Shamanic initiation

Regenerative Culture Spiritual Technology
#1

This I wrote in reply to a guy on forums.ayahuasca.com who were describing many symptoms of being a shaman but didn’t seem sure.
Since I was planning to write something on this here anyways I just copy/pasted. Just wanted to hear I anyone here had this kind of experience.

Sounds to me like you were born a shaman just like you think. I went through the Dark Night like you, and when I finally found a world view(shamanism) which could integrate my experience of the world all my supposed problems just sort of dissolved. Now, 5 years later I'm raging at civilization for alienating just the type of people it needs.

Guys, you can learn to be an Ayahuascero, you can learn to use shamanic techniques to handle the spirits, but Shamans are born or chosen by the spirits, not made. And being born to it or chosen basically means you’ll wind up in some sort of situation where everything is trying to kill you, or even kills you, but you come back.

For me it came as a near death experience at the age of 9 where I got stuck under water, drowned, and after falling endlessly through darkness I heard a Voice(note the capital V, that kind of voice:), telling me its not my time and I should basically get some balls. Then I woke up, still under water, still no oxygen and still stuck. But somehow I got my muscles under control, lifted of the… whatever it was that had my leg pinned to the bottom and swam up. I was under for 6 minutes. Then followed years of strange illnesses which left the doctors looking like question marks, of dreams of dismemberment and death, being eaten and regurgitated, operated and dissected, generally not a pleasent time.

Then I read of shamanic initiation on the web, and everything just snapped into place.

Edit: By the way, every shamanic culture on the face of the planet will tell you that the strongest shamans are those who are teached by the spirits, in solitude. No apprenticeships to other shamans or books or workshops but through the spirits, directly. When I go to the amazon now I will listen to the things I learn about Yage from those who have been drinking it for a long time, but I know my way of the shaman, and it’s not something I can teach, or formalize, or systemize. It’s something I do.

#2

Would you be so kind to eleborate on “the Dark Night” ? what is meant by this?

#3

The Dark Night of The Soul is a poetic phrase from the spanish mystic John of the Cross. It’s that point in your spiritual path when everything has lost it’s meaning. God/satori/enlightenment/mystical union is simply pointless, hollow. But then so is the life you once had, so your stuck in the middle! Or even better, think of it as the worst phucking depression ever, coupeled with sever dissasociation, anxiety and generally feeling and experiencing the world as shit.
Afterwards of course you realise that this is the logical thing to happen when you begin to see the illusory nature of everyday reality. You’v spent your entire life in that reality and now you discover it’s empty as a mug of ale in Gimli’s hand.
But of course this is when the real fun begins, now your deprogrammed, spiritually rewilded you might say, and the food is just everywhere, just takes time to notice it under all the grass and twigs and stuff.
It’s like an archetype, you’ll find it in every spiritual tradition. I’v got a hunch it’ll rear it’s ugly head at many of us rewilders at some point too, so you might as well read up on it now.

#4

Because this reads like an exact copy of what 2 years of my life were like. I mean everything came apart instantly! BANG! just like that. Experience of the world shattered. Experience of the senses shattered. Experience of self shattered. It left me 2 years practically unfunctional. what was left was putting all the smashed little pieces slowly back somehow. There were points were i didnt talk for days, for it just didnt make sense anymore. It was like a 2 year long delirium, it feels like a dream now, i terribly long dream, but i wrote my whole journey down in books which i have kept ever since.

Well they doped me up. prozac. didnt do anything helpful at all. After 2 years, i quit that stuff. Told no one. I decided at some point that I HAD to heal myself together. half a year later i could visit school again, go out with friends, and generally act with confidence in this world.

Still. Every now and then, i suddenly get thrown back in this other perception of the world and actively must THINK my senses and experience of the world back together or something. It isnt frightening anymore as it sure as hell was before. Because i know this dream like time now.

It might or might not be, “the dark night of the soul”, but as soon as you put that term down i sure as hell knew, that for me, that that was my dark night of the soul, and i have a relationship with that perception of things that is both frightening and very sad as well as a reminder that one can loose oneself and get back. My strenght. No friend no enemy. It shaped me.

#5

I think the shamanic sickness is more dramatic and therefore better noticed. A Long Dark Night though seems more common. Extended depression, listlessness, etc. I also think fewer people come out of the later than the former. The sickness either kills you or you heal yourself, but people linger in a living death for decades during a long dark night that never seems to end. Like the now annoying metaphor with the bloody frog, you stew in it, but never get that “must get out” feeling of need required for real healing. Prozac may be the wrong drug, we should try shrooms or LSD, that’ll make them jump out of the pot. Or, for the legally minded, just run for hours on a fast (no food) and then spend the night in an extreme environment and switch it fast (quickly) (like a sweat lodge and then into the pond!). Wow, I’d make one bastard shaman making people do shit like this.

#6

It’s a truly intensly immensly hideously horrible feeling isn’t it… It’s like the world’s lost all it’s colour, taste, feeling, everything that makes getting out of bed wortwhile.

Same as you I got anti-depressives, which are really only zombifiers. Like you it changed when I decided that enough is enough, and finally decided to mount the burden of my future on my own shoulders. And it is in this act, in the acceptance of responsibility, that shamans are born. You taking charge.

The shaman is a wounded healer, his ability to heal comes from the wounds he’s recived and healed on himself, in so doing gaining the knowlegde and certainty that it IS infact possible to get through these things. As I wrote in the first post, the spirits will try to kill you in ANY manner, including by suicide. But you got through that. As many anthropologists have noted, shamans differ from those not called in that when Death comes knocking on the door they great him, if not as a friend then atleast as an old aquintance.

And once again, as both of our exeriences prove, western medicine and psychology stands impotent against these types of inflictions. Now I think of these things in terms of spirits and energy, but I can just as well think of them as chemical imbalances in the brain, or the traumas of civilization acying up. Shamans don’t care what you call it, they fix it by any means nessecary, in the process not giving a rats ass if they look stupid to the civilized crowd; because shamans have endured the chill on the other side. That is why humanity NEED shamans, especially now at the end since more and more people will be going through this in the years to come. But that involves learning to navigate “this other perception of the world”… Nicely said by the way!

Did you ever identify what triggered it? Had you like just got a new, stressfull job, or end a long relationship? Or where you simply beginning to question the validity of the world as you experienced it?

I got the full package, the shamanic sickness with unexplained, delerious fevers and dreams of dismemberment(with no prior knowlegde to these type of dreams, no cultural reference) at the age of 16 and then the Dark Night two years later. In hindsight I think the latter was triggered by me ignoring the message of the former, the spirits beat me over the head for being slow you might say:-P
And you are absolutely right, I’d be cautious with using the psychedelics until I knew if the poor soul had any fight left in him. If he had I’d say 3 grams dry of p.cubensis should set him right or even better, a few cups of Ayahuasca! If not then something a bit subtler like fasting and sudden changes of enviroment might get him out of the trance as you said. But caution must be applied so you don’t end up creating a full blown psychosis! I’m pretty sure by the way that what we are dealing with, atleast in the case of a Dark Night, is some sort of runaway trance state which somehow must be ended. I also think many of these crises could have been avoided if our culture had clear rituals of initiation into adulthood, like vision quests or Iboga or the drinking of copious amounts of tobacco juice or whatever.

#7

sometimes i experienced it like that. plus loss of context to frame perception in. plus waking dreams.

like being locked in a 2 year long dreaded intimate relationship with the spirit of the world, communicating across all senses and many modes of experiencing.

yeah the prozac didnt do anything to help me engage this “dialogue with the world”. I think it only made it more dificult to engage. Only when i found myself at the bottom i could was willing to let go and fully embrace this thing.

I find it sound pompuous but it did really feel this way to me this is how i wrote it down in one of my diaries. " even though i wouldnt want my worst enemy to suffer this [ referencing my experience of the position i was in], i am thankful for the wisdom, the experience of it all. What came as peril, as enemy left as aquintance, one i have entered deep relationship with. An aquintance im awed of knowing.

that last. in the following context: I was visited by nightmares EVERY night when i was like a kid. I state this explicitly again: Every night i dream and my dreams ALWAYS were nightmares.

Somehow i learned how to shift into consciousness when nightmaring. I learned to wake myself up from them. I turned brave enough to face them, considering they were “only” nightmares. I faced my childish fears. Then i figured it was but a dream and if only i could come up with some nicer dream, and it worked. So i started dreaming nightmares, afraid but able to shift them. facing them, changing them, into nicer dreams. finally and effectively controlling them. dreaming nice dreams, i slowly “forgot” to become conscious in them (no longer dreaming lucidly). I finally slept without effort.

THat is the context and this happened from my earliest memory (which is a nightmare) to about my 12th / 13th .

then i smoked some pot. reality became slippery, uncontrollable like dreams, effectively turning my “safe” waking reality into that nightmarish realm i though i had all figured out. Uncontrollable. Slippery. Like once my nightmares.

this is the first since quite a long while that i take a LONG look back on it, and it feels clear and unconfused actually. im happy with that. What i once experienced as one of the worst things that could happen to me now indeed feels like an old friend visiting.

thanks for this topic.

#8

I’m happy your happy :slight_smile:

Lucid dreaming is just another sign of innate skill on your part, me thinks you should look into shamanism a bit;-) You can potentially learn not only to find you way through the other reality and get rid of any residual fear, but also to help others! And on the way you may be lucky enough to realise why your here, bringing you more fulfillment then anything else you have ever experienced.
A word of caution, if you are called and ignore it the guys behind the scene might whack you over the head again to get your attention. If you “place yourself in the hands of the gods” as Daniel Quinn called it then you’ll know where this guy gets that blissed out grin in the end from:-D

I wonder how many other rewilders share our experience? This just might be a common thing for us…

#9

Thank you all for sharing, this thread resonates with me.

i think i may be in the Dark Night right now, brought on by an antidepressant reaction. i’ve had the dissociation for a couple of years now, along with many, many other problems. Ongoing insane fear, which at times turns to outright terror. Anxiety/agitation. Sense of self obliterated. Incredible loneliness (prior to this I liked time to myself.) Living outside of “time”. Occasionally a bliss state that alternates with extreme paranoia (i had one particular incident where the bliss seemed to emanate from a man who looked quite a bit like Derrick Jensen :o) A feeling like you have seen Truth (with the capital, like the Voice you mentioned.) Being overwhelmed by energy fields, from TV/computers to people to thunderstorms. And a feeling like everything has an equivalent moral weight. i can barely write this because it almost seems pointless? trivial? like nonsense? Like i cannot pin down the meaning of the concepts i want to discuss. There was some terribly interesting stuff too, intuitions, a vision and a connection I made with someone through the work of the spirits.

Now i definitely feel like my old life and ways are invalid, but the new ways have not opened up yet. So I try to stuff myself backwards, into old routines, in some futile attempt to stabilize, reconnect. It’s not working and I know it, but I haven’t a clue about how to move forward.

Rhex, do you currently do shamanic work for people?

#10

I wonder how many other rewilders share our experience? This just might be a common thing for us…

I think it may be at that.

I also received a Shamanic Dismemberment at around the turn of the millenium. It’s only recently that I’ve taken it up fully. I’m a V…e…r…y s…l…o…w learner.
But I get there in the end.
Before I get hit by a second clue-by-four.

Love,
Terri in Joburg

#11

This will be one longass post, the first part in reply to Reticient Lemon, and the second part the story of the first time I applied shamanism to heal someone very close to me who suffered from the trauma of sexual abuse.
I hope that story will help you gain a realistic view of shamanis and in the process teach you a few techniques. But more importantly I hope to show you the worldview and modes of thinking necessary for shamanism.

Thank you all for sharing, this thread resonates with me.

i think i may be in the Dark Night right now, brought on by an antidepressant reaction. i’ve had the dissociation for a couple of years now, along with many, many other problems. Ongoing insane fear, which at times turns to outright terror. Anxiety/agitation.

Good to hear you find this interesting!

First of I hate chemical anti-depressives! What they do is simply alienating people even more from spirit, which again makes spirit pull out the heavy artillery to get your attention. The civilized solution is giving you more pills.
The result is you getting trapped in a artillery barrage that would have made any soviet general give a rare nod of approval. When and if you can, try to cut back on the pills, but don’t rush it if your feeling unsure.

Now cutting back on pills will leave your brain aching for serotonin which certainly won’t do you any good. To remedy this you need to increase your intake of foods containing neurochemical precursors, like for instance:

-Kiwi fruit
-Turkey meat
-Bananas
-Walnuts

Also there are herbs that will do you good, like:
St John’s wort, natural antidepressant and eases anxiety.
Damiana, anti-depressant
Kava-kava, best anti-anxiety there is! Seriously, things like Valium and Xanax are shit in comparison!
Ayahuasca, I have no words for it exept what I just wrote:-p

Now in the herbs case, a rule of thumb since we are approaching this shamanically, is to use fresh or dry herbs, not extracts and semi-indistrual supplements. You should acknowlegde that its not simply compounds in the herbs that does the job, but the spirit of the herbs too, reaching out across the void of culture to lend you a helping hand in a time of need.
When you take the medicines do it with the intention and faith that it will lead to healing, infact I say make it a little ritual! Nothing fancy, just do whatever comes to mind that you feel expresses gratitude for the herbs help. May I suggest bying seeds of the herbs and planting at a nice location, preferably somewhere you think of as a part of yourself if any such location is available?

Sense of self obliterated. Incredible loneliness (prior to this I liked time to myself.) Living outside of "time". Occasionally a bliss state that alternates with extreme paranoia (i had one particular incident where the bliss seemed to emanate from a man who looked quite a bit like Derrick Jensen :o) A feeling like you have seen Truth (with the capital, like the Voice you mentioned.) Being overwhelmed by energy fields, from TV/computers to people to thunderstorms. And a feeling like everything has an equivalent moral weight. i can barely write this because it almost seems pointless? trivial? like nonsense? Like i cannot pin down the meaning of the concepts i want to discuss. There was some terribly interesting stuff too, intuitions, a vision and a connection I made with someone through the work of the spirits.

Now these are all expressions of spirit at work, combating your former self and trying to point the way forward. You are experiencing an increase in sensitivity while living in a culture so desensitized that what for them is normal reality is a hell of sensory overload for you.
The loneliness stems from a lack of a felt community, both with likeminded people and with spirit, and the dawning realization that your dreams and values does not match with those of the people and the culture around you.
A Derrick Jensen look-alike who radiates bliss is simply you, and spirit, associating Derrick Jensen with the promise of a better future, a future where your reality matches consensual reality:-)
Truth is simply Truth, closely related with the feeling that everything carries equivalient moral weight… These things are not trivial or nonsense, as you see there are more of us who understands you. And as you acknowlegde yourself, on the occasions that you connect with spirit some terribly interesting things happen!
Even though you feel alone in the material realm, you are not alone in the world of spirit:-)

Now i definitely feel like my old life and ways are invalid, but the new ways have not opened up yet. So I try to stuff myself backwards, into old routines, in some futile attempt to stabilize, reconnect. It's not working and I know it, but I haven't a clue about how to move forward.

Now here you are pretty much getting to the essence of the problem, and also the essence of what a Long Dark Night of The Soul is all about.
Sorry to say it, but trying to stuff yourself back is nothing else then extending the culture of repression and denial you were born in, by no fault of your own, into the future.
First of, acknowlegde spirit. Yes there are spirits at work behind the scenes, yes you can learn to talk to animals and plants and armchairs and whatnot, if it exists in material reality or as a thought or perception in your head, then its real. This does not mean that you should let yourself become a throwingball for spirits, thats a role new-agers seem happy to accept so let them do that. Don’t fall in the new-age trap, thats a spiritual pit of darkness if there ever was one.
A shaman never worships a spirit, he pays it respect and acknowlegdes it’s right to exist, like everyone else. Nor does he let himself become posessed, be it by a spirit or a thoughtform, or in any other way let something control him or take away his individuality.
Start trusting your intuition, pay attention to dreams and synchronicities. Start writing, or play a musical instrument, or plant a garden, or buy a drum and hammer on it till’ you can’t feel your body, but whatever you do, do something! Connect! But remain you.
Once spirit sees that you are willing to change, what may now feel like an attack will turn into loving guidance. You will begin to see it’s subtle flows, guiding you backwards into the future.

Rhex, do you currently do shamanic work for people?

I hope I just did :wink:

But no, I don’t, not because I don’t want to but because people don’t want to. Norway is a conservative country, with conservative people, and I live in a particularly conservative part of Norway. But I guess thats why spirit put me here:-)
But yes, I am completely willing to do shamanic work for people in need, just contact me!
In the past I have crossed paths with people willing to try, to great satisfaction for them, and just as much satisfaction for me since a get a chance to practice my beliefs.

My first attempt at healing:

Infact, as a primer for you people I will tell you the story of a girl I know who had some deep issues. This was right after I got through my Dark Night. We became intimate, and after a while she got used to strange things happening around me so she was willing to let me help. This is also the story of my first shamanic healing. It was done by telephone! I asked her permission to tell this story and she was OK with it so here we go!

The issues were sexual, stemming from childhood abuse. I knew this pretty much from the day I met her, but she had spent so much time and energy repressing it that she no longer remembered any of it, and any attempt to gently let her get it out was met with more repression and denial.

I gave it time, strengthening our bond by sharing my darkest secrets(which was both hard and healing for me) and just generally giving her love and attention. Then her family moved and she wasn’t ready to live 900 kilometers from them, so we broke up. We still kept contact almost daily(still do), and she went from being my lover to my closest friend.

Now about a year after she moved she began getting terrible headaces, to the point of her having to quit her job. Also she had pains in her neck, shoulders, arms and the back of her head, aswell as nightmares. She called me regularly for support, and I gave what help I could. But I knew that these were all symptoms of those things she never could acknowlegde.

Then one night she called me, crying and completely desperate. She hadn’t slept well for two weeks at that point due to pain and anxiety, and I knew that this was the right moment. I asked her if she was willing to trust me completely and let me help her by taking her through a ritual. She agreed. Remember this is all by telephone, and everything was done by intuition, didn’t follow any set ritual.

The Process:

I began by asking her to light three candles on the floor and sit comfortably in her bed so she could see them. I told her to arrange the candles in a downward triangle from her viewpoint. This is because my intention at that point was to take her down into her subconscious, the lower world of shamanism, and a downward triangle is a powerfull symbol that makes this easier. I lit three candles of my own in the same fashion for the same reasons and to deepen the connection between us. Then I told her to light a cigarette and blow smoke towards all the corners of her room, telling her that this would chase away negative energy. I did the same in my place. Then I told her to simply get comfy in bed for a few minutes while I prepared myself.

I went to the center of my room and clapped my hands three times, this is what I do to tell myself and spirit that I am about to do something
I bowed and offered tobacco smoke to the four directions/elements, spending a few minutes with each, really feeling the power of them become a part of me. Then I said a little prayer to the universe in general, asking for help for us both, courage for my friend and guidance for me. I declared that my room was now sacred space where nothing harmfull was allowed, and through the candles linking us(and more importantly, my intention), so was hers. I put my phone on speakers so she could hear all this. Now I’v spent a lot of time in trance so I don’t need drums or psychedelics to reach that state, just some deep breating and an effort of will. If not I would have smoked a weak joint, swallowed some mushrooms or drummed at this point.

Then we chilled for a few minutes, just taking time to get comfy and connect. I asked her where the specific pains were located, how it felt, how she felt etc. This was to deepen our connection, and shamanically I was trying to really sense how it was to be her at that moment. This is called aspecting, I’m trying to connect so deeply to her present situation that the boundaries between us dissolve and I actually feel myself AS her, kind of like letting her partially possess me in a way. Then when I sensed the connection was made(I started feeling dull pain in the same places as her, and anxiety and deeeep fear) I closed my eyes and simply asked spirit if I could see what was causing these problems. After like 20-30 seconds I saw this black, oozing mass, like oil and dead beatles, attached to my/her neck, sending tendrils down our collectiv back, into our head and out to our shoulders and down our arms. It scared me senseless, remember this was my first time attempting something like this at someone else then myself! Over the phone I could hear her starting to breath rapidly, she sensed what I sensed but without the context I had, which of course made her afraid too.

Aloud I recited the Litany against Fear from Dune, I know it’s nerdy and cheesy, but it works, especially if you intend that it works;-) Shamans pick the tools they find compelling!

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain.

Fear gone I started to really observe this thing I was dealing with. Revolting shit, like something from H.P Lovecraft. I noticed a thin black stem connecting it to her/my groin, which confirmed what my intuition had been telling me for several years.

I lessened the connection between us enough to give me space to think and work by making my trance shallower(simply breathing faster). Then I started to bring her into a deeper trance using sounds, gentle words and suggestions, making her visualize first a blue downwards triangle, then feeling her muscles relax, beginning with her toes and working upwards.

When I heard her breathing getting deeper I told her to really feel gravity pulling her downwards into her matress, feel the warmth and comfort and security of her blanket and pillow. Her breathing got even deeper and she started to sound somewhat dozey. I told her to imagine herself falling slowly like a feather downward through a warm, secure darkness. This is kind of like hypnotism you know, the intention on my part was to get her in a state where she would feel secure, unafraid, comfortable and protected as well as to loosen her inhibitions. After maybe twenty-thirty minutes of this her voice sounded childish, innocent and with no fear. All the time I beamed love at her both vocally and spiritually.

Then began the hard part. I told her I knew there was something she had never told me, never told anyone. She denied, I comforted her and spent a few minutes telling her from the bottom of my heart how much I loved her and that there was no need for shame or fear. She started crying, low sobs of desperation that fucking brought me to tears right now thinking about it.

After little while she started speaking in a really childish voice, telling me of a recurring nightmare of a dark, looming shadow bending over her bed at night. This was her subconscious speaking, trying to tell me what her conscious self still denied. I think you see what I mean and what she meant. Shit this is hard to write about.

I spent time comforting her, really throwing gigawatts of love in her direction all the time aswell as having her relax all her muscles again.

Then I asked her if she sometimes sensed something(the entity) clinging to her neck. That was an affirmative, and she got scared again so I once again, using maybe 5-10 minutes, deepend her trance. Now intuition told me she, and I, was ready to face the fucking critter. I could literally feel power pulsing through me, fueled by my love for her and rage at the fucking asshole who did this to her.

“I know what he did to you” I said, putting every bit of love, compassion and power in my being into the sentence, wielding it like a weapon to shatter her defenses. She stopped breathing for what seemed like an eternity… Then it all came flowing out of her in a torrent of grief and desperation that, and I mean this literally, made the candels in my room flicker and almost go out. I imagined myself as a sponge(hows that for poweranimal!), sucking up all this negative energy. After a while the torrent subsided, and I comforted her and told her how much I love her. By this point I started feeling nauseous from all the negative energy I had absorbed.

Then I went into deep trance, once again aspecting her to see what the entity was doing. It was much smaller now, the tendrils had retracted and only reached down to about her/my shoulders, the one from the groin completely gone. It pulsed and quivered, looking to all intents and purposes like a frightened animal. I think that animal found me somewhat lacking in compassion…

Still merged with her and in a deep trance I described to her what I saw until she could feel and see the thing herself. Then I told her to reach back, imagine herself grabbing hold of it and ripping it loose with all her might.While she did this I beamed love at the thing, confusing it. I felt it in my own neck when she grabbed it, I felt it let go and hurridly told her to imagine herselfe giving it to me. The moment she did that I was overcome with nausea, ran in a haze to a window and gasped for air.
I knew instinctivly that I couldn’t release the thing near other people, so phone in hand I ran out of my apartment, stumbling and trembling and half crying with the effort of trying not to spray vomit everywhere, to a grove of old trees a couple of hundred meters away from any houses, once there dug a shallow hole in the ground with a stick and PUKED. And puked, and puked, over and over again, seeing black ooze coming like a torrent from my mouth. She seemed to understand the process and comforted me all the time over the phone.
After a few millennia of puking I finally felt cleansed. I filled the hole with soil and asked the trees respectfully in a loud voice and with strong intention to transform this negativity into something good so it could live on in as something positiv. I strongly felt the trees accepting this task, for which I thanked them, she too, over the phone on speaker.

Then I went home and we talked on the phone till we both fell asleep, leading to a huge phonebill:-p

She got rid of her problems that night, and I gained the confidence necessary to devote myself completely to the path of Shamanism.

Thank you for listening.

1 Like
#12

Wow RHex i read this and i just bawled. i cannot express how grateful i feel for your response and that you shared your experience and insights. Really i cannot. i suspect your skills will be greatly sought after.

This will take me some time to digest, but i know i will have about a billion questions and comments, which i would like to ask in a PM if you are willing to answer them.

Sincere respect,

RL

#13

RHex, just wanted to make sure you felt okay after revisiting your initiation. i re-read it again and it got me bad. You show great compassion and your friend much courage. i don’t know quite what else to say, words just don’t cover it, but know you and your friend are in my thoughts right now.

With the deepest respect,

RL

#14

Thanks, it did kinda off bring me down remembering that, it was very emtional. But no worries, I called her and we talked about it just now:-)

Tomorrow I’m going to explain my take on entites of the trauma/thought form kind like the one here! They seem to be the most common.

Just PM me by the way:-)

#15

Sounds like you have some real power rhex, thanks for sharing.

I went through a long dark night when I was young and thought the material world was the only real world. All the traumatizing things in the world scared me and I reacted by disconnecting and avoiding. The only time I could be present was out in the woods, and that is the only thing that kept my will to live going.

But the more I disconnected from all the fucked up things in the world and myself, the more I lost my soul. The soul loss caused me to be even more sad and distant, which harmed my ability to relate. You can see the downward spiral here.

Eventually, I started to gain responsibility and felt an urge to face my wounds and all the fucked up things in the world. Once I was able to be present with the material world (including all the hard stuff), I was able to see beyond this reality.

In my experience, I had to fully experience material reality before I could transcend to shamanic realities. I couldn’t get it by just escaping into the wild lands, I had to look at my rotten roots and the civilization that trained them. I had to prove that I had a strong will to live and could listen thoroughly and intently before I received power.

There are ways out of the dark night, but they’re different for everyone. We all have different wounds and addictions. I think we all have the potential to perceive other realities or change consciousness or whatever it’s “called” and I know we don’t need drugs to do that. Drugs can be really traumatizing. I have found the best results from drumming.

#16

Want to thank RL again for a deep display of compassion!

[quote=“Mugwort, post:15, topic:1364”]

I went through a long dark night when I was young and thought the material world was the only real world. All the traumatizing things in the world scared me and I reacted by disconnecting and avoiding. The only time I could be present was out in the woods, and that is the only thing that kept my will to live going.

But the more I disconnected from all the fucked up things in the world and myself, the more I lost my soul. The soul loss caused me to be even more sad and distant, which harmed my ability to relate. You can see the downward spiral here.

Eventually, I started to gain responsibility and felt an urge to face my wounds and all the fucked up things in the world. Once I was able to be present with the material world (including all the hard stuff), I was able to see beyond this reality.

In my experience, I had to fully experience material reality before I could transcend to shamanic realities. I couldn’t get it by just escaping into the wild lands, I had to look at my rotten roots and the civilization that trained them. I had to prove that I had a strong will to live and could listen thoroughly and intently before I received power.

There are ways out of the dark night, but they’re different for everyone. We all have different wounds and addictions. I think we all have the potential to perceive other realities or change consciousness or whatever it’s “called” and I know we don’t need drugs to do that. Drugs can be really traumatizing. I have found the best results from drumming. [/quote]

I can really relate to what your saying Mugworth! Feels like we have some things in common… Your post triggered introspection on my part which led to healing, thanks!

Soul loss is an epedemic in this time and age, helping people with getting back lost parts of their soul is one of the most powerful and profund ways of healing in the shamanic path.

It seems to me like introspection is the important thing both in triggering shamanic initiation and gaining power. I am at times truly amazed at the lengths most people are willing to go to in order to avoid looking into their own mind and soul. Everyones just going around, reacting to stimulus like robots, with no thought for why they behave this way or how their actions affect their reality and hence their future.
We live in an armored culture, everyone enveloped in layer upon layer of psychological defenses aimed at simply stuffing things they don’t know how to face into the deep recesses of the mind. There the things lurk, and the more energy you use to repress and deny them, the more energy they get, the more they grow. Sooner or later they start expressing themself as physical and mental symptoms that may seem completely unrelated. Thats when you get an entity.
Fed on positive or negative energy through attention or repression thoughts and memories grow in complexity until they become truly alive, complete with instincts and desires. Given enough energy they get power, just like you or me.

Drugs, yeah. Like with timeLESS earlier in this thread drugs stir up these things, and if you’ve never learned to face them this leads to trauma. Also want to say something about Cannabis… DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE HER POWER! For people with a shamanic knack Cannabis can trigger shamanic initiation, as well as Kundalini awakenings. Both things are really best met when you and spirit is ready for it, and an unhealthy relationship with the Green Godess is certainly not a good foundation on which to build your future.
A healthy relationship on the other hand is incredibly healing and a exellent source of shamanic knowlegde and power!

#17

This is a thread that needs revived.

Many people go through this, many people face this pain, the pain of their minds stretching beyond their conditioning to witness the full scope of this reality. Shamanic initiation is not a pleasant experience. Anyone who struggles with this knows it isn’t something to brag or lie about, because it is a difficult gift and curse to accept. So many shamans will never find themselves and just be labeled insane and drugged.

I was never like the other kids. While I have the capacity to feel great self-sacrificial love, I was never able to connect with other humans or understand their modern ideals. However, I’ve always shared a deep bond with plants and other animals, and I’ve had a lifelong interest in biology, history, and theology. These eventually converged into herbalism, bushcraft, and anthropology.

While my human peers were inside playing video games or out partying, I’d be running through the woods or buried in books about ancient cultures. Around the age of 11, I discovered the great binding circle of overpopulation, pollution, sickness, genocide, and greed that is modern medicine, technology, and society. I began to shun all manmade drugs and strive for a life as part of the ecosystem.

Thus I was labeled insane, evil, retarded, etc by my parents and classmates for my beliefs in herbal medicine and natural selection. Asperger’s, bipolar disorder, anxiety, dangerous anger issues…Every non-anthropocentric value just the result of another mental disorder. Now I don’t know whether I’m all wrong or more alright than the masses.

Of course my beliefs didn’t matter when I was in high school; my parents let me refuse aspirin and antibiotics, but my freshman physical was required. The blackout, fevers, and neurological problems in my arm after those 4 vaccines only confirmed my anti-pharma beliefs. I barely made it through school and escaped with no friends left, only a like-minded mate I thank God every day for.

For 9 long years, 11 to 20, I’ve sunk through waves of crippling rage, despair, and paranoia. Always torn between the reality I see and what I was taught, what the masses were taught, what sins my own misguided loved ones expect of me. This was long before I discovered a community of others who share my values, a name for us, “rewilders”. Long before my lifetime of spiritual studies led me to the words “shamanic crisis” this past winter.

I still struggle sometimes. I wonder if what I see and believe is really true, and if it is, does it make a difference? Does believing in a better way, striving for a life as part of the food chain, make any difference in this tangled mess of 7 billion lost souls? Bayer and Hillary really could care about us for all I know.

It’s so easy to label myself crazy, to think the real problem is in my head. Being insane is a lot easier to accept than being a born healer in a broken world. It’s a lot less scary to believe that humans are meant to be a monopoly, there’s nothing wrong with eating plastics, that the government isn’t reading this post. Sometimes I’d rather be blind to the scope of reality just like so many others.

But not to make myself sound even crazier…I’ve had visions that come true days later, often horrible things but some are beautiful. I’ve seen signs, little things that most people wouldn’t notice, that make me fall to my knees laughing at such a clever confirmation of God’s sense of humor. And I feel life that I was taught isn’t there, in my canine friends, my green companions, flame, bare bones, and air.

The times they are a-changing. Balance will be restored, and the energy of life directed away from humanity. We will need healers of body, mind, and spirit, and while I never dreamed of going into medicine, I’ve never been good at saying no. My parents always did want me to help the sick. Mistrust of authority and belief in natural healing may make me a primitive prepper lunatic, but visions and spirits signal a shaman.

Or still just a lunatic.

#18

I have never had Shamanic Sickness or a Long Dark Night of the Soul. I assume those who survive consider it a worthwhile trade for the gifts at the end of the tribulations. I hope they do.

I think if I were to be able to heal anything I would want to be able to heal minds rather than bodies. If I had to choose one that is. Also, rather than having the ability to work with and commune with spirits and the unseen I would choose an affinity for preparing people for the afterlife.

From what I gather the afterlife is going to be really good (especially when compared with the way things are going as of right now), and from what I have observed mental wounds are just as serious an issue as physical problems.

Does anyone who has not had Shamanic Sickness and/or a Long Dark Night of the Soul desire such a thing in trade for power? I am guessing just how selfish the craving for power is during such a difficult time plays a big role in whether you succeed or not. Power hunger is not something I associate with healers.