Growth and Growing Pains

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Waiter! There’s a Spirit in my Drink!

Ravenari made an excellent comment to my bunny hop post from the other day. This part in particular got me thinking:

I wonder as well, if that sort of familiarisation with each animal spirit (even onces you’ve danced with before) is also a method to broaden your base of animal helpers. Because I feel that as you become more familiar with the energies as you skin dance, more will come through as clear helpers.

It’s one of those moments where I smack my forehead and say “Geez, why the hell didn’t I see that before?” This is sort of a continuation of our conversation a couple of weeks back about spirit helpers in general–and how it’s not a great idea to go journeying with just a power animal. I’ve been more aware since then of how the various spirits in my life interact with me, particularly as I walk along this particular path. I’ve been particularly focused on the totems, since they’re at the center of a lot of my elemental work in my six months. But I haven’t been too sure as to what would happen after March when the six months were up.

The Animal Father telling me he wanted me to work with the skin spirits on a daily basis after my six months was my first indication, along with him making it clear that part of the transition from the six months to the next stage of my training would involve dedicating myself to him. However, Ravenari’s comment above made it hit home to me that I’ll probably spend the second six months (at least) just working on strengthening my relationships with the spirits and determining who’s willing to help me and how. These first six months have been a process of cosmology building, creating the setting for the work to happen in, and next I’ll be figuring out who’ll be walking the path with me the most, at least to some extent–spirits may come and go as they please, as the relationships change, etc.

So this helps me make some sense of what’s going on. This is why I believe it’s crucial for those of us who work on a solitary basis to talk shop with others regularly. Other people can have perspectives on things that we may have totally missed. Ravenari is a practitioner of a traditional Russian form of animism/shamanism, and her viewpoint gives me something besides the neoshamanic/core shamanic/etc. material that’s a lot more common in neopaganism. It’s not so much that I think I should be a practitioner of Vilturj, mind you–it’s that what she says makes sense to me in a way that core shamanism and its derivatives haven’t, at least not on the subject of spirits. Most of the neoshamanic material deals a lot with the shaman doing most of the work, with little “interference” from the spirits. And, as she noted in her original post on the topic, it’s not a great idea to go journeying with only a power animal, because a power animal only has so much influence in certain places. (Granted, it’s dangerous to go alone, too.)

My point is that while I may not personally draw on every single thing Ravenari has in her practice, in both her original post, and her comment to my post about her post, she was able to offer me a unique perspective based on her experience. It may have gone against conventional neoshamanic wisdom in a lot of ways, but that doesn’t mean it can’t ring true to me, a neoshamanic practitioner. We don’t always have to toe the party line, and when something works with what I have, I’m going to run with it. And it does make a lot of sense that the various spiritual relationships I’ve been cultivating over the years–not just the skin spirits, but many others–would come into play as I started on my shamanic path. I think there was part of me that was expecting to have to find a whole new “set” of spirits for this work, and perhaps I will meet some new faces along the way, but it is quite comforting to realize that some of my best allies have been around all along.

All this does make me feel better overall about what I’m doing. I think there’s a certain amount of uncertainty that comes from “creating” your path rather than working with one you’ve been raised with. It’s so easy to be led astray by one’s own UPG; I’ve been exceptionally cautious about my discoveries. There are things that I’ve discovered but haven’t yet talked about or accepted because I’m still waiting to see if they pan out into something more substantial or not. But while I don’t expect to have everything I do verified by someone else before I accept it, the external validation I got in this case was a nice treat. Obviously, if the second six months end up being entirely different, then I’ll of course change my views. But the idea that cosmology comes first, then comes learning how to work with the spirits more effectively, makes perfect sense with what I’m doing.

One final thing I do want to make clear, on a bit of a tangent. I am not yet a practicing shaman, though I may refer to myself as a therioshaman for short. Therioshaman-in-training is a better term (but it’s a mouthful!). While I’ve made a few practice runs journeying with the drum, and done years of trance-dancing and shapeshifting, I won’t start with the actual shamanizing for a while yet. It looks as though the spirits want me to have at least a solid year of training in the basics–cosmology and working with spirit helpers–before I even get the bike with training wheels, never mind taking the training wheels off! Occasionally it’s frustrating, because I realize how much work there is to do once I am practicing. However, mostly it’s a relief, because I know I’m not going to get sent off unprepared. I know that shamanizing isn’t safe, that not all spirits are friendly, and not every journey will be successful. But I do feel that I am being directed through effective training, and it’s things like the experiences above, as well as the fact that both I and the spirits have been seeing a lot of very concrete progress come out of the past few months, that show me that I’m on the right track.

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Feeling Small

A recent discussion on my friend Ravenari’s Livejournal got me thinking about my place in the grand scheme of shamanic practice. Ravenari is one of my go-to people, so to speak, regarding shamanism, particularly when dealing with traditional forms of shamanism. She practices Vilturj, a form of Russian animism with a rich collection of shamanic elements that she learned from certain family members (she’s one of the very few people that I would consider being in possession of a “family tradition” of any sort). While this obviously doesn’t make her an automatic expert on every single flavor of shamanism out there, she does provide some really good insight from her own perspective.

At any rate, she made a very profound (to me, anyway) observation on my practice. She had written a post about how having a single power animal isn’t enough when journeying into the Otherworld. While a power animal can perform some tasks, there are also areas that s/he may not be of much help. While not everyone may agree with this assessment, I think she made a good argument in favor of having a diverse “team” of helping spirits, rather than just the power animal that is relied upon so much in many forms of core shamanism and neoshamanism.

Now, when I’ve done guided meditation, and in my limited journeying experiences, I didn’t think I had a whole entourage of spirits with me. At most I either turn into the animal myself, or I have one animal next to me, or offering me a ride. There are others I meet along the way, but most of the spirits and deities I consider to be companions and guardians never show up in any visible way. I brought up this observation in this thread. Ravenari pointed out that although I may not “see” such folks as the directional totems, the Animal Father, etc. on my journeys, it doesn’t mean they’re not there. I may very well be working with a lot more entities during my experiences than I initially considered.

Although this does make me feel a little more like I’m “doing it right”, so to speak (since I did agree for the most part with Ravenari’s initial post) it is rather humbling. I don’t think this means there’s anything wrong with me or what I’m doing, per se, but it does make it clear that as far as shamanism in particular goes, there’s so much I don’t know even the very basics of yet. Granted, I have years and years of practice and learning ahead of me; I don’t think I’ll ever stop being a student in a way. But it does put things into perspective.

I guess the way I see it is like university degrees. I have a B.A. in English, but suppose I went back to graduate school and got a Master’s degree in English as well. I see that as similar to my work with animal magic in particular, animal magic from a neopagan perspective mixed with some chaos magic. However, delving into shamanism in a deeper way would be like getting a second Master’s degree in a different subject. I’d have already gained the basic tools for dealing with advanced academia, but I would still have to learn specifics. In the same way, my decade and change of experience with animal magic, as well as magic in general, gives me some tools to work with, as well as some of the basic “curriculum” of shamanism, but there’s a lot more for me to learn before I can say I’ve mastered the material in any way.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that I can voice no opinions or comments, or that the experience I do have isn’t good enough. But this is why I like talking to other people; not only does it keep me in perspective, but it helps me to see things I might otherwise have missed.

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Rethinking UPG

I’m currently most of the way through The Cave Painters by Gregory Curtis, a new paperback release talking about the history of the study of paleolithic cave paintings in France such as Lascaux and Les Trois Freres. It’s given me a lot to think about, because it presents a lot of alternative theories to the ones I was most familiar with in regards to these works. For example, I had been enamored of the hunting magic theory that Henri Breuil put forth in the first half of the twentieth century and which Joseph Campbell elaborated upon; I hadn’t realized these theories had been seriously questioned later on. There are some pretty convincing arguments against them, though the jury’s still out (and probably always will be since we can never know for sure what the artists believed or why they created the paintings in the first place).

However, the thing that really struck me was when I read in one chapter about Curtis’ examination of the Sorcerer of Les Trois Freres, the painting of the deity that I call the Animal Father. Numerous people have attempted to decipher what animals his various limbs and features are reminiscent of. Just some of the ones that have been cited have been stag, bear, lion, wolf, horse, lion, and owl. Curtis himself saw the figure as primarily staglike, with some equine features besides. Looking at a reproduction of Breuil’s own tracing of the Sorcerer, I could see what he was saying, and the more I looked, the more I came to see that he really wasn’t any particular set of species, but a being all to himself.

This puzzled me. I had formerly seen him as a stag-lion-wolf-bear hybrid of sorts, as these were the animals he’d given me to associate with the equinoxes and solstices. However, now I wasn’t so sure. What was happening?

I decided the best thing to do was to go to the source, my usual answer to this sort of conundrum. So I asked the Animal Father what he had to say about it. “I am myself, that is all. I gave you those animals because you seemed to want to work along a four directions worldview. If that doesn’t work for you, let’s try something else until we find something that does”. Here, then, is one of the benefits and perils of creating your own cosmology and working largely with Unverified Personal Gnosis (UPG). You have a lot more flexibility, and you can tweak things to make them make more sense to you. However, what do you do when you end up finding that research indicates that your UPG can’t be objectively proven?

I’m not about to say “Well, this ended up being wrong, so the rest of it must be wrong, so let’s just throw everything out, and quit”. Baby, bath water, does that ring a bell? However, it’s okay to admit when something doesn’t work quite right. This is, after all, a path I’m creating for myself. Therefore, I get to decide the parameters. One of my guidelines is that non-religious sources are quite acceptable as source material, including archaeology, anthropology, and other “ologies”. So I find that some things that I had initially assumed were true, to include Breuil’s hunting magic theory, may not stand on as strong a foundation as I thought.

It’s a delicate balance to maintain. On the one hand, if all I ever did was take these studies at face value, I’d have little to believe in. Even the more neopagan flavored things, such as my perspectives on totemism, have been created in recent decades, though they at least have the consensus of a number of people. However, I also don’t want to go down the road of the Irish potato goddess–UPG needs to be at least given a reality check.

And there is value in UPG. I’m not going to suddenly decide the Animal Father no longer exists; I’ve already have experiences that prove his objective existence, if only to me. But I am going to continue to consider the results of my meditations, journeys and other inspired experiences. As I have found in the past, sometimes it’s better to simply allow myself to believe something, rather than try to rationalize it to death.

In the end, flexibility is key. This is something that I am going to continue to develop over the years, a living, evolving path. That means that sometimes I’m going to have to scrap some things and start over when presented with new evidence. However, I’m in good company. Even the hardest of sciences ends up with new theories that overcome the old “truths”. It’s only when we stubbornly hang onto our dogma that stagnation sets in, and what may once have been a growing, evolving things turns to stone.

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When Life “Gets in the Way”

My schedule right now really sucks. I have a full day at work, plus three hours of commuting total. By the time I get home in the evening, I have about three and a half hours at most to eat (and sometimes prepare) supper, shower, do whatever recreational activities I have planned, get ready for work the next day, and get ready for bed.

Oh, and squeeze in shamanic work when and as I can.

Add in that my day pretty much wipes me out, and that I don’t always sleep well (especially when I have to drag myself out of bed at six every morning), and a lot of the time during the week when I do have time to shamanize, I simply don’t have the energy to do so. Fortunately, since this is a contract job, it’s only a temporary situation. However, in the meantime, I’ve had to be creative about time management, as well as admit that sometimes I simply can’t do what I planned.

For example, meditation. If I’m tired, it’s too easy for me to fall asleep while trying to meditate in a quiet way. For instance, I’m still doing my daily meditation with the spirits at lunch time. There are some comfy chairs down in the lobby at work where it’s nice and quiet most days, so I can get a few minutes to check in with the powers that be. Unfortunately, sometimes the comfort of the chairs works against me, and I start drifting off a bit (and whoever I’m talking to has to get my attention again!). I’ve also learned that meditating right after eating is a bad idea, since digestion makes me sleepy.

I’ve also had to resign myself to the fact that by the time I get home, get fed, and get settled in for the evening, I’m usually too tired for things like dancing or drumming. There have been several occasions where I’ve gone upstairs with the greatest of intentions, only to have the spirits tell me to march right back downstairs and rest. One of the goals with my Earth work last month was regulating my physical health. I’m dealing with years of accumulated sleep deprivation from pushing myself too hard, and so one thing I’ve been doing has been to try to get eight hours of sleep (or at least eight hours of laying in bed being relaxed). Unfortunately, that only goes so far, and even if I go to bed on time I still have to get up and going pretty quickly, when I’d rather get up at my own pace (I can take up to an hour to wake up completely). If I were to spend as much time in bed as I needed, I’d be going to bed around 8pm, which would give me just enough time in the evening for supper and a shower.

So I learn to compromise. It’s frustrating sometimes; I want to be able to shamanize every night. I have so much that I want to do that’s not getting done, and until I’m done with this contract (or find a reasonable replacement) I’m stuck. But I also have to admit my current limitations and learn to work within them. Therefore, I do more on the weekends, and I spend the week mostly doing less strenuous activities like writing or reading. I also remind myself that I need to pace myself, and that this schedule won’t last forever.

And, occasionally, I find I have an evening where maybe I’m not so tired, and I’m awake enough to make something happen. But until that happens, it’s best to not push myself too hard. Quality over quantity, and all things will happen in their own time.

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For Those of You Playing Along At Home

In the past few months since I started this blog, I’ve had a few folks tell me that my work has inspired them in their own spiritual paths, or that, independent of what I’m doing, they find themselves in similar situations. So I’m not the only one who’s been seeking a more formal path, a closer connection to the Divine, and a more regular practice. I find this to be an excellent set of events, personally. One of my goals with this blog, along with helping me to keep track of my progress, is to demonstrate one person’s progress in creating a formal path essentially from scratch. While there are numerous elaborate and spiritually fulfilling traditions and religions out there whose adherents are quite satisfied (and in some cases are contributing to a great deal of positive growth), some of us prefer to wear down our own trails in the grass.

I do know that at least a couple of the aforementioned folks have their own spiritually-focused blogs that I’ve enjoyed getting to read. It’s nice getting to compare notes with other folks, whether they’re on a shamanic path or not. And while there are plenty of resources on how to be a solitary practitioner of an established path (such as Wicca, or as some would argue Neo-Wicca or eclectic Neopaganism), there’s not that much out there on constructing your own personal path. Oh, sure, there are books of correspondences and spells and whatnot, but most of the deeper texts on constructing a specific path, cosmology, set of rituals and celebrations, traditions, etc., seem to be group-oriented*.

Granted, some of that just comes with the group-based territory. If you’re already in a tradition of one sort or another that depends on groupwork, then you’re going to have the cosmology, rituals, etc. handed to you as part of your training. The same thing goes for those who are individual students working with a teacher or mentor. As I’ve mentioned before, though, those of us on our own have to create these things from scratch, determining what works best for us and what’s don’t really mesh well with our beliefs. One of the reasons I’m a “career solitary” is because I never found a particular tradition that I agreed with enough to dedicate myself to it, and now that I’m older and set in my ways, therioshamanism is the best choice, given that I’m its creator. However, I also value the input of others. Talking shop and trading notes are valuable practices for me–they allow me to bounce ideas off of others, and they help me to find inspiration in others’ work.

Here’s where, in the past, I might have said “Hey, I’m going to create a listserve/Livejournal community/forum/etc. for the discussion of creating your own path!” However, I’ve done that sort of thing before, and honestly, at this point, I haven’t the time. Additionally, it takes a TON of work just to get a bit of steady activity going on such a forum, and I’m stretched thinly enough that I don’t need another commitment. So I know better than to bite off more than I can chew.

However, I would like a way to gather a few resources for those who come to this blog seeking ideas on forging your own way through the spiritual world. Therefore, here’s my request. If you have a spiritually themed blog that you are primarily using as a journal to record your progress through a stage of growth, I want to link to you. Whether you’re creating your own path, starting a group, or working through a novitiate in an established tradition, if you’re recording it as you go along, complete with successes and setbacks, feelings and experiences, I’m interested. I’m going to create another section of links on the left sidebar of this journal just for these links. I want to offer the stories of others’ journeys for those who visit here who like using my experiences as inspiration for their own, and can benefit from reading even more first-hand accounts.

What I’m not looking for is personal journals that may include some spiritual content, but are also full of day to day minutiae, memes, etc. For example, I have my Livejournal for that sort of thing, but this one is specific to therioshamanism.

Leave a comment here (on therioshamanism.com, not the Livejournal feed post for those on LJ) and I’ll get you added in.

Thanks 🙂

* For those curious, two of my favorite books related to this are Gathering the Magic: Creating 21st Century Esoteric Groups by Nick Farrell and Magickal Connections: Creating a Lasting and Healthy Spiritual Group by Lisa McSherry. While both of them are rather practical, dealing with things like group dynamics, and the latter text is particularly coven-oriented, they also are good for prompting thought about group-based spirituality and magic in general, creating a group mindset without becoming a cult, etc.

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And Air Continues to Breeze On By….

I probably shouldn’t be surprised that my Air month has been more cerebral than anything else. I got used to Earth, with the drumming and the poking at my body to see what makes it tick (especially the stomach) and the solid feeling of being grounded on a daily basis. However, Air has primarily been about communication, and so I’ve been doing a lot of talking and a lot of thinking. As I was warned, the dream work really hasn’t taken center stage at all. I’ve been dutifully recording my dreams, though, mostly on my commute into work during the week. It’s become part of my morning routine, and I’m getting good enough at remembering that, half an hour after I first hear the alarm I can still remember the bulk of what I dreamed.

Still, I haven’t done much in the way of drumming. Instead I’ve talked, and talked, and talked some more. And then I’ve thought, and analyzed, and imagined inside my head. The interpersonal communication has been pretty impressive. I won’t go into details, but I actually ended up having to postpone my skin spirit work last weekend due to a personal crisis. It got worked out, but it involved some of the most intense communication I’ve had to do ever. With regards to communication with noncorporeal beings, I finally started doing the daily meditations as the Animal Father suggested at the beginning of my Air month. Today was the third day in a row that I managed to remember, and have a successful meditation. Hey, I’ll take any victory I can. Right now I’ve worked it into my lunch hour (I’m big on routine for changing habits). Not sure what I’ll do with regards to the weekend; I actually have more trouble with these things when I’m not on a schedule, because it’s easier to get distracted. (Oooooh…sleeping in…..)

I’ve also been getting better at being aware of my actions and thoughts and words. Not perfect, but getting there. I’ve shown some progress in stopping myself from speaking without thinking, and considering the potential results of my actions. Of course, the problem is that when the goal is to NOT do something, nobody notices 😉 But in seriousness, I’m noticing it, and that matters quite a bit. I like being more aware of what I’m doing, rather than going through my day in robotic mode.

So this weekend, at the very least, I am going to try to keep up my daily work with the meditation and dream records, as well as make it up to the skin spirits for missing out on last weekend’s ritual. And, in a week, I’ll be getting ready to switch over to Fire. It’ll also have been three months since I started this blog to track my progress in formalizing the best of the past decade-plus’s efforts and lessons. It feels longer in some ways. However, I think it’s actually a record in near-daily practice for usually-spontaneous me. Certain things have kept my interest for years; animal magic has been my main magical squeeze for almost as long as I’ve been practicing magic. But, as those of you who have been following this know, any sort of daily practice for me is another thing entirely.

Here’s to continued success!

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The Existence of Spirits

While my experiences with Chaos magic did a lot of good in that they really expanded my understanding of magic and how it works, one of the unfortunate side effects was that I absorbed the psychological model of magic a little too deeply. (If you’re unfamiliar with the models of magic, here’s their origin.) Essentially, much of the material I found on Chaos magic was slanted heavily towards a highly pragmatic, even solipsistic, psychological perspective of how magic worked. In this model, spirits, gods and other entities aren’t objective beings; rather, they are aspects of the psyche given form for our understanding.

It’s been about three years, maybe a bit more, since I hit the deepest point of immersion in the psychological model. I was still working with totems, but what I read rubbed off on me enough that I *talked* about them as if they were just internal. I don’t think I completely believed it; I’ve interacted with them for too long to ignore the signs that I interpret as proof of their objective existences. Still, this immersion in solipsism has clung to my personal cosmology since then, and it’s been damned hard to scrape off (kind of like hagfish slime). It primarily manifested as a doubt, “Am I really doing what I think I’m doing, or are the spirits I’m talking to all in my head? Are other people getting the real results, while I’m just talking to parts of myself?”

This has led to occasional issues with my magical and spiritual practices. Nothing kills the mood of a ritual quite like a nice big bag of doubt dumped into the middle of the room. However, I’ve been fortunate in that the spirits I’ve been working with have been good about tapping me on the shoulder and bringing my focus back to the ritual at hand. This has helped me to break the cycle of doubt-ritual fails-proof for doubt-etc.

It’s not even that I was ever 100% convinced by the psychological model. Rather, there was always a part of me that maintained, even at my most solipsistic point, that the spirits and gods are “real” in a literal, as well as mythological/metaphorical, sense. But that doubt would come in every so often and steal my confidence.

Some of my Air month work has served to finally kick that habit. I’ve been working on communication, which leads into being more open emotionally, energetically and spiritually. I have a tendency to be insular and introspective to the point where I sometimes get so wrapped up in my head and my concerns that I get a little too focused, and it’s not always easy for me to open up to others. Add in that I learned early on how mean people can be, and I’ve developed quite a defensive “shell”. But I’ve been making headway in the past couple of weeks in learning to open up more to people that I know I can trust–and also opening up to those who may not have physical bodies, but are no less present in my life. (And since they’re not limited by physics, they don’t have to wait for me to open the front door before visiting!)

I was talking to the Animal Father late last week on my commute home. We talked about my attitude towards spirits, and he pointed out that even sitting there talking to him I had that seed of doubt. He asked me if I was willing to open up that last little bit, to consciously choose the belief in spirits over the doubt in spirits. He emphasized that if I was going to journey into the spirit worlds more often, and if I was going to shamanize, that I was going to have to accept the cosmology I was creating entirely. This didn’t mean never questioning my perceptions, or being aware of potentially dangerous beliefs (such as, “God told me to shoot all the meter maids because God hates bureaucracy”). And it’s not even faith, per se, at least not in the stereotypical sense where you never question it, you just go with it.

But in order to do what I need to do in the future as I become more experienced and mature in my path, there comes a point where I have to unceremoniously toss the doubt out on its ear. It serves no purpose other than to trip me up, and any possible benefit it might have is covered, in a more healthy manner, by conscious appraisal of my progress, as well as trading notes with other magical practitioners to get some feedback on what I’m doing.

And so that’s what I’ve done. Belief is a choice. We may feel strongly obligated towards a particular beliefs, but in the end it’s still our decision as to whether we accept those beliefs in our lives or not (never mind the individual interpretation thereof). I choose to allow myself to believe that the Animal Father, the totems, the skin spirits, and all the rest, exist as objective beings, and the experiences I have are quite real. While there is a psychological level to my belief, and I can look at things from that perspective, I no longer feel that that is the only “true” level of spiritual reality. I’m still a big fan of the microcosm-macrocosm connection, but I’m much happier for having gotten rid of the doubt that has become more than useless.

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Communication With the Self

I’m used to working on communicating with other people; gods know I’ve gotten into enough situations through miscommunication that I could stand to pay better attention to what I hear as well as what I say. However, the Air work has reminded me that communication also exists within, my relationship with myself. In some ways it’s easier to communicate with other people. Other people eventually go home, go about their business, and take their problems with them. However, I have the (unenviable?) task of living with myself 24-7. Since I’m a vivid dreamer, I don’t even get a break when I sleep!

Okay, it really isn’t so bad as all that. However, I can be pretty tough on myself. One thing I need to remember is that life and personal evolution are not competitions. Too often in my life I’ve angsted over my deficiencies because I’ve compared myself to other people (whether I knew them or not) and found myself lacking. And that’s really not fair to me. I put myself up to such high standards that I can never meet them. That generally leaves me (predictably) frustrated and feeling pretty bad about myself, which additionally is an incredibly unproductive way to spend my time. It’s not even a fun way to relax.

A good example is tonight. I’ve just started reading Mircea Eliade’s classic Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. I’m only in the first chapter, and I’m reading about all these impressive initiations that various shamans in other cultures have had. For example, some shamans became shamans by curing themselves of serious illness. I look at myself and realize that I haven’t even managed to successfully cure a headache. I tried grounding the illness in my stomach, and all it did was make my stomach hurt more. Granted, there were some things that I could have tried that I haven’t yet–I haven’t even attempted asking Bear or other totems for active help in healing, other than in my evening prayers. However, tomorrow I have a doctor’s appointment to make sure that there’s nothing really serious going on, since it’s been going on for over a month.

Should I admit defeat because I’m going to someone else about my illness? Should I just scrap the whole idea?

Believe me, the thought crossed my mind for a moment. But then I realized, with a little reminder from the spirits, that I am not a shaman in the middle of early 20th century Siberia. I am a shaman-in-training in the middle of 21st century Portland, Oregon, and I am in a very different cultural and geographic situation, never mind the deviation of my experiences from that of an Evenk shaman.

And that’s where I had to sit and talk to myself. One thing I’m in the process of doing is separating out what I think about myself versus what other people (generally people close to me rather than random people) think about me, as well as what I think about myself as a consequence of what others think of me. As social creatures we’re conditioned to be tuned into the thoughts and feelings of others as a way of maintaining some form of relationship and conformity. However, in American culture this awareness is often tied in with some serious insecurity issues. Therefore, rather than seeing interconnections with others as mutual support systems, some people may see these interconnections as methods of controlling others as a way of bolstering their own confidence, amassing power or even releasing pent-up negative emotions that could be vented more constructively. The negative impressions from abusive relationships of all sorts may take years, if not the better part of a lifetime, to undo.

In my own case, I’ve had to recondition myself to realize that being flawed isn’t the end of the world, and that I shouldn’t strive to be perfect just because I may perceive others as having fewer flaws. I got picked on a lot as a kid by my peers, and that left a few deep emotional scars that told me that even the smallest blemish could lead to abuse. Although I’ve done a lot of healing on that particular element of my past, and discovered that there are, indeed, excellent people in the world who have risen above such pettiness, I still have that pattern of perfection-as-protection to undo in its entirety.

And so that entails communicating with myself, rather than bullying myself. I consciously watch what I say and how I interpret what I hear for signs of that behavior pattern, as well as a few others. Otherwise, if I neglect this conversation, I miss the very important messages from within. It’s all well and good to be in touch with the spirits, and with the people around me, but if I am not in touch with myself, then I’m missing out on some of the most important information given to me.

My Air month hasn’t even been going for a week yet, and it’s already been a tough one. Earth kicked me in the stomach, and Air is rattling through my head (no, not like THAT), and both have shaken me up to the internal environment that is ever crucial to improving my work with the external environment. The true test, of course, will be how well the lessons stick, and how much permanent change for the better comes out of all of this. All in good time; it’s not a race.

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Earth…

Tonight was the last night of my Earth month, or so it worked out, at any rate. Tomorrow I’ll be calling on Hawk for help initiating my Air month.

Tonight I went upstairs and drummed again. I went up a little later because the upstairs was cold, and I needed to give the heaters a little time to get it to a comfortable point (I get cold incredibly easily, especially if I’m sitting still). This meant that I was a little tired by the time I went up (about 11pm). I was a bit concerned that I might have to postpone the ritual due to getting getting grounded again. However, I got the green light due to not being as tired, and having the opportunity to sleep in again tomorrow morning.

I’m not sure how long I drummed; I lost track of time after the first few minutes. Judging from the clock afterward, I’d say I probably had at least twenty minutes. It was plenty of time, though, since I tend to drop into altered states pretty quickly, and I’m still going relatively lightly here–my arms aren’t up to an hour or more of straight drumming yet.

I turned into a wolf, and found myself in a desert with the moon shining overhead. This confused me–I’ve never really been all that connected to deserts, and I was wondering what I was doing there. So I ran around a bit until I saw Wolf ahead of me, shining like silver-blue moonlight. I chased after hir, and s/he continued to run, leading me through dry rocks and thorny plants in the silver light (though I could see no moon above).

Finally, s/he let me catch hir. S/he would look down at the ground, scratching at the rocks and pebbles, then run a short way and repeat the action. Finally, I caught on–the dry, flat desert landscape was the complete antithesis of my ideal terrain, mountains heavy with temperate rain forests and mossy rocks.

The message that was imparted at that point is rather personal, so I’ll be keeping that to myself. But s/he took me to the mountains, my ideal situation, and took me deep into the Earth beneath. There s/he showed me the root of my problem, a small, acid-green plant that was creating the problem, turning what should be lush forests into desert. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with desert; it simply was chosen to represent the antithesis of where I needed to be in the situation that we were discussing. I took the plant in my teeth and uprooted it, tearing it away. At that point, Wolf sent me back to my body, telling me to do the same in my waking life with the situation at hand.

Needless to say, this was an incredibly effective journey. There’s a lot of growth that needs to occur during my six months, and even beyond. The Earth work won’t stop just because the Earth month is over; however, starting tomorrow I’ll be learning what it is I need to do to work with Air in a more focused manner.

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Grounded!

My Earth month will switch over on Saturday, to Air. Tonight was a good reminder of things to take with me as “souvenirs” of focusing on Earth.

Since I had a brief, but successful, journey earlier this week, I wanted to take time out to try again tonight. However, I was feeling somewhat tired this evening–not enough to quite go to bed yet (at 8:30 in the evening), but enough that I was feeling it. Still, I wanted to give drumming again a try; maybe I could just push myself through the fatigue–after all, hadn’t I kept dancing numerous times after “hitting the wall”? What was a little sleepiness?

I went upstairs, and before I could even sit down in front of the altar, Wolf “tapped” me on the shoulder and said “Uh-uh. You’re too tired.” Of course, being the stubborn person that I am, I tried arguing. However, s/he wouldn’t hear a thing of it. “Nope. Go back downstairs, take a shower, and rest. Your body needs it. The kind of suffering you may go through for your shamanism isn’t the same as the kind of suffering you put yourself through in neglecting your health.”

I listened. So here I am, an hour later, showered and cared for, and posting before going to bed to get some sleep. Tonight, while a little frustrating, was a good reminder of principles of Earth work. First, physical health, the personal environment, is as important to care for as everything in the external environment–if not moreso. Unfortunately, my tendency towards workaholicism can sometimes end up with me neglecting myself for the sake of getting just one more thing done. While I have gotten a lot more relaxed over time, I still have my bad moments.

And that leads to patience. Being a small, rather temporary creature next to the bulk of the Earth, patience can be hard to come by–“But I’ve already spent almost three decades of this life NOT doing this stuff–I can’t afford to fall any more behind, and neither can those who I need to help!” (Yeah, that’s a bad guilt trip I sometimes lay on myself.) Still, I have to remember that if I push myself too hard it’ll be counterproductive. Care for the self first, and in a healthy way, not a self-centered manner.

Plus there’s grounding. This past month, for various reasons, has been exceptionally stressful, and I haven’t remembered to ground myself as much as I feel I should, instead letting things carry me away. This, of course, doesn’t help me become healthier–my stomach has been unhappy with me as of late. So this was a good reminder to keep grounding throughout the day when I need it, whether it’s stress or illness or any other force that could benefit from a good dose of Earth energy. It might not be a cure-all, but it can at least take the edge off.

This month has been a real exercise in staying focused. I’ve been at this for a couple of months now, and it’s been exceptionally educational. The important thing is that, while the progress may be slow, I am making that progress, and while I may not change my habits and patterns immediately, I’m still doing better than I used to be. And it’s teaching me to be more conscious of what I’m doing, though again not without errors and hiccups.

We’ll see if I can get to some drumming tomorrow night. Going to bed early and being mindful of my unhappy stomach may not be as interesting as exploring the joys of being my own drummer, but it’s no less important.