Why Shamanism Now - A Practical Path to Authenticity

There has been a great domestication of the heart in America, numbing and dumbing down the voice that should guide us. It is the rare individual today who knows the path of his or her heart, who is fearless in feeling the passionate emotions of a spiritual adult, and who finds the courage of heart, discipline and devotion, day in and day out, to get off the couch, out of the office, or unplug from the Internet and take the steps to make their soul’s purpose happen. Loving openly is considered foolish and following the heart considered weak or weak minded. However, if the Story of the People is to change and support us in creating a qualitatively different world, then we must ally ourselves once again with our Wild Hearts. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt as she explores what we must do in our own lives to subvert the need to control that runs throughout the Old Story enforcing separation and attend skillfully to the Shadow energies that are actually the very path back to our Wild Hearts. The Wild Heart ally brings us to the intimacy necessary for true nourishment, sustaining pleasure in our connections, and a primary relationship with our True Self.

We stand at the dawning of the New World envisioning the journey ahead, the co-creation of a world different than before. Who are our allies on this quest of creation? The first and unexpected ally is The Unknown. “If we cannot change our cultural story about the Unknown as the enemy that must be defeated,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “we will never see through the blindness and hear the whispers through the deafness of the Old World’s Story.” The Unknown as ally is a place of peace, of not needing to know. This opens us to wisdom, especially the wisdom that lives outside of the cultural story, the wisdom we do not yet know. Opening our experience to unknown wisdom engages the journey to the Great Mystery. Contact with the Great Mystery renews our wonder in All That Is and our belief that a new story is possible. Join us this week as we begin to gather our allies here in the heart of winter and listen for the new story the earth is singing.

The Visionary asks us, “What does it take to envision a truly new future? How do you open to possibilities that have not yet existed for you?” The Visionary cautions us that our personal past, family of origin past, and our ancestors’ unresolved issues can only hinder us. We must take what we have learned from the past and courageously leave the rest behind as we step into the New World. The Visionary councils us to speak the truth, listen closely to the truth of others, human and more-than-human, and never let go of the thread that is the energy of our soul’s purpose that goes among changes without changing itself. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she shares the Visionary’s wisdom and encouragement to notice the abuse of the Visionary power in visions without the means to make them real. We must remember the Visionary doesn’t manifest anything. It is the warriorship of holding that vision daily that makes things manifest. It is the warriorship of tending what you believe in the face of self-doubt and fear of change that makes things manifest. And always remember that what you believe gains power, so tend your beliefs well.

How can we focus our spirit work to support the necessary shift during these times of great global transformation? What assumptions about the Sacred must we change? How are we being asked to adapt our selves and our practices to assist in the birth of the New World? How can we repair our Ancestral lines in ways that free the descendants from living the same patterns? How do we make amends that recover our heartfelt working relationship with the spirits of the land on which we live? Join our guest, Daniel Foor, Ph.D., MFT, and host, Christina Pratt, as they explore often overlooked assumptions about life and spirit work that work contrary our awakening. Daniel draws on his experience hosting over 30 indigenous elders in recent years and shares the common threads in their approach to ancestral and earth healing. Daniel, the founder of the Earth Medicine Alliance and shamanic healer in the San Francisco Bay area, is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series, in which we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of this profoundly changing time.

The Teacher asks, “can you be passionately committed to the process without attachment to the outcome?” Can you step through the door and into the New World with precise and passionate commitment to your purpose and an open heart to all that is Unknown and will change— thatwill have to change if this New World will be different than the one before? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues this four part series sharing wisdom from the Four Great Teachers about the coming New World. The Teacher speaks to us of leadership, sovereignty, and mastery, as these are the places from which we truly teach. Are you willing to lead simply because the moment calls for a leader and you are there? Are you willing to govern your life and shape your choices based on the innate value in each living thing, including yourself? Are you ready and able to bring only your mastery through the gate with you, reconciling all else and then leaving it behind? The Teacher asks what have you learned that enables you to bring your leadership, sovereignty, and mastery to bear in the New World. Whatever that is, now is the time to live it.

The Warrior calls us out to do what must be done for what we love in the world. What would you do today if you knew you would die tomorrow? What would you give the rest of your life for to be sure it was here for our descendants in the New World? In this time of ending and new beginnings, you must be able to discern what you want to bring into the New World and what you must do to make that happen? The Warrior is not so much about battle in the world, but about the battle for authenticity with the False Self. Warriorship is about facing your fears in a way that allows you to see them for what they are, expectations from the past that you project and attachments to a future you imagine. The warriorship is stepping into our personal practice daily and clearing the energies we hold that keep us out of the moment. Warriorship is risking what is safe and known for what could be and needs to be. Warriorship is the countless moments of discernment through which you decide that this actions is worthy of your resources because it has purpose and meaning in your heart and this one is not. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores the wisdom of the Warrior in these changing times.

The Healer speaks to us of death and rebirth and asks, “What needs to die?” In this time of ending and new beginnings, you must be able to fit through the doors of opportunity that will open for you if you are to find your true place in the New World. Your False Self is just baggage and it’s in your way. Our ability to intentionally kill off aspects of our familiar self—to release, surrender, and grow simple—so that we are able to fit through the openings we encounter and plunge ahead in a new way is mastery of The Healer. We must know what to kill off and how. We must allow our faith in the status quo to be broken so that we strengthen our faith that which has heart and meaning and power in an interconnected world. And we must ask for help skillfully, knowing who to go to and how so that we are not consulting the unresolved dead or our own frightened ego. Our ability to move with intention through December 21, 2012 and birth a world truly different than this one depends on the Wisdom of the Healer. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores how to engage the wisdom on the Healer in these changing times.

We must engage intimately with our wild heart to participate in shaping a new direction for humanity on Earth. Only through an intimate relationship with nature can we come to know our own true wild-hearted nature. Renowned author and leading edge thinker, Will Taegel, calls us to open our wild hearts and take the next step, to establish a new relationship with the Earth and our local environments. In his new book, The Mother Tongue: Intimacy in the Eco-field, Taegel lays out the necessary path of return to the Earth’s primordial wisdom. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she encourages Taegel to challenge us to enter into deep reflection and question our current beliefs. He shows us how today’s science shows that all life communicates and that our intimate relationship with nature can guide us through these turbulent times. Taegel shares tools to communicate with and learn from the more-than-human world so that we are able to step up t and participate in the fullness of our role in the manifestation of a new era: The Era of Natural Birth. Join us this week as we explore the Mother Tongue Hypothesis and Taegel’s intimate path for successfully navigating our shared global crisis.

Traditional cultures have systems or cosmologies that explain the universe. These shamanic cosmologies explain for the people where the world came from, what we are, how we got here, and most importantly why we are here. These cultures also sanction divination systems or tools that the people use within these cosmologies to interpret their dreams, journeys, and visions. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she continues with part two of Learning to Interpret Your Symbolic Language from the Mastering the Art of the Shamanic Journey Series. This week she explores how your symbolic language came into being and why it continues to transform with you. Why you must deepen and stop limiting yourself if you are to deepen and stop limiting your interpretation of your symbolic. Join us this week and learn why a consistent and effective clearing practice is essential if you are to accurately interpret the messages from your guides and create the life you have come here to live for yourself and for the next seven generations.

The invisible world speaks to each of us through our own unique symbolic language. Learning to accurately interpret that language is essential to understanding your journeys, dreams, and inspirations. “The art of interpreting messages and visions is based entirely on how your see yourself in the Universe,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “and how you understand the true nature of your soul.” Accuracy in interpretation is important, especially when we being to allow our information from our helping spirits and guides to inform our actions in everyday life. While the messages from spirit resonate with our soul, they are all filtered through our consciousness. Thus our accuracy in interpretation is limited by our accuracy in how we see our selves and the world around us. Consistent and effective clearing practices are essential if we are to interpret the messages from our guides accurately and use them to co-create lives of beauty, joy and purpose.

Mastering the art of shamanic journeying requires that you first learn to craft a good question that, like key in a lock, opens a realm of information you previously had no access to. A good question provokes an answer that addresses your problem effectively without creating new problems down the road. Central to this art is attitude. You have to care passionately without taking things personally. You have to patiently allow the uncertainty to unfold while being completely impatient with what you think you know. And you have to hold true to your discipline while simultaneously abandoning familiar assumptions and human comforts. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt as she continues with Part Two of Mastering the Art of Shamanic Journeying: Crafting Questions. You must learn to ask the question from the truth of where you are living in the moment, especially when you don’t like that truth. Always remember when we journey to spirit for answers we are seeking a deeper truth and that there will always be an even deeper truth out there.

“Any heartfelt practitioner of shamanism in the world today is deeply aware of the vital evolutionary role of this ancestral eco-spiritual tradition… Indigenous culture is based on the understanding that people are not moved through persuasion; rather, people are moved through being aligned in purpose,” explains our guest, Don Oscar Miro-Quesada, “…one’s experience of communion and reconnection with the living earth always arouses the desire to act on its behalf…(and when) you act on behalf of something greater than yourself, you begin to feel it acting through you with a power that is greater than your own”. Join host, Christina Pratt, and Don Oscar, originator of The Pachakuti Mesa Tradition (PMT), a five-part workshop apprenticeship series and tradition rooted in the Peruvian spiritual methods of sacred relationship with the Earth. Don Oscar is our next guest for the Society of Shamanic Practitioners sponsored interview series. In this series we explore how contemporary shamans are meeting the challenge of their world where the relations of things are profoundly out of balance. It is the ancient role of the shaman in all cultures to tend the balance of things. How is this shaman meeting this extraordinary need today?

At the heart of shamanism is the pulse, the breath, the dance of complementary dualism, a Tao-like awareness of wholeness expressed in Nature and found in the sustainable, practical philosophies of shamanic peoples around the world. Our guest this week is psychological anthropologist and author, Hillary S Webb, PhD. She recounts her compelling scholarly and personal odyssey into the complementary worldview at the heart of contemporary Andean shamanism in her most recent book, Yanantin and Masintin in the Andean World: Complementary Dualism in Modern Peru. With host and shaman, Christina Pratt, Hillary explores complementary dualism as a sophisticated and practical philosophical model for living a balanced life, for healing and for transformation. At its essence this philosophy offers respite from the lie of separation that overwhelms human consciousness today. It brings us experientially into the interdependent reality of the physical world and the possibility of peace in our hearts.

Shamanic journeying is an art that requires crafting good questions. A good question provokes an answer that addresses your problem effectively without creating new problems. Shamanic journeys are often confusing or lackluster because the practitioner began with a poorly crafted question. To be crisp, clear, and meaningful shamanic journey requires a focused question and free access to the imagination. The shamanic journey is purely question driven state and occurs within the dreamlike landscape of your own symbolic language. The practitioner must craft the question so that it acts as a key to open the answer, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. And then the “answer” that may be as inscrutable as last night’s dream must be accurately interpreted. Here in lies the greatest challenge in developing a powerful, passionate, and effective journeying practice. Join us this week as we continue to explore the common mistakes, misconceptions, and false assumptions made by journeyers and remedies to correct them. This show is Part 1 in a series called Mastering the Art of Shamanic Journeying.

Not all shamans are great visionaries; not all understand the universe at the same depth. However, they all apply the knowledge they have and that knowledge is rooted in the experience of the Oneness-of-all-things. The more powerful the shaman, the greater his or her insight into this true nature of our physical universe, which is a Oneness composed of complementary and interdependent opposites. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores the Oneness at the heart to of the shaman’s universe and why this way of viewing the world holds the answers to the challenges that face us today. It is the shaman’s capacity to function with intention within the trance state that determines the degree of power of the shaman. The shaman’s ability to act in the spirit world is bound by her capacity to reach beyond her own human fears, expectations, and limits and grasp the vast implications of the true nature of this universe, what the true source of the problem is, and how the prescribed actions will actually restore balance.