Moments of awakening can bring a direct experience of interconnection, a sense of being part of something greater and a deep feeling of rightness. They can come in physical activities such as athletics and mountaineering, though not only there. In Therapeutic Shamanism, their message matters more than their thrill.
What can moments of awakening feel like? #
For many people, learning shamanism feels like remembering. Reconnecting can feel like a homecoming, or finding a piece of ourselves that has been missing. The world seems more vibrant and alive, as we wake to the aliveness already around us.1
Peak experiences bring interconnection and a ‘harmony of being’. Someone becomes not just an individual but part of something bigger. With that comes a deep feeling of rightness.
Where do these experiences happen? #
They do not only come through physical activity. Athletes, mountaineers and fencers describe them, and so do musicians, painters, mathematicians and philosophers. They can also happen during sex or quiet contemplation.2
Paul Francis has known times when his mind disappeared and he became completely in the moment, part of something bigger that was flowing through him. They have come to him when sitting around a campfire, when dancing, and when listening to the ocean.
What do Joseph Campbell’s races show? #
Joseph Campbell‘s account of his own peak experience translates a story about interconnection into more human and everyday terms, and it helped Paul grasp the difference between Soul and Spirit. Campbell described two races in which he was immersed in doing something completely competently. Everything flowed and came together.3
This is a teaching about Soul. When someone is committed to what they are designed to do, being what they are meant to be, something greater comes through them. Their experience brings a sense of harmony and relationship to something bigger than the individual.
Is the aim to have more peak experiences? #
No. What matters is their message, not seeking out the thrill. They tell us something about being true to Soul, to what we are meant to be.4
“The more you shape your life around your Soul (or allow your Soul to shape your life), the less important the peak experiences become.” In their place grows “a quieter but more constant and grounded feeling of rightness”: the harmony of being the Human Being we are meant to be.
What does waking up mean beyond a powerful moment? #
The shaman is sometimes said to be someone who has woken from the dream of consensus reality. Consensus reality is the constructed reality of a society’s stories, myths, conventions, traditions and social mores. The shaman can see past those constructions and, when needed, see what has gone wrong in a community and what needs putting right.5
Waking up is connected with seeing both the spirit world and human society as they are, and with being of service. But ideas without experience remain a head-trip. Embodying and experiencing them is what changes someone and helps them wake up.
How can interconnection be experienced in a journey? #
Expansion journeys try to loosen and soften the narrow focus on individuality and separation. Picture a torch whose beam can move from narrow, tightly focused and intense to wider, softer and more diffuse. Even in journeying, people tend to experience being one separate thing at a time.6
A worked example moves from becoming water to becoming the whole lake: “Not just the water, but the whole lake and everything in it.” The account continues into the groundwater, plants, animals and moisture in the air. It ends: “I was not experiencing things in the valley, one single narrow-focus and separate experience after another. I became the valley itself.”
Compared with the practices before it, expansion can be a trickier practice to master. Someone relatively new to the work may want to leave it until they have more journeying experience, whilst people who practise mindfulness-based meditation might find expansion journeys not too difficult.
What does it mean to just ‘be’? #
Journeys can be busy, with long shopping lists of things people want to achieve. There is nothing wrong with this: there is much healing to do and much to learn and experience. But to experience what it is truly like to be Plant or Stone, we first need to really slow down and, instead of doing, just ‘be’.7
“Sometimes there are things to be done. But sometimes just hanging out and doing nothing is where the healing is to be had.” In one journey Paul spent the whole time being Kelp: rooted in the ocean floor, swaying in the gentle currents and tides, and doing nothing.
“When I came out of it, I felt transformed. I felt profoundly relaxed and calm.” “And in spite of nothing much happening in the journey in terms of ‘doing’, it is one of the most impactful, vivid and memorable journeys I have ever done.”
How are Soul and Spirit brought into everyday life? #
The aim is to cultivate Soul and Spirit in equal measure. In the story of Indra, he takes his place in the world and is true to his Soul, with healthy detachment and perspective from Spirit.8
The body and middle-world selfMiddle-world self. The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer are part of that balance: “Our body and middle-world self can then become the means by which we express our Soul and Spirit and be of service in the world.”
