Shaman: Chant a song and shake a rattle. Let the drumbeat take you into non-ordinary reality. *While the Western world crafts laws, perceive wholeness into being.
Bear dropped his hide and Raven, her wing. Owl scattered feathers marking a trail to all of this laughter and inextinguishable joy. With one strike of lightning, they crossed through death’s veil and passed their healing gifts on to you.
When we have finished exhausting conventional options, perhaps we will turn to you. Will you still welcome us?
Retrieve our lost soul parts, lay your hands on our wounds and extract any misplaced energy within us.
Then we will broaden our sense of Infinite Love beyond images that keep us inordinately contained.
Shaman, you are the wild expression of Spirit, the one who sees sacredness in all things. Gradually, we lost touch with the natural world, which is why we need to acquaint ourselves with you.
Though the fearful among us declare you mad, you readily forgive. How many healers have we admitted to treatment centers? If only we could accept your magic as an answer to our prayers?
Like priest or layman you, too, young shaman can use your gift for good or harm. Rather than indulging the black arts, we plead with you to offer healing grace.
Journey with the animals. Sit under a tree until she sings; or rest your head on a rock to understand the spirit of place.
Know that we will try to persuade you with rational arguments, many of which come with ulterior motives. Rather than weighing options, you will feel vibrations, sense energy and see destructive imprints in the light fields surrounding us.
Oh, the many expressions of Spirit! Prophets predict, confront and warn. Mystics surrender to being, seeking union with the Holy. And you, Shaman, empower.
Refuse to be tamed. Turn toward us, reflecting Moon’s glow and continue rotating on the sacred spiral, scattering stars to light our way.
Sacred Ruminations*
*“Today we are people of precept. We are a rule-driven society…The Ancient Greeks, on the other hand, were people of concept. They were interested…in ideas. Shamans are people of the percept. When they want to change the world…they engage in perpetual shifts that change their relationship to life…elders will sit in meditation envisioning the kind of world they want their grandchildren to inherit…It’s about vision and Spirit.”
From: Shaman, Healer, Sage, by Alberto Villoldo