Post by wren on Nov 27, 2006 8:28:39 GMT -5
How do you know when a call to shamanism and soul work is truly a call to spiritual adventure and not, for example, a momentary disorientation, a mood, a rogue feeling or an excuse for fleeing responsibilities that have become too much or too fearful? How do you know it is not just a sudden encounter with unsown wild oats or the need for a long overdue vacation? How can you be certain you do not just long for something you perceive as power over others, rather than a call to become a servant of the sacred?
First, if it is a true call, you will that that responding to it is, in fact, not an avoiding of responsibilities but rather a facing of something difficult, something unknown and even frightening that summons you. Far from looking like an opportunity for escape, a call feels more like a compelling need to walk into the mouth of a whale or out into the night and into a storm. You have a profound sense that something essential is waiting for you in the midst of a wilderness and your one true life depends upon your being willing to find it.
Second, there is a paradox at the heart of the call. This strange thing that calls to you somehow feels profoundly familiar to the unconscious – though unknown, surprising or even frightening to the conscious personality. It has the character of déjà vu but it is even more disorienting; you know you belong to it even though you have never before encountered it and can’t really explain anything about it.
Third, you have the sudden and inexplicable sense that a chapter of your life is over, whether you wanted it to end or not, and usually you have not. What formerly was meaningful becomes strangely emptied of value. This often is associated with what is known as a ‘dark night of the soul’. (see thread of that name on this board for more information)
Fourth, the call is almost always unexpected and often unwanted. Yet you feel summoned by destiny, as if your own future has grabbed you by the collar and is tugging you forward, as if you have been volunteered by life to a task you hadn’t sought. You feel as if your spiritual center of gravity has been transferred from which the pale of society to a zone unknown.
Like many encounters with the Great Mystery, a call to adventure is typically experienced as uncanny or numinous, suffused with the sacred or holy. More often than not it is accompanied by enormously powerful emotion – as either cause, effect or coincident effect. Non-ordinary states of consciousness are also common, states in which you may apprehend something astonishing about the world for the first time.
Another way to know if a call is genuine, a way to test it, is to imagine not acting upon it and then notice how you feel. Imagine you are going to ignore the call, or even laugh it off. How does that feel? Do you detect a building dread, a huge sadness, a guilt that comes from refusing a sacred invitation?
Likewise, another test is to act upon it, to move you life forward toward the call and see if a feeling of rightness grows stronger, above and beyond the background noise of fear, which may also grow. If it is a call, you’ll feel like you are drawing near a promised land or your true home for the first time. The fear will be the sort a child feels when lost or too far from home.
Acknowledge your fears, first to yourself and then to at least one person close to you (someone you can wholly trust, who will not be threatened by your experiences and who will not try to hold you back from your journey). Describe how the fear feels to yoru body, what images arise with it, what memories it evokes. As deeply as you can, tell the truth about your fear. Simply acknowledging and speaking it aloud to another goes a long way to summoning the resources you need to meet that fear and to enable you to proceed despite it.
Then, describe the call in detail, along with the fear, in your journal (and to your confidante if you wish), including where you were, what happened, how your body felt, what emotions you experienced, what symbols you noticed, and the connections you see with other significant life experiences or with myths and archetypes. Telling someone will relieve some of the burden of carrying the experience by yourself. And, it will begin to get the experience of the call outside of yourself and into the world where it belongs. It’s very difficult to face a storm alone, even if it is your own storm. There are times of extreme loneliness to come on this journey. So, begin, at least, with a friend.
Should you find yourself resisting the call, ask yourself what part of you is creating the resistance (good chance here it’s the ego). Of course, it may be more than one part, in which case you have a little extra work to do. Lie down, get yourself relaxed as you can and ask the resisting part to reveal itself in your imagination. Let yourself be surprised by what form it takes. Ask that part what it really needs. Tell it you will not take anything away from it but rather hope to offer it new options. This process allows you to develop a deep relationship with your resistant self.
It is essential that you act upon the call as soon as you are ready, even in the most general way. The window of opportunity may not remain open long. The knock comes to the door but will leave if the door remains closed. Look hard at yourself in the mirror and decide whether you will cross the threshold. You are a prospective immigrant and you must make a choice between safely and a dangerous passage…
Crossing the threshold into your uncharted future is an act of courage and self-compassion. It changes your relationship to life in a fundamental way. You will never be the same again. It embodies your willingness to employ a new form of risk-taking, to consciously choose growth-stimulating, soul-nourishing conflicts, to live through the accompanying anxiety, and to accept your life as open-ended and unpredictable. Passing through that door commits you to living in the present in a way you never have before. Your personal, cultural and religious past no longer provides you with a map to your future.
Are you willing to leave home and journey into the wilderness with neither map, compass, guide or assurance you will return?
One of the first things you must do is face your self-imposed limitations, your fears and self-deceptions. We all suffer from these, whether we acknowledge them or not, and as a shaman you will learn, in time, to be free of such things. This is all that is holding you back from realizing your shamanic self.
It is equally important to understand the need for periods of solitude in which you must come to terms with your emotions. You may proceed some considerable way along the path without realizing this and it can be extremely painful, but once you have learned to know and understand your true self, your whole approach to living will be changed beyond recognition. You will no longer feel inadequate or self-denying; your strength of will will grow and continue to develop. So, take some time to be alone, truly alone; if possible go into the countryside and stay near one of the less-frequented ancient sites which possess a sacred dimension. Or find a place where you feel the pull and power of the landscape. Even here it may be difficult to be totally alone: this is one of the problems of the modern world and must be dealt with as best as you can. In effect the kind of solitude necessary for the shaman is an inner ‘aloneness’. Only by this means will you be able to recognize the many facets of your inner self, and to separate the true from the false.
This exercise will benefit greatly from complete and utter darkness and silence. If possible, find a place (say a bathroom) and cover the windows and door edges to create a ‘cave of darkness’. If you have access to a large stone, flattened on one side, place this on your belly as you lay in the dark. This will ground you and help keep your attention focused. And, be certain to turn off telephones, pagers and alert any and all nearby that you are not to be disturbed. Earplugs may help, but the sensation of them in your ears might be distracting. If, however, something disturbs your focus and meditation, be absolutely certain to ground yourself immediately, by drinking some water and eating something. Sit quietly and bring yourself back to the Middleworld before stepping back into your daily life.
Begin this meditation, as you will always begin, by finding the breathing that relaxes you and brings you to inner focus. Allow the darkness to consume and envelop you, letting any other thoughts to be brushed aside. Remember the weight of the stone on your belly and simply ‘be’ in the darkness.
Imagine yourself in a great cave, its roof a huge arch above you, its walls stretching out on either side and vanishing into darkness. When you feel that the cave is sufficiently solid and real to you, visualize a circle of light around you. This is for your personal protection and ensures that no matter what occurs next no harm will come to you. When you are completely certain of your security, begin to consider your greatest fear. Try, if you can, to give it form and shape. Then, when you are ready, call it in to the cave with you and face it. Do the same with your limiting and self-deceiving selves, and also with your ideal self. Subject them all to careful scrutiny. Some will appear glamorous, some the reverse, but which is better? Are they not all you? Some fears are so deep-seated that you may not recognize them as such. Take time to consider the things that most upset you: an emotional signpost may denote more than one kind of inner response. See these forms for what they are: shadows of your real self.
Slowly and carefully, begin to make careful changes to the images you have formed. Watch them alter before your eyes into something different. This re-sculpting process may take many forms. Your fearful self may look shimmery and insubstantial: shape it to be confident and firm. Your illusory self may appear suspicious or beglamored: give it some hard reality by seeing it perform some mundane task such as gardening or washing up. You may see ‘wounds’ or holes in your different selves. These are areas that need special attention, to be healed and made whole again. Be honest with your selves, seeing them for what they truly are, but be gentle as well. This is all you, after all. When you feel ready, reform yourself into one being, a being who is wholly aware of the parts that build the sum. Return to the Middleworld and ground yourself.
Remember what you see and feel, and try to bring a sense of your restored inner self from the meditation. Record all you can remember, including your reactions and feelings at each step of the exercise.
This is not an easy path to tread and it will need to be traveled several times before the desired result is achieved. However, its importance cannot be over-estimated. Before any shaman accepts new pupils, he or she will subject them to rigorous tests and trials of this kind. The effect of these is to dismantle some of the old and outworn concepts which lie within every person and to rebuild upon strong foundations of truth. There is no point in taking up the practice of shamanism if you are weak and unprepared to face the truth of who you are. Take your time with this exercise, which may be less tempting than you would like, but which is of paramount importance since it helps form the foundation on which you can then build.
At first you will probably experience some confusion, and there are bound to be painful realizations. That is true for any and all who face their fears and their true selves. You should seriously question your reason for wanting to be a shaman at this point. The answer may be quite different from what you expect, as may be the shadow-selves you perceive in the cave. Later you will be able to call upon the help of inner guides and helpers but it is essential that, in the initial stages of this journey, you face certain things alone.
First, if it is a true call, you will that that responding to it is, in fact, not an avoiding of responsibilities but rather a facing of something difficult, something unknown and even frightening that summons you. Far from looking like an opportunity for escape, a call feels more like a compelling need to walk into the mouth of a whale or out into the night and into a storm. You have a profound sense that something essential is waiting for you in the midst of a wilderness and your one true life depends upon your being willing to find it.
Second, there is a paradox at the heart of the call. This strange thing that calls to you somehow feels profoundly familiar to the unconscious – though unknown, surprising or even frightening to the conscious personality. It has the character of déjà vu but it is even more disorienting; you know you belong to it even though you have never before encountered it and can’t really explain anything about it.
Third, you have the sudden and inexplicable sense that a chapter of your life is over, whether you wanted it to end or not, and usually you have not. What formerly was meaningful becomes strangely emptied of value. This often is associated with what is known as a ‘dark night of the soul’. (see thread of that name on this board for more information)
Fourth, the call is almost always unexpected and often unwanted. Yet you feel summoned by destiny, as if your own future has grabbed you by the collar and is tugging you forward, as if you have been volunteered by life to a task you hadn’t sought. You feel as if your spiritual center of gravity has been transferred from which the pale of society to a zone unknown.
Like many encounters with the Great Mystery, a call to adventure is typically experienced as uncanny or numinous, suffused with the sacred or holy. More often than not it is accompanied by enormously powerful emotion – as either cause, effect or coincident effect. Non-ordinary states of consciousness are also common, states in which you may apprehend something astonishing about the world for the first time.
Another way to know if a call is genuine, a way to test it, is to imagine not acting upon it and then notice how you feel. Imagine you are going to ignore the call, or even laugh it off. How does that feel? Do you detect a building dread, a huge sadness, a guilt that comes from refusing a sacred invitation?
Likewise, another test is to act upon it, to move you life forward toward the call and see if a feeling of rightness grows stronger, above and beyond the background noise of fear, which may also grow. If it is a call, you’ll feel like you are drawing near a promised land or your true home for the first time. The fear will be the sort a child feels when lost or too far from home.
Acknowledge your fears, first to yourself and then to at least one person close to you (someone you can wholly trust, who will not be threatened by your experiences and who will not try to hold you back from your journey). Describe how the fear feels to yoru body, what images arise with it, what memories it evokes. As deeply as you can, tell the truth about your fear. Simply acknowledging and speaking it aloud to another goes a long way to summoning the resources you need to meet that fear and to enable you to proceed despite it.
Then, describe the call in detail, along with the fear, in your journal (and to your confidante if you wish), including where you were, what happened, how your body felt, what emotions you experienced, what symbols you noticed, and the connections you see with other significant life experiences or with myths and archetypes. Telling someone will relieve some of the burden of carrying the experience by yourself. And, it will begin to get the experience of the call outside of yourself and into the world where it belongs. It’s very difficult to face a storm alone, even if it is your own storm. There are times of extreme loneliness to come on this journey. So, begin, at least, with a friend.
Should you find yourself resisting the call, ask yourself what part of you is creating the resistance (good chance here it’s the ego). Of course, it may be more than one part, in which case you have a little extra work to do. Lie down, get yourself relaxed as you can and ask the resisting part to reveal itself in your imagination. Let yourself be surprised by what form it takes. Ask that part what it really needs. Tell it you will not take anything away from it but rather hope to offer it new options. This process allows you to develop a deep relationship with your resistant self.
It is essential that you act upon the call as soon as you are ready, even in the most general way. The window of opportunity may not remain open long. The knock comes to the door but will leave if the door remains closed. Look hard at yourself in the mirror and decide whether you will cross the threshold. You are a prospective immigrant and you must make a choice between safely and a dangerous passage…
Either you will
Go through this door
Or you will not go through.
If you go through
There is always the risk
Of remembering your name.
Things look at you doubly
And you must look back
And let them happen.
If you do not go through
It is possible
To live worthily.
To maintain your attitudes
To hold your position
To die bravely
But much will blind you,
Much will evade you,
At what cost who knows?
The door itself
Makes no promises.
It is only a door.
~Adrienne Rich
Go through this door
Or you will not go through.
If you go through
There is always the risk
Of remembering your name.
Things look at you doubly
And you must look back
And let them happen.
If you do not go through
It is possible
To live worthily.
To maintain your attitudes
To hold your position
To die bravely
But much will blind you,
Much will evade you,
At what cost who knows?
The door itself
Makes no promises.
It is only a door.
~Adrienne Rich
Crossing the threshold into your uncharted future is an act of courage and self-compassion. It changes your relationship to life in a fundamental way. You will never be the same again. It embodies your willingness to employ a new form of risk-taking, to consciously choose growth-stimulating, soul-nourishing conflicts, to live through the accompanying anxiety, and to accept your life as open-ended and unpredictable. Passing through that door commits you to living in the present in a way you never have before. Your personal, cultural and religious past no longer provides you with a map to your future.
Are you willing to leave home and journey into the wilderness with neither map, compass, guide or assurance you will return?
The Cave of Learning
One of the first things you must do is face your self-imposed limitations, your fears and self-deceptions. We all suffer from these, whether we acknowledge them or not, and as a shaman you will learn, in time, to be free of such things. This is all that is holding you back from realizing your shamanic self.
It is equally important to understand the need for periods of solitude in which you must come to terms with your emotions. You may proceed some considerable way along the path without realizing this and it can be extremely painful, but once you have learned to know and understand your true self, your whole approach to living will be changed beyond recognition. You will no longer feel inadequate or self-denying; your strength of will will grow and continue to develop. So, take some time to be alone, truly alone; if possible go into the countryside and stay near one of the less-frequented ancient sites which possess a sacred dimension. Or find a place where you feel the pull and power of the landscape. Even here it may be difficult to be totally alone: this is one of the problems of the modern world and must be dealt with as best as you can. In effect the kind of solitude necessary for the shaman is an inner ‘aloneness’. Only by this means will you be able to recognize the many facets of your inner self, and to separate the true from the false.
Meditation Exercise – the Cave of Learning
This exercise will benefit greatly from complete and utter darkness and silence. If possible, find a place (say a bathroom) and cover the windows and door edges to create a ‘cave of darkness’. If you have access to a large stone, flattened on one side, place this on your belly as you lay in the dark. This will ground you and help keep your attention focused. And, be certain to turn off telephones, pagers and alert any and all nearby that you are not to be disturbed. Earplugs may help, but the sensation of them in your ears might be distracting. If, however, something disturbs your focus and meditation, be absolutely certain to ground yourself immediately, by drinking some water and eating something. Sit quietly and bring yourself back to the Middleworld before stepping back into your daily life.
Begin this meditation, as you will always begin, by finding the breathing that relaxes you and brings you to inner focus. Allow the darkness to consume and envelop you, letting any other thoughts to be brushed aside. Remember the weight of the stone on your belly and simply ‘be’ in the darkness.
Imagine yourself in a great cave, its roof a huge arch above you, its walls stretching out on either side and vanishing into darkness. When you feel that the cave is sufficiently solid and real to you, visualize a circle of light around you. This is for your personal protection and ensures that no matter what occurs next no harm will come to you. When you are completely certain of your security, begin to consider your greatest fear. Try, if you can, to give it form and shape. Then, when you are ready, call it in to the cave with you and face it. Do the same with your limiting and self-deceiving selves, and also with your ideal self. Subject them all to careful scrutiny. Some will appear glamorous, some the reverse, but which is better? Are they not all you? Some fears are so deep-seated that you may not recognize them as such. Take time to consider the things that most upset you: an emotional signpost may denote more than one kind of inner response. See these forms for what they are: shadows of your real self.
Slowly and carefully, begin to make careful changes to the images you have formed. Watch them alter before your eyes into something different. This re-sculpting process may take many forms. Your fearful self may look shimmery and insubstantial: shape it to be confident and firm. Your illusory self may appear suspicious or beglamored: give it some hard reality by seeing it perform some mundane task such as gardening or washing up. You may see ‘wounds’ or holes in your different selves. These are areas that need special attention, to be healed and made whole again. Be honest with your selves, seeing them for what they truly are, but be gentle as well. This is all you, after all. When you feel ready, reform yourself into one being, a being who is wholly aware of the parts that build the sum. Return to the Middleworld and ground yourself.
Remember what you see and feel, and try to bring a sense of your restored inner self from the meditation. Record all you can remember, including your reactions and feelings at each step of the exercise.
This is not an easy path to tread and it will need to be traveled several times before the desired result is achieved. However, its importance cannot be over-estimated. Before any shaman accepts new pupils, he or she will subject them to rigorous tests and trials of this kind. The effect of these is to dismantle some of the old and outworn concepts which lie within every person and to rebuild upon strong foundations of truth. There is no point in taking up the practice of shamanism if you are weak and unprepared to face the truth of who you are. Take your time with this exercise, which may be less tempting than you would like, but which is of paramount importance since it helps form the foundation on which you can then build.
At first you will probably experience some confusion, and there are bound to be painful realizations. That is true for any and all who face their fears and their true selves. You should seriously question your reason for wanting to be a shaman at this point. The answer may be quite different from what you expect, as may be the shadow-selves you perceive in the cave. Later you will be able to call upon the help of inner guides and helpers but it is essential that, in the initial stages of this journey, you face certain things alone.
