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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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Spiritual Unfolding
Our columns over the past several months have been focused upon how I was drawn into relationship with a revered Hawaiian elder named Hale Kealohalani Makua. He was a kahuna nui, a high priest, by virtue of the body of esoteric indigenous wisdom that he carried, as well as an ali’i nui, a high chief due to his exceptional genealogy.
One of the areas that he and I discussed across the eight years of our friendship (before his passing in 2004) involved the phenomenon of spiritual unfolding--a process in response to which we, as souls, grow, increase and become more than we were.
In a previous column, I have drawn upon the thoughts of the philosopher Ken Wilber who has written about the nature of our uniquely human spiritual unfolding in his book One Taste.
I bring this topic up again for our consideration because it includes keys to the kingdom, so to speak. When we understand fully what it is that we have stepped into, or as Makua was fond of saying—what we all signed up for--the rest of our life becomes increasingly clear.
Wilber begins by observing (accurately in my opinion) that spiritual unfolding is a process of personal soul development that typically progresses through four major stages.
Belief
The first stage is belief, and there can be many kinds of beliefs—magical beliefs, mythic beliefs, rational beliefs, scientific beliefs and so forth.
Magical beliefs include the notion that we can dramatically affect the physical world, as well as other people, through the power of our ego—in other words, through intention. Kids’ TV shows are filled with such beliefs—scenarios in which superheroes can leap tall buildings in a single bound, travel faster that a speeding bullet, and zap enemies with a mental punch.
A couple of the latest New Age fads illustrate this nicely. The film called The Secret is an example of magical belief systems in action. It draws upon the ‘power of intention’ and ‘the law of attraction’ so that we can manifest the things that we want and bring them into our lives.
If your belief is strong enough, whatever you want may magically appear, and through our focused intentionality, we can manifest unlimited wealth, prime real estate, the perfect relationship, and BMW’s.
Those who have read Visionseeker, the third book in my Spiritwalker Trilogy, will recognize these ‘attainables’ as aspects of the ‘physical foursome’—money, power, sex and status. These are the things that motivate the young souls who are here to play and acquire the things of the physical world.
Another example of magical beliefs is the recent Fire The Grid phenomenon on the web whereby the call went out from a near death survivor for as many people as possible to meditate upon what the kahuna mystics call the aka field or na huihui o makali’i surrounding the earth, the true internet. We were all asked to do this on July 17, 2007, at 11:11 AM, visualizing this energetic matrix achieving a higher level of frequency vibration through our collective intention and literally ‘firing the grid’ in the process.
Without casting judgment, allow me to observe that such efforts, though worthy, rarely result in effects that are measurable, and we eventually come to understand (and accept) that we are not all powerful, that we cannot affect the world (let alone the Universe) through our egoic intentionality. It is usually then that we begin to embrace mythic beliefs.
In mythic belief systems, we delegate authority for manifesting our requests to God or to Jesus or to various other deities and spirits, including the compassionate archetypal forces, usually anthropomorphized as winged super-humans called angels.
At the onset, we find much support for these mythic beliefs in unending avalanches of well-intentioned metaphysical books, seminars and workshops, (not to mention our organized religions). Yet at this level of operation, we are simply dealing with another belief system in action--one that is based in the conviction that the deities, including “the creator,” have ultimate power over us and can be persuaded to serve us in various ways if our belief is strong enough or we pray hard enough or do ritual and ceremony correctly or long enough.
While magical and mythic beliefs can be greatly sustaining in the short term, not much changes in our lives in the long term, and sooner or later most of us come to understand three things quite clearly.
1) These are simply belief systems at their best.
2) If we are to interact effectively with the Universe at large (in its unthinkable immensity), we are going to have to understand the Universe on its own terms, and…
3) The Universe, despite all our best intentions, is by no means compelled to respond to us (in our immeasurable smallness).
Science provides us with powerful tools to approach and to understand the Universe on its own terms, and in choosing to move in this direction, we take a giant step up into yet another belief system--rational beliefs.
Rational beliefs, correctly perceived and understood, attempt to de-mythologize religion and the Universe at large. They attempt to portray God, for example, not as an anthropomorphic creator deity, but rather as a created archetype as discussed in a previous column.
And in looking at God as the process (and product) of creation itself, ‘the created’ rather than ‘the creator’, we can now begin to truly understand the method by which everything has come into being, including ourselves, because we can apply the scientific method in the study of the ‘created.’.
However, the cosmic impulse that set everything into motion—the universal directive toward ever increasing diversity that resulted in life itself—continues to elude us. This directive/impulse remains in the realm of the mysterious because that is its nature. This is and forever will be—the great mystery.
Yet even at the level of scientific investigation of the mystery, we become aware that we are dealing with belief systems yet once again.
Scientific beliefs, more commonly known as theories, can serve as the stuff that leads us to discover the answers to the mysteries, great and small. Theories, properly viewed and used, reveal layers of revelation, much like peeling an onion, with each new layer granting us entirely new levels of understanding.
Yet it is also around these scientific theories that major controversies usually develop, contentious and often grisly competitions for grant moneys, prestige and fame, which at their best generate still more theories, and at their worst, create disharmony and confusion and despair, and so forth and so on…
The problem with belief systems whether magical or mythic, rational or scientific, is that they are at best mental phenomena—collective thought-forms with strong emotional sentiments attached to them. And as such, beliefs can be continually embraced without ever changing one’s present level of consciousness in the least.
In other words—no growth.
Because of this, our beliefs usually fail to compel us in the end. We can believe in God or believe in angels 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
Faith soldiers on when our belief systems falter, and most people choose to remain here because faith is another great sustainer, another great supporter. Yet faith can take us in two quite different directions.
In one direction, faith can and does spiral us backward into belief. This is what fundamentalism is, and this includes the whole born again phenomenon. Fundamentalism, whether Judaic, Christian, Islamic, animistic/paganistic, or even Buddhist, is a trap on the spiritual path of truly immense proportions.
This is because 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 correctly as the second level of our spiritual unfolding, our self-serving and self-limiting magical and mythic beliefs, including faith itself, are transcended.
With this courageous act (of faith) we are drawn not back down the hill into narcissistic and egocentric belief systems once again, but forward and up the hill into the third stage of spiritual unfolding—Direct Experience.
Direct Experience
Direct experience of the transpersonal realms of spirit lies beyond both belief and faith. It is also 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.
What we’re talking about here is direct connection, but not with our culturally determined mental constructs of gods and goddesses and angels. Rather, at this stage we discover that each of us has the power to engage in authentic transpersonal experiences through which we discover the real archetypes.
Trans-personal in this sense implies that we are going beyond our personal ego, and in the process, we are expanding beyond our personal self—and beyond those self-created mythical thoughtforms that usually tell us just what we want to hear.
We are talking here about what Wilber and others refer to as the ‘deep psychic’ through which our conscious awareness can expand exponentially, allowing us to directly experience the authentic spiritual worlds.
In my two initial columns posted almost three years ago now (see the Meta Arts Archives), we discussed how most of us are genetically hard wired with a program to be able to do this. And when that ‘program’ on your inner hard drive (your DNA) is double-clicked with the right mouse, the deep psychic kicks on and true transpersonal experience becomes available to us.
The shamanic method is a powerful and easily learned way to do this—one that usually brings us into connection with ‘Nature Mysticism.’
This is an authentic spiritual path with heart that many of us experienced spontaneously as children through our contact with Nature. This is a path that we can learn to reconnect with as adults, a path that brings us into the direct transpersonal connection with the World Soul—the same multi-leveled archetypal matrix (and intelligence) that many call Gaia.
This contact is most often sensed as an immanent and user-friendly presence. Some of us experience it on the golf course, some on a fishing trip or weekend camping expedition. Sometimes it’s a walk in the park, or a hike through the woods, or a visit to the zoo, a trip to the beach.
The soul of Nature is alive. It’s aware of us, and always has been since we are part of it, and it expresses itself through those transpersonal, archetypal forces that the traditional peoples call ‘the spirits’.
We’re not talking about belief systems here. We have now gone beyond them and beyond faith as well. We’re talking about connection with the real thing. We’re talking about communion with the Infinite, and the doorway into it usually occurs through our one-on-one connection with Nature.
When you have had that mind-blowing direct contact with those spiritual forces hovering just to one side of us in the world of things hidden, this experience inevitably draws us into the fourth stage of our spiritual unfolding—Personal Transformation.
Personal Transformation
We are talking here about that ego-shattering, mind-expanding, and soul-enhancing experience known in the East as ‘enlightenment’ … one that includes deep realizations about the nature of the self and the nature of reality—an experience that conveys the mantle of authentic initiation upon the spiritual seeker, as well as authentic knowledge about the nature of the Universe and our place and role within it.
And it is then, precisely then, that we may step up into a still higher stage of spiritual unfoldment that brings us into direct connection with our own immortal transpersonal oversoul, the one who ‘hovers over us’—the real god-self or angelic-self who breathed its seed of light into us at the beginning of this life, and the one who will embrace and receive our soul cluster back into itself when we release our last breath at life’s end.
When we establish connection with this aspect of ourselves, we know with absolute clarity that the higher transpersonal levels of reality, the Subtle and even Causal Realms of awareness, have become available to us. And it is then that we may enter into relationship with what the ascended masters in both the Eastern and Western (and Indigenous) traditions have called true Deity Mysticism.
It is here (and only here) that we can really connect with the gods.
They reside in the Subtle Realms—in the dreamtime of the Australian Aborigines, the Spiritworlds of the indigenous cultures, the sacred otherworlds that all religions point toward—the ones that we may access through authentic transpersonal awareness.
And it is here that we may enter into relationship with the oversoul fields of those ascended masters.
Instead of ‘believing’ that you can pray to Jesus of Nazareth and that your prayer will be heard and answered, you may enter into transpersonal relationship directly with the oversoul field of which Jesus of Nazareth was (and is) an aspect. (My column several months ago titled The Sermon in the Airport offers a good example of what’s possible.)
As my friend Lama Surya Das is fond of saying, why be a Buddhist when you can be a Buddha?
Why proclaim yourself as a Christian when you can access the Christ directly, and in the process, experience what it’s like to be the Christ yourself?
Blasphemy? Not at all. But are you ready for this experience? The mythologist Joseph Campbell was fond of observing “If you want the whole enchilada, the Gods will give it to you, but you better be ready.”
This is what really waits for us all out there on the trail… and it’s up the hill, not down. We are to go forward and upward toward our own luminous destiny as a soul traveling across eternity, not backward and downward into archaic and outdated fundamentalist belief systems.
One more point is important to make here.
When we have had that direct, transformative experience of spirit, we become aware that one of the traps of New Age spirituality is its equating of magical and mythic belief systems with the true transpersonal experiences of the deep psychic (Nature Mysticism) and the subtle realms (Deity Mysticism).
Ken Wilber calls this tendency “to equate magic and myth with the psychic and subtle to be the single defining characteristic of the New Age Movement.” He exhorts us to stop confusing mythological stories with true transpersonal awareness, and points out that “the elevation of myth to subtle illumination is rampant in counter-cultural spirituality.”
Does this mean that power animals and angels, as well as spirits and deities do not exist? Not at all. But we have to progress beyond the relatively simplistic platforms of belief and faith in order to experience them as they really are.
Does this mean that the so-called law of attraction or the power of intention are invalid? Not at all. They simply need to be experienced and worked with beyond the limiting values of belief and faith.
When we engage with the compassionate archetypal forces directly, everything becomes available to us, but it’s not about worship. It’s about relationship.
Instead of pulling a power animal card or an angel card from an oracle deck and then reading in a book (or on the card) what that being’s message is for you is, you can make the transpersonal journey into your sacred garden, call in that animal power or angelic symbol you’ve drawn and then ask it directly why it has come to you and what it’s guidance for you may be.
As we have mentioned in previous columns, it’s time for an upgrade.
Until next month, allow me to invoke the spirit of Makua, my great Hawaiian friend, and with his blessing (and his words), 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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