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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 Unicorn
My narrative this month is inspired by an account offered by Frank DeMarco in his June 2008 column for the Meta Arts—a story of his participation in a workshop lead by the actress Shirley MacLaine many years ago in which he made a visionary journey to connect with his own higher self (see the Meta Arts Archives).
The story that I will tell you now is similar and reveals how easily non-tribal Western people may achieve a spontaneous and often unsought connection with the spiritworld—those same visionary realms of the dreamtime so well known to traditional shamans in indigenous societies.
It will also reveal how the archetypal forces who reside there and who are willing to help us in various ways, may suddenly and unexpectedly express themselves in a manner that may produce effects that may be very far reaching, even life-transforming.
It all happened on a bright spring day almost ten years ago in northern California where I was living at that time. I was at one of the colleges in the Sacramento area where I was teaching an anthropology class called Magic, Witchcraft and Religion.
In a previous class, we had defined the shaman as a man or woman who discovered, often by accident, that they had the ability to go into trance very easily, sometimes spontaneously for reasons that often remained obscure.
On that day, we were discussing ways in which the shamanic initiate in tribal societies sought out connection with a guardian spirit complex, usually in the mythic Lower Worlds, and I had described the stages of the classic vision quest, engaged in to some extent by all people everywhere.
We were discussing how shamans, in an expanded state of awareness, are able to journey into “the realm of things hidden” where they often encounter the spirits of animals and plants and elementals in the Lower Worlds, the spirits of departed ancestors in the Middle Worlds, as well as the higher transpersonal forces often anthropomorphized as winged super-humans called angels in the Upper Worlds.
I also described how shamans, mystics and visionaries are able to enter into relationship with the oversouls of the ascended masters like Jesus of Nazareth, Gautama the Buddha, or Yogananda in our own time—great avatars who came to be of service… and who still are.
We talked about how shamans are able to do various things through relationship with these archetypal forces, initially on behalf of themselves, and then increasingly on behalf of members of their families and communities—and how this cluster of abilities defines the shaman and sets them apart from other kinds of religious practitioners.
All this was on the table of our discussion that day when a young woman in the front row of the classroom raised her hand. She had never asked a question before, and so I nodded to her as she found her voice to speak.
“I had an interesting experience in this same classroom last semester,” she began hesitantly. “I think it bears relevance to what we are talking about today. May I share some of it with you and the class?”
I nodded again as I watched the focus of the entire room shift to her. This made her nervous as she wasn’t used to speaking before a group. I made a mental scan of the class list and found her name. I smiled at her and made encouraging gestures, using her name to help her find her courage. It worked.
“Last semester I was in a psych class in which the instructor decided to give us the experience of a guided visualization…” her voice began to drift off again. I made more encouraging movements.
“He had us all close our eyes while sitting at our desks and visualize ourselves standing in a meadow.” She thought for a moment. “Once we were there, he had us reach down to touch the long grasses with our hands, smell the scent of the flowers, hear the songs of the birds and the breeze through the trees… things like that.”
I nodded again “He instructed you to activate and enhance your sensory-cognitive-motor complex.” She looked relieved. “It’s what Jung called active imagination,” I added.
“Whatever,” she continued. “He then had us all walk across the meadow toward a small hill with a tree on top. Then he asked us to climb the hill. When we got to the summit, he had us feel the bark of the tree to see if it was rough or smooth. Then he told us that there were low branches that allowed us to reach up and climb the tree and we did.
“He then instructed us to peer out between the leaves to see what lay beyond the meadow. For some reason, I looked down rather than out. And there, on the other side of the tree, was this big hole going down into the ground.” She looked at me speculatively. I nodded again and smiled.
“On impulse I got down from the tree and walked around to the hole. It was a big well shaft going straight down into the earth… and it had a spiral staircase built into its wall leading down into the darkness.” She paused and glanced behind her at the rest of the class. You could have heard a pin drop in the room.
“I’m not too wild about being in the dark, but I couldn’t resist standing on the top step. And when I did,” He eyebrows shot upwards, “ the vertical part of the step under my foot lit up. It was like there was a light inside the step.
“I stepped down and the next one lit up too, and the next, and the next. I could see the inside of the well now. The walls were made of old stonework all fitted together with moss growing on them. The stairway seemed strong and sturdy however, so I went down some more steps. They continued to light up.
“Then I decided to run down them and they lit up really fast, like strobe lights almost…” She paused. “I felt really good, kind of euphoric… and then I suddenly heard the voice of the psychologist. He was droning away about walking down the hill back to the meadow. I quickly looked upward in alarm. The circle of blue sky was no bigger than a penny. I was way down inside the well and began to feel a sense of panic. What was I gonna do?”
The girl was watching me to see my reaction. I sensed what was coming and said “Please continue…”
“Well,” she went on, “I looked down and I could just see the bottom of the well shaft. It appeared dry. I went down another dozen steps until I was at the bottom. There was a big door with an old-fashioned doorknob and a knocker built into the wall.
“I walked over to the door. There was a keyhole so I bent over and looked through. There was light on the other side but I couldn’t really make anything out. So I thought for a moment, then reached up and pulled the knocker toward me and swung it down—KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.
“I waited but nothing happened. I was reaching for the knocker again when I heard a faint tap tap tap coming from the other side. ‘Whoa! ‘I thought.’ I’m in over my head. I was just about to head back up the stairs when I heard the tapping once again. What could it be? ‘ I wondered.
“Then something within me seemed to step forward and without thinking about it, I reached forward, grasped the big doorknob and twisted it. The door slowly opened…”
The class was dead silent, every eye on the girl before me. She had their absolute and undivided attention.
“I found myself staring out across the most beautiful landscape I had ever seen. It was like the meadow I had just left but much grander and the grass was more than just green. It was also lemon yellow and orange in places. Beyond the meadow were the strangest, biggest trees I had ever seen. The words that came into my mind were ‘this is the enchanted forest.’
“And far away beyond the trees were misty mountains all purple… and the sky… there was a great golden sun down here. ” Her voice trailed off. “It was like a painting. It was just totally unreal, and yet it was alive and …” She sought for words to describe her vision.
“I was suddenly aware that there were animals in the meadow, lots of them and one of them was walking straight toward me… When it got closer, I saw it was a unicorn… an honest to god unicorn…”
One of the boys in back of the classroom snickered at this point in her story and the mood wavered. Many of these kids were right out of high school… The girl in the front row ignored him with a slight frown and continued.
“The unicorn walked right up to me. It was incredibly beautiful… all iridescent and sparkly with its long beard and long spiral horn. It stopped and looked directly at me with its beautiful liquid eyes and a voice seemed to come from it. It said ‘Hi… my name is Sam. What’s yours?’”
I fixed my gaze on the snickerer before he could react and his laugh froze in his throat. I glanced back at the young woman before me.
“It was too much,” she said plaintively. “It was too real. I felt confusion. I opened my eyes in the classroom and the whole scene just faded away until it was gone.” She thought for a moment. “I’ve never told this to anyone before. Do you think that I found my way into the Lower World?”
On that day, a long discussion followed in which the class first approached this account from the perspective of the philosophical materialist—essentially the view of Western psychology in which the dream worlds and all that is perceived within them are regarded as products that originate in the mind of the perceiver. In other words, visions and dreams are regarded as illusions (or delusions) and therefore not real. This is also the Buddhist perspective.
We then approached the same story through the perspective of the transpersonal psychologist in which transpersonal aspects of the self and reality at large are regarded as possible, even expected under certain conditions. One such transpersonal self-aspect would be the higher self or oversoul. From this view, it could be observed that the unicorn was a manifestation of the student’s own higher self—the same idea that occurred to Frank DeMarco.
Finally we reexamined her vision though the eyes of the panpsychist—essentially the perspective of the tribal shaman in which everything in existence possesses its own personal supernatural aspect or soul (the doctrine of animism) and that therefore everything is alive and conscious, at least to some degree (the doctrine of hylozoism).
In this discussion, no one view was favored over another, yet all the students left with a good deal to think about.
Yet there is something else about this story that deserves mention. This young woman’s experience began as a guided visualization in which the instructor was ‘talking the class through the exercise’—in other words, telling them what to see.
But when she looked down and saw the well-shaft, she had shifted into visionary mode. She then proceeded to have her experience of entry into the Lower World and the rest of the journey then simply unfolded as her conscious awareness re-geographied itself (journeyed) into the same spirit world perceived across time by countless shamans in all cultural traditions.
Her spontaneous visionary experience strongly supports two essentially complimentary interpretations.
1) Many psychologists and anthropologists have suggested that there exists a basic psychic unity that connects all human minds everywhere and everywhen to each other, and
2) The spirit worlds—‘the realm of things hidden’ of the shaman and ‘the implicate order’ of the advanced theoretical physicists--as well as who and what are perceived within them, may have their own autonomous existence and agendas quite separate from those who can see them. In other words, they are real.
The young woman attended one of my shamanism workshops later in the year, and in her first visionary journey, assisted by the monotonous sonic driving of my drum, she returned to the meadow through which she found her way back to the hilltop and back down the well shaft. And when she accessed the Lower World once again, she found reconnection with the unicorn who came into relationship with her as a helping spirit.
I saw her again about a year later in the college cafeteria. Over a cup of tea, she told me that once the unicorn came into her life, everything changed—subtly at first, and then with increasing power.
First, she found a good job and with the money she made, she found ‘the perfect car.’ Within six months, she had moved out of her family home and into her own apartment. She was now involved with ‘the perfect boyfriend’ and had been accepted into a prestigious university where she intended to take pre-med with medical school to follow.
“It was the unicorn, you know…” she twinkled at me over her tea. “My whole life changed once he came into relationship with me and he’s still with me.”
I had no doubts that she would succeed at whatever she set her mind to.
Until next month, allow me to invoke the spirit of Chief Hale 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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