I've finally decided to stop sitting on my arse and do something about my life. I've been reading a lot tonight and listening to a lot of podcasts and I'm finally beginning to see sense and embrace my spirituality head on. I've talked a lot about shamanism but this passage spoke volumes to me tonight and I felt compelled to share it.
WE ARE NATURAL BORN SHAMANS
by Paul Levy
The shamanic archetype is one of the major processes that is becoming animated in the collective psyche of our species. We?d have to be truly ?disturbed? if our emotions aren?t disturbed by what is playing out currently in our world. And yet, the darkness is a ?disturber of the peace? in order to (potentially) create a higher-order integration of the psyche and its contents. Just as dreams are the unconscious? way of balancing a one-sidedness in an individual?s psyche, the shamanic archetype is the dynamically evolving pattern of healing that is being constellated in the collective unconscious as a compensatory response to the trauma that is playing itself out on the world stage.
We are truly a species in trauma. Traumatized, we traumatize each other as we re-traumatize ourselves, collaboratively re-enacting the repetition compulsion of the traumatized soul on the world stage. Seized by something greater than ourselves, we are possessed by our compulsion to re-create our trauma, as we perform a holy liturgy en masse, structuring and ritualizing our experience as a way of potentially transforming it. And just like trauma, where the re-solution is hidden in encoded form in the very pathology, we are collectively re-creating our trauma in the world theater as if we are participating in a sacred mass in the holiest of temples, so as to potentially awaken ourselves. The madness of trauma is its own revelation, and how it manifests depends upon whether or not we recognize what is being revealed to us through what we are compulsively and unconsciously acting out as history.
Having the shamanic archetype activated in the collective unconscious means that we can re-contextualize our problems, our trauma, and our own madness. It?s been very helpful for me as I continually deepen my own healing to remember that my experience of trauma in myself is simultaneously a microcosmic, personalized fractal reflecting the greater trauma resonating throughout the collective field. This realization allows me to not personalize the moment of feeling the trauma, or concretize myself as being traumatized, but allows me to give myself over to and embrace my experience.
We all have a part of us that is mad to the extent that we are not fully, totally awake, and who among us can truly claim this degree of enlightenment? Thinking that we are not mad is an expression of our madness. How can we not have a mad part of us, as we are not separate from the world, which has clearly gone mad? The world?s madness is a reflection of our own; we have all collaboratively dreamed up the world?s madness. Instead of pathologizing ourselves because of our madness, which is a mad thing to do, we can embrace and own it but not identify with it nor judge it. In a truly radical act, we can interpret our madness in a way that is sane.
Recognizing that we are picking up the madness that is in the field which resonates with, is an expression of, and constellates the madness within ourselves, is to step out of personalizing our experience, and step into the point of view of identifying ourselves as would-be shamans. We then can envision ourselves from this more expansive point of view to have, like a shaman, the intention to take into ourselves the madness in the field, which ultimately is our own madness, so as to creatively assimilate it into our wholeness in our own unique manner as a way to help serve the field. Recognizing the part of us that is a natural-born shaman is the very act that calls forth and manifests, as if by magic, the part of us that truly IS a shaman.
Recognizing that the madness within us is both ours while simultaneously being an expression of the field is to snap out of our self-limiting and self-alienating identity of being separate from the universe. Instead, we can recognize our deep intimacy with the universe, which is to say ourselves. This very recognition allows us to embrace our mad part as an aspect of our vast wholeness, our monstrous totality, thereby snapping us out of the infinite regression and self-generating feedback loop of acting out our madness as an unconscious reaction against looking at our madness. Crazy as it seems, embracing our madness is the very act which helps to actualize and make real our basic sanity. Compassion spontaneously arises as both a cause and effect of this realization.
We are being invited by the universe to step into our shamanic ?garments? and consciously participate in our own evolution. Instead of our ritual implements being drums and rattles, however, as ?modern-day shamans? our accessories might be something like the keyboard of a computer or the tools of multi-media, as we work to inspire change in the underlying consciousness of the field by a simple keystroke or the creative use of a video camera or website.
The formless bodhisattvic archetype of shaman/healer is thirsting for instruments to express and actualize itself in embodied form. Recognizing, and assenting, saying ?Yes,? to the deeper shamanic calling that is pulsating through our veins inspires us to breathe life into and incarnate the living figure of the shaman within us. Following our calling with religious devotion, we sacrifice ourselves as we offer ourselves in service to a power greater than ourselves. Co-operating with our deeper shamanic calling constellates the universe to support us in our endeavor, as the universe itself is the sponsor of our calling. Like shamans in training, we are each being called to connect with the spirit which animates our being, a process that can only take place within the psyche, mediated by the human heart and fueled by the power of love.
WE ARE NATURAL BORN SHAMANS
by Paul Levy
The shamanic archetype is one of the major processes that is becoming animated in the collective psyche of our species. We?d have to be truly ?disturbed? if our emotions aren?t disturbed by what is playing out currently in our world. And yet, the darkness is a ?disturber of the peace? in order to (potentially) create a higher-order integration of the psyche and its contents. Just as dreams are the unconscious? way of balancing a one-sidedness in an individual?s psyche, the shamanic archetype is the dynamically evolving pattern of healing that is being constellated in the collective unconscious as a compensatory response to the trauma that is playing itself out on the world stage.
We are truly a species in trauma. Traumatized, we traumatize each other as we re-traumatize ourselves, collaboratively re-enacting the repetition compulsion of the traumatized soul on the world stage. Seized by something greater than ourselves, we are possessed by our compulsion to re-create our trauma, as we perform a holy liturgy en masse, structuring and ritualizing our experience as a way of potentially transforming it. And just like trauma, where the re-solution is hidden in encoded form in the very pathology, we are collectively re-creating our trauma in the world theater as if we are participating in a sacred mass in the holiest of temples, so as to potentially awaken ourselves. The madness of trauma is its own revelation, and how it manifests depends upon whether or not we recognize what is being revealed to us through what we are compulsively and unconsciously acting out as history.
Having the shamanic archetype activated in the collective unconscious means that we can re-contextualize our problems, our trauma, and our own madness. It?s been very helpful for me as I continually deepen my own healing to remember that my experience of trauma in myself is simultaneously a microcosmic, personalized fractal reflecting the greater trauma resonating throughout the collective field. This realization allows me to not personalize the moment of feeling the trauma, or concretize myself as being traumatized, but allows me to give myself over to and embrace my experience.
We all have a part of us that is mad to the extent that we are not fully, totally awake, and who among us can truly claim this degree of enlightenment? Thinking that we are not mad is an expression of our madness. How can we not have a mad part of us, as we are not separate from the world, which has clearly gone mad? The world?s madness is a reflection of our own; we have all collaboratively dreamed up the world?s madness. Instead of pathologizing ourselves because of our madness, which is a mad thing to do, we can embrace and own it but not identify with it nor judge it. In a truly radical act, we can interpret our madness in a way that is sane.
Recognizing that we are picking up the madness that is in the field which resonates with, is an expression of, and constellates the madness within ourselves, is to step out of personalizing our experience, and step into the point of view of identifying ourselves as would-be shamans. We then can envision ourselves from this more expansive point of view to have, like a shaman, the intention to take into ourselves the madness in the field, which ultimately is our own madness, so as to creatively assimilate it into our wholeness in our own unique manner as a way to help serve the field. Recognizing the part of us that is a natural-born shaman is the very act that calls forth and manifests, as if by magic, the part of us that truly IS a shaman.
Recognizing that the madness within us is both ours while simultaneously being an expression of the field is to snap out of our self-limiting and self-alienating identity of being separate from the universe. Instead, we can recognize our deep intimacy with the universe, which is to say ourselves. This very recognition allows us to embrace our mad part as an aspect of our vast wholeness, our monstrous totality, thereby snapping us out of the infinite regression and self-generating feedback loop of acting out our madness as an unconscious reaction against looking at our madness. Crazy as it seems, embracing our madness is the very act which helps to actualize and make real our basic sanity. Compassion spontaneously arises as both a cause and effect of this realization.
We are being invited by the universe to step into our shamanic ?garments? and consciously participate in our own evolution. Instead of our ritual implements being drums and rattles, however, as ?modern-day shamans? our accessories might be something like the keyboard of a computer or the tools of multi-media, as we work to inspire change in the underlying consciousness of the field by a simple keystroke or the creative use of a video camera or website.
The formless bodhisattvic archetype of shaman/healer is thirsting for instruments to express and actualize itself in embodied form. Recognizing, and assenting, saying ?Yes,? to the deeper shamanic calling that is pulsating through our veins inspires us to breathe life into and incarnate the living figure of the shaman within us. Following our calling with religious devotion, we sacrifice ourselves as we offer ourselves in service to a power greater than ourselves. Co-operating with our deeper shamanic calling constellates the universe to support us in our endeavor, as the universe itself is the sponsor of our calling. Like shamans in training, we are each being called to connect with the spirit which animates our being, a process that can only take place within the psyche, mediated by the human heart and fueled by the power of love.
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