Hi Willow,
I share the same myers/briggs personality type as you but find that, ever since my days as a christian, I have lost a desire to seriously examine or try any spiritual path which involves learning techniques (for want of a better word) from someone else. I mention the personality thing because I am sure that often has an effect on the way we express our spirituality.
Hi David!
Oh, it undoubtedly has! I used to feel an intense dislike for organized religions, which has since matured into a more intellectual and conscious rejection of the same. That is why my own spirituality revolves mostly around immediate, personal experiences, rather than around adopting second-hand beliefs as some sort of dogma. At best, the experiences of others help to keep me "grounded", or else serve as a reference point that aids me in my training. The techniques are just that: techniques, not static beliefs. In my opinion, there's a HUGE difference between a teacher saying: "If you pray like this, you'll feel JESUS - and if you experience anything else, that's the DEVIL trying to deceive you!"
And a teacher saying:
"If you drum at this frequency, you'll enter a trance. See for yourself what happens next!"
As a related side issue I find that my very limited experience with mind altering drugs has only been a negative one, and doesn't make me want to experience anything of that nature either. (I'm not associating shamanism with drug taking, but I do have a perception that there is a willingness to transcend the usual ways of thinking within it. Although curious, I think I have become suspicious of anything that might potentially involve "losing my mind". Sorry, if this all smells of sterotyped prejudice)
Interestingly enough, Freud would have completely agreed with you; and his views have coloured "Western" thought for the last 100 years. We tend to equate altered states of consciousness with psychological disease-states, religious experiences with neurosis - although nothing could be further from the truth. It's as if you were equating driving a car down a street to driving a car with a broken steering wheel down the highway in the wrong direction - blindfolded, and without a fastened seat belt. Both feature a car moving down a street at a potentially dangerous speed. The difference is indeed one of control: employing techniques that allow you to enter a state of altered consciousness is fundamentally different from, say, having a nervous breakdown and finding your consciousness pathologically altered. Both psychosis and meditation/trance feature an altered state of consciousness - yet chances are that meditation will even allow you to be MORE mentally stable than the average person. (At least, that's what studies conducted on Buddhist monks suggest. They seem to suffer from significantly fewer neuroses than the man at the bus stop.)
So I guess that I have "control issues". I have also found that often the effort involved in pursuing a particular spiritual/experiential course isn't justified by the end results. It is clear to me of course that your shamanism bears very little relationship to the evangelical christianity I was previously involved in, not least in that it doesn't have any axe to grind about whether I become a follower or not. But my previous experience does make me averse to trying anything new of a remotely spiritual nature, which involves relying on other people's body of knowledge.
I can see where you are coming from. I'd contest the notion that I'm a "follower", though. (Core-)Shamanism is hardly an organized religion - it doesn't even feature a unified and/or compulsory world view, not to speak of the total absence of clergy and/or organization. Things may look differently within the framework of specific tribes or peoples: for them, shamanism is potentially as strong a reference point as Christianity used to be for our civilization - even though most of those people have never entered a trance-state.
So, from a personal perspective, am I missing out on something? Also, do you think that the fact that most world cultures largely ignore these ancient practises is a bad thing? Do you see a lasting and influential place for shamanism in modern soceity?
Whether you're missing out on anything or not is hardly for me to determine. Virtually all of my friends and relations are completely aspiritual (for lack of a better word), and I wouldn't exactly call them unfulfilled. On the other hand, another friend of mine is an awfully gullible adherent of New Age-quackery of the most blatantly inane kind - and I've got a slight suspicion that for her, it's mainly a form of escapism, an attempt at blending out the harsher aspects of life. So in the end, it's really impossible for me to determine how things might work out for you. Personally, I feel that exploring the depths of my mind and learning to exert some control on it is an integral part of my growth as a person, of my self-actualization. Who is the "I" that writes these lines? I'm determined to find out - and to find out much more besides as well.
As for shamanism's place in a modern society: shamanic techniques disappeared with the rise of organized religion and the city-state. In a society that was increasingly relying on specialization and hierarchy, on compulsory world views and group-identities, shamanism didn't have a place any longer. It didn't lend itself as readily to the establishment of power-structures.
Nowadays, however, things have changed considerably once more. Individualism is now considered a blessing, scepticism towards organized religion and authoritarian thinking grows, and people are looking for spirituality beyond the confines of hierarchical structures, potentially based on their own experiences and insights. As such, shamanic techniques may very well re-assert themselves on a larger scale. Naturally, it will be a new form of shamanism, and not just a world view adopted from, say, the Aleutes or the Saami.
I guess when it comes to spiritual pursuits I am sort of preferring to try and rediscover the wheel, rather than learn from what has gone a before...I can see that this is probably counter productive, but would be interested in your perspective.
Oh, I hardly consider that counter-productive. It's almost exactly what I'm doing, except that I feel free to look at what others have done, without necessarily sharing their conclusions, and then "borrow" whatever technique or insight seems relevant to me. Call me irreverent, but it's all linked to how I view religion as a cultural phenomenon:
I believe that most religions (apart from the obvious crackpot cults) originally started out based on some genuine spiritual experience, more often than not by an exceptional individual. This individual managed to breach the confines of the world view that defined the culture of his day, and touched upon insights that had been obscured from view up until that point. The problem, however, was that this insight could only be communicated by using the very language that had created the ideological barriers to begin with. Accordingly, the exceptional individual had to reside to metaphor, which in turn invited all sorts of drastic misunderstandings and misinterpretations. (An alternative to that, of course, is teaching people how to reach such a state of exalted insight on their own - but that mostly applies to the Eastern religions; the "West" has been virtually dead in that regard, as the Western Esoteric tradition was always a marginal phenomenon.)
As a result, exoteric religions blossomed in the wake of the initial movement, burying its insights beneath an increasingly fossilized structure of compulsory beliefs, hierarchies and power struggles. Just look at Christianity: in less than a hundred years, factionalism and infighting had started to plague it, and the most powerful group focused much of its energy on silencing potential dissidents.
It does have a tendency to mess with your Christianity though...
)
