Extract from my new book: Why is shamanism becoming so popular?
Why is shamanism in all its varieties becoming increasingly popular? Why is this happening now?
In a nutshell we can say that as human beings we have an innate drive to develop into ‘all that we can become’, and that we have reached a point where a shift in consciousness and a change of our way of life is inevitable if we want to develop further – or even survive – as a species.
Our efforts over the last two millennia have focused increasingly on material reality, economic growth, consumption and scientifically orientated mental development. This has produced materially wealthy societies, but has neglected our inner and spiritual development. We have lost our connection to the Earth, to our souls and to the sacred within and without, and are deprived of deeper meaning and purpose.
The shamanic archetype, that knowing pattern deep within us, reminds us of how it felt when we were still focused on soul and spirit, embedded in a community and experiencing ourselves as an integral part of existence. It reminds us of what we need to come back to on our human journey if we want to become balanced and whole.
We have reached a point in human evolution where many of us are beginning to wake up to the fact that our materialistic world-views, the economic structures of our societies and our one-sided development have created a range of very disturbing ecological, economic, social and political problems and, most importantly, ‘soulless’ societies.
The price we have paid is much higher than can be outlined in the context of this book. The environmental devastation, the extinction of species, the destruction and uprooting of almost all indigenous cultures around the world, the cruelty of slavery, the religious crusades, the horrendous world wars and more tell their own story.
Even our much-hailed economic progress has now – in global terms – produced an inequality in wealth distribution on a scale never seen before, where 1 per cent of the world’s population owns 48 per cent of the world’s wealth. Even in developed countries that have a good share of the created wealth, we still pay a high price. We have reached record levels of so-called ‘mental disorders’, with depression and anxiety disorders leading the field, and loneliness and isolation following on behind.
The pressure to be ‘well adjusted’ to a soul-denying society is taking its toll. For me as a psychologist, it is not surprising that the suffering of the soul, which has not been catered for at best and negated at worst in contemporary society for a long time now, is ending up in the consulting rooms of medical practitioners, therapists and psychiatrists in the form of psychosomatic pains, diffuse emotional disturbances, hopelessness, disenchantment and depletion of energy as well as anxiety and depressive disorders. Jung warned that if we did not explore and nourish the psyche, we would not survive as a civilisation. He understood, as many more do now, that we would lose our souls in the process.
FOR WESTERN WOMEN IT WAS FIRST ABOUT EQUALITY. It was about being seen and heard in a patriarchal society, about equal pay, about voting rights, about being valued and more. It was becoming good at competing, climbing ladders, proving that we can develop our left-brain capacities - that we can succeed and catch up in a world that had suppressed women for millennia. Our quest for equality led to much imitation of the 'masculine and patriarchal' because it was necessary to internalise patriarchal values, adopt rational, goal orientated thinking and acting and, for women, it was often about working harder and behaving tougher than their male colleagues if they wanted to be accepted as equals or attempted to break through the glass ceiling.
The feminine has become a much-talked-about subject. Concepts and ideas, such as ‘the empowering of the feminine’ or ‘the feminine needs to come to the fore’ are thrown into conversations and feminine leadership, feminine ways of working, feminine structures, values and attitudes are topics discussed from the alternative scenes to the boardrooms.
The rise of the feminine seems well under way. It will be a long and exciting journey - not without obstacles, not without resistance from those who would like to turn the clock back, not without certain scenes trying to make it 'fluffy and nice', and certainly not without the interference of market forces, trying to press this diverse movement into formats that ensure its adaptation to the existing structures and thinking.
Nevertheless, as the current global crisis is rooted in humanity’s loss of ‘heart, soul and connection to the wider field’ - all domains of the feminine - which have been replaced by a materialistic view of the world, by lateral thinking, greed and self-centredness, the journey of the feminine will continue. The more we wake up and accept that this loss has brought with it immense destruction in place of the nurturing qualities all of life so urgently needs, the more we will be forced to explore the feminine and work towards its emergence on every level of our existence.
The feminine debate ties in with the consciousness debate and the exploration of the ‘mind and matter interaction’. This is because, in the final analysis, it is a matter of ‘how we think about the world, our planet and human evolution within it’ that shapes the direction we will take as a species. This thinking about the world is changing and, with our growing understanding of the interconnectedness of all of life (on an underlying level), we increasingly realize that our one-sided materialistic and patriarchal ways cannot be sustained.
When we try to define ‘the feminine’, we enter hazy waters. It has, after all, been hiding behind the veil, trying to escape the belittling, denying, devaluing and abusive treatment it has suffered through millennia of patriarchal thinking, structures and values. Importantly, it cannot be explored easily when we are stuck in a mind-set that restricts us to the rational and material. Nevertheless, feminine attributes and principles, such as love, nurturing, caring, connectedness, gestating, intuition, natural wildness, embodiment and more are not only named now, but longed for. Whilst this process is ongoing, I feel that it is necessary to begin by distilling the essence of the feminine: the life creating, life gestating and life sustaining force. This aspect lies at the heart of the matter and it needs to break through the hazy veil and come to the fore, needs to penetrate all our thoughts, ideas, values and morals and guide our actions. Without it we cannot love, nurture, care and connect. Without it we cannot achieve a shift in paradigm.
WAKE UP 'CONSCIOUSNESS SCENCE"! WHAT ABOUT THE FEMININE?
﻿Not long ago I spoke to a friend who is part of a team organizing a consciousness conference. Looking at the speakers and their subjects, I was surprised that a conference dedicated to ‘ecology, consciousness, human evolution, spirituality, future’ didn’t include a topic that explored the outcomes of the imbalance of the feminine and masculine in our patriarchal societies. This was reflected in the line up of speakers, who were predominantly male. I checked a few more events in the consciousness conference calendar and found a similar picture: only one third, or sometimes even less, of the speakers were female.
We all begin to understand that a functioning, sustainable whole requires the feminine and the masculine to be integrated within the individual and within humanity as a whole, and we are increasingly aware of the dysfunctional results of millennia of human development based almost solely on patriarchal, masculine value systems. The issues deriving from this one-sided way of thinking and being reach from the appalling way women were, and still are, treated all over the world to the over-exploitation of our planet’s (mother earth’s) resources. They show themselves in the way we use wars as a means of conflict resolution and in the non-caring, self-centred attitudes of our societies. They have led to the exclusion of the feminine from our major religions and to valuing individual success, hierarchical structures and left-brain scientific thinking more than caring for communities, sharing structures and emotional intelligence and connection. None of the countless issues we face on this planet today can be resolved by our current way of thinking and being, based on our established, mainly masculine, value systems.
So, why is the feminine principle not more prominent as a subject and, as importantly, why aren’t more women invited to speak about it? When I asked my friend, who is a heart- and soul-orientated guy, this question, he replied “Oh, it didn’t even occur us.” Yes, that’s exactly it! It is a kind of ‘thoughtless’ acceptance of the status quo.
The feminine wasn’t always subordinate to the masculine. As far as we know, it was the earth, nature itself, who provided our ancient, tribal forefathers and mothers with the concept of the Great Mother and with a value system based on nature’s ways and cycles. The Great Mother was a symbol of life itself. In her womb grew all of life; from her body emerged all of life; she sustained all of life through the nourishment she provided, and all living things retuned to her when dying. Therefore, the Great Mother, as an inclusive force of life, and its cycles, was seen as being sacred. The feminine principle stems in its origins from this nature-based concept, as the female body exhibits the same patterns and cycles as nature. Consequently, the feminine was seen as the life-giving, nurturing, sustaining and life-embracing force, the ‘creative vessel of life that contained, birthed, nurtured and protected’. Not surprising, then, that ancient people respected the feminine.
Over many millennia, we developed from a tribal, hunter-gatherer existence. We became more powerful users of tools and resources; we established agriculture and individual possession; we begun to fight territorial wars; we started to build big cities and civilizations and we grew in numbers. And as all of this was happening, our spiritual systems changed: the feminine, as the sacred womb-creatrix, was replaced by the masculine all-powerful god-head. We went from female goddesses and priestesses, to both male and female deities, and then to the dominance of the male gods and male priests. These gods were fierce, war-orientated, powerful creatures, competing with each other for influence and for the possession and sub-ordination of the feminine. This became increasingly evident in ancient Greece around 500 – 400 BC, but so far as our current state of consciousness is concerned the subjugation of the feminine principle reached its culmination in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. In these three ‘religions of the book’ the ‘one masculine God in the sky’ is firmly established whilst the sacred feminine disappears either completely or is, as in Christianity for instance, replaced with a split, guilty woman and a holy mother, subordinated to her son.
I am a psychologist, therapist, lecturer, shamanic teacher and author. This blog aims to contribute to the expansion of consciousness and to the necessary paradigm shift. My contributions are from a shamanic and feminine perspective.
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