Neo-Shamanism: A New Way of Seeing the World
Shamanism: A New Way of Seeing The World
With Shamanism seeing the unseen, feeling the formless, and understanding the unimaginable are just the beginning. Incorporating Shamanism into our life will not only result in a better quality of life, but it will also aid in the acceptance of things that can not be changed, the strength to change the things that can be changed and the wisdom to know the difference.
The goal of Shamanism is a better quality of life for all beings, regardless of age, culture or social-economic status. Practicing Shamanism in this day and age involves a return to the archaic methods of the ancient shamans of our ancestry through the use of plants, and herbs of all kinds as well as specific techniques to ensure safe passage amongst the other realms of reality. This is done in order to return to a more symbiotic relationship to nature and a more authentic way of living. Not just the healing medicinal plants, but the psychoactive plants as well, not just with singing and drumming but with silent meditation as well.
We are a society that is too deeply rooted in the idea that the laboratories of men are more dependable than the herbs and plants of the Creator. For this reason I boldly recommend that these shamanic plants and techniques be used in the following ways: In substitute of pharmaceuticals and chemicals whenever possible to recover from illnesses and diseases, those seeking spiritual growth could be administered a psychoactive plant by a trained professional shaman or psychiatrist if the individual is at least 18 years of age and in a controlled shamanic ceremonial environment only, in retirement homes for people who wish to facilitate facing disease and the end of life, as well as using it for treating some forms of mental illness and criminal behavior essentially acting as a healing medicine to help heal the pain that puts people there and keeps them coming back. The plants act as an aid in correcting the criminal mentality and work to radically change the criminal's view of the world, which is what drives the criminal to commit crimes in the first place.
Once the root of this factor of societal anxiety is identified it can then be solved, and only then. To identify the core problems in our culture we must first view our culture's perspective on the human condition and its reasons for anxiety. To do this it helps to look at other cultures perception of human suffering, spirituality, disease and death. Having done this already, I propose that our anxiety and fear is generated by three things; first and foremost there is no part of our culture that allows for or gives credence to the notion of life existing outside of the physical body, secondly, people's fear of death is directly related to not fully knowing how to live their life, and lastly the detachment from the shamanic way of life.
In order to facilitate the dealing with these common human problems, one must first dissolve all cultural boundaries and values that conflict with the authentic experience of life in the now. To ensure and facilitate the process of dissolving cultural boundaries as well as materialistic values, I propose a prolonged interaction with nature, combined with the consumption of psychoactive plants. The psychoactive plants target the cognitive and language parts of the brain, this is the reason why they have been being used by shaman (ancient psychologists) for thousands of years to return to the authenticity of the human experience, which exists outside cognition, language and culture. Once the cultural boundaries and values are dissolved the notion of life existing outside of the body, not only makes sense, but it is an essential truth for it to be possible for life to exist within the body. Also, this will allow people to understand how they want to live the rest of their lives when in the body as fully as they can.
Many different cultures use healing plants and psychoactive plants for many different reasons. In the book "The Attraction of Peyote" there is a chapter dedicated to "Peyote Healing". This chapter discusses how the Kiowa's used to use peyote buttons to put around a tooth ache, the Shawnee use to use it and its tea as an antiseptic. And the peyote bulbs were also often used in Mexico and in the US as a medicament for a variety of diseases. In fact the shamans who discovered the power of this plant to not just produce visions but to also heal, only realized its healing powers after being cured of whatever sicknesses or diseases they had prior to the plants consumption. So, many psychoactive shamanic plants not only have the power to transform our perspective on life and reality forever, but they also have physical and emotional healing properties as well.
The LA times reported on a study done at Johns Hopkins in 2006 on psilocybin (the key psychoactive ingredient in magic mushrooms) and depression. The research concluded that psilocybin caused profound mystical experiences in 36 volunteers. Then 14 months later the volunteers said that "They would rate it (the psychedelic experience) as the most or one of the top 5 spiritually significant and personally meaningful experiences of their lives." Another follow up interview was done 2 years later and most of the volunteers said they had long lasting spiritual effects up to a year later and best of all their depression was gone after the single dose administered years prior. Obviously, the psychoactive shamanic plants do and have had a place in our diet for some time. I assert therefore that if these plants were reintroduced to our diet, then the human condition of depression and anxiety can be remedied. Through the most ancient traditions of sacred ceremony, combined with the consumption of the shamanic psychoactive plants we journey to a better understood reality and bring a stable piece of its magic and power back with us when we return to the mundane world of self limiting culture.
The shamanic method can not only help us in life and living day to day but it can also aid in the accepting of death as well. For example, a woman named Nicky was a terminally ill volunteer in a study at New York University on the calming effects of psilocybin mushrooms, in regards to the anxiety and fear of death. ABC NEWS reported that Nicky had ovarian cancer and had many failed treatments and she felt very frightened of her looming death. Researchers at NYU said "In a controlled setting hallucinogens can....help patients reduce anxiety, personal isolation and fear of death."
This is what Nicky herself had this to say about her experience. "I was in a dome and it was all bejeweled with colors, mostly striped like a kaleidoscope, but not turning. Every once and a while the dome would open up at the top and send in a luminescence. I was in awe and I could feel myself taking deep breaths, at the same time tears were running down my face but I wasn't crying. It was incredible, I wanted to share it. I couldn't believe the world could be so beautiful. I know it sounds trite but I live more in the moment now. I am living life more honestly and authentically." This is a great example how the Shamanic Method of using psychoactive plants and certain techniques have the power to help us live fully again.
Another professor at Harbor-UCLA-MED Center in California named Charles Grob is also performing experiments with psychedelics in aiding the terminally ill. He is using LSD (acid to the layman) and psilocybin to help transform his patients and their perspective on life and death. One man said this about his wife, "Psilocybin transformed Pamela's view, Pamela had lost hope, she wasn’t able to make plans for the future. She wasn’t able to engage the day as if she had a future. Treatment allowed her to realize that her fear about disease was destroying the remaining time she had left."
The Shamanic way of life is obviously what our sick world needs. We must therefore return to a more civilized way of living in order to continue our survival on this planet, and the Shamanic way of living seems to be the only reliable remedy for our problems. Most of the problems that are currently in the world are due to destructive human behavior and therefore can be corrected by humans behaving differently. If we change the perspective of the human performing the destructive behavior then the human problems can be ceased and repaired. Only through a reintegration into nature and the consumption of plants that dissolve cultural programming, can we return to a symbiotic relationship with nature and the plants we consume. If we do not then we will most certainly destroy ourselves, the planet and all the life on it that we claim is so precious