Why not just use the powerful practices of shamanic cultures, hallucinogenic plants among them? Because these days they do not always work, or not in the way they once used to. There are several ways of entering shamanic states, and what matters is contact with the shamanic realms, rather than the means used to enter them. The bigger question is how powerful experiences can become part of everyday life.
What makes a state of consciousness shamanic? #
An altered state is a change from ordinary consciousness. Such states vary: time can seem faster or slower, awareness can be heightened, or there can be an experience of losing oneself. Meditation and movement practices deliberately enter altered states, and people also experience light trances whilst daydreaming, painting, listening to music or staring into a fire.
Not every altered state is shamanic. What makes a trance shamanic is contact with the world of the spirits: experiencing a deeper reality in which everything is alive and conscious. What defines the shamanic state is neither its depth nor the method used to reach it.1
How is that state entered? #
There are many ways in: dancing and repetitive rhythmic movements, singing and chanting, fasting, hallucinogenic plants, and the drum and rattle. The drum and rattle are the two basic tools of shamanic practice. Amazonian cultures rely more on hallucinogenic plants; other cultures use them much less often than the drum.
The shamanic state of consciousness, often shortened to SSC, is not defined by whether it is light or deep, nor by the means used to enter it. The drum itself is a means to an end, and only one way of entering that state.
The first journey usually taught is a Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer journey to the drum. See What role do drumming, movement and other methods play in journeying?23
What part can powerful ceremonial experiences play? #
In his twenties and thirties Paul Francis took part in ceremonies that may have gone on for days, prolonged fasting or dancing, hallucinogenic plants, vision quests and sweat lodges, and he acknowledges their part in waking him up.
This is not to decry them: “they definitely can be powerful and useful (if done in the right way).” These days, though, they do not always work, or not in the way they once did. The difficulty is what happens afterwards. Paul felt great after such experiences himself, but their positive effects gradually wore off, and usually, after a few weeks or months in ordinary modern life, he was more or less back to square one.
He noticed the same pattern in friends and students. 4
Why can an experience be difficult to integrate? #
Because of domesticationDomestication. The process by which, in domesticating other species, we domesticated ourselves. When dated precisely, Domestication begins with the Neolithic era, before the Fall proper, which begins with the first city-state cultures around 4000 BCE. What rewilding works to undo. More about this and the lives people return to. Vision quests and similar practices connect people with their wild Soul and with the undomesticated, more-than-human world. For hunter-gatherer ancestors living in that connected way already, there was no conflict between what the practices brought and their everyday lives.
For modern people, the question is how to sustain an experience after returning to domesticated life. Paul has had emails from people who had taken ayahuasca in Peru or undertaken a wilderness vision quest. They had found the experience amazing and potentially life-changing, but back in ordinary life were struggling to integrate it. The change was not happening, or was not happening to the degree they felt it could.
For many years Paul repeated powerful practices regularly. Eventually, for him, this became unsatisfying. His spiritual life felt “semi-detached” from the rest of life, something for weekends and holidays which kept him going during the intervening days. He wanted shamanism to become the basis of daily life.5
What does everyday shamanic practice involve? #
Shamanism means having one foot in ordinary reality and one in shamanic reality, with the ability to move attention between them at will. A formal journey is a temporary fuller immersion. Outside journeys, the connection can continue whilst walking, working or going about daily life.
Awareness can shift towards the Power AnimalPower Animal. The Oversoul of a wild species, met as a single Lower-World being and bonded with in a deep, committed, usually lifelong soul-bond of unconditional love. The practitioner’s first and foremost Guide: Panther, not “my panther”. Read the full answer and GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this during an ordinary walk or whilst writing. At other times attention belongs with the physical surroundings or the task at hand. There are certainly times when both feet need to be firmly in ordinary reality.
The emphasis is on bringing the two realities closer together. Formal journeying is important and central in many cultures, but “to think that shamanism is entirely, or even mostly, about doing shamanic journeys is to miss the true point and depth of it.” The ongoing relationship is described alongside the formal practice.6
What helps make that practice possible in modern life? #
Practices are needed that reconnect people with nature and also help maintain that connection in largely urban and domesticated lives. People cannot all return to living in the countryside, and much of the countryside is itself managed and tamed. The work includes finding the wild beneath those surroundings.
Hollowing-outHollowing-out. The core, lifelong discipline of setting aside the middle-world self, its stories, agendas and preconceptions, so the Guides can work through us. The image: the shaman as hollow bone. Read the full answer is a lifelong practice, and mindfulness helps by cultivating the Aware SelfAware Self. The Witness: not a part of the self but a capacity for awareness, cultivated by hollowing-out, that can watch the flow of thoughts without being caught in them. More about this. The practice is Spirit-led: the Power Animal and Guides lead the journey, whilst the journeyer asks for healing, witnesses and remembers. A shaman’s power comes from the ability to hollow out and from the strength and depth of their connection with the Guides. Hollowing-out means stepping aside as much as possible from personal agendas, drives, beliefs and preconceptions, so that Spirit can work without the practitioner getting in the way. So the Guides are left to lead, and the question to ask is what needs to happen. The journeyer asks for healing, allows the work, and witnesses and remembers it to bring it back into ordinary consciousness.78
