Shamanism

[webbykevin]

In defense of two crack-pots - Tim Leary obviously knew the cosmic joke left, right, up, down, in, out, round-and-round, loop-the-loop and back again. With bells on. Not only this, I believe that he might have also been witness to the Galactic Joke, and lived it to the max. This is the sign of a true shaman - one who has seen through the sham, and become a man - one who has won the rat race, and realized that he is a rat. It is quite a humbling effect - especially on a young apprentice who needs toughening up to walk with the souls of the ancestors according to this one guy. And McKenna is just a cheeky chap who fooled every seeker into believing that he believed his own bullshit talk and helped ego death many a good person who now write in the third person because they realize that eye is a subjective term - you will see them scattered around many steamy rainforests talking to thin and thick air - telling people that they are gonna sing again and smoke some tobacco but that they're trying to give it up. One cannot say anything without people taking things too seriously - that's why one should just shut the fuck up and not ever type a damn thing that other people can read ever because - as Leary said - or maybe it was McKenna - it is important to just shut the fuck up and try not to embarrass yourself unless it's really funny and your really high and you wanna fly into the sky like a lie and write a book which people buy - take too seriously and give you money so you can live a nice little life fucked on mushrooms, stoned and high in Hawaii - don't sound too bad to me - and that's some free sham healing for the seekers

I really love you for this perspective, people do tend to take themselves and everyone else way to seriously where as the true lightness of being I find usually to be contained somewhere in the "Cosmic giggle" as that crackpot McKenna would say.

Shamanism isn't about drugs, it's not all based around plant hallunicinogens, in fact that area of the practice is where you are most likely to find a higher percentage of non genuine self inflated fuck up ego's, I have met with elders and clever men and women of a few native indigeoness cultures that do not place a so called consciousness expanding intoxication as a primary means of their knowledge and practice, these people and these experiences are the ones that seem to provide a more magical experience because without drugs in a situation you are seeing reality through a clear experiential lense, When something incredible happens and your spirit gets a jolt of energy or understanding in an unstoned state the lessons and experience lifts you so much higher and leaves you with a personal truth ( a knowing) that is far more profound.

I spent a while there under the delusion that taking hallucinogenic plants was the doorway to being something other than just a plain old human experiencing the "mundane plane" of existence, but as I grow older and wiser just through the experience that life itself offers I see that the plants are only relevant if that is what your intuition tells you is the thing you need, and that experience could be a very rare thing maybe that only happens once or twice in your life, anything used in a way that becomes a doctrine or forms itself into your own self belief that there is only one way to walk the path of life is limiting the whole thing, narrowing the walls of the canyon.

I once asked an old man at a healing ceremony who was laughing so hard that tears were flowing down his cracked and wrinkled face what the joke was, he pointed at the participants of the ceremony and said "I can tell people to hit themselves with stinging nettles.... AND THEY DO !" ..... and then he collapsed into hysterical laughter, pure joy, pure bliss, just an old rascal having fun, the cosmic giggle was never so funny as the laughter in that old charletans eyes.

This whole thread seems to have its spotlight focussed on a small group of yage takers in the Amazon as the model we should use to define a Shaman, this is not the case, the worlds ancient peoples have a whole plethora of amazing wisdom and fun available that is outside of the realms of a tryptamine induced fantasy.

 

[webbykevin]

We don't think for our selves we are taught, and taught a lot of crap at that.

Amen Brother.

there is a massive difference between the truth and the imagination, and the fact of the matter is the imagination becomes real in extreme circumstances

Perhaps the imagination becomes real in all situations not just in the extreem ones, it all seems to start with a thought that is either discarded or gains the attention of just the pure consciousness and the somehow slips across the boudary between consciousness and ego and becomes a belief instead of just a random thought in the flow, in the great Tao that flows everywhere.

I have not interacted with any indigenous shamans, (I'm sorry I'm not as rich and pretentious as you, to have a fulfilled life now and explore the fucking world, again with the condescending snobbishness I'm not talking about religion I'm talking about people like YOU!)

Hey hey, now c'mon, no need to diss on a bruv like that lol. But I do respect and undertsand where you're coming from, I grew up in England in the 70's and 80's I was from nowhere, lower working class poor rural devon, when the day I left school it was raining, Thatchers unemployed army awaited me, in fact the careers advice officer that showed up at our school basically gave us a run through of how to fill out a UB40, So I had no work, no money, no education, no family support, I know the way the world looks when you stare out of it from a place of English hardship.

But I left, with 80 quid in my pocket after I had scraped together the airfare to America out of a summers work in a horrid seaside town arcades, I wanted more than England, I wanted starsky and hutch and the land that time forgot and to see the great walls and monuments from those history books, to bring that knowledge out of history, out of the past and the only way to touch that stuff, the exotic, the bewildering, the mind expanding, was to get my ass up out of Englands rain soaked gutters and make it happen.

I have travelled the world on nothing more than my own hard work and sheer damded determination NOT to have a boring unintersting life, they taught us in school that all the adventures had been used up, that history had stopped being written and now was the time to be a cog in a machine that was already breaking.

So don't please assume that everyone who goes to exotic (to you) places is a rich spoiled snob, cos it's not as fucking simple as you say it is and you can go as far as your own fucking courage will carry you.

and those bollocks angel healing seminars

LMAO, Amen again mate !, I do miss England sometimes, it's part of who I am no matter where on the planet I find myslef blown, England in many ways never leaves you.

Peace

 

[Carlqua]

So don't please assume that everyone who goes to exotic (to you) places is a rich spoiled snob, cos it's not as fucking simple as you say it is and you can go as far as your own fucking courage will carry you

Thanks for the input on my posts, thought I would be alone on that one lol
I'm not at all making that assumption based on the fact that he had traveled, it's the fact that he was using that to be condescending, he was all like "have you actually met an indigenous shaman" sort of thing. I wasn't even talking about indigenous shamans I was talking about new age shaman/hippy/wiccan types but he kept changing the subject towards people of a different culture.

I do miss England sometimes, it's part of who I am no matter where on the planet I find myslef blown, England in many ways never leaves you.

That's wierd to think, I would really love to leave and emigrate to the US or Australia and I wouldn't think I would miss it at all, how long you been away, if it's for over 10 years and being as patriotic as your post seems you would cry f you came back and saw whats going on here today lol but then again you lived through the 70's and 80's so you probably seen it all before.

and btw webbykevin, your story is inspiring.

 

[webbykevin]

Thanks for the input on my posts, thought I would be alone on that one lol
I'm not at all making that assumption based on the fact that he had traveled, it's the fact that he was using that to be condescending, he was all like "have you actually met an indigenous shaman" sort of thing. I wasn't even talking about indigenous shamans I was talking about new age shaman/hippy/wiccan types but he kept changing the subject towards people of a different culture.



That's wierd to think, I would really love to leave and emigrate to the US or Australia and I wouldn't think I would miss it at all, how long you been away, if it's for over 10 years and being as patriotic as your post seems you would cry f you came back and saw whats going on here today lol but then again you lived through the 70's and 80's so you probably seen it all before.

and btw webbykevin, your story is inspiring.

Thanks man, yeh I do see where you're coming from on the ( "have you actually met an indigenous shaman" ) thing.

So on that subject, I will throw in my 10 cents worth.......

When you travel the world, you create your own experience by the way you approach a place, the way you think of yourself in relation to the place and to the way you behave in the place. by what parts of yourself, what character you add to the flavour of the mix while you are there.

I have never done it the wealthy funded way, I have always arrived places by getting through the trip by the seat of my pants, I always run out of money almost immediately and have to then do something about that situation or starve, lol
Thats pretty much how each of my adventures have started, I left the UK in 1987, never went back, had 3 years in and out of the USA doing manual labour, roadie work, a bit of bar work, just hanging with the itinerent edges of the backpacker crowd, we always lived in the seediest hostels, the cheapest places, and got jobs that were under the radar, low wage cash in hand bullshit but it put food in your mouth while worked out a plan. That method gave me a few hundred dollars savings every few months to launch myself into a few more exotic places, jamaica, south america, every time I went I was right on the edge of total poverty.

And what happens when you interact with a place on that level, be it miami beach, iquitos, sydney, brixton wherever, is that you meet and experience the people of that place in a way a wealthy tourist or a well funded anthropologist or even a well funded ethnobotanist never gets close to.

To stand penniless on the riverside at the mouth of the amazon with nowhere to go except inside your imagination to work out what to do next, that is very different from flying by light plane and helicopter into some paradise tropical jungle eco village in peru with a 1000 dollar silk hammock. In both cases the drive is the same in a lot of ways, both seek adventure, both have alive and enquiring minds, neither is wrong.

But when you do it the way i did, as an ignorant devon yokel with a wandering heart and a flicker of courage I always seemed to make my way into a culture through the basement door, I stood with the local men who were on the lowest wages doing the shittiest jobs at times, when I had no choice but to do a crippling days work in the sun for 6 dollars, because that was what needed to be done to start to dig myself out of mess i'd gotten myself in, an alternative to hopeless dispair at the unfairness of it all. hunger is a great motivator.

When you offer that part of yourself to the experience, when you put your pride away and just get down in the dirt with people and put in a good effort, somehow that leads a path through these countries that is truly a people path, and the humanity shared is the point of it.
because if you sit down and get drunk with these other rascals and scallywags and battlers and slaves, If you are respted as one of them because you have connected with them in the sewers of life, they will show you the real magic, the Shamans that they respect and recommend are the real deal, No university grant or air conditioned suit in a first class river boat is ever going to get someone to the real magic.

So in my experience and opinion the way to have a full, mind blowing, challenging, exciting, consciousness expanding adventure that will give you real bang for your buck is to turn up in a country broke, find a bar, and see how far your true character can take you.

It got me this far, I've lived in Australia for over 20 years, about at the end of the child rearing couple of decades and starting to get itchy feet again, I was thinking of coming back for a squizz at merry old england just to kind of re integrate some of my Englishness, the drunken bard, the member of the darts team drinking pints of scrumpy, I think a winter of doing that should pretty much top me up with that spirit for another 20 years or so, and then hopefully I'll be off to strange and wild places as yet unknown again, This time i am going to try and do it with a bit more security and money and also I now have a known final destination, I will come back to Australia to get old if the universe lets me live that long.

But ! I've done the poverty thing to death, maybe there is something about doing it the wealthy way that I will really love and have always missed out on. All i have to do between now and then is work out where the money is actually gonna come from, lol always the dreamer, its always hard, "such is life" ned kelly said.

Peace

 

[yagecero]

Apologies Carlqua, I didn't mean to become so confrontational. I suppose given that this is a philosophy and spirituality forum, I felt a need to press my point. @Webbykevin, I agree that this become about one group of people, and that this is indeed a narrow point of view from which to interrogate the question, but my main purpose was to give an example that breaks from the particular stupid-indian-in-the-jungle-anglo-eurocentric view of traditional shamanism.

While it's true that I was lucky enough to pay my way through some of my travels with scholarships from study, I come from a lower-socio-economic background myself, and while I haven't worked a manual labour job for around eight years, I had to work extremely hard to transcend my social position and gain those grants through a lifestyle that was completely alien to my blue-collar family.

 

[Carlqua]

Lol yagecero, no feeling hurt it's online. Not in any way do I think stupid-indian-in-the-jungle at all. I know shamanism even stretches back into the history of England, Russia and all over Europe really.
Hey I'm only young still, I still have to work hard to make my way which I will and I hope to be richer than you could imagine I have no hard feelings towards any one with more money than me, it's just those who use that against me in a condescending way.

I have no loss of respect for you at all I just view it in the name of fun, bored at home, start an argument on a forum

Now lets leaves this thread for those who wish to discuss shamanism. :D

 

[Foreigner]

Anyone who says they are a shaman isn't one. It's a misappropriated term, mostly by new agers.

If you want to learn about mysticism and natural magic, then go into nature and do some communing with your own spirit. Avoid the koolaid of plastic shamans at all costs.

 

[yagecero]

Out of interest: Why don't you like Terence McKenna? Or why do you think he is a crack-pot, more-speciically. I agree that he was a 'bit' of an egomaniac - but you can't deny that he took his experiences with psychedelics very seriously- and saw them as gateways to different worlds, which can be travelled, mapped, and understood (in-part) - much like shamans do.

Based solely upon experience alone, this is hard to deny - but we must integrate experience into our lives, to become members of whatever community we find ourselves in. His theories may have been a little bizarre - to some - but to me it shows that he is someone who takes 'experience' at face value, and tries to find explanations for what he is seeing/feeling/living. This, I think, is the mind of a great (if perhaps academic-bound) intellect.

To his credit, I think, is the fact that he tried to incorporate scientific, spiritual, philosophical, mathematical etc. ideas to try to gain some understanding of the 'worlds' which he had visited - and prove them to be "real" - of course, like ordinary philosophy, he never found any answers - but he found plen of (drug users!) who would condemn his "wooly" ideas as being drug-induced. Have you seen Jan Kounen - Other Worlds? I think you will like it, if you haven't. There is no reason to feel bad about having money, by the way - non-drug users don't!

Whilst there are many shamanistic practices used throughout history - ayahuasca has to one of the best, deepest, and - i nothing else - certainly the most interesting - I don't think that anyone would prefer a siberian shaman's "eat fly-agaric mushrooms - then drink your urine - and you'll act like a mad man" trip as a deeper or more meaningful exploration of reality than ayahuasca. It is certainly interesting (I didn't drink my piss, though) but DMT seems a little bit special; as I think most, if not all, who have taken it would agree. Do you prefer ayahuasca to DMT (smoked), yagecero? My human mind can only stand so-much: 10 mins (or an hour, if I fancy a few re-ups) of THAT is plenty to keep me unhinged and perfectly balanced - I don't know if I would want to be stuck in ayahuasca land on a big dose of DMT (and I DO like to dose big) where the "hold on tight - it only lasts ten mins" safety net has been chewed up and spit out by the MAOI!

I have not taken much ayahuasca - and not very strong - but DMT impresses like no-other for me, and it seems a shame to 'dampen it down' with an MAOI, in a way. What are your thoughts on this? Do practicing shamans smoke DMT? And what do they think of it? I'd be very interested to find out if anyone has managed to bring some ancient shaman up to date with the very latest in smoking techniques!

Well, I feel the same way about Leary and McKenna to be honest, and my criticism stems from the fact (for me) that the plants used by shamans (and if you want to add synthesised psychedelics here, I'm okay with that, even if I don't personally use them [& therefore I am unqualified to comment]) are truly magical in the sense that they open our perception, and are also amazing therapeutic tools if used under the right circumstances (with a trained professional). These two social figures were both, in the beginning of their careers, respected academics, and in being so, were in the perfect position to affect change in society from inside the system.

What bothers me so much about them is the egotistical manner they went about things. If it weren't for their desire to be adored, things could very well be different now. Also, after the period of their fame, it has been increasingly difficult to receive funding for projects regarding the medicinal use of entheogens and the benefits (when used responsibly) they could bring to society at large. For me, the decision to go for fame over academia really changed the course of how these medicines are (ab)used and the way they are perceived by the majority of society. For example, I don't think I have to point out the absurdity of drug classification to anyone here: Meth and psilocybin in the same category? I digress...

I only have experience with the Cofán and to a lesser extent the Uitoto, so I can only comment on their practices. The Cofán shamans use various species of DMT and 5-meo-DMT containing plants, various brugmansias and brunfelsias, psilocybin mushrooms, various species of Echinopsis var. Trichocereus cacti, tobacco, coca leaf, and even marijuana (by memory). Prominently they are ayahuasqueros or floriponderos (people that use brugmansia and brunfelsia species), but they have to learn how to get to know all of the plants (and of course this includes various non-psychedelic ones as well).

They don't smoke DMT, but they do use Yopo which is a snuff made from the seeds of Anadenanthera peregrina. And personally, I find yagé to be much more agreeable than smoked DMT. You can get just as far out with it, but it has the added advantage of a smoother come-up and down, which aids in both integrating the experience and being able to "handle" being in the DMT space for a longer period of time. Purging also doesn't bother me (it happens less with experience) as it's over in a second - I really don't understand people's fear of vomiting. It's never been an issue for me.

McKenna was obviously intelligent, and I do enjoy some of his writing, but I really do feel that if he (and other counter-cultural-figures) adopted a different approach to what they were doing, society today could be very different indeed. I also don't subscribe to the idea that these substances wouldn't have been discovered by the general population if it weren't for these guys. People travel (a lot these days), and anthropologists, linguists, sociologists etc study indigenous cultures also, so I have no doubt that if there were no McKenna or Leary, there would have been others that would have followed this path.

So perhaps crack-pot is a bit harsh.