EarthThunder: Articles
Shaman Way Teaching and Healing
Dialogue about the importance of Shaman Way as well as the barriers in society today.

January 10th 2012 - SHAMAN WAY PHILOSPOHY

Questions? Questions for the purpose of insight, understanding, direction, affirmation, inclusive stability, etc. anything and everything that will support movement is functional and welcomed.

Questions for the purpose of ‘Get you’, divisiveness, trickery, disposal of someone, punishment, I know more than you do but I am going to question you to get more information so that I am always ‘right’, etc. This kind of questioning is a mental health dysfunction called ‘Control’. Acts of controlling are based in all kinds of issues. Mostly the outcome of controlling is to promote disposal or punishment. Everyone loses and many stuck energies increase. This kind of questioning breeds so much extra work, time and fracturing.

What is erroneous with disposal of someone? Obviously there are no laws or social agreement to keep each other. Even in marriage the weaving of togetherness is much stronger for many reasons other than a commitment not to dispose of each other.

Our World’s peoples have many generations to become masterful in disposing of each other. The systems of community investments are pretty shallow and linear. The last societies to make major investments in lifelong association were tribal. Even today that is why starving, abused Native Americans do not leave the devastation of living on a reservation. They are acutely aware that if they leave that would increase the possibilities of fracturing their weaving of loyalty. Indigenous cultures invest in each other spiritually first and foremost for a really obvious reason – human-to-human association is complex, risky, and sooo much work. The spiritual investment acts as a foundation to return to every time there is a bump, hiccup, etc. in the relations. Something close to unconditional familiarity…there are always conditions if you are living. Unconditional love is pre-birth and death. Spiritual investment is the training to value longevity in relations more than the brief “honeymoon high” of continual separations and drama.

Indigenous Shaman Way Teaching and Healing invests many rituals, ceremonies, risking, and more for the purpose of growing tribal trust and transition/growth. Many Apprentices leave because their previous experiences in their societies mostly invest in buying products that can be used in some way. Shaman Way endeavors to find Healing daily/monthly/yearly whatever the slow methodical means need to be to awaken the instincts of gathering spiritually. Trusting that more times than not the information and/or gifts of gathering spiritually are symbolic, non-literal, and have no timeline. The benefits of gathering spiritually are many times though may not be obvious for a long time. No wonder the hundreds of years of investing only in products or ‘getting something back’ are so easy to do.

Our society today is so fractured, splintered, low/leaking energies, reactive rather than resourceful, bashing/judgmental, covert, etc. that coming together as a gathering often accelerates some peoples’ need to find ways to leave from the start of gathering. The instinctive experiences that this will be tons of work is exhausting at the get go. So leaving becomes the outcome.

Everything about having a ‘Shaman’ Teacher reeks of potential paranoia. This goes back to when missionaries fighting for control of the investments of the tribe, sought to delete the power of the Shaman. They felt the Shaman was damning to their preaching. The missionaries started the mandate that if a Shaman even once didn’t heal or teach you, they were to be killed as a dangerous demon. Not unlike how we value teachers in America today.

The mantra of the Shaman is; the more they know the less they know. The Shaman can’t coerce or chase those who wish to leave. The Shaman is to be an example of honoring/respecting. In other words the foundation of gathering spiritually is ‘Enough’.

Today where the Shaman charges for their time but not the Teaching or Healing, the relationship experience can become unclear. For some reason when the Shaman used to be paid in blankets, land, lodges, food, horses and other valuable exchanges, the relationship expectations of the Shaman were simpler. Today the Shaman has few means to pay for their urban lodge and utilities by means of blankets and tobacco.

Today the Shamanic Teaching and Healing is done in groups if at all possible. The student is often a giant mix of; wiggles, resistance, learned expectations, dramas, health issues, awakening of personal responsibility (in other words it is not the Shaman’s job to make you teachable), past relationship baggage, religious expectations, timing, location, etc. A single student would not have the wondrous advantages of group healing, understanding, acceptance, insight through the changing of perceptions, learning to release jealousy, learning to release unfulfilling competition, practicing skills with the support of others seeking, etc. Sometimes a student comes to a spiritual gathering expecting all their needs to be filled that, of course, is impossible. Group Teaching and Healing sometimes can support suggestions of seeking many sources for Healing and Teaching, Shamanism being ‘one’ of the many ways of The Medicine Wheel.

Today’s Shaman often and understandably has the same wiggles, resistance, learned expectations, dramas, health issues, awakening of personal responsibility, past relationship baggage, religious expectations, timing, location, etc. that their students do. After all, the Shaman rarely lives remotely in Nature anymore where they would continually be taught directly from Nature, hunt, gather as Nature allows, and get immense exercise = where spiritual devotion is basic and obvious.

Therefore, the death rate of Shamans and student is very high. Given the current system in place in the World today, minority is only valued and protected if it is eliminated.

Are you ready to be a group student of a Shaman? How would you make room for the gathering, the homework, is there room inside of you for devotion, the daily Rituals, completely different skill sets than public schooling, the embarrassment that is spiritual feedback, and/or are you willing to stand out as wanting to recover a minority?

The internet news reported that Peru recently killed 14 Shamans. The news did not state what happened to her/his students.



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