Thread: I am a shaman

Originally Posted by b12

Would you impart sacred knowledge so freely? If I typed to you the words, you would hardly understand. It's not yet time for you, yet the simple knowledge that the subject exists will in time give you understanding. The words are just words, yet the implications are both challenging and life-changing.

I am curious now. Let us hear it, please.

I am making way too many references to this experience of mine, but when I was in South America, I have spent time with a member of the Krishna Consciousness. This person made sure she said "Hare Krishna" to everyone she met (in subtle ways). The reason is those words purify people from Karma. She wasn't converting people at all, actually, she sort of kept it secret because she didn't want to get people's prejudice but she found subtle ways to cleanse other people. The person didn't need to know what "Hare Krishna" meant.

In the same way, it would be nice if you could say the words, not so we may understand them necessarily but so they may purify us in a way.

I think my story is relevant, because this particular person I'm talking about went to a jungle shaman (Everyone knows about the amazonian shamans!) not too far from where we were and the shaman said she didn't need his hallucinogenic drink because she was above that (spiritually speaking), she could see ghosts and auras.

Anyways, I am curious to here what that shaman had to say, what was your question. It can only do good. And you've already mentioned the story. The value of it won't be diminished from being shared. It will only grow.

When a bee pollinates a flower, who knows if any new plant will blossom from it, but it's the only way it will ever happen.

Besides, you told your friends, and I would be impressed that three users of drugs would be the only people at a high enough level of wisdom to understand this, and not us, which have lots of hallucinogenic experience (That is, dreams). Besides, my understanding of Shamanic practice is that drugs are only a facilitating tool that wouldn't even need to be used by someone who is in great relationship with nature and whatever is beyond, ex. Sivason.

Originally Posted by Denziloe

If it was intensely personal I don't see how it makes sense to... tell everybody about it.

It's pretty straight forward - he briefly mentioned an experience he had that was somewhat related to the topic, but didn't go into any more detail than was necessary. No need to try and poke and prod it.

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

I am making way too many references to this experience of mine, but when I was in South America, I have spent time with a member of the Krishna Consciousness. This person made sure she said "Hare Krishna" to everyone she met (in subtle ways). The reason is those words purify people from Karma. She wasn't converting people at all, actually, she sort of kept it secret because she didn't want to get people's prejudice but she found subtle ways to cleanse other people. The person didn't need to know what "Hare Krishna" meant.

I know I'm going off on a tangent, but I can't stand people that confuse their hippy-isms with spirituality. eg. people who convert to Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. because they think those religions will make them "more enlightened." A monk in meditation is no more profound than a bible-thumper at mass or a professor in a lecture hall.

Originally Posted by GavinGill

I know I'm going off on a tangent, but I can't stand people that confuse their hippy-isms with spirituality. eg. people who convert to Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. because they think those religions will make them "more enlightened." A monk in meditation is no more profound than a bible-thumper at mass or a professor in a lecture hall.

Well, those thoughts are kind of amusing in a weird angle.

In defense to my friend OR. I wouldn't take it too seriously

GavinGill, I will answer your comment. I am not sure I completely understood it so I will respond to it in different ways so that one of my answers will be relevant.

Originally Posted by GavinGill

I can't stand people that confuse their hippy-isms with spirituality.

It's hard for me to understand this one sentence because neither the Krishna Consciousness member or I were being hippies. I was volunteering and had 2 "Spanish" classes per week with different teachers. We talked about culture, religion, and politics. It was very fun talking to all these people with different perspectives. One of them was a Jehova's Witness and it was a lot more fun talking to her than people say it is. My teacher who was an Hare Krishna member just talked to me about her own faith and I asked if I could go with her to the temple (after we had talked about these subjects for many hours) because I had never been to such a religious event.

I am saying this because there is a huge "hippie" traveler culture in South America, and not that I have anything against them, I did not happen to interact with them.

Originally Posted by GavinGill

Eg. people who convert to Hinduism, Buddhism, etc. because they think those religions will make them "more enlightened." A monk in meditation is no more profound than a bible-thumper at mass or a professor in a lecture hall.

This makes a lot more sense! I definitely see what you mean in this sentence. Personally, I don't see what is wrong with it, though. Let me explain.

If you're saying my teacher was looking to Krishna Consciousness for enlightenment, well, why not? She was raised in a Mormon family. Her family was very religious. However back in that time (20 years ago), there was a lot of violence, you would hear explosions in the night, there would be black-outs and gun fire and you couldn't talk about politics to your university profs because a lot of them were part of violent organizations and you could be hurt. Anyways, because of all the violence, and because she did see auras and ghosts and stuff, she just didn't identify with her family religion. She turned to another catholic branch religion. It didn't work for her. In the end, she found the Krishna Consciousness, and that specific religion succeeded in explaining the things that she didn't understand about her life and give her a proper spiritual blooming.

I think it's perfect for people to reach out for Hinduism or Buddhism because they relate better to that. But like you said, there is as much value in a catholic or secular life. Personally, I am attracted by Eastern beliefs. It hasn't prevented me to learn a lot from many different religions and secular school of thoughts.


If However, you are saying that you don't agree that I would bring religious spirituality in the topic of shamanism, well, I don't know, I think shamanism very well fits in the religious spirituality topic. And the reason I brought Krishna Consciousness in the topic is not that I think that it is superior, I am not a member of it, there was just something that I thought was relevant, that is, you don't need to succeed at explaining something to someone, only exposing them to it is valuable.

(I have done catholic-sorcery stuff too in South America. I prayed to a mommy and watched until my candles burned out for my spells to be cast (all good ones). That was my Jehovah Witness teacher that brought me in that secret invitation only place. I'm just saying this because I thought it was very cool, and yes Catholics can be even more mystical than eastern religion believers sometimes).

Originally Posted by Occipitalred

GavinGill, I will answer your comment. I am not sure I completely understood it so I will respond to it in different ways so that one of my answers will be relevant.



It's hard for me to understand this one sentence because neither the Krishna Consciousness member or I were being hippies. I was volunteering and had 2 "Spanish" classes per week with different teachers. We talked about culture, religion, and politics. It was very fun talking to all these people with different perspectives. One of them was a Jehova's Witness and it was a lot more fun talking to her than people say it is. My teacher who was an Hare Krishna member just talked to me about her own faith and I asked if I could go with her to the temple (after we had talked about these subjects for many hours) because I had never been to such a religious event.

I am saying this because there is a huge "hippie" traveler culture in South America, and not that I have anything against them, I did not happen to interact with them.



This makes a lot more sense! I definitely see what you mean in this sentence. Personally, I don't see what is wrong with it, though. Let me explain.

If you're saying my teacher was looking to Krishna Consciousness for enlightenment, well, why not? She was raised in a Mormon family. Her family was very religious. However back in that time (20 years ago), there was a lot of violence, you would hear explosions in the night, there would be black-outs and gun fire and you couldn't talk about politics to your university profs because a lot of them were part of violent organizations and you could be hurt. Anyways, because of all the violence, and because she did see auras and ghosts and stuff, she just didn't identify with her family religion. She turned to another catholic branch religion. It didn't work for her. In the end, she found the Krishna Consciousness, and that specific religion succeeded in explaining the things that she didn't understand about her life and give her a proper spiritual blooming.

I think it's perfect for people to reach out for Hinduism or Buddhism because they relate better to that. But like you said, there is as much value in a catholic or secular life. Personally, I am attracted by Eastern beliefs. It hasn't prevented me to learn a lot from many different religions and secular school of thoughts.


If However, you are saying that you don't agree that I would bring religious spirituality in the topic of shamanism, well, I don't know, I think shamanism very well fits in the religious spirituality topic. And the reason I brought Krishna Consciousness in the topic is not that I think that it is superior, I am not a member of it, there was just something that I thought was relevant, that is, you don't need to succeed at explaining something to someone, only exposing them to it is valuable.

(I have done catholic-sorcery stuff too in South America. I prayed to a mommy and watched until my candles burned out for my spells to be cast (all good ones). That was my Jehovah Witness teacher that brought me in that secret invitation only place. I'm just saying this because I thought it was very cool, and yes Catholics can be even more mystical than eastern religion believers sometimes).

Perhaps I shouldn't have been so vague...

I wasn't knocking you or your friend, your post just reminded me of a certain kind of person that I find annoying. I live close to Vancouver and the city's full of suburban (usually White) folks who think they'll magically become enlightened by adopting some Eastern faith (typically Hinduism or Buddhism), growing dreadlocks, talking about attaining "nirvana" (or at least their half-ass conception of it), and basically living their lives as if they were cartoons. It's as if they see themselves as being on top of the "spiritual hierarchy" because they did some reading on Lao Tzu and "raised their consciousness" by reciting a few "Hare Krishna's" in the morning. It's nothing more than modern-day orientalism. Hippes that think they're sages.

Words of wisdom do not make a wise man, as anyone can repeat them. It is a matter of timing and context that helps a man appear wise. The mysterious words needed to be spoken on that path, at that time, and while the listener had enough LSD on board. Take that away and they would just be words. Repeat them now and we will say, "that is not very profound." It is the core of,"you just had to be there."

^^ Then they are not words of wisdom. Period.

The moment may have held some transcendental wisdom -- or at least seemed that way, given the drug use. But words are words, and mean exactly what they mean. To announce that "You had to be there" in order to understand the meaning of specific words is a cop-out that ersatz mystics have been hiding behind since there have been mystics. I'll accept such a cop-out if a person is trying to describe a transcendental experience that leaps beyond any words or metaphor that might describe it (I've had a few of those myself), but not when he is using it to keep a specific word-based question and answer from us.

Not to mention that it is decidedly offensive, B12, to assume that no one can understand what you said or heard...leave it to us to misunderstand your question and/or answer, rather than assume our ignorance (yes, that also risks us deciding that those words are meaningless, but why should you care about that?).

Perhaps B12 doesn't himself understand it yet. It takes some amount of grasping to fully recapitulate and share wisdom.

^^ That would be mystics' official cop-out #2, I think. Also, B12 implied that he did understand, and he certainly understood the question he asked. And again, why would that even matter? We could all not understand the words together, and either be amazed or not.

[Also, I think this conversation is very much on topic, because we are sort of challenging the notion of making unsupported claims about shamanism, which I think is relevant to the OP. Okay, I'm doing the challenging, given my solitary position here.]

I think given the situation: B12 understood that what the guy said was somehow true and relevant and proves he's a shaman. He/it in no way implies that he actually understood the answer itself he just understood it to be true..

What is the question? Spill ur guts B12 We are eager here!!

All i'm saying is that truly repeating a piece of wisdom takes some serious work. Otherwise you are just repeating a subjective and not wisdom.. And repeating subjectives doesn't make sense to anyone. Cus it's not real wisdom.

... I like that you challenge. You are honest so... if that is somehow too much heat atleast you are spurring B12 to spill his guts

.
I say, we do need more modern day shamans.. Whatever that constitutes. To me it means someone who traspesses the barrier between the unknown and the known and influences the society in magical ways.

Maybe the question was, "do girls fart?". The answer...too disturbing to be repeated.

modified by sivason

-post was offensive

Dude, if Terence McKenna wasn't a shaman, then I'm pretty sure no one here is either.

Ok. I don't want to be offensive or hurt about it. But how certain can you really be about it? There is honestly not much information to work with. Besides, only OP is claiming to be a shaman.

Hope we can do this without resorting to I'm right ur Wrong kind of attituted. I'm just trying to facillitate the discussion

IMO, someone who talks like the OP can't possibly be a shaman. I've heard stories about real shamans down in the Amazon, and they don't sound like teenagers with inflated egos.

Just my 2 cents.

I was kind of a self proclaimed shaman for a few years. It was when I was about 20 and into mushrooms and such. None of my peers gave a crap about otherworldly things and just took drugs to get high. I had some profound experiences and imagine I was fairly close in my approach to what would be shamanism. However, I came to a few conclusions about my own path. 1) Drugs are interesting, but not something you should hold to for long if you want the most potential in life. They only have so much to share, and at some point it is old news. I moved forward. 2) Nature is great, but I started to see deep spiritual virtue in any manifest thing, even macaroni and cheese. I have reverence for nature, but I look at a bigger picture now. 3) I became in awe of God (god/ gods/ the higher self/ the one etc...) and found myself far more drawn into yogic mysticism in which seeking a connection with God was the source of 'bliss,' Then none of the drug stuff mattered anymore.

Being a 'shaman' in modern-day society seems harder than it is from an amazonian village. Shamanism isn't exactly defined well. But say it constitutes what the indians did and it encompasses going into the desert for 3 days and eat Peyote.

This kind of freedom in this society is hard to get by.. Going outside and eating mescaline. I've been there. Encompasses strange faces, very strange experiences. And that is just training wheels for being a shaman if you ask me.

There is also no guidance. I mean, shamans are trained by other shamans per usual. I can very much agree that being trained as a shaman in this society without having guidance is though.

This forum gets more disgusting day by day. So someone gave words of wisdom to b12, regardless of what those words were, it was obviously a personal message that doesn't include anyone else in this thread. B12 doesn't have to tell you those words to prove anything. It was a personal experience and that's what spirituality is. Personal.

What confuses me is not the content of the message (because it's just information, I'd guess drawing knowledge of them could potentially be impossible like B12 said), but the fact that if it's such a personal message of spiritual relevance, which like juroara said, emphasis on personal, how could 3 distinct people reach the same conclusion about it? Even if they're extremely informed about B12 life, I'd think that a shaman message would be unique to him, or....personal.

I mean, if I was in the same situation and my friend said "he was really a shaman!" I'd say "jesus, the man was too obvious, even other people can grasp this apparently deep message about myself after CREATING knowledge out of a piece of information (cause like B12 said, it's not the words that matter, his friend would have to attain knowledge of what they meant in order to agree with him that the man was indeed a shaman)". Right?

If it was intensely personal I don't see how it makes sense to... tell everybody about it.

I was just being a smart ass and should say "I am sorry" to B-12. Sorry B-12.

Thanks for sharing your encounter. I have no problem with calling anyone a Shaman who desires to follow that form of spiritual inquiry. As far as I am concerned if the guy spends lots of time alone in nature and draws his spirituality from it and believes he is attaining a connection with "the spirit world" then we may as well accept his claim. It is not like the guy B-12 met was claiming any certain magical skill that he claimed could be observed.

How is this really any different than if we deny someone's claim to be a martial artist? That claim is not to be a master in one skill or be better than some one else. It is just a claim to having gone through many steps on the path of learning. The same fits the shaman argument.


The man on the path has given no reason to doubt him, so I find it rude to think otherwise, just as it would be rude to reject a claim that one is a Buddhist who meditates a lot.


Now, why was I being a smart-ass in this thread? The OP seems very dramatic and attention seeking in the manner that makes me think they are 16 years old. Add to that not a single comment about shamanism itself or how they practice it. At least no comments that make any sense. Then they fail to respond in any way, such as telling about experiences or philosophies. It came across a lot like "I am a Jedi!!! Yep a freaking Jedi, Play some Star Wars music, because that is how cool I am. No, I refuse to give details, it is a curse to be so damn powerful and awesome."

My comment about B12's experience was just joking around about the nature of comments that seem profound at the moment, but do not seem special when typed out on a forum.

Originally Posted by sivason

The man on the path has given no reason to doubt him, so I find it rude to think otherwise, just as it would be rude to reject a claim that one is a Buddhist who meditates a lot.

This might not be the best example. There are many forms of Buddhist practice that have nothing to do with meditation, and there are many forms of meditation that have nothing to do with Buddhism.

Originally Posted by GavinGill

Perhaps I shouldn't have been so vague...

I wasn't knocking you or your friend, your post just reminded me of a certain kind of person that I find annoying. I live close to Vancouver and the city's full of suburban (usually White) folks who think they'll magically become enlightened by adopting some Eastern faith (typically Hinduism or Buddhism), growing dreadlocks, talking about attaining "nirvana" (or at least their half-ass conception of it), and basically living their lives as if they were cartoons. It's as if they see themselves as being on top of the "spiritual hierarchy" because they did some reading on Lao Tzu and "raised their consciousness" by reciting a few "Hare Krishna's" in the morning. It's nothing more than modern-day orientalism. Hippes that think they're sages.

Haha, silly me!

Well, I think those eastern religions get more hype because they give importance to mindfulness, while western religions give importance to love, and maybe being raised in a place where love is already the big focus, maybe it feels like an evolution when they add mindfulness to the mix. Could that be it? I feel like the opposite isn't true because Eastern cultures still do have love in their faith.

Originally Posted by Verre

This might not be the best example. There are many forms of Buddhist practice that have nothing to do with meditation, and there are many forms of meditation that have nothing to do with Buddhism.

I think it still was a good example because despite all you said, if a person meditates a lot and identifies themselves as a Buddhist, it's still rude to say "You're not a Buddhist."

For example, I don't drink alcohol. I take sips to taste the different kinds (but as it is an acquired taste, I still never like them ) Anyways, when I am at a party, people feel the need to pressure me. I use to say "It's a life choice. I value mindfulness and have chosen not to drink." but then they would start a conversation with lots of people where everyone makes comments like "You're a child. You're so innocent. Just wait for the day you grow up..." and "Why don't you drink?" and "I know people who didn't drink till your age then they didn't know how to control their consumption". I find that type of conversation very "not-fun". I don't know why they feel the need to do it. And the last thing I want to do is further explain my stance because they will think I am attacking their lifestyle. So I have changed my approach. Now, when people tell me to drink, I just say I am Buddhist. The response is great. They just say "Wow, that's so cool!" I don't call myself Buddhist otherwise though but it makes parties a lot more fun! If they drink, I can be a Buddhist! And it's not so much of a lie because I do value and follow the main Buddhist values and I don't drink for the same reason as them.

Now, it has happened that someone else in the room was also Buddhist and they did drink. How rude would it be for me to say they weren't Buddhist? The reason they were Buddhist is because they had anxiety and concentration problems. Buddhism retreats and meditation allowed them to deal with that. We all have our reasons.

Labels are mostly just for the person themselves. Just like gender identity. It doesn't matter what you truly are. Labels are only ways that help you describe yourself and you're comfortable with. If someone is a Shaman, then they are. But what does it mean to them to be a shaman, that's the true question.

Originally Posted by sivason

The man on the path has given no reason to doubt him, so I find it rude to think otherwise, just as it would be rude to reject a claim that one is a Buddhist who meditates a lot.

Sure, but we (or at least I) were not rejecting any claims. Asking for more details about a vague story for the sake of understanding at least peripherally what the speaker is talking about is in no way rude, and certainly not a rejection.

Also, regarding the question asked, much less the answer, in the story to be extremely personal becomes moot when the speaker chooses to announce that there was a question and answer; and remember that the exchange with the shaman was apparently not too personal for his two friends to understand immediately.

Sorry; bad mood this morning.

Originally Posted by Sageous

Sure, but we (or at least I) were not rejecting any claims. Asking for more details about a vague story for the sake of understanding at least peripherally what the speaker is talking about is in no way rude, and certainly not a rejection.

Also, regarding the question asked, much less the answer, in the story to be extremely personal becomes moot when the speaker chooses to announce that there was a question and answer; and remember that the exchange with the shaman was apparently not too personal for his two friends to understand immediately.

Sorry; bad mood this morning.

No problem, None of us rejected the claim that the guy on the path was a Shaman. I agree with you, and was just pointing out that we (as a whole) were not doubting that, as much as finding the post from B-12 to invite further question, plus what I said about how what seems profound at the moment (on acid for example) will seem silly typed out to the sober.