Ask any passer-by on any street to spell it out shamanism along with the result will probably be blank stares. So many people are surprised to master that shamanism is not a religion however the oldest spiritual and problem-solving technology in the world. More surprising will be the discovery that it is the precursor to the majority major world religions, such as the Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist traditions, and that it has become practised on every inhabited continent in the world for at least 40,000 years and possibly quite definitely longer. Historically, shamanism was obviously a significant survival tool of prehistoric humans. Our hunter-gatherer forbears decorated the stone walls of caves and cliffs worldwide with carved and painted images drawn from shamanic experience. We will no longer are in caves or in tiny communities whose members are all seen to us. The majority of us live far longer, healthier lives than our ancient ancestors, but our minds, that section of us competent at fearing the dark and seeking the help of things unseen, hasn’t changed in almost a quarter of your million years. What made the uncertain lives of prehistoric people less difficult works today because, even though world might have changed, fundamentally we have not.

Ask what a shaman is along with the question may evoke several words about Native American ‘medicine men’ or word ‘witchdoctor’. In reality, that of a shaman is and does is just explained. From the Siberian Tungus language which produced the word, ‘shaman’ means ‘the one that sees’ and refers to somebody creating a ‘journey’ to alternate realities while in an altered state of consciousness to meet up with and use spirit helpers. What are the shaman ‘sees’, what she realises, during this experience of meeting spirits is the fact that there is no separation between something that is: no separation between me writing so you reading these words, from your dog and cat, between life and death, between this apparently material reality as well as the non-material realities in the spirit worlds. This idea of ‘oneness’ is normal currency in contemporary culture and increasingly given credence by certain quantum physicists dealing with sub atomic theory, regarded course this is a predominantly physical, as opposed to a spiritual, oneness that such scientists want to describe. However, where many of us are only able to consider the perception of ‘oneness’, shaman’s actually live it over the connection with the shamanic ‘journey’ and direct, personal interaction with spirit.

Described as a ‘breakthrough in plane’, in physiological terms the journey begins as the shaman redirects the main cognitive process from the left cerebral hemisphere with the brain off to the right, through the corpus collosum – that is, in the structuring, organising hemisphere, on the visualising, sensing one. In the overwhelming tastes traditions worldwide this ‘breakthrough’ will likely be assisted using percussive sound, for example drumming, rattling or clapping. Although hallucinogens, like ayahuasca, are widely advertised in the West as a means to assist alter consciousness, actually just about 10% of traditional shamans use plants in this way. Metaphysically, your way begins once the shaman’s consciousness shifts in the here and now and enters worlds visible and then her. These worlds, which vary with each culture and tradition all over the world, are referred to as ‘alternate reality’, ‘the arena of the spirits’, or ‘non-ordinary reality’. Some traditions call shamans ‘the walker between your worlds’ since they’re the bridge between ‘here’ and ‘there’.

Although often considered primitive or seen as a ‘religion’ of less developed peoples and cultures, San Pedro cactus is both subtle and paradoxical. The ‘worlds’ of shamanic journeys are utterly real – they exist and is felt, smelt and experienced as clearly since this ‘ordinary’ reality. As well they may be qualitative spaces, states to be that reflect and support the reason behind the shaman’s journey – to request help, healing or information from your spirits. Contemporary research inside the cognitive sciences points too the human being mental faculties are hardwired to see the ‘unseen’ and the mystical; perhaps the Lower, Middle and Upper Worlds from the shaman – translated into Hell, Earth and Heaven in later tripartite cosmologies – are seemingly an important part of human perception.

And in addition, one of the questions most frequently asked by students being unveiled in shamanism is, “What are spirits?”. Perhaps because Western society has mostly avoided thinking about spirituality for most generations we lack an obvious, objective idea of such things as spirits. Today it’s actually a one-size-fits-all word encompassing entities, energies, ghosts, angels, ancestors, the undead, elves, fairies; this list is seemingly endless. Personally, I’ve two understandings in the idea of spirit and though both the coincide, they’re not the same yet they help me. The Core Shamanic, or Western, tradition which underpins my own, personal practice and teaching, describes spirits in everything that exists. I’m a spirit currently inhabiting an actual body so that you can possess a human experience. The spirits I meet on my ‘journeys’ are dis-embodied and for that reason offer an existential overview unavailable in my opinion, but we have been basically the same: particles of infinite universal energy, fragments of the Great Spirit. We all come from this energy, exist inside and go back to it. It is actually living this angle which allows a shaman to try out having less separation between issues that ordinary-reality considers very separate indeed, for example life and death or wellness disease.

My second comprehension of spirit is a lot more psychological and archetypal and was plain and simple explained by CG Jung in the autobiography ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections’. Describing his knowledge of spirit helpers Jung wrote, “Philemon… brought you will find me the important insight there are things in the psyche i don’t produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a force that has been not myself.” This is the beautifully lucid explanation of how it might feel to get with spirit within a shamanic journey. More prosaically, I describe the entire process of journeying to my students as having one’s imagination harnessed and directed by something external.
To learn more about Psychedelics just go to our net page: look at here now