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Encounters on
the Shaman's Path
with anthropologist Dr. Hank Wesselman, PhD.
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by Dr.Hank Wesselman, P.h.D. |
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The Creator Reconsidered
Our last several columns (11/06-2/07) have provided an overview of the general spiritual reawakening that is going on within an important subculture emerging in the Western world—a group that could be thought of as the Transformational Community. We have also considered the beliefs and values that the transformationals hold dear.
This broad social movement is significant for two primary reasons: 1) Demographer Paul Ray (The Cultural Creatives) has revealed it is represented by at least 60-70 million people in the United States alone, with close to another 100 million in Britain and Europe, and 2) the beliefs and values held by this steadily growing cultural group carry the potential to change the directions of world history.
Either of these points are worthy of a Time Magazine cover story yet curiously, we are still under the radar of the media at large.
We concluded our last essay by observing that increasing numbers within the transformational community have experienced that direct connection with those inner worlds that the esteemed psychologist C.G. Jung referred to as the archetypal realms of the psyche—the same transpersonal levels that shamans call the spirit worlds. In response, many are reconsidering the true nature of the “Creator Father-God” that we inherited from our Old Testament precursors.
Jung was among the ‘reconsiderers.’ His writings reveal deep insights about the Father-God as an archetype manifested by and through the human psyche, one that continues to change as we ourselves change and grow in our travels across time. “Whoever knows God has an effect on him,” Jung wrote, and when we look at the origins of this God-image, we see that this process of transformation extends well back beyond Judaism and the Old Testament for several thousand years until we come to its source.
The cultural collective known as ‘the Jewish people’ were historically a cluster of Semitic tribes loosely organized into many pastoralist, nomadic groups. In Biblical times, they lived primarily in that part of the Roman Empire known as Judea. With apologies to the Moses-myth and the story of the exodus out of Egypt for which there is simply no solid physical evidence, those who would become known as the Jews are thought to have migrated into Judea about 3000 years ago from the southern Mesopotamian region near the Persian Gulf where they were known as the Elamites.
It was also from this part of the world that the Father God-image came, borrowed by the migrating Elamites from the Babylonians whose polytheistic religion included an alternately wrathful, alternately beneficent principal storm god called Marduk.
Among the Persians to the north, the archetype of the Creator God was known as Ormuzd and came to be called Ahuramazda through the teachings of Zoroaster. But if we go back still further, we find that it was among the Sumerians that this archetype originated. Among them he was known as Enlil.
We have mentioned in previous columns how the Sumerians created a stratified polytheistic religion focused upon a pantheon of many high gods and goddesses above and beyond Nature. Among them were the twin brothers Enlil and Enki. The positive polarity was personified in Enlil who would eventually become the monotheist deity Yahweh, Jehovah, Allah, or simply God. We have also discussed how this Judeo-Christian archetype became the ‘Great Spirit’ or ‘Creator’ now embraced by the Native American Indians. The negative polarity was vested in Enki who would be transformed into Ahriman among the Persians and into Satan in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions.
Jung wrote: “Yahweh… is an antimony—a totality of inner opposites—and this is the indispensable condition for his tremendous dynamism.” During the Roman Period, his ‘humanization’ culminated in his incarnation as the half-divine, half-human Christ, the good god embodied, in keeping with the ancient prophesies of a messiah appearing among the Jews.
Daniel Pinchbeck elaborates on these ideas in his book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl in which he notes that Jung did not perceive Yahweh as a benevolent father figure. Rather Jung understood the Old Testament Creator God as a sort of “personified brutal force… an unethical and non-spiritual mind… inconsistent enough to exhibit traits of kindness and generosity besides a violent power drive. It is the picture of a sort of nature-demon and at the same time of a primitive chieftain aggrandized to a colossal size.”
Pinchbeck also brings forward thoughts from Jung’s follower, Edward Edinger, who defined an archetype as “a primordial psychic pattern of the collective unconscious that is at the same time a dynamic agency with intentionality.” Pinchbeck adds: “the archetypes hover just outside or offstage our human drama, awaiting their moment to ‘constellate’ in the individual and collective psyche, catalyzing processes of transformation with far-reaching consequences.”
In other words, these archetypes, including the Father-God that exists at the center of our monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, represent culturally-determined forces that are in actuality aspects of ourselves. Although this fact may be upsetting to some conservative sects such as the fundamentalist Christians, there is no doubt that these archetypes were and are projections of our own multi-leveled psycho-spiritual complex that is, in turn, self-determined as well as self-limited.
This is not to say that all the discarnate beings that are so well known to traditional shamans were created by humans. Quite the contrary. As has been discussed in previous columns, the hierarchy of spirits includes elementals, nature spirits (sometimes called faeries), animal and plant spirits, ancestors and the spirits of the dead, as well as all those higher spirits already evolved beyond planetary and solar development.
The higher transpersonal beings include those compassionate forces poised just beyond the physical world to help us in various ways and usually anthropomorphized as winged super-humans called ‘angels.’ Among these wise beings is our own personal ‘angelic’ self or higher self-aspect, our oversoul—the one who breathes life into us at the beginning of our incarnations and receives the energetic matrix of all that we have done and become during life back into itself at the end.
The mystics of all traditions and all times know that our personal oversoul is the immortal ‘god-self’ who listens to our prayers, works in mysterious ways, and sends in its seeds of light to live within serial incarnations across time so that it can grow, increase and become more than it was.
This is the vital co-creative relationship between heaven and earth, between spirit and matter, through which the Universe itself is growing and becoming more than it was. Our oversoul is our personal piece of the action, our greater spiritual Self who holds us with unconditional love. And as we grow and become more, so does it. We’re talking here about spiritual evolution.
With the exception of our oversoul, this spiritual hierarchy of transpersonal beings is, from the shaman’s perspective, clearly separate from the self with each archetype having its own persona and agendas. And yet they may come into relationship with us if we invite them to do so, ‘constellating’ within and through us as Jung and others have described.
Now… whether we define these forces as archetypes or spirits, the shaman’s technology of transcendence, practiced and refined across tens of millennia, has largely been devoted to dealing with them, bringing them into alignment with humanity so they may be of service to us, and we to them.
The shaman’s job is to use their own bodies and minds as bridges between our physical world and the transpersonal realms of spirit. And as the indigenous peoples know well, when those bridges are formed, miracles happen, something that increasing numbers in the transformational community have personally experienced.
And now… if we turn our attention toward the Judeo-Christian-Islamic Creator God archetype, there is no question that the time has come for an upgrade… and this includes the realization as well as the acceptance of the fact that this archetype was created by us and through us, rather than visa versa.
Does this mean that God, as commonly invoked and conceived in the public at large, doesn’t exist? Not at all. Once we humans have ‘thought’ something into being, it exists as a mental thought-form, and the more we turn our collective attention toward it, the more dense it becomes, invested with the energy of our collective focus.
However… it is not, nor has it ever been, the Creator.
Of course, for monotheistic “God-believers,’ and God-fearing fundamentalists in particular, God simply is what you think it is. And yet it must be observed that religious fundamentalism is a trap on the spiritual path, a really large one. Allow me to elaborate.
The philosopher Ken Wilber has offered his thoughts on the nature of our uniquely human spiritual unfolding in his book One Taste, revealing it to be a process of personal soul development that typically progresses through four major stages.
The first stage is belief, and there can be many kinds of beliefs. Magical beliefs include the notion that the self can dramatically affect the physical world as well as other people through intention. Mythical beliefs are invested in the conviction that supernatural beings have ultimate power over us and can be persuaded to serve us in various ways. Rational beliefs attempt to de-mythologize religion and portray God, for example, not as an anthropomorphic creator deity, but rather as a created archetype as discussed above. And then there are scientific beliefs, more commonly known as theories, and so forth and so on…
The problem with belief systems is that they are at best mental phenomena—collective thought-forms with strong emotional sentiments attached to them, and they can be continually embraced without ever changing one’s present level of consciousness in the least. Because of this, beliefs usually fail to compel us in the end. We can believe in God or believe in spirits for decades, yet little to nothing may really change in our lives in response. This is usually when the second stage of spiritual unfolding occurs—faith.
Faith soldiers on when our belief systems falter, and most people choose to remain here because faith is a great sustainer, a great supporter. Yet faith can take us in two quite different directions.
In one, faith can spiral us backward into belief. This is why fundamentalism, whether Judaic, Christian or Islamic, is a trap on the spiritual path, one of truly immense proportions. Fundamentalism, despite all of its fervor and intention, ritual and rapture, proclamation and pontification, will not ultimately bring the believer into connection with that which they are seeking.
In truth, salvation lies in precisely the opposite direction. When faith is doing its job, we are drawn not backward into belief, but forward to the third stage of spiritual unfolding—Direct Experience.
Direct experience of the transpersonal realms of spirit is completely and irreversibly life changing, revealing why the shaman’s path and its experiential centerpiece of the shamanic journey is of such interest to members of the transformational community.
When you have had that mind-blowing direct contact with the spirits, those archetypal forces hovering just to one side of us in the world of things hidden, the experience takes us immediately to the fourth and final stage of spiritual unfolding—Personal Transformation.
This—and only this—will bring us to that ego-shattering, mind-expanding, and soul-enhancing experience known in the East as ‘enlightenment’ … an experience that includes deep realizations about the nature of the self and the nature of reality that convey authentic initiation to the spiritual seeker.
This is precisely what Prince Siddhartha Gautama, the one who came to be known as the Buddha, experienced in his deep meditations under the Bodhi tree 2500 years ago, when his mind was assaulted by the demon king Mara, the master of illusion. Gautama realized in those moments who and what Mara really was (and is), and he remained calm and inwardly unmoved as the illusion master sought to distract him from his spiritual quest.
The same thing was experienced by Jesus of Nazareth during his vision quest in the desert, and this brings us to an interesting cross-cultural moment. Having mentioned the Satan/Ahriman/Enki archetype, here is something else for our consideration.
When we trace the Satan archetype back through time, we discover the nature of his true ‘job’, a deep insight that reveals Satan and the Devil to be two quite separate entities.
The Devil’s name is Lucifer, which means ‘light bearer.’ He is an archetype, an angel really, who brings the light to those who sit in darkness (ignorance) and he took on a very specific job in order to be of service to humanity. Lucifer is the Master of Desire.
When we experience a powerful desire to shop for things we don’t need, to eat when we are not hungry, to pick up a potential lover in a bar, or to drop in at the ice cream parlor for a hot fudge sundae, these are Luciferic impulses. These impulses are not bad, they are simply desires, and they can be very powerful as we all know.
Satan, who is Ahriman/Enki, has a quite separate job. He is an angelic being who serves us as the Master of Illusion (the same guy as Mara). The task Satan took on to be of service to humanity is to weave illusions which ensnare and captivate us--distractions that we have to overcome in order to find out who we really are and what we are doing here.
Seen from this perspective, when you come home at the end of your work-day and turn on the TV, what appears on the screen? An illusion. Accordingly, it could be observed that television is Ahriman/Satan at his absolute best. We’re talking about Monday night football, Tuesday night basketball, Wednesday night baseball, Thursday night NASCAR races—and all those endless, meaningless sporting events and soap operas, movies and sitcoms, whose role is to entertain us.
In the process of being so entertained, we drift through our lives, completely distracted, rarely if ever turning our attention toward that which is really important: who we are and what we are doing here, who we are becoming and what our life is all about.
This is Ahriman/Satan’s real job, and when we cast an informed glance at Hollywood and television, he’s doing it very well indeed. The entertainment industry and the media in all its forms have more power today than the president of the United States.
Seen in this light, we can understand that Lucifer and Satan really have nothing to do with the archetype of evil. They are simply (angelic) threshold guardians, sent to test us until we see them for who and what they really are. At that point, we resist making a pass at the baby sitter or getting mindlessly drunk, or we turn off the TV or the DVD player… and at this instant of realization, we pass the test and we’re free—an operational life moment that reveals the ultimate goal of our personal and collective soul’s evolution is liberation.
Our great journey across eternity is about experiencing Life in all its forms and permutations in response to which we grow and become more than we were. And the great goal of that journey is Freedom. When we attain liberation, that’s when we ‘get off the wheel’ of suffering and attachment and distraction to become something else. Yet there is more…
As we come to the end of this cycle of ages and become more fully engaged in the exploration the nature of our selves and the nature of reality, we become aware of an immanent Mystical Force or Vital Presence that exists everywhere, in everything. And it is here, precisely here, that we rediscover the true nature of God.
This Presence that we sense is not some remote super-human, demanding our deference, subservience and worship. The Presence is none other than the Life Force itself, the Universal Creative Impulse that is life-giving, life-supporting, and life-sustaining, found embedded within the natural world all around us—as well as within us. It came into being with the Big Bang and is something quite separate from Yahweh/Jehovah/Allah or the God-head archetype as commonly perceived by the public at large.
All the mystics know that the Universe is a song that is singing itself into being, a story that is writing itself, and we, through our thoughts and our feelings and our dreaming, are participating in its growth, helping it to become more than it was. In this sense, we are functioning as its co-creators. That’s our job.
I discovered this when I was a boy growing up in New York City. Although I was taught about the Judeo-Christian God in church and was taken to religious services in the great cathedrals in that city as well as others, I just didn’t feel the Presence in those ‘holy’ edifices with vaulted ceilings and tall narrow windows.
I felt it in Central Park. The Presence was there in the grasses and the trees, in the lakes and the fish, in the pigeons, the hawks and the squirrels, in the rocks, the earth and the wind…and in the clouds and the Sun and the rain. For me, Central Park was (and is) the only authentic church, temple or mosque in New York City.
As we become aware of this Presence, often at odd moments, we rediscover that Nature in all its complexity and beauty is God. And it is not transcendent; it is immanent. It is all around us all the time and within us as well.
And the practice? As we mentioned last month, the practice is not about worship; it’s about relationship. We are in relationship with Nature, and it is through Nature that we can interact, mano a mano, with the Universal Force that infuses Nature, as well as ourselves, with Life. Ultimately, there can be no separation from it.
As we transcend our wonderful distractions and the mass hypnosis created by all our glittering gadgets, we pass the tests set for us by the Masters of Desire and Illusion and we become aware of what it really means to be alive on this beautiful world. In response, we experience an awareness that leads us inexorably into profound feelings of appreciation and gratitude… feelings that bring us to the experience of reverence. And when we experience reverence, we feel an active respect for everything and everyone around us, and the rest then follows.
Reverence is the foundation of indigenous mind. It is the first and the last stone on that path that will bring us into the sacred garden, revealing why the primordial spirituality simply must re-emerge as we leave this world age behind and prepare for the next.
We will talk more about this next month. Until then, allow me to invoke the spirit of my great Hawaiian friend, the Kahuna Nui Hale Kealohalani Makua, and with his blessing, I extend to each of you the Light and the Love of the Ancestors, The Source of Life, rejoicing in the Power and the Peace, braided with the cords of Patience, revealing the tapestry of the strongest force in the Universe, your Aloha.
With warm thoughts—Dr Hank
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Dr. Hank Wesselman, P.h.D
Anthropologist, Shamanic Teacher, Healer, & Author
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Dr Hank Wesselman PhD., holds advanced degrees in anthropology and zoology from the University of California at Berkeley and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Since 1971, he's conducted research with an international group of scientists, exploring eastern Africa's Great Rift Valley in search of answers to the mystery of human origins--fieldwork that has allowed him to spend much of his life living and working with traditional peoples, rarely, if ever, visited by outsiders.
During this time, he has worked with many notables including Prof F. Clark Howell, Dr Don Johanson, "Lucy's" discoverer, as well as members of the famous Leakey family.
He is currently engaged in fieldwork in northern Ethiopia with the Middle Awash Research Project headed by Prof Tim White, where he is reconstructing the paleoenvironments of sites dated between four and six million years old that have yielded the fossilized remains of humanity's earliest ancestors.
Dr Wesselman has taught anthropology for the University of California at San Diego; the University of Hawai'i at Hilo's West Hawai'i campus at Kealakekua; California State University at Sacramento; American River College and Sierra College in northern California; and Kiriji Memorial College and Adeola Odutola College in Western Nigeria, where he first became interested in indigenous spiritual traditions while living among people of the Yoruba Tribe as a US Peace Corps Volunteer during the 1960s.
Dr Hank (as his students call him) is also a shaman in training, now in the 23rd year of his apprenticeship. His autobiographical trilogy Spiritwalker, Medicinemaker, and Visionseeker describes an ongoing continuum of visionary experiences that began spontaneously out in the bush of southern Ethiopia in the 1970s, resumed in Hawai'i in the 1980s, and continue to the present day.
Combining the sober objectivity of a trained scientist with a mystic's passionate search for deeper understanding, Hank's books and teachings contain revelations about the nature of reality, the self, as well as the shaman's spiritual worlds.
Since 1994, he has offered seminars and training workshops at many internationally-recognized centers such as the Esalen Institute in California, the Omega Institute near New York, and the New Millennium Institute in Hawai'i.
Hank's newest books include the Journey to the Sacred Garden: A Guide to Traveling in the Spiritual Realms, and Spirit Medicine: Healing in the Sacred Realms (co-authored with transpersonal medical practitioner and soul retrieval specialist Jill Kuykendall).
He currently serves on the advisory board of the Society for Shamanic Practitioners, is a member of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, the American Anthropological Association, the Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness, and is featured in Traveling Between the Worlds: Conversations with Contemporary Shamans by Hillary S Webb.
In addition to his scientific publications, he is at work on a book about his expeditionary field experiences in Africa.
He has also written a small book for children: Little Ruth Reddingford and the Wolf.
Contact info and workshop schedule:
www.sharedwisdom.
com
email:
hw@sharedwisdom.com
Notes & Updates
from Dr.Hank
Descriptions of the workshops and presentations offered by Hank Wesselman and his wife Jill Kuykendall, as well as the website links to the centers where they will be held in 2007, are now taking form on their web site:
www.sharedwisdom.
com
Soul Catchers
I discovered, quite by accident almost 15 years ago, that I am married to a great soul catcher. My wife Jill Kuykendall was trained in the Western medical paradigm and has worked as a physiotherapist in acute care rehabilitation in hospital as well as home health settings for more than 25 years.
Today, Jill works primarily in transpersonal medicine and has a private practice devoted to soul retrieval. Clients come to her from all over the country, as well as from abroad and she is usually booked up months in advance.
Interestingly, the transpersonal nature of this work means that it is “nonlocal’ and is just as effective when done long-distance, revealing that Jill can still do the work on behalf of those who cannot travel to meet with her in her office.
Jill is the co-author with me of Spirit Medicine and wrote the chapters on soul loss, soul retrieval and more. As you may be aware, we have a website <www.sharedwisdom.
com> where Jill has a page describing the nature of her work in soul retrieval.
For those interested, there are also two hour-long interviews with me posted on the Broadband Learning Channel <www.bblc.tv>, one of which is focused upon health, illness and healing the soul in the indigenous perspective.
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