As a shaman I find it deeply offensive to be labelled a glorified trip sitter.
I will consult the spirits to determine my course of action
Hah! Please tell me you're joking. If not it's a shame because your efforts to promote the church of 4-HO-MiPT - if I'm not mixing you up with someone else - deserve some credit, but this makes me think you're just the kind of charlatan that the OP is obviously referring to.
As others have noted Shamanism historically meant something quite different to the commonly accepted usage today, but it's quite obvious that if you are a practitioner of some form of ancient Shamanism, then you're not the kind of "Shaman" being discussed here.
Equally, if you are a "modern Shaman", and trip sitting is a somewhat significant part of your role in society, your interactions with others, your spiritual practice, or however you choose to define it - and I include in this definition of "trip sitting", any form of assumed responsibility for someone going through a trip, ie, sitting with a tripper for most of the duration of said trip - then, I mean... what are you deeply offended by? Surely you can't deny the reality that many so called or self-proclaimed modern shamans are exploiting the spiritual/mystical allure of psychedelics and traditional or less traditional psychedelically oriented spiritual practice for personal gain, financial or otherwise?
If you don't deny this, then surely you can understand why this thread exists, and if you're not one of the aforementioned exploitative characters - why are you personally offended? Surely the fact that these people exist is more offensive to modern shamanic practice - as far as such a thing can be defined - than the fact that someone would start to think that most if not all modern shamans are, in fact, glorified trip sitters, or worse? After all, this thread isn't directed at
you personally.
On the other hand, if you DO deny it... well, that seems a difficult thing to justify but I think it warrants further exposition and I would think the spirits would have informed you of the context in which this thread was made at some point prior to you being offended by it...
To just shut down discussion by proclaiming your personal offense without any elaboration as to the reason - and, worse, a vague allusion to your access to the spiritual realm and presumably, by extension, spiritual truths inaccessible to most of us non-shamans... well, someone said to me recently that when someone claims to be offended it is not for you to tell them that they should not be offended, but to try to understand why... but, that was in the context of discrimination against persecuted minorities, which I would say modern shamans are not... I'm honestly trying to see if that can or should apply here, hence my asking for your clarification, and I hope I haven't jumped the gun here, although also, I hope that I have, because my gut reaction to your post is that such a statement would only be made by a deeply dishonest character...
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