Personal Assessment

'All efforts to make me into a suitably civilised human being have proven only partially successful.'

                                                                                                       This morning, me.

Shamanic Journey

It is eighteen years since I engaged in an intense period of shamanic journeying. It was a phase in my life that radically altered my experience and subsequent view of the world and how it works.

My spiritual life, for want of a better expression, had hit a brick wall: it was the end of the road for orthodox Buddhist practice, as I saw it at any rate. It was taking me nowhere. In an effort to revive flagging spirit and soul, I decided to give the technique of shamanic journeying a go. There was nothing to lose; plus, a friend of mine was embarking on a similar experiment at the same time, so there was ready opportunity for sharing.

One of the first tasks is to find your power animal; or let the power animal find you.  Shamanic literature abounds with tales of helpful power animals. Wolf, eagle, mountain lion; owl, bear, crow: these are typical animals you will read about. In my case, however, the power animal emerged from behind a thicket on the edge of a dry limestone mountain in the shape of....... a Great Ape. I was astonished to see such an animal, since I had never given any thought or consideration to this kind of creature before. It seemed to appear from nowhere. And it is at this point that the theories of behavioural psychology come tumbling down. This was no memory from childhood, no image absorbed then forgotten from my infant picture book. A repressed encounter at a zoo, a story told by an uncle. No. This really seemed like a new kid on the block.

My power animal journey came easily, effortlessly almost, despite my never having done a practice remotely like this before. It was accompanied by a remarkable release of physical and emotional energy, and a state of considerable bliss. It was as if I had opened a doorway - or, in the case of shamanic journeying, descended a tunnel - that had been ready and waiting for me for a while. It was easy, seeming the most natural thing in the world.

From then on, shamanic journeying became a regular item in my diary. To the accompaniment of recorded shamanic drumming, I would meet my animal friend and guide at the entrance to the lowerworld. Together we would descend a long, dark tunnel, to exit into a landscape of some description or another. We would walk or fly, sometimes traversing enormous distances. Typically we might then meet a female figure, who I came to regard as a teacher. Following this encounter we would plunge further and deeper into mysterious lands, engaging in all manner of adventure and bumping into all kind of beings animal, human, supernatural, or just plain weird. When the drum beat changed to the callback, the animal and I would scurry back, returning the way we had come.

I recently reviewed the journal I kept at the time, and was astonished at how much journeying I had done. Over a period of twelve months beginning in Septemer 1998 I travelled on 32 journeys. Some of it I don't recall very well. But, for a while, my life seems to have consisted mainly of teaching work Monday to Friday, with shamanic journeying sessions fitted in most weekends.

At the time, the journeys were nearly always vivid, imbued with an unmistakeable numinous reality. One of the most amazing things was that they were never 'willed' or 'intended' on my part. Sometimes I set off with a distinct purpose, on other occasions simply to explore, but the events taking place during the course of these journeys were always independent of 'me' guiding or directing. I was not so much the creator of the narrative, but a character who turned up in a story that was taking place anyhow.

The journeys seemed to open a doorway into another layer of consciousness. As can happen with psychedelics, it was very different to 'normal' experience, and worked in very different ways. At the same time, it appeared very close, just around the corner, a storehouse just waiting to be tapped into.

I didn't 'understand' it very much at all, but my instinct was that this was very important if you wanted to know how things and the universe work. It was my friend who was experimenting with journeying at the same time who put me onto Jung. I was amazed to read about Jung's nekyia, or 'night-sea journey'. He would deliberately descend, or fall into, a dark tunnel, and meet a whole bundle of characters that he would later refer to as archetypal images. Jung's technique and experiences during his night-sea journey mirrored precisely what my own shamanic journeys had thrown up.

Delving more deeply into Jung, I came across another idea of his which seemed to resonate, and to describe concisely what I had encountered. 'Autonomous contents of the unconscious' is the phrase he created for the figures who walked through the landscapes that I entered during the shamanic journeys. There is no need to get caught up in the minutiae of Jung's terminology, as some folk are inclined to do: endless wrangles about whether the unconscious truly exists as a thing; about whether it can be considered as having 'contents'. I prefer to take Jung's phrase as an image in itself, rather than literally.

To accept that there are 'autonomous contents' in our psyche; that our everyday conscious ego may not be ruling  the roost all the time, in fact might not know what's really going on in our life: all this dramatically turns round how we regard and live our life. It should be humbling, positively so. That there may be forces running the show that we do not control is, to many people, too scary to consider. It's a reality that will truly bring that Tower in the Tarot crashing down. It is a notion that is anathema to much of the edifice of modern society, built as it is on the values and ambitions of a cut-off ego. It is this sense of being individuals isolated in our ego-structures, ego-wishes, ego-insecurities that is manipulated and exploited in the constant clarion calls to personal ambition, success and fear of failure, material gains, career path etc etc. Listen to, make conscious, the voices issuing from the figures roaming around the lowerworld, and much of this just gets blown away.

In my case, I have at times found the emanations from the unconscious scary - very scary. At the same time, an abiding curiosity that amounts to a personal need, has led me to explore this element in life. To live a complete, whole life means calling up, having a decent chat with, whoever, whatever, might be around in the realm of psyche that is all that I know, all that I am. This is not a 'path' that I have chosen. It feels truer to say that it has been chosen for me; 'I' have had little say in the matter.

After that year, journeying became more intermittent but still powerful. I continued for another eighteen months or so, but by that time the effectiveness of the technique had begun to wane, with the journeys becoming less vivid and themes increasingly repetitive. I eventually stopped, apart from the very occasional venture. Looking back, maybe I didn't need to make so many trips to the lowerworld, and could instead have spent more time reflecting on and absorbing what had been happening. I don't know. For sure, I ended up with a real bucketload of archetypal adventures, many of whose sense and meaning continue to elude me. But I became familar with a different and special landscape, intuitively coming to know how to negotiate its features and how the whole thing worked. Since then, life has not been quite the same.

Image: from our friends at Reality Sandwich



                    

New Order

Card number twenty in the Tarot is often titled 'Judgment'. Or 'Judgement'. Take your pick with the spelling, it would seem. The typical depiction, found in the classic Waite-Smith Tarot for example, shows an angel in the sky blowing a trumpet-like instrument, with people rising as if from the dead in salutation. The problem with the idea of 'judgement' is that it comes burdened with twisted notions from orthodox Christianity, of the good going up to heaven while the bad suffer eternal damnation. Resurrection and redemption are further problematic aspects to the narrow and literalistic view of 'judgement' offered up by Christianity, and ones which spread their pernicious influence over some Tarot decks.

In the Thoth Tarot, that pious Christian saint Aleister Crowley ditches the term 'judgement' in favour of 'Aeon'. Good move, I suggest. It is a new age, a moment of change, of transformation, of ushering in the new. The deeper meaning of the twentieth card in the Tarot is expressed more properly in the image of the phoenix, that miraculous bird arising from the flames. It is depicted rather beautifully in the image here, from the Chrysalis Tarot.

'The phoenix renews her youth
only when she is burnt, burnt alive, burnt down
to hot and flocculent ash.
Then the small stirring of a new small bub in the nest
with strands of down like floating ash
shows that she is renewing her youth like the eagle,
immortal bird.'

From 'Phoenix' by D.H. Lawrence

Card number twenty was face up on the centre of the dining room table forty years ago. The commune project for which I had shed blood, sweat and tears for three years had fallen apart, and with it a good slice of the meaning of life for me. Fear not, however. The phoenix rose from the ashes, splendid in all its glory. I spent a goodly portion of that endlessly hot sunny summer on Buddhist retreat, and in a whole variety of ways felt wonderfully reborn. A year later, I was due for ordination into Buddhism. The intervening period had seen the feathers of the phoenix dampened by the less-than enlightening experience of 'working for the Buddhist movement'. Nevertheless, the magical bird was able to shake off the heaviness of the water like dew on a sun-blessed dawn as I prepared for that momentous event.

New age, new life, new everything: this was what was signified by entering the Western Buddhist Order. It is a matter of identification. Everything that I previously considered myself to be was gone, to be replaced by a new identity, a consciously-expressed new direction, a new me. And that wasn't all. Being reborn into a Buddhist Order meant rising up out of the flames to discover a new family, full of people doing the same thing as yourself. Sounds great...... doesn't it?

I offer a couple of reflections related to that ordination here. Not as personal indulgence, but because issues beyond the details of my own life may be hinted at here. Vamos, vamos....

What's in a name?

One of the primary aspects of my Buddhist ordination was getting a new name. Coming in Sanskrit, it denoted both the path and the goal. It purported to encapsulate the Ideal in personal form, if you like: what I was to become. It also signified a psychological rebirth into a new family, that of aspirant Buddhas. These were my new brothers and sisters, fellow phoenixes arising out of the death of everything that had gone before. It never occurred to me to ask my blood parents what they thought about all this. Were they disturbed, pissed off? Did they feel existentially disowned at this swapping identity, my successful transfer application? Did they feel that the blood, sweat and tears they had put into bringing me up amounted, on my part, to zilch? Bloody hell......

More recently, I have had occasion to mischievously muse over how my former Buddhist teacher came upon all these names. Did he receive a gusty blast of transcendental inspiration to order on the eve of every ordination? Or did he pick names out of a hat? The answer probably lies somewhere between the two.

In translation, my Buddhist family name comes across as 'Jewel hero', 'hero of the Jewel', something like that. And for a decade I lived up to the appelation. I practiced meditation daily, and taught it. I studied Buddhist texts, attended seminars on Buddhist themes, and led study groups. I worked for the Buddhist movement, then became chairman of a Buddhist centre. My jewel shone so brightly that people had to wear sunglasses if they wanted to meet me. 'There are no flies on you' another Buddhist commented to me after I had given an inspirational and doctrinally spotless talk at a Buddhist gathering. Then I went to New Zealand and fell apart.

On my return to Britain, everything was different. People who had once queued up to speak to me now looked askance as my darkened presence approached. It was as if I had fallen into a deep pit full of horse shit and come up smelling not too good. I gave up giving talks and bought an electric guitar with a bunch of effects pedals instead. I took to a basement rehearsal room in a friend of mine's house, where long hours were spent with friends playing dark, spacy riffs through flangers, phasers, and any other weirdness-enhancing effects that might have been around at the time. Rarely has an apparent Buddhist manifested in less jewel-like garb.

As for the 'Hero' side of my nature, I undertook a serious study of Jung, then archetypal psychology under James Hillman. In the worldview of Hillman, the hero in myth is none other than the ego sallying forth in conquest, marching its narrow-minded march forward in an effort to take over the entire psyche. According to Hillman, the true way forward is not heroic at all, but lies in 'relativising the ego': putting it in its rightful place rather than granting it carte blanche to run riot and identify itself with the entire psyche. During my final years as an official Buddhist, I wrote a number of articles for the Buddhist journal about how the heroic ideal was limited in perspective. It had to go; and so did I.

It is ironic how the ideal laid out in my name became turned completely on its head, rather like the Hanged Man of the Tarot. Yet there may be a further layer to this name stuff. There is a story in the White Lotus Sutra of Mahayana Buddhism, where a jewel is found in the most unlikely place, at the bottom of a dung heap. This has proved to be my experience as the years have passed - the jewel at the bottom of the dung heap. And maybe the more heroic act is the one that dares to question the entire notion of the heroic ideal in the first place.

Good Chakras, Naughty Chakras

Another aspect of my Buddhist ordination was the receiving of a visualisation and mantra meditation based upon one of the many Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, the different imaginal embodiments of the enlightened state. This invocation and creation of an image of awakening suited me down to the ground, and I performed the entire practice, involving verses, mantras, building up then dissolving visualised images on a daily basis for ten years. During this period the sadhana, as it is known, was focal to my spiritual life, probably the most important thing that I did, and on many occasions when my spirits were lower than low, it saved my bacon.

A time came, however, when a creeping sense of discomfort began to descend upon my often complex, troubled being. The Buddha spirit wasn't reaching into my depths. The transformational element was not complete, failing to touch some aspects of my psychology.

There came a seminar, to which I was not invited, on which one upstart asked a telling question. During this meditation practice, variously coloured lights were seen emanating from the Bodhisattva form and entering the body of the meditator. These lights streamed out from between the eyebrows, the throat, and the heart, corresponding roughly to three of the upper chakras as enumerated in the conventionally-used seven chakra system. What, asked our bright spark, about the 'lower chakras', solar plexus and below in the human body? Didn't transformational light need to beam into these as well? No, the reply came loud and clear, there was no need. Transform the 'higher' energy centres of mind, speech, and heart, and the 'lower' chakras would be transformed automatically, of their own accord.

Seen from the space that I nowadays occupy in this marvellous universe, I suggest that this is a big mistake! It is a suggestion that comes oozing value-laden notions of higher and lower, better and worse, sacred and profane, the stuff of false dualisms that have distorted two thousand years of thought and life in the western world.

Why this bias? Why transform 'higher' energy centres and not 'lower' ones? Is there something we're afraid of? Our strength, maybe, our physical vitality. The viscera. Sex. Shadow. Our drive, our will. Yes, that's the rub. It's a bit of a psy-op, I feel. All of our energy has to come for the ride if personal transformation is to be effective. No need to discriminate, that's just a mind distortion. All energy centres from top to bottom can express our innate divinity, provide contact with that sacred level to existence, act as portals to the infinite. No high and low; no black and white; no good and bad. These are all veils that get placed upon our own direct experience, veils designed to deceive, to delude, to blind us to a remarkable truth that is staring us in the face all the time, should we be so courageous as to look. Energy centres are energy centres, that's it. End of story. The reality is so beautiful, so simple that it's...... unreal.