Laurence: ?How does one live as a shaman in our American bubble. I understand that shamanism itself maintains a connectedness to earth, but... could you please elaborate for us modern mystics :-) My descent into the inner workings of haiku poetry, and martial arts have helped both my spiritual and physical alignment...even with my job being in technology. What should a young haijin (haiku poet) like myself do to reach an even higher plateau? :-)?
How to live a Shamanic Life:
1. The first question to ask prior to all else is ?Why?? Why am I living right now? Then ask the Grail question?for who does the Grail (Spirit) serve? Translate that into the personal question? Who does my behavior serve? And with all choices of your time and energy ask?what does this mean to me, what is the pleasure in this and how can I use my strengths?
2. What is killing humanity and the Earth at present is a loss or deficiency of visionary capacity. If there is no workable individual and collective vision of integrity and spiritual-value, then civilization is going nowhere fast. So the most important thing you can do for yourself and humanity is to build your visionary consciousness. (Through fasting, vision quest, trials, exertion, adventure, new experiences, risking and stimulating the senses, plus possible shamanistic use of drugs). Study visioneering, and hang out with outstanding artists to help build up your own inner visual neurology.
3. Next one has to use all external information sources as secondary to ones own gnosis. That is to transcend the information database in traditions, sciences, philosophy and all human endeavor?to use the information but not be used by it.
4. The main roadblock to becoming a shaman is that we are trained as slaves to subordinate our own minds to external authorities...thus this flip to "self-authorship" is the key to the self-determined life...otherwise we are wasting our lives forever seeking approval, confirmation of worth and the go-ahead from society instead of from source. The shaman is a sorcerer...initiated by source.
5. To transcend anything one has to gain comfort with the unknown, with chaos and paradox?and to abide always in the first question prior to all else??Why am I doing this??
6. You cannot grow as a shaman unless you are determined to raise your energy above consensus consciousness, thus you need practices and experiences to shake things up, to lose your balance so that you find your sea legs in higher domains.
7. Play with your life script, build various flow diagrams and maps of ways you would like to grow and lives you would like to lead. Along with this you can change your lens through predetermined changes in your worldview so that you can view each day through a slightly different perspective.
8. Read The Diceman by Luke Reinhart to learn the mystic truth that due to habit most of us live only a small fraction of who we are and our potential. He will give you insight and practical ideas on how to move beyond the known self.
9. While still in bed set your intent, energy and attitude with a morning visionary dedication to how you will use your will for the day.
10. Read bios of people you admire, and those who have interests and vocations similar to you and your aspirations.
11. Unless you are in a school of ascendancy you might have to construct your own initiations to continually break through into new levels of operation.
12. Pragmatic Outstanding Operations is an attempt at describing how to live a shamanic life.
13. Figure out how you want to dedicate your life to Eternity. In this time and age what is the most courageous and important thing for you to be doing for the actual evolution of humanity, regardless of the comfort and placation of societies present mode of existence.
To live the life of the shaman is to become spiritually mature, to rise beyond the safe bounds of collective-think of the village and to venture through time and space to worlds beyond the known.
I was thinking about how to reach the level of stillness and alignment necessary for rising to the visionary realm and living from that level, one really needs to remove oneself from the dissonance culture. One would have to build up a community of peers dedicated to cultivation of the visionary arts and their products. Then the higher consciousness could be impregnated into the existing culture via media, product and education. If this doesn't occur then human civilization is essentially running blind without its lights on. Thus an unplug, retreat and impregnation tactic seems the only viable solution.
Americans are becoming increasingly insane and sick by the minute as stress and dissatisfaction increase, so my greatest recommendation for quality of life is to leave America. If you can?t leave then you are going to have to develop Aikido-like energy and stance in order to avoid and deflect the social abuse that is pandemic.
My observation that America was becoming sicker and more insane due to increased stress was not going to serve me, so I got to thinking how to change my thinking and picked up the Course of Miracles Workbook.
"Whatever I see reflects my thoughts. It is my thoughts that tell me where I am and what I am. The fact that I see a world in which there is suffering and loss and death shows me that I am seeing only the representation of my insane thoughts, and am not allowing my real thoughts to cast their beneficent light on what I see."
ie: you are what you see, and what you see you get!
Change my thinking and see things differently, such as...
"America is not in the midst of the craziest period in US history, but is
rapidly becoming saner and more awake every second, and more at peace
with itself in the world."
WC:"I think your statement above is fair enough, although "ahead of the curve" by a few years. The timing doesn't negate it; at least some people have to think like that in order for it to happen. But I also think that while the general statement is true, it may not apply to any one particular person. So while that statement may make one feel better in the morning before facing the "reality" of the day, it's not necessarily a good basis on which to make a leave-or-stay decision. There may be particular things which matter more."
I think its a case of "as if"...if we act "as if" then there is a chance of transformation, if we simply observe and complain about the current state of things then we are contributing to the ongoing demise of humanity. Because the disease has been going on all the time, but as we collectively own up to truth the disease is made "apparent" and thus we should really be rejoicing that the darkness is now being exposed.
John: ?I advocate the state change as a way to calibrate the inner compass. I think that "messing around with the infinite layers of the desire for suffering" is worth it if your inner compass is calibrated properly. That way, progress is permanent. But state change alone cannot solve the problem, unless we are able to abandon the old states and never return.?
What you don't seem to understand is that state change, energy raising coupled, with an actually spiritually "supportive" affirmative community changes the entire perceptive field and operating mode of the individual...they are a different individual with different thoughts and responses. Establish the grand alignment (body-mind-soul-spirit) by increasing the energy and coherency and you do not have to continually bandage and assuage the poor broken dysfunction self that is just trying to survive in a poor, broken and radically dysfunctional society. Dealing with the broken self on its own level with the tools of this broken civilization will only perpetuate the ongoing hell realm of the struggling ego which is divorced from both body and soul.
When you enter Spacemind there is NO dysfunction ego or worry or social difficulty anymore, it is GONE! What is more is that you will not be even able to PROCESS it, because it is not THERE to process!!!!
We can abandon the old states and never return (except perhaps during regressive-type crisis). It can be done, I am determined to do it, but simply changing state does not mean that the "work" is finished, it means the work has just begun! Instead of mucking around forever on the portico, we begin to enter the TEMPLE OF LIFE! through living the life of the soul.
It requires setting up a community in which high-energy visionary state cultivation is the MAIN focus of the community. People who continue to act in the baboon-like character traits will be eliminated from the community. I am going to try and get Sapolsky to do a full feature on the politics of baboons for mass market video...so we can really get a sense of how we are even more wicked than they are.
If the whole human is cultivated from soil to soul and allowed to coalesce in an affirmative, supportive environment then the ego layer of the mind is healed through a grand conjunction of the body and soul. Then this inner peace (coherency) is translated into interpersonal harmony within the group, and immunity from the baboon-like behavior of the stressed populations of standard culture.
Willy-conjuncto and I pretty much have all the preliminary technology needed to establish the conditions for the state change to permanent revelatory chemistry...that is living permanently as the Delphic Oracle without the need for Ethylene. Now all we need is the cash to exit America and set up base and find some others that have something to offer to the project.
http://myfacilitate.net/jana/Armarnia.htmThe Heart Aroused: Poetry and the Preservation of the Soul in Corporate America, David Whyte.
Thriving in Transition: Effective Living in Times of Change, Marcia Perkins-Reed.
http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC28/Mollison.htm ?Fantastic Article by Mollison
http://critiquemagazine.com/article/rainbowwarriors.htm ?Book Review of Legend of the Rainbow Warriors;
Other books by McFadden: Profiles in Wisdom; The Little Book of Native American Wisdom; Teach Us To Number Our Days; Farms of Tomorrow; and Farms of Tomorrow Revisited.
www.chiron-communications.com/farms.html ?Community Supported Agriculture
To stabilize emergence so that it is not one step forward two steps back, it helps to have a "system" and a sangha or spiritual companion with which to do the great alchemical work. However be aware though that a sangha will not ?let? you rise out of group-think and above the spiritual level of the group. You will be expected to monkey back the worldview of the group, and not present alternative or original ideas. In relationships 99% of humans will attempt to get you to serve them instead of your own soul?s truth.
I suggest you look into The New Hermetics, by Jason Augustus Newcomb
http://www.newhermetics.com/ ?Lays out the various stages of the spiritual path.
Strategies for success?Sandra Anne Taylor
www.sandrataylor.net
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