The Shaman & the Sage

[Lady]

SHAMANISM

Over tens of thousands of years, our ancient ancestors all over the world discovered how to maximize human abilities of mind and spirit for healing and problem-solving. The remarkable system of methods they developed is today known as "shamanism," a term that comes from a Siberian tribal word for its practitioners: "shaman" (pronounced SHAH-mahn). Shamans are a type of medicine man or woman especially distinguished by the use of journeys to hidden worlds otherwise mainly known through myth, dream, and near-death experiences.



Shamanic Healing: We Are Not Alone
An Interview of Michael Harner by Bonnie Horrigan

Michael Harner, Ph.D., is an anthropologist and founder of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, an international nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving shamanic knowledge as it survives on the planet and to teaching the basic principles of that knowledge for practical applications in the contemporary world.
Harner, who has practiced shamanic healing since 1961, received his doctorate at the University of California-Berkeley. He is a former professor and chairperson of the department of anthropology at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York, and has taught at Columbia, Yale, and UC Berkeley. He also served as co-chair of the anthropology section of the New York Academy of Sciences. His books include The Jvaro, Hallucinogens and Shamanism, and the classic The Way of The Shaman.



In the course of his academic study of shamanism, Harner lived and worked with indigenous peoples in the Upper Amazon,
Mexico, Peru, the Canadian Arctic, Samiland, and western North America.

Alternative Therapies interviewed Harner at his office in Mill Valley, California, during an intense storm.


What is shamanism?



Michael Harner:
The word "shaman" in the original Tungus language refers to a person who makes journeys to nonordinary reality in an altered state of consciousness. Adopting the term in the West was useful because people didn't know what it meant. Terms like "wizard," "witch," "sorcerer," and "witch doctor" have their own connotations, ambiguities, and preconceptions associated with them. Although the term is from Siberia, the practice of shamanism existed on all inhabited continents.

After years of extensive research, Mircea Eliade, in his book, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, concluded that shamanism underlays all the other spiritual traditions on the planet, and that the most distinctive feature of shamanism-but by no means the only one-was the journey to other worlds in an altered state of consciousness.

Shamans are often called "see-ers" (seers), or "people who know" in their tribal languages, because they are involved in a system of knowledge based on firsthand experience. Shamanism is not a belief system. It's based on personal experiments conducted to heal, to get information, or do other things. In fact, if shamans don't get results, they will no longer be used by people in their tribe. People ask me, "How do you know if somebody's a shaman?" I say, "It's simple. Do they journey to other worlds? And do they perform miracles?"


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Is shamanism a religion?


Harner:
The practice of shamanism is a method, not a religion. It coexists with established religions in many cultures. In Siberia, you'll find shamanism coexisting with Buddhism and Lamaism, and in Japan with Buddhism. It's true that shamans are often in animistic cultures. Animism means that people believe there are spirits. So in shamanic cultures, where shamans interact with spirits to get results such as healing, it's no surprise that people believe there are spirits. But the shamans don't believe in spirits. Shamans talk with them, interact with them. They no more "believe" there are spirits than they "believe" they have a house to live in, or have a family. This is a very important issue because shamanism is not a system of faith.

Shamanism is also not exclusionary. They don't say, "We have the only healing system." In a holistic approach to healing, the shaman uses the spiritual means at his or her disposal in cooperation with people in the community who have other techniques such as plant healing, massage, and bone setting. The shaman's purpose is to help the patient get well, not to prove that his or her system is the only one that works.

In many cultures, shamans are often given gifts for their work, but they will return all the gifts if the patient dies, which I think is a commendable innovation that might help us with the costs of health services today.



My understanding is that there are two aspects to shamanic healing:
a medicinal one and a spiritual one.


Harner:
Shamans talk with plants and animals, with all of nature. This is not just a metaphor. They do it in an altered state of consciousness. Our own students rapidly discover that by talking with plants, they can discover how to prepare those plants for remedies. Shamans have been doing this since ancient times. They typically know a great deal about plants, but it's not essential. For example, Eskimo shamans don't have access to a lot of plants, so they work with other things. But in the Amazon shamans know the various plants and the songs that go with the plants, which they commonly learn from the plants themselves.

One former student of mine in the United States developed a practice of discovering and using healing plants based on his learning directly from the plants. He found that the pharmacopoeia he developed was very close to the ancient, classic Chinese pharmacopoeia knowledge of how to prepare and use these plants for different ailments. Another former student in Germany worked with minerals and found how they could be used in healing. It turned out that her discoveries were very close to what has been known in India from ancient times.

Which brings us to a very important issue: everything that's ever been known, everything that can be known, is available to the shaman in the Dreamtime. That's why shamans can be prophets; that's why they can also go back and look at the past. With discipline, training, and the help of the spirits, this total source of knowledge is accessible.



What happens when a sick person asks a shaman for a healing?


Harner:
For example, a shaman might make a journey for diagnostic purposes, to get information about the person's problems from a spiritual point of view. It doesn't necessarily matter what the diagnosis is from an ordinary reality point of view. There's no simple one-to-one concordance between spiritual illness and ordinary reality illness. You can't say, "This equals that." So the shaman will often make a journey to find out what the spiritual causality is and, according to that causality, decide on the treatment.

From the shamanic point of view, people who are not powerful-spiritually "power-filled," that is-are prone to illness, accidents, and bad luck. This goes beyond our normal definition of illness. The shaman restores a person's linkage to his or her spiritual power. This spiritual power is something analogous to a spiritual immune defense system, but I wouldn't make a one-to one equivalence. It's an analog. The power makes one resistant to illness. If somebody is repeatedly ill, then it's clear that they need a power connection. A healthy person who is not sick might go on a vision quest to get this power connection, but one of the shaman's jobs is to help people who are in no condition to do that for themselves.

Today in our culture many consider it avant-garde if a person talks about the mind-body connection, but the fact that the brain is connected to the rest of the body is not the most exciting news. It's been known for hundreds and thousands of years. What's really important about shamanism, in my opinion, is that the shaman knows that we are not alone. By that I mean, when one human being compassionately works to relieve the suffering of another, the helping spirits are interested and become involved. When somebody who is disinterested, who is not an immediate family member, out of generosity and compassion helps somebody else to relieve illness or pain and suffering-and it works even better when there are two or more shamans involved-this is when miracles occur. So the big news shamanism offers is not that the head is connected to the rest of the body, but that we are not alone.



What is soul retrieval?


Harner:
Anyone who's had a trauma, from a shamanic point of view, may have had some loss of their soul. By soul we mean the spiritual essence essential throughout one's life as we describe life in our culture, which is from conception or birth to the time of death. The techniques for healing soul loss are soul-retrieval techniques, and one of the classic shamanic methods is to go searching for that lost portion of the soul and restore it.

Until about 8 years ago, most people in the Western world felt that soul retrieval was a superstitious practice that had no validity, but things have turned. I must say that a major reason is the work of my colleague, Sandra Ingerman, the author of Soul Retrieval and Coming Home. During her shamanic practice in
Santa Fe, NM, years ago, women who had had significant childhood abuse would mention in the course of the sessions that they had removed themselves psychically from the situation at the time of abuse. Sandra immediately recognized, as a practicing shaman, that the person's soul to some degree had left the body (if it had left completely, the person would have been dead), and therefore the logical thing was to retrieve the lost portion of the soul and bring it back. So she then started doing soul retrieval for these people who had had significant childhood traumas, and the results were astounding. Today, this work is an important part of shamanic healing practice in the West.

Indeed, if you ask a group of people, "How many of you feel you've lost part of your soul?" it's typical that everybody raises their hand. At some deep level, there is a natural awareness of this problem. By the way, even a minor trauma can result in some degree of soul loss and can be treated.

Another major technique in shamanic healing work is extraction. Extraction involves removing a spiritual intrusion. Just as there can be infections in ordinary reality, so there can be spiritual intrusions. We don't mean that "evil" spirits have entered. It's more like termites in a wooden house. If you've got termites in your house, you wouldn't say those termites are evil, you'd say, "I'd just like to get them out of the house." In this same way the shaman works to remove things that interfere with the health of the body, such as spiritual intrusions, and extract them. This is not done through journeying. It's done through working here in the Middle World in an altered state of consciousness.

[mahabaratara]

I saw this at pudding place...

Is this your work my Lady...?

Its very good...

[Lady]

Yes, my dear Mahabaratara. Copy and pasting is easy. I started the Pudding Palace, but the PP may be chucked if the Admin wakes up in a bad mood. That's why we want to back up the good stuff, just in case. No worries about losing Uri/Dice's wonderful posts.



How is an altered state of consciousness achieved in shamanism?


Harner:
In about 90% of the world, the altered states of consciousness used in shamanism are attained through consciousness-changing techniques involving a monotonous percussion sound, most typically done with a drum, but also with sticks, rattles, and other instruments. In perhaps 10% of the cultures, shamans use psychedelic drugs to change their state of consciousness.

I was introduced to shamanic work in 1961 among the Conibo Indians in eastern Peru, with the aid of native psychedelics. When I came back to the United States and no longer had my supply of ayahuasca, I experimented with drumming. Much to my surprise, it really worked. It should not have surprised me, because drums were reportedly used by shamans almost worldwide. Virtually everything you find in shamanism is done because it works. Over tens of thousands of years, shamans developed the most time-tested system of using the spirit, mind, and heart for healing, along with plant remedies, and so on. Again, the system is time-tested. So if healers in 90% of the shamanic cultures are using the same methods, we pay attention to them. And, of course, we find they work.

To get back to the extraction technique: the technique involves an altered state of consciousness and seeing into the client's body. Much shamanic work, including journeying and extraction, is done in darkness for a very simple reason. The shaman wishes to cut out the stimuli of ordinary reality- light, sound, and so on-and move into unseen reality. The shaman learns to look in the body with "x-ray vision" and see the illness and its location, and then to extract that illness.



Is that like depossession?


Harner:
Depossession is related to extraction but it's not the same thing. From a shamanic point of view, it's very important to get out of the Middle World when journeying for spiritual purposes. In the old days, shamans journeyed in the Middle World to see how relatives were doing at a distant place or to locate the herds of migratory animals. But most of our work today is in the Upper and Lower Worlds where shamans have voyaged since ancient times. Shamans often prefer not to draw on the spirits of the Middle World because many of them are confused and lacking in power. Going to the Upper or Lower Worlds, one reaches spiritual beings of compassion, power, and wisdom.

Shamans who do another type of healing help the dead as well as the living. These shamans are called "psychopomps," or conductors of souls. Remember, from a shamanic point of view, when you're comatose, you're dead. So the shaman, in the case of comatose persons, would seek them out and see if they wanted to come back. Shamanism is not a system that intends to keep people in this ordinary reality whether they like it or not, because the shaman knows that this is not necessarily the best reality. You make the journey for the person who is comatose to find out what they want. If they want to come back, then the job of the shaman is to bring them back. But if they want to go on- or, more commonly, if they're dying or already dead-then the job of the shaman is to get them to a place where they will be content and not have them stay here, adrift in the Middle World.

So now we come back to this business of depossession. Most cases of depossession of humans are by other humans who are dead, who are here in the Middle World and don't know they're dead. If people are disempowered, or have soul loss or power loss, they are like a vacuum into which these confused entities can come. This is involuntary possession.

Shamans will conduct the entity-with its permission once it realizes it's dead-to a place beyond the Middle World where it will be reunited with people who it loves. Once this is done, so that the clients are no longer possessed, shamans restore their full soul and lost power connections so they are again whole and not vulnerable to further possessions.

Depossession work has slightly different forms in different cultures, but the basic principles are the same. I hope that one day our culture will recognize the need to permit shamanic practitioners to work with the spiritual aspects of illness in cooperation with nonspiritual health professionals.



In your opinion, why don't we do that now?


Harner:
Unfortunately, when science started, partially as a reaction to the church in Europe, it ordained that souls and spirits have no reality and therefore could not be considered in scientific theory. Now that's an a priori position; in other words, ironically, a statement of faith enunciated in the 18th century. In fact, science has never disproved the existence of spirits. I would submit that now, on the edge of the 21st century, it's time to stop having a science that's based on faith (the faith that there are no spirits) and make it real science, which means that it doesn't ordain a priori that certain types of causes cannot exist.


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In regard to extraction healing, in the shamanic view, where does the illness to be extracted come from?


Harner:
From a shamanic point of view, all people have a spiritual side, whether they recognize it or not. When people get angry, jealous, or have a hostile emotional attitude, they can vent not only verbal and physical abuse, but spiritual abuse without even knowing it. In other words, if somebody is ignorant of shamanic principles, they can do damage to other people on a spiritual level.

Among the Untsuri Shuar and Jvaro people of eastern Ecuador, with whom I lived for quite a while, they call these intrusions "magical darts." There were many feuds and wars, and sometimes healers would get angry and lose their discipline and use their powers to get even. But it is important to know that this is a big mistake, not just ethically, but in terms of self-preservation. No matter how justified a person feels emotionally at the time, those spiritual beings who are representative of the great, loving, hidden universe will disconnect. It's like we're rechargeable batteries. We still have some power, and we can do damage, but the power source is no longer charging us. I've seen this many times in the Amazon. The shamans, in their anger, do harm for awhile, but eventually everything they send out comes back in on them, and it often results not only in their own death or pain, but their immediate family gets affected disastrously by it.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't get angry at people. It just means that you should have discipline and know there are parameters. You can get angry with somebody and verbally let out steam and, at the same time, control your spiritual side. But for your own self-preservation, if you don't work to relieve pain and suffering-and especially if you work in a contrary way-you're soon out of business, and probably dead.

[Lady]

If I understand the concept, shamans restore wholeness and power to a human being,
and then that wholeness and power heals whatever is wrong with that person.
So in this framework a power-filled person has the ability to heal himself.


Harner:
To an outsider, it would look like they're healing themselves. But the concept of self-healing excludes the spirits. From the shamanic point of view, nobody's lived into adult life without spiritual help, whether they know it or not. The self-healing concept is a secular concept, and that's fine as far as it goes. It teaches people to take some responsibility for their illness. But it also teaches them to take responsibility for their death. With that approach, everybody's a failure at the moment of death, because they are responsible for the whole thing. From a shamanic point of view we are not that important. We are not necessarily the biggest thing in the universe. The shaman has a more humble point of view, that there is what looks like self-healing but, in fact, we are getting help. And the shaman has the role, of course, of accelerating that possibility.


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So the person is not healing himself?


Harner:
They might be in a specific case. I don't want to rule that out. Self-healing is a very secular view of reality, but it's a step in consciousness. It's like recognizing the brain is connected to the body.




Can you talk about the difference between ordinary reality and nonordinary reality,
especially regarding the implications for medicine?


Harner:
The terms "ordinary reality" and "nonordinary reality" come from Carlos Casteneda. Ordinary reality is the reality that we all perceive together. It's the reality in which we can all agree that there is a clock on the wall. Nonordinary reality is the reality that is associated with the shamanic state of consciousness; that is, when the consciousness has been altered and you're able to see what you normally don't see in an ordinary state of consciousness.

Ordinary reality is something that virtually everybody agrees on. Nonordinary reality is very person-specific. The information obtained in nonordinary reality is tailor-made to the individual-other people may not perceive it at all, as opposed to the information obtained in ordinary reality, in which everybody gets the same thing.

Nonordinary reality is also an empirical reality; that is, the person interacts with it, sees it, touches it, hears it, feels it. And the shaman sees with the heart in that reality. In nonordinary reality, for something to be the same for different persons, it has to be the same in the heart. Here (in ordinary reality) for something to be the same it doesn't matter what your emotion is; you'll see it, for example, as a door in the room. If I showed you a picture of my mother, now deceased, you and I would not have the same emotional relationship with that picture. But if I said the word "mother," and everyone saw their own mother, the emotional feeling in the heart would be closer-not identical, but closer. So to see things exactly the same in the heart, they have to be a little different for each person, because each person has a different personality and a different life history.

The term "nonordinary reality" is useful because it permits one to be reminded that access to these worlds is related to the degree to which you have entered the shamanic state of consciousness. It clarifies our thinking. For years, many people were confused by what shamans said. "I made a journey and was away for 3 years, and such and such happened." Now that person in nonordinary reality had the experience of living somewhere else for 3 years, but might have been gone only a half-hour in ordinary reality.

[Lady]

What are you working on now?


Harner:
My primary interest right now is in miracles. I've devoted some years now to finding out what principles are involved to have miracles happen. I think we're making significant progress. Almost everything that anybody's ever read about in the shamanic literature or the miracle literature is something that we have some knowledge of how to do now. And this includes miracles of healing.

Starting next year, we will be moving forward on this project with some of our most advanced students. I'm not in a position to comfortably start sharing this information publicly-it's too early-but it does involve a real awareness of the spirits.

I might say something about spirits, because it's a strange word to people. What is a spirit? In 1961, when I was with the Conibo Indians in eastern Peru in the Amazon, I was training using ayahuasca with a shaman, and we were working with the various nature spirits every night. I worked with the anaconda spirit, the black panther spirit, the fresh-water dolphin spirit, various tree spirits, and so on. They would come, we would see them, and so on. Then one night I got introduced to the outboard-motor spirit. And then the radio spirit and the airplane spirit. I came to realize that anything that you see in complete darkness or with your eyes closed is technically a spirit. That makes it sound like it's just an image in the air, but shamans find out which spirits have power and which don't. They discover what spirits can help in what ways. It's very important to recognize that whatever you contact in nonordinary reality is technically a spirit. It's a spiritual reality.



Once a shaman contacts the spirits, what happens?


Harner:
There's a crossover of the power from nonordinary reality to ordinary reality. The two realities are conceptually discrete, but the shaman is able to move the power of one over to the other. When this is done successfully, that's how healings occur and how we have what is called miracles.


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Your interest in miracles was obviously spurred by your experiencing or witnessing miracles.
Would you be willing to tell us a miracle story?


Harner:
This is a very simple one that can be seen to this day, empirically, in ordinary reality. One of our students, Carol Herkimer, was in what we call a "spirit boat," along with other members of a basic class. The spirit boat is a technique used in aboriginal Australia, on the northwest coast of North America, and in the upper Amazon. A group of shamans journey together to the Lower or Upper world to go outside of time. They may be going for healing or knowledge. When a whole group of people, trained properly and in contact with spirits, journey together to help one person, it's very powerful.

We were using a dance studio in lower Manhattan on Canal Street called "The Kiva." Like any other dance studio, it had highly polished floors, so we always had to be careful not to scuff them. Carol was recovering from a terrible traffic accident and she couldn't sit on the cushions on the floor with the other people. She had to sit in a chair with bent tubular metal legs. So we went off on the journey, and when we came back (to ordinary reality), people shared what they had encountered. When Carol went on the journey, she went through a sea of fire in nonordinary reality. When she came back, the floor was smoking under her chair, and the bent aluminum tubular leg on one side had burned a channel into the floor, but she hadn't gotten burned. The people who owned the studio were quite upset, and to this day the burned channel is still there.

This example alone doesn't prove anything, but it's these kinds of coincidences that build up in your own practice. In no single case can you be sure what actually happened, but if you find a high correlation between treatments by people who are well known as healing shamans and recoveries- when other things have failed-then you begin to pay attention.

When you start shamanic journeying, if you're the kind of person the spirits feel compassion for and want to help, you're going to get lots of teachings you never asked for and never expected. Because once you go through those doors-whatever those doors are-the spirits will teach you according to your preparation, and your life will change. Even one journey may start changing your life.



What is Shamanism?



Controlling the masses:

[Lady]

Magic, "Haamana", was a separate venture, and not even restricted to the Tahu'a. A Tahu'a was expected to be skilled at it, but non-Tahu'a could sometimes do it as well. In fact a fisherman was expected to know the rudiments of "fishing magic", for example--forms of magic associated with one's profession were normally wrapped into that profession's skill set.

..... I notice when I put energy/magic into a place, and I return to that place and charge it with energy again and again, the magic seems to build and stays there, and this can be done anywhere. No alters or magic tools necessary.

The main thing that set a Tahu'a apart from others wasn't magic, though, but KNOWLEDGE.

..... Ciggy is the closest thing to a Tahu that we've got.

If you've gotten this far you'll probably think that Faaroo dwells very much on the intellectual side of things, and doesn't have much use for instinct or "the right brain". Not true. Intellect was considered the partner of instinct, not its master, and indeed, all teaching included imparting wisdom in intuitive, instinctive ways, geared toward how a student was best able to learn them. Teaching could be in the astral, in the dreamspace, or physically sitting around a fire

...... Very well put, and I'm glad we left the right brain left brain debate at the Pudding Palace ...... like Ciggy said, "It's like trying to fly a plain with one engine down."

[warrior_priestess]

Very interesting. I actually believe that 'we' are magical beings and do not need altars or rituals. Everyone is capable of healing and thats another thing I find difficult to accept is why people charge for healing. It is a gift from spirit and should be passed on.

[Lady]

What kind of Shaman is Terence McKenna?

Terence McKenna: Culture is NOT Your Friend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOy3H4yyocQ&mode=related&search=

http://deoxy.org/mckenna.htm



Terence Kemp McKenna (November 16, 1946 – April 3, 2000) was a writer and philosopher. He was notable for his many speculations on subjects ranging from the Voynich Manuscript to the origins of the human species to Novelty theory, which claims time to be a fractal wave of increasing novelty, which culminates dramatically in 2012. His concept appeared to involve a combination of hallucinogenic chemical agents, Gaianism, and shamanism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna

[joann]

Warrior Preistess

I actually believe that 'we' are magical beings and do not need altars or rituals. Everyone is capable of healing and thats another thing I find difficult to accept is why people charge for healing. It is a gift from spirit and should be passed on.

Do we need the outward forms of religion? That's what alters and magic equipment are.

Maybe money jinxes real magic.

Dove

[Lady]

Peru: Hell and Back—Video Exclusive
Deep in the Amazon jungle, writer Kira Salak tests ayahuasca, a shamanistic medicinal ritual, and finds a terrifying—but enlightening—world within.

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/0603/features/peru.html

[Lady]

Terrence McKenna on social evolution and ayahuasca:

I find difficult to accept is why people charge for healing. It is a gift from spirit and should be passed on.

If a healer used herbs, then pay them for the herbs. If they used energy, pay them in energy.

Terrence agrees with you in his last interview above.

[Bobber]

One time the Tahu'a Rahi told me: "The best way to remember something is to assign energy to it. With energy attached to it, the thought will always be there, in the place of energy, where you assigned it. If you put it on paper, you can lose the paper, but you can never lose the energy."

It's interesting, too, to see how people apply this technique accidentally: if something is funny, for example, it's easier to remember because of the energy of the humor!

Yes. When there is an emotional element present, the experience is enrichened and increased. And it will stand out in your memory.

Or the energy of music brings back what you were thinking about when you first heard the music.

The law of associations. F.ex if "the sunny side of the street" was playing when your girlfriend broke up with you, you'll always have sad associations when you hear that song. (Or good ones if you were glad she broke up with you.)

I once asked the Tahu'a Rahi if I should follow the Polynesian path and be like them, and he told me: "Your people have a tradition too, people who were like us before they followed the ways of the Farani. When you find that tradition, you'll be more like us and more like yourself, at the same time." That launched my research into pre-Christian European traditions: Druidry and Asatru. It was all very familiar with what I'd learned from the Tahu'a Rahi, but in "European terms", you might say, expressed in ways fitting to our ancestral memories.

Yes. He refers to something which is universal; the growth in knowledge, being and understanding. From the point of view of God no traditions/ways/schools exist. Only qualities of material.

BUT, I still like to use Polynesian tradition as reference material, because the Tahu'a Rahi I learned from had more knowledge in a clipped fingernail than Blavatsky, Tsarion, Crowley, or any of those jokers would ever learn in 1,000 lifetimes. On BB's recommendation and in giving the benefit of the doubt, I'll consider Gurdjeff the equal of the Tahu'a Rahi, hehe... (I'll know more about that after I'm done reading Gurdjeff!)

Gurdjieff is for real. But following him or another teacher in his footsteps is difficult.
Because great demands will be made of you. Only those willing and able to meet the demands (= really to learn to make demands of oneself) can benefit from this teaching. Those that expect something for nothing (no effort on their part) will get nothing.

Though, (he he) you're an anarchist. Do you believe that "everybody's equal" and there is no hierarchy of levels ? Gurdjieff's teaching is all about levels.

[Bobber]

Hello Ciggy.

I see.

Levels - when working together in an "esoteric school" (such as the schools/groups Gurdjieff organized, and the one I was in myself) levels are something that become evident very very quickly. There's a lot of humiliation to be had when you have to admit that you weren't as smart or as capable as you used to believe you were...

And, it is also wonderful to observe/verify the growth - or ascension from a lower level to a higher one. If it's a good school this is also bound to take place. Learning - in the fullest possible meaning of the word.

Can you tell me something more about this Tahitian/Polynesian Tahu'a Rahi?
A "general introduction"?

[Bobber]

Ciggy -

interesting. What is your personal belief regarding demonic possession?
I know about some documented cases. It's scary stuff. (No, not mtsar. Worse.)
I'm talking about the really heavy stuff.

Or was it a "bad spirit" in a house? There's a priest in Sweden who's a specialist in this. He's very popular and has chased away many hundreds of bad spirits.

Ghosts I can explain. And angels. And voodo/juju and most kinds of magic. But I can't really explain demonic possession of the most severe kind. Independent invisible evil entities that enter and possess people?

[maid]

BB ... I'm interested in this, too.

I just did a search of posts by Maha, a great regular poster friend of Ciggy's, because he talks about incubus and sucubus. I haven't found the exact post yet.

Maha has started his own Ballroom topic, "'This book very precisely encapsulates my theories," and I'm sure he is interested in talking about this on other topics in the Oracle, as well.

I'm just trying to help with the exchange of info. Hope this helps.

[Bobber]

incubus and sucubus -

that's interesting too...

[maid]

The Ghost Dance was a seasonal dance during the hardest weather which brought down the spiriit of ancestors to survive. Around the time of the Trail of Tears when the Indians were losing against the white man, they started the Ghost Dance Movement. I supposedly have Iroqois blood. My father called me We-Wa-Chi. I looked this up for Indian translation, and it most closely means "Ghost Dancer." I was adopted into the Onondaga tribe of the Iroquois Nation, and I was a reporter on Native Indian arbitrations with the Paiutes in Nevada and invited to their sweat lodge. I have absolutely no doubt that my indian and non-indian ancestors help me. I sing, dance, pray. I know they hear me.

Paiute Native American shaman Wovoka and the Ghost Dance

[Lady]

I've contacted a Shaman and we are going to meet at Cyotes. I'm going to take perfect notes, and he will dictate to me to spread his knowledge here.

Does anyone have the experience of your body jerking really hard? This happens to me when I'm in between dreaming and waking. He told me this is my body jerking back from astral travel.

[warrior_priestess]

yes, my body that to. I was aware that it is the astral body moving back into the physical body. It can be very powerful too!!!!

[Lady]

Soul Fragments and Soul Retrieval

A shaman is a man or woman who interacts directly with spirits to
address the spiritual aspects of illness, perform soul retrievals,
divine information, help the spirits of deceased people cross over, and
perform a variety of ceremonies for the community. Shamans have taken on many roles in tribal communities. They have acted as healers, doctors, priests, psychotherapists, mystics, and storytellers.

Shamans look at the spiritual form of illness which might manifest
on an emotional or physical level. When I was doing the research for my book Soul Retrieval Mending the Fragmented Self I found that most shamanic cultures around the world believe that illness is due to the loss of the soul.

It is believed that whenever we suffer an emotional or physical
trauma a piece of our soul flees the body in order to survive the
experience. The definition of soul that I am using is soul is our
essence, life force, the part of our vitality that keeps us alive and
thriving.

The types of trauma that could cause soul loss in our culture would
be any kind of abuse sexual, physical, or emotional. Other causes could be an accident, being in a war, being a victim of a terrorist act,
acting against our morals, being in a natural disaster (a fire,
hurricane, earthquake, tornado, etc.), surgery, addictions, divorce, or
death of a loved one.

Any event that causes shock could cause soul loss. And what might
cause soul loss in one person might not cause soul loss in another.
Shamans believe that alarm clocks can cause soul loss. I think we all
know what they mean.

It is important to understand that soul loss is a good thing that
happens to us. It is how we survive pain. If I was going to be in a
head on car collision the last place that I would want to be at the
point of impact is in my body. My psyche could not endure that kind of pain. So our psyches have this brilliant self protect mechanism where a part of our essence or soul leaves the body so that we do not feel the full impact of the pain.

In psychology we talk about this as disassociation. But in
psychology we don’t talk about what disassociates and where that part goes. In shamanism we know that a piece of the soul leaves the body and goes to a territory in what shamans call non ordinary reality where it waits until someone intervenes in the spiritual realms and facilitates its return.

Although soul loss is a survival mechanism the problem from a
shamanic point of view is that the soul part that left usually does not
come back on its own. The soul might be lost, or stolen by another
person, or doesn’t know the trauma has passed and it is safe to return.

It has always been the role of the shaman to go into an altered
state of consciousness and track down where the soul fled to in the
alternate realities and return it to the body of the client.

There are many common symptoms of soul loss. Some of the more
common ones would be dissociation where a person does not feel fully in his or her body and alive and fully engaged in life. Other symptoms
include chronic depression, suicidal tendencies, post traumatic stress
syndrome, immune deficiency problems, and grief that just does not
heal. Addictions are also a sign of soul loss as we seek external
sources to fill up the empty spaces inside of us whether through
substances, food, relationships, work, or buying material objects.

Anytime someone says I have never been the same since a certain
event and they don’t mean this in a good way soul loss has probably
occurred.

You can really see how much soul loss there is today as we put
money over life. Anytime someone says that we have to kill other life
forms for material gain that person must be suffering from soul loss.
Anytime someone feels that buying one more car or that gathering
material objects will bring happiness that person is suffering from the
loss of soul. As you can see we are looking at a great deal of
planetary soul loss today as you watch how we behave towards each other and the rest of life.

It is interesting to note that as soul loss was so understood in
shamanic cultures people who suffered traumas were given a soul
retrieval within three days after a trauma occurred.

Today as we have not been practicing soul retrieval modern day
practitioners are going back ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years or
even more looking for lost soul parts.

Also in a shamanic culture the individuals knew what was out of
balance in their lives that might have caused an illness or issue to
occur.

In our culture we are unaware of what is out of spiritual harmony
that is creating illness. And because often our soul loss happened so
young we are unaware of the unconscious patterns we are living out due to our first soul loss. We are always trying to retrieve our soul. And how we do this is by repeating the same trauma over and over again. The names might change of the people involved in our life story, but the story is often the same.

The effects of having a soul retrieval vary person to person. Some
people feel that they are more grounded in their body and feel more
solid. Some people feel lighter and a joyful way of being returns to
them. For some memories of the past traumas might be triggered bringing up a variety of feelings that must be worked through. And for some people the effects are too subtle to notice a change until further work to integrate the soul is done.

As people feel more present in their bodies and in the world they
become more conscious of behavior that might be out of balance and
disharmonious.

I believe that once a person has his or her soul brought back the
client now has to do some work. If the person has done a lot of
personal work the soul retrieval might be the end of the work. If not
the soul retrieval would be the beginning of the work.

This is vital work for the times we live in. The earth wants her
children home and she wants them home now. It is time to come back home again and take our rightful place on the earth. It is our birthright to fully express our souls and create the world we want to live in. And it is our birthright to shine as brightly as the stars above us. It is time to share our light again in the world.

http://www.sandraingerman.com
_________________
www.slavespecies.com

Spirit Releasement Therapy

http://webanarchy.net/viewtopic.php?t=483

Emotional Freedom Technique

http://webanarchy.net/viewtopic.php?t=910

[Dice]

edit:spam

[Guest]

Dear fellow Ocelotl,
You are disturbing peoples (false) thoughts, that's GREAT! My, just wanted to let you know that you got endorsed a second time by a real scientist.

Sounds right, the people from a few hundred years ago were smarter because they observed things around them and how they worked, now a days, they just theorize about stuff and don't really think about reality. So only people on the edge of consciousness(which is very few) these days are thinking about how things really are and how they work... You don't need a special degree in anything to become an expert in that subject, in fact, the degree would probably limit your ability to excell in that field because of the education will box your thoughts in... "

And by the way, ANY person who makes weapons of mass destruction, are ONLY doing it for the money(EDIT, and for war purposes). The I, always comes first, sadly.........
p.s. As for the world,,,,,,one of my predictions, something I don't hear anyone else saying, is very close to happening, if it occurs things are going to get very bad.................

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