Our Ancient roots are shamanism
Wherever we live and whatever sort of culture we have grown up in, Shamanism is our spiritual heritage. Look back far enough in time and all of us come from shamanistic cultures. Long before such recent concepts as organised religion, humans sought understanding and knowledge of the wider universe using a variety of experiential ways and tools which are just as applicable today as ever.
These practices are still in use in a surprisingly large number of places in the world and many shamans of indigenous cultures are now teaching people irrespective of their culture.
Our outer health and wholeness is an expression of our inner health and holiness. We are here to bring spirit into matter and matter to spirit.
Shamanism is the oldest spiritual path on planet earth
Creating and maintaining healing and harmony in society and the individual and keeping our connection with mother earth and all creation. Shamanism is an ancient way to knowledge, to an awareness of the subtle energies that underly existence, to a vastly increased level of consciousness. The term is used to describe the practices of indigenous people from all over the world who were and are the healers within their community i.e. the Medicine People, the Shamans.
Shamans are people who are in tune with the Earth and know how to touch the soul in everything in order to keep a healthy balance within self, within each individual and therefore within the community. For them there is no separation between daily life and Spirit, they know that all things are connected and that disconnection brings dis-ease.
Although our modern times seem very far removed from the experience of indigenous people, the needs and expression of the human soul is still the same in its desire for connection – love, community and creativity.
The shamanic journey, the trance-dance, the vision quest, the purifying ceremony of the sweat lodge, the Circle of community, these are ancient but eternally relevant ways to contact the timeless reality that exists parallel to and just out of sight of the world we so mistakenly call the ‘real world’.
It is here in the everyday that we experience the reflections of who we are, of our actions, our deepest beliefs, our ‘dreams’, but it is in the non-manifest world of the Spirit that the hidden causal interactions take place. Hidden, that is, until we begin to open the doors and ‘see’ with an expanded vision.
Living Shamanically
We have given ourselves away through the pressures of a material driven society, we have been encouraged to hide within the false belief that self worth is accumulation of external power and possessions. Now is the time to come back to our inner knowledge, our inner-connection. It is the time to re-awaken our ability to sustain life through our relationship to (rather than our control over) the earth and nature. It is a time to remember who we are, much greater in consciousness than the boxes of beliefs we have squeezed ourselves into.
It is through greater awareness, the Eagle’s eye view, the deeper breath, the pause in thought, that we can embrace the changes that are coming and only with a greater awareness can we ride these changes to dream and live the best of human consciousness.