Recently,  a few people who have experienced a direct connection with a numinour experience themselves have said that they believe in the principles of shamanism but have wondered about how to incorporate shamanism into daily living. They “get the big picture” but are not sure how to have an “active” relationship with the spirit world in day to day reality. In my mind there are two key elements that are essential to the practice of shmanism. These are:

1) Using right intention in serving the connection with shamanic experience

2) Engaging in daily practice or ritual that serves serve the connection

Intention is the fuel that creates the sense of agency,  and the ritual is the structure that holds the energetic fuel. From a Jungian perspective, intention is the force of the expression of the masculine principle, while ritual establishes an energetic relationship through daily practice, in the feminine dynamic. For things to come together and become integrated both the masculine and feminine principles must be present (I want the be clear that this is a principle and not a gender issue!). Focused intent provides the momentum that is manifested through practice. In alchemy, the feminine vessel contains the material to be worked with and transformed. In shamanism, the ritual is the expression and container that holds the life force.

Being able to “grow corn” with the experience, – which refers to the practical application of shamanism, occurs through a process of integration, through being able to “make it your own.” In our modern world talking to plants and mountains, and  connecting with the spirits of the earth, water, and the wind may seem strange at first. One might wonder if this is imagination and whether elemental spirits, Pachamama, and the Apus actually exist. A friend of mine gave me some good advice many years ago when I first began to engage with the spirit world. He told me to “take what feels right and put what you don’t understand on the shelf” until you are ready.

Most of us find our own unique way of knowing what is true for us. In my case, because I have an active mind that goes many places, I know if something is true by feeling it in my body. Other people may need to see or hear something to know that it exists. I believe that we each find our own truth, with the help of our guides and allies, and that it is important for us not to rely or depend on the opinions or visions of other people. If our intention is to connect, we need to learn to develop our own direct relationship with the shamanic world. We each form our own perception of reality as we are walk further on our own individual shamanic path.

Hi, Deborah,

This is fan mail. I just finished reading your book and am very impressed. Very, very deep. I so appreciated your descriptions of what you experienced and honest exposure of the details of your and Perry’s life that grounded it. Also, the heroic work of making sense of it on all levels including the level of mind (where I live and feel safe most of the time).

The exercises in the book are great too. I did the first one with my drumming group last time we met, and experienced how much more connected I felt with the group when in the state of being aware of the luminous body. I’m planning on working more with these exercises.

Now I feel more comfortable using the drum and taking it slow and easy. I can sometimes get glimpses of the sense of unity and connection with everything I had back then with drumming – but no further. Even though I’ve always felt a connection with the land as a sort of bodily identification, I’ve never experienced the kind of connection you describe with the Apus – how they revealed themselves to be sentient and loving entities with their own wills and personalities.

Thanks so much for writing this book and bringing back the lessons in such a clear and careful way with such respect for preserving the integrity and “truth” of the experiences.

Your fan,

Ellen Winner (O’Laughlin)

1045 Toedtli Dr.

Boulder, CO 80305

303-499-3204

www.worldshaman.org

“If you’re not having fun, you’re not doing it right.” – Coyote

The world “collective” can apply to many different things. In the context of Western world, it can be used refer to society or mass culture. Jung used the term “collective unconscious,” to describe the deepest level of the psyche that contains the archetypes, universal to all mankind. In Inca shamanism, collective refers to the life force that is the essential energy of all living beings found in nature.

The collective energetic experience of connection can be powerful and profound. It is what shamans enter into in states of ecstasy. It can feel  like coming home and unconditional love. It is having the experience that everything is limitless and exactly as it should be in each moment. In Taoism it is being in the flow. Shamans refer to this as being in right relationship.

Entering into a collective state can be freeing and amazing – yet the opposite can also be true. In times of violent change and confusion, the energy of the collective can become alienating, confusing, oppressive – and life draining. It can bring on dissociative states and lead to soul loss. It can create the sensation of being unable to breathe or think.  This can become over-powering – similar to the way Jon Luc-Picard became taken over by the borg for a couple of episodes in “Star Wars: The Next Generation.” This is because, for better or worse, we are all connected in an energetic field.

When we are paying attention and are in a receptive state, we feel everything going on around us. If we remain fully present, living in the modern world requires tending to the energetic field. When we are ungrounded, tired or hungry our energy fields are more susceptible to taking on negativity and feelings that may not be our own. If we give away our sovereignty and enter into a passive state so that someone else will take care of us we leave ourselves wide open – and give away our power. In states of intoxication we can become even more vulnerable because we lower the vibration of our energy body, leaving ourselves wide open.

Remaining clear and balanced is an active process that requires focus and intention. If we  stay grounded and align ourselves with a purpose for the highest good in service of the earth (Pachamama) and the light, we protect ourselves and develop immunity. Like attracts like. If we are drawn to the light we will bring the light to us. If we live in right relationship we remain in connection with the positive life force that is surrounding us.

Power is accessed and developed through connection. This connection can occur with one’s own self, nature, creative acts, and through a reciprocal exchange with others that Inca paqos (shamans) refer to as being in right relationship. Although we sometimes forget this living in the modern world, the ability to hold energy is  not limited by supply, the amount of energy available to us is only limited by our perception and our willingness to surrender to being open in an ongoing energy exchange.

I have heard people say “you can have anything you want.” Perhaps that is true, however, from a poqo’s perspective, that is not the point. The intention is always to be in right relationship with the living natural world (Pachamama), and when we experience the flow of this connection we drop our “ego orientation” and realize that there is something that is much bigger than we are, that we are a part of. In the field of psychoanalysis, attachment and object relationship theorists say that we find meaning through our relationships, through being seen, and having our true sense of who we are reflected back to us. Psychoanalysts and paqos have a similar view of how we find meaning. A difference between the two would be that psychoanalysts focus on the individual psyche, while paqos focus on the collective psyche.

The capacity to build and hold power is largely a function of our availability, how open we are to the actual energetic experience available to us, and how willing we are to participate in the collective process of nature that is occurring in every moment.This requires that we  drop focusing on what we think we want and consider our world from a “bird’s eye” view, by looking at the whole picture. It could be that there is opportunity for something much greater than what we think we want.

I am using the phrase “think we want” because energetic connection is felt through our hearts and or bodies, and seen in our minds from a “big picture” perspective. In the field of psychology,  common common cognitive characteristics of depression that are worked with are the perception of isolation, limited ways of viewing the world – along with narrow minded thinking, and negative belief about the future. The experience of universality – that their are others like us can foster hope and a sense of agency, that brings a willingness to initiate steps toward positive change.

In psychoanalytic theory, it is understood that the disaster that we fear may occur  in the future is actually a memory of a traumatic event that has already happened in the past. Whatever we have not worked through from the past is carried forward in our memories and in our bodies. This premise corresponds to to the theories about karma in Eastern religions, as well as with the shaman’s belief that the totality of our experience is carried in the etheric field, what Carl Jung referred to as the subtle body.

When we relate to our experience energetically (i.e. through the charge we carry in our body that emerges when we remember something that has happened to us in the past), the constraints of linear sequential time are less applicable. Understanding our connection with time as a relationship between layers is more accurate.

At any given moment, we are experiencing  reality through  multiple channels.For example, we are who perceive ourselves to be – are as we are in our bodies in our present state (i.e. our persona). In addition, we are our past memories as we are currently holding them in the present, and we are also what we are holding in our unconscious. In other words, as Jung said, we are also our shadow – whatever we think we are NOT.

Many of us try to avoid thinking about painful memories – because they are painful. When traumatic memories become psychically “walled off,” or repressed they stay preserved in a “frozen state,” However, even when they have been “forgotten,”  and we have become  unaware of them through using avoidant defenses, we are still carrying them with us in our energy body. Freud said – and I happen to agree with him – that whenever we are carrying an experience with us that we do not want to face – and are not looking at, we will “act out” the memory in behavior as a means of seeking resolution. Because of this, the past becomes the present because our psyches possess an innate sense of agency to heal ourselves.

As memories are accessed into consciousness – they change. Neurologically, making psychic connections changes the structure of neurons – more dendrites are formed creating a bidirectional relationship between our experience, physical structure, and conscious awareness.  When memories change – the charge associated with them is altered as well, Which in turn, alters the energy body. As a result our relationship with the past is bi-directional – the past lives in the present, and through remembering we alter the past.

Medicine people develop a very different understanding of their exterior world, growing up close to nature. Rather than learning to place value on personal achievement and individualism as we do in this culture, by encouraging people to “stand on their own two feet,” in shamanism everything in life begins, exists and ends in relationship with Mother Earth. Incan medicine people refer to the land as Pachamama. Because most Inca shamans grow up in small villages in the Andes Mountains, they live close to the earth and depend on Pachamama for their survival. However, besides being in a physical relationship with the land, through raising corn and herding llamas, the connection is also a spiritual relationship.

Unlike those of us raised in the modern world of Western culture, shamans serve their experience rather than trying to make meaning from it. Understanding everything through our logical mind is not necessary. Growing up in a village, or ayllu, they learn to rely on their hearts and bodies to make sense of the world rather than minds. The medicine people believe that thinking about something brings separation while a heart-centered focus brings connection. The feelings of the heart lead the individual to the truth.

Medicine people learn to source, or draw life energy, or kausay, from Pachamama because, unlike people, the land is constant and the energy is always there. Shamans live their lives by tending to kausay, or fertility in nature.  Kausay is the building block of shamanism and Incan medicine. Kausay is life force. It is the energy of creation, experienced in the body as a vibration, and in the heart as a feeling of universal love. It is often seen as an intense light, or experienced as clarity, or a vibration bringing sense of all-knowing wisdom. It is what is experienced in altered states of ecstasy when paqos enter into the spirit world of energy.

The expression of kausay occurs by being in ayni, in an open reciprocal relationship with Pachamama. What is taken from the land is returned to the land in gratitude so that it can be born again. Everything in nature, and all living things, occurs in the order of “right relationship,” or kausay pacha. Everything comes from and returns to Pachamama.

According to Inca cosmology, being in ayni (“right relationship”) comes as an expression of munay (unconditional, universal love) with the collective. In Inca shamanism, the definition of “collective” is much broader than how it is understood in modern Western culture. Besides referring to “mass culture” and society, the term collective refers to the energetic relationship existing among all living things. For paqos, this consists of Pachamama, (Mother Earth), plants, animals, and humans living in the physical realm of the natural world. The expression of the collective in the spirit world includes the Apus (the collective mountain spirits) and Santa Tierras (feminine spirits residing in the earth that are an aspect of Pachamama).

Medicine people learn to source, or draw life energy, or kausay, from Pachamama because, unlike people, the land is constant and the energy is always there. Shamans live their lives by tending to kausay, or fertility in nature.  Kausay is the building block of shamanism and Incan medicine. Kausay is life force. It is the energy of creation, experienced in the body as a vibration, and in the heart as a feeling of universal love. It is often seen as an intense light, or experienced as clarity, or a vibration bringing sense of all-knowing wisdom. It is what is experienced in altered states of ecstasy when paqos enter into the spirit world of energy.

The expression of kausay occurs by being in ayni, in an open reciprocal relationship with Pachamama. What is taken from the land is returned to the land in gratitude so that it can be born again. Everything in nature, and all living things, occurs in the order of “right relationship,” or kausay pacha. Everything comes from and returns to Pachamama.

According to Inca cosmology, being in ayni (“right relationship”) comes as an expression of munay (unconditional, universal love) with the collective. In Inca shamanism, the definition of “collective” is much broader than how it is understood in modern Western culture. Besides referring to “mass culture” and society, the term collective refers to the energetic relationship existing among all living things. For paqos, this consists of Pachamama, (Mother Earth), plants, animals, and humans living in the physical realm of the natural world. The expression of the collective in the spirit world includes the Apus (the collective mountain spirits) and Santa Tierras (feminine spirits residing in the earth that are an aspect of Pachamama).

Paqos move into altered states of consciousness between states in ordinary and nonordinary reality through shifting levels of perception. Ordinary reality has to do with physical reality, while nonordinary reality pertains to the energetic, spiritual world. In Peruvian shamanism, there are four levels of psychic engagement, or states of perception. The first level of perception is the literal level, taking place in ordinary reality. The literal level is the physical world of everyday experience.

The second level is the symbolic level, and includes both left hemisphere and right hemisphere brain functioning with the capacity for abstract thinking and imagination, respectively. It is the territory of dreams, metaphors, and images, -including fantasy and imagination, and language and verbal communication.

The third level pertains to the mythic or archetypal level of the collective unconscious that Carl Jung described. It is where synchronistic events connect. In the collective psyche of Peruvian cosmology, three mythic beings appear in the form of animals. They are the guiding principles, which manifest as emanations of the spirit world and correspond to the energy centers in the body – the Belly, the Heart, and the Mind.

The fourth level of perception in Peruvian shamanism is the energetic or essential level. This level is pure energy where form, time and space no longer exist. This is the level where transformation and healing occurs.

Shamanism is an intersubjective rather than an intrasubjective experience. The focus is feeling connection with the collective – not an individual journey. The medicine people say it takes heart. Shamans begin with the collective, and through the collective heal the personal. In the West, our approach is healing yourself first and then you can heal the others. Shamanism focuses on giving back to the community and to the collective:

In shamanism, ceremony refers to the practice of entering the spirit realm of non-ordinary reality and asking the spirits to respond.  Calling sacred space is the way we ask the spirits for their attendance, guidance, and support – always with intention for the highest good.  Entering into sacred space enables us to facilitate the perceptual shift into experiencing non-ordinary reality.  This is especially important when working in groups.

Some shamans call sacred space from each of the four directions – north, east, south, and west. The Q’ero shamans call sacred space by following the movement of the sun, which is the method I use and am most familiar with. When calling sacred space, it is helpful to have a rattle or drum to create a rhythmic sound that will help you to shift into a meditative state.  The Q’ero shamans usually work with rattles.  Although using either a rattle or a drum is fine, my personal preference is to use a rattle. I have found listening to a drumbeat extremely helpful in facilitating journeying into the other world, but I have discovered that using a rattle is less cumbersome to manipulate during a ceremony. I have grown accustomed to working with the rattle, and now associate the sound of the rattle with sacred ceremony and connecting with the spirit world.

In the Amazon jungle during ceremony, ayahausceros, the shamans who work with the plant medicine of ayahuasca, weave the threads of their song into the experience as a way of guiding various stages of the journey into and out of the spirit world.  Hearing a melody we recognize often elicits an emotional reaction in us and may remind us of the feeling of coming home. Facilitating these kinds of emotional response may help us to open and connect through our Heart centers.

Michael Harner, the well-known anthropologist and shamanic practitioner, also uses songs, as well as a drum to help to facilitate the deeper states of receptivity necessary in journeying to the other world. You should use whatever works best for you.

Rituals, techniques, and symbols are a way of holding the life force of kausay because they provide context and a means of understanding energetic experience. They are the container that holds the energy – but they are not the energetic connection itself. Kausay is the collective energy source that brings life.  We are in kausay through loving, being, creating, and feeling – as expressions of pachamama. Shamans derive their power through embodying the experience of the connection, by becoming the conduit. Similar to painting once an artist has a deeper understanding of their subject they find their own language to articulate the experience, by serving the experience and being the experience. Artists fall in love with what they are trying to visiaully describe and this is what brings it to life.We are in the flow when we are allowing the experience to move through us and we do not try to control it. The connection grows when we become it, dance it, breathe it, taste it, and embody it.

Artistic expression occurs through finding your own voice, as a way of describing an authentic experience – from the inside out. The ritual is only the point of departure. The technique is the format, but the connection is what is essential. At times, living in this culture there is a tendency to focus on the preciseness of a methology rather than staying true to the connection. We can lose the forest ‘fore the trees by losing ourselves in the details. When we are connected we transcend the need for structure, through our commitment to serving pachamama, our connection with the land, and with everything living around us.

Ultimately when we are serving the experience we become the experience and the form drops away. We move from being caught in the physical experience with discreet boundaries to the essential energetic experience. Intention  in serving the collective is the way we open to the experience and embody it.

• Everything in the universe has a memory of a healed state and shamans access these memories
• Shamans see and sense how and where the technical state of the individual they are working on is and facilitate healing by moving energy using mesa stones, the shaman’s medicine body to remember and hold that healed state.
• Once the body recognizes the healed state, aligns itself with it, the healing is done.
• In shamanism, a healer needs to be able to ignite, turn on the switches in a person’s body, whether the situation is physical or nonphysical and reactivate the memory of their healed state.
• Healing is a non-personal state, a good healer understands what’s personal and what is non-personal.
•  Love is not direct towards the individual – it’s an energetic shift and transaction that imbibes the land, imbibes the spirits, imbibes codes of the individual’s memories.
• Making that memory active is what healing is about -moving energy in a non-personal way.