February 15, 2007
The Sixth International Shamanism Conference: A personal view
By Stephanie Hiller
The dangers that lurk in all four corners of our world at this critical moment in the human story loomed large in the minds and hearts of participants in the International Shamanism Conference held last weekend in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Running under and through so many of the discussions like a powerful underground stream was the urgent question: Will shamanism help us survive? The answers were many and varied but almost universally indefinite. Yes, speakers told us, shamanism can enable us to heal so that we can heal the world, and maybe just by being together here, in prayer, we are doing the very thing the world needs now.
But we better wake up, said Maria TeresaVelazquez, indigenous healer and teacher from San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, because hard times are coming down. Referring to the ancient Mayan and Azteca prophecies, showed the parallels between the present era and the age of the Conquistadores 500 years ago &endash; which is also when the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to Juan Diego. In Mexico, "we are still living under conquest," she said. The prophecies reveal that a new world is being birthed and in the process millions of people will die, mostly those who choose to leave because they don't want to endure the whole agonizing birth. We cannot stop these events because "we are only human," she said, and we do not have the solutions to the terrible problems of our time. Prayer is the powerful answer.
Knowing how to die &endash; holding death as an illusion &endash; became an upfront theme and discussion in Nicki Scully's workshop on the Egyptian Shamanic Mysteries &endash; not surprising, perhaps, in view of the enormous importance given that transition by the ancient Egyptians, who built pyramids for their celebrated deceased, whose bodies were embalmed and sarcophaguses laden with all the goodies needed in the next life. Nicki wasn't planning to teach us how to die. Her vibrant journeys to the land of the great animal headed Egyptian gods and goddesses were artfully designed to empower us for the work we needed to do. But when one of the men in the workshop reported that the lion-headed fire goddess Sekhmet had told him that millions of people, perhaps a third of humanity, was going to die, the possibilities of an imminent ominous future leapt to the forefront of the discussion. One woman said that during 9-11, the people who died in that tragedy had willingly offered their lives to wake us up; and another followed suit, speaking about the tsunami victims as more volunteers, "to teach us compassion." Perhaps what we learned was denial? I struggled to deal with the anger that arises at statements like these, and I had to express my concern over what I consider to be such evasions. Nicki was then aroused to assure us that hers was a message of commitment and hope; and finding that we had half an hour more time remaining to us, she led us in a beautiful meditation to the goddess Hathor in her bower of beauty and bounty, concluding the session on an inspired and heartening note.
"If you can't imagine it, you can't make it happen." That was another thread in the shamanic tapestry for the rebirthing of the world. Fortunately, we have no difficulty imagining a better world, and our pictures of this earthly paradise are fairly consistent: it's a world where there is plenty of food and water for everyone, where love abounds, the earth flourishes, and children grow up safe in the security of a peaceful world. The problem is how to create such a world, and especially the nuts and bolts of how to get there from here. One of the obstacles to creating that plan, as Sandra Ingerman pointed out in her lecture, is our apathy and despair. If we don't thrive, she said, then we leave room for other entities with a stronger will to live &endash; viruses, diseases, and negative spirits &endash; to invade and devour our bodies. Hence the role of shamanism to inspire us, empower us, and thereby to free the creative energies within us so that we can become healthy, joyous and effective in the world, has a powerful role to play in transforming our planet.
Even more persuasive was her workshop that afternoon, where she demonstrated that shamanic practices can change the vibrational field in such a way and to such a degree that the world we view as "physical reality" can be changed.
Ingerman, a therapist who became a shaman after taking Michael Harner's workshop on soul retrieval, had studied marine biology as an undergraduate. Her interest had been in restoring streams. After some 20 years of practicing soul retrieval and other shamanic healing practices, she had decided to do an experiment to clean polluted water by infusing it with harmonic vibrations, taking one step further the work of Masaru Emoto, who photographed and compared the crystals in frozen water that was pure or polluted or exposed to healing messages. Ingerman used water that was contaminated with a common pollutant, ammonium hydroxide. With the circle of friends, she used toning to cleanse the water, and succeeded in reducing the water's ph from a toxic level of 12 down to 9 &endash; a miraculous transformation confirming the power of shamanic practice to effect change in the material realm.
Ingerman had studied miracles as they had been accomplished by a wide range of teachers from Jesus to Sai Baba and Ammachi, and had identified that seven characteristics must be present to accomplish a miracle: Intention, Love, Concentration, Focus…. There is no question in her mind that shamanic healing work can be applied to planetary tribulations such as war and global warming as well as personal healing. She gave us a taste of this power at the end of the workshop. We formed two groups. One group lay down in the center of the room to receive the healing vibration; the other formed a circle around this group and toned for about ten minutes; then we switched positions.
I had experienced a similar healing with Vicki Noble some years ago where the chanters sang, "I am opening in complete surrender to the luminous love light of the one." It was a thoroughly ecstatic experience that generated waves of light crashing above and within the body of those needing healing. This workshop experience was not as intense for me, but it definitely cleared the body and the head of clutter inevitably accumulated in four days of interactions with unidentified embodied energies and the exhaustion that often accompanies such exposure. It was easy to see that if we gathered in community on a daily base to practice this kind of clearing and healing, as Ingerman urges, our daily work would be conducted from an entirely different basis than what is transacted today in stuffy offices clogged with competition, intimidation and the stress of keeping up in order to survive.
Combined with a plan for redesigning the world, this kind of practice could certainly liberate and redeem us, and perhaps it would be too much to ask of one four-day conference that it attempt to address this level of activity. Bioneers already does that quite successfully. Although none of these gatherings tell us how to stop the Neoconservative agenda that is presently the biggest threat to our continued existence on this earth, they do provide us with energizing experiences that fortify us and give us the courage to go back out into the dirty dangerous world and take baby steps to improve it. Certainly no one can prove that George Bush's falling ratings are not due in part to the rituals, prayers, meditations and ongoing gatherings that continue to project a harmonious and positive energy out towards the embattled world.
In the meantime, we are healed, to whatever degree may be possible in this moment, and as all these great shamans exhorted us to realize, we are only adding our own fractious voices to the fray until we are able to find peace within ourselves. Whether we achieve that by means of tantra (one of the techniques widely discussed in the Sacred Sexuality segment of this two-pronged gathering), meditation, yoga, hallucinogens or some combination of these varied tools, our progress toward the goal contributes to the harmonizing energies that must be invoked if we can hope to heal the world.
On a personal level, Lynn Andrews workshop showed me that this was true.
As I came into the room, I saw Lynn sitting up at the front, eyes lowered, focusing her intention for the workshop, perhaps, or perhaps reading her notes. I sat in the front row and found myself looking at her.
She didn't look that much like her pictures, probably because her hair is short and fluffed, not long as it used to be. She doesn't look very much like the kind of shaman you ordinarily see in places like Santa Fe or the California Bay Area, except perhaps for the stunning necklace she is wearing, and the feathers adorning the front of her brown dress. But those are the only clues. Otherwise, she looks a person who stepped off the streets of Los Angeles after getting her hair dyed and styled and perhaps a facial. She is slim, very pretty, and has an air of fashion clinging to her. But the energy emanating from her person is quite abundant and distinct, as was revealed in her workshop.
She felt me looking at her and glanced expressionlessly at me and away. I found something else to do with my eyes, and as I turned inward I felt a great rush of sexual energy swamping over me. It didn't seem to be coming from Lynn, but it didn't seem to be coming from me either! Perhaps I was just soaking up some rampant sexual energy in the room which, after all, was filled with people who were attending workshops in tantra. But the energy was definitely in my body, and as it moved upward as the kundalini is supposed to do, I had difficulty containing it.
Meanwhile Lynn began to talk, first reading from the paper in front of her, then rambling off, speaking about the necessity of letting that kind of kundalini energy reach its peak because if you get stuck, you're in trouble. Looking back, I suppose she might have thrown that comment in for me, or maybe for all the other tantrikas in the room, who knows &endash; or maybe even had sent it to me to begin with. I haven't felt any sexual energy for quite a long time, and it certainly woke me up out of a phase of elderly half-life, so to speak.
Lynn (calling her "Andrews" in common journalistic style just doesn't seem to fit this vibrant, forthright woman who minces no words) covered many topics, focusing briefly on the wheel of the mother who tends to come in two forms, the devoted and orderly Nurturing Mother and the ecstatic, more carefree (and slightly careless) Rainbow Mother, and their opposites, what happens to them when the children leave. I could certainly recognize my own pattern as the nurturing mother who finds herself facing death once the children leave.
But Lynn moved quickly on to a guided visualization in which we were to meet the Sacred Twins within our consciousness, the female warrioress, and the male warrior. It was a powerful journey, one of the most intense I've ever experienced, and there was a surprising revelation in it for me.
Lynn had begun the journey telling us that having these two elemental characters in balance would free up blocks that had stopped us thus far from moving forward in key areas of our lives. I had come to New Mexico six months ago because I felt that my life was utterly stuck. Initially drawn here to continue my investigation of America's love affair with nuclear weapons, I had also received in meditation a message from Amma pointing me toward the desert. I cannot remember what I was going to find there but I do know that this spontaneous endorsement of the journey I was preparing to undertake had been very reassuring. Once here, though I have had great difficulty explaining to people why I moved from California, I have held in my mind that my goal was to become RADIANT.
The journey with Lynn did exactly what it was supposed to do. It broke through some deeply held block with a great rush generated no doubt by that rising kundalini energy. Two days later in meditation, asking my spirit guides (who are there all the time I know, but whom I cannot identify or name) to tell me now what it is I'm supposed to do, I heard a voice say, Why are you asking us? What do you want to do? I have been wanting to do too much, I explain, too many things that do not come together, too many unwoven strands, and so I am paralyzed.
And with that, the weaver began to weave those strands together; and I saw that none of it was wrong or unnecessary or in vain. But now I could move forward because I was given focus and I had the confidence to do exactly what I was guided to do. It just wasn't an issue! For the first time in my life, in decades of searching for the right direction and the right livelihood, I knew without question that if I just took the first step, it was all going to fall into place. Wow!
I know it wasn't all Lynn. I went to this conference because I wanted to recapture my interest in shamanism. The time was right. Since I made the decision to leave my home in California and move to New Mexico, I had been taken apart &endash; dismembered, as shamans call it &endash; but I had not quite been put back together! Each of the presentations I attended played a part in my pulling together what had been apart; but it was Lynn who gave me the tool I needed to move forward. And that is real shamanism!
As with the patient, so with the planet. If death is the only outcome that will heal us, so be it. It too is only transformation of that indefinable sacred substance that composes our eternal spirits, that starlight from which we come and to which we inevitably eventually are called to return.
But for my money, if we can heal the world without inoculating it with a toxic dose of radiation, if we can restore the waters and the soils and learn how to share these fragile, essential resources, if we can learn how to resolve conflict nonviolently and give up all these deadly weapons, and if we can put aside our desires for nonessential and costly material goods in favor of fresh air and sunshine &endash; well, how much better that would be.
As Nicki Scully told us, There is still time. As Lynn Andrews urged us, The Dreaming God has awakened, and now is the time for us to dream our own dreams. As Andrew Harvey exhorted us in his enormously powerful and dramatic presentation, Passion for the Mother is what will save us now, and it is the only thing that can save us.
The Sixth International Conference on Shamanism, and the accompanying Sacred Sexuality Conference (though these were touted as two conferences, they were actually one), were well organized affairs with a brilliant array of extremely talented presenters, many more than I have been able to cover here. What better place for it than Santa Fe, New Mexico &endash; proving once again that this high desert is a very good place to hear what the spirits have to say.
All the presenters have excellent books to offer. I recommend:
Andrew Harvey, Return of the Mother
Lynn Andrews' 19 books, especially Medicine Woman, Flight of the Seven Shields, Jaguar Woman, and her newest work, Writing Spirit
Sandra Ingerman, Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self, and Medicine for the Earth: How to Transform Personal and Environmental Toxins
Lewis Mehl-Madrona, Coyote Medicine, Coyote Healing, Coyote Wisdom
All are available from Amazon
Please go to the Message Company web site for information about all the presenters and to order tapes of the conference. http://www.bizspirit.com/Shamanism09/sham_index.html