Why Shamanism Now - A Practical Path to Authenticity

What does it take to live a legendary life? A human is born to live a legendary life because we are all born of the Big Dream. In the creation stories of shamanic peoples the Great Timeless, Spaceless Mystery Void dreamt, for reasons no one knows or understands. But from that Big Dream came fire and ice, yin and yang. As they continued to dream, the world as we know it was manifest and those legendary dreamers took the form of Earth and Sky. When we are able to release our parents and the small story of our personal childhood with all of its beauty and suffering we can then take the Earth as our True Mother and the Sky as our True Father. In that initiatory act of surrender and release we step into our true family and we orient ourselves for a legendary life. “We are born into this world with a blueprint for a legendary life,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “But that doesn’t mean living it will be automatic. To engage the blueprint for your legendary life you must consort with beings of legend, sacrifice your mediocre expectations of safe comfort, and reach within for the passion that lights up the heart memory of why you are here.” Join us this week as we explore the acts and attitude necessary to live a life of legend.

We have lost the true power of action in the habits, expectations, and excess fire of the Old World and its story. The Warrior warns that the spiritual ambition, economic aggression, and arrogance of the full range of positional people have stripped us of the understanding of what an expression of true yang energy looks and feels like. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores the true power of action and how we can transform the aggression and control of our false self into the precision with which we chart the course to live our soul’s true purpose. We can transform our ambition to be good girls and boys and get it right into devotion to the ever-unfolding process of living honestly and authentically. And we must transform the arrogance that arises from our identification has the healers, light workers, and good-guys into the excellence that flows with ease and joy and laughter from giving our gifts to the world.

When we focus on the element of fire we are focusing on the quality of the relationship we have with our own spirit. As a transformational force, fire is the healer who is showing us how to engage in the art of release and sacrifice. The fire helps us to free our hearts to love what truly matters to us and free our lives from the patterns of thinking, speaking, and acting that drain our hearts of their natural fullness for all life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for the new series, Working with the Elements. This week she explores how we can work with the element of Fire to kill our false passions that lead to the arrogance, aggression, and ambition that sickens our world. There is big medicine to be found in the Fire; it brings the blessing of freed energy so that you can feel and follow the true passion of your soul’s longing.

When we co-create our lives with Spirit and our Shadow together, we end up following the path of crazy logic. If you can use your shamanic skills to stay on that track—without panic and doubt—you will begin to unfold your inner self in ways you never expected or believed possible. With the help of your Shadow you begin to see what you have denied in yourself and with the help of spirit used skillfully, you can welcome that aspect of your true self home. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, for this final section in the Co-Creation Series where we explore how to use shamanic skills to co-create your life today so that you bring the needed medicine of your gifts to the world tomorrow.

Effective shadow transformation requires a specialist who knows the terrain of the darkest reaches of the human heart. This specialist must be more than human, fiercely loving all that is vast, ugly, and twisted within us while remaining a centered, curious, and creative guide. The Specialist is the archetype of Crazy Woman. She has inspired many wondrous and powerful destroyer goddesses in humanity’s diverse religions. But like the Tao, the destroyer goddess who can be named is not the eternal Crazy Woman. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shares the essence of working effectively with Crazy Woman when our modern minds are stuffed full of Western bias, false beliefs about our own shadow, and fundamental misunderstanding of the human heart.

What if our Shadow is actually trying to save us from a successful and safe but un-soul-satisfying life? What if our Shadow was actually trying, in it’s messed up, self-destructive, terribly resource wasteful and energy expensive way to get us to actually co-create a life that is true to us and our soul’s purpose? If this were so—and it is—then how do we co-create our lives with Spirit and our Shadow? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores how to use shamanic skills to use the shadow patterns that arise along the path of co-creating your life as precisely the detour to take you directly to your truer self. There is no calling worth living that will not demand that you change yourself. That’s the adventure, the discovery, and the creation of a life worth living. And the world out there, so deeply in need of medicine and gifts, will change if you have the courage and creativity to give them.

What is Shadow Work, really? Psychologically speaking the Shadow is an unconscious aspect of one’s personality that the conscious ego judges, fears or rejects to the degree that it does not identify the Shadow as part of the itself. Shadow work implies not only a shift of consciousness or insight, but also the transformation of the relationship that is dominated by judgment and fear. When people talk about doing shadow work they are largely talking about gaining insight through noticing shadow behaviors. “But shadow behaviors are not the Shadow itself,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. “The focus is on a symptom and not the source. This means the sincere work of transformation results largely in a spiritual bypass. This relieves the conscious ego, which will not need to change after all, and leaves the Shadow Self largely intact, to undermine our conscious efforts and lay out a seductive path of self-destruction yet again."

The fundamental assumption about shadow work that blinds us to its true nature is the idea that shadow work is a psychological or spiritual issue. It is neither; it is an issue of the heart. Once we understand that, contemporary assumptions unravel for anyone, and the transformational fun begins. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, shared the commons beliefs that actually lead us away from the real work we can do. She explores what we can do when we have the right tool for the job and a specialist to guide us. There is an art to engaging in transformation that flies under the radar of the mind and is deeply rooted in changing your real life choices. Mastering that art is the secret to renewing your heart’s sacred contract with your soul.

If we are to write a truly new story for the people in the new world we must transform the communal shadow behaviors that shaped so much of the old world. In the old world story much of the authentic impulse to create change was lost in fruitless rebellion, following gurus, and playing the victim the old world stories require. “To remember the true power of right action,” explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, “we must bring our own inner warrior out of the shadow and cultivate discernment. Only then will we be able to see through our cultural delusions, lies, and denial and rescue our truly enduring visionary energy from the false prophets of the old world stories.” Join us this week as we explore the use of shamanic skills to transform communal shadow energies into the allies we need to both see a new world and to create it.

Most of us are aware of the Shadow thanks to the genius of Karl Jung. However knowing and doing are two different things and, let’s face it, most of us don’t do actual Shadow transformations. We hope it’s taken care of in that one weekend workshop or that one year at the men’s gathering. Shamanic skills allow us to track the crazy logical twists and turns inherent in good Shadow transformations anywhere any time, explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. They also allow us to transform these energies into allies, never to return to the shadows again. This is what really matters, because we all participate in communal shadow behavior. We will not be able to write a new story for the new world if we cannot learn to notice and transform our part of the shadow stories that shape our world, holding humanity in “us versus them” thinking around economics and war, food and the environment, and sex and the place we call home.

The right use of power requires that you are willing to do whatever it takes. The person of mature spirituality understands that this will mean drawing on discernment, flexibility, and adaptability. One must discern when to act with insight on the past and far-sighted perspective on the future or when to act with trust in invisible allies and intuition in the face of the Unknown. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores what it means to take right action in a world that has normalized a diverse array of the abuses of power. Taking right action always requires facing our fears. Only then can we act with discernment. And we must act if we are to engage in the right use of power. The mature spiritual warrior knows that she must “do whatever it takes” while steering clear of “doing it at all costs.” To act at all costs is the desperate act of the child and often results in soul loss and giving away our gifts and power. This lays down the pattern for life draining co-dependant relationships and/or unexplained autoimmune disorders that drain us of lifeforce. We have all acted at all cost as children and we need to go back, heal and reclaim ourselves from those moments. Join us this week as we explore the warriorship of self-reclamation and the art of doing whatever it takes.

The last part of the Cycle of Transformation involves using all the skills you have learned in the cycle to dismantle your False Self. The False Self is more than the ego or the personality you identify with. It is an entire ‘person’ you constructed as a child to make certain that you fit in, get along with people, survive physically, and do nothing that scares you. The False Self always moves us away from our authenticity. To truly manifest a life guided by our authenticity and purpose in service of all living things, we must learn to recognize the False Self and free up the power we have locked away in it. This week guest host Langston Kahn, senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, will interview students who have completed the Cycle of Transformation and Dismantling the False Self, the last part of the 4-year training process offered which begins with a week-long residential workshop, Masks of Illusion and the Authentic Self. They will explore together what brought them to the Cycle, how their lives have been changed by their Dismantling and what it’s like to be supported in transformation by a contemporary shamanic community.

When we change patterns held by our ancestors, we become free to change those patterns within ourselves. Ancestral Healing empowers not only the healing of past and present wounds but also the embodiment our deepest gifts. No matter where your people are from originally, ancestral connection is rooted in your cultural history. When you restore the native wellbeing of your own bloodline lineage and receive the powerful blessing of their support, you become an active part of the true transformation of systems (internal and external) of injustice and oppression. Join us this week as Langston Kahn and Christina Pratt share their adventures in healing their ancestors and themselves. And how doing this work has inspired a depth of understanding of what is needed to cure our cultural illnesses and how, together, we can be the medicine in that cure.

Traditionally, our Ancestors are meant to be a primary source of blessing, wisdom, love and protection. However, when the dead aren’t tended well they hijack the living, their unresolved issues snowballing down the generations and becoming a source of disease and dysfunction. What if we could repair the dysfunction in our lineages and receive the full blessings we are meant to embody? What if with the wisdom of our ancestors we could vision and create a more beautiful world for our descendants? This week Langston Kahn, guest host and a senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, will interview students involved in the fourth year of the Cycle of Transformation, the 4-year training process offered by the Last Mask Center, which continues in year four with a week-long residential workshop, Laying The Bones To Rest. They will explore together how their work with ancestors have changed their lives and their experience of vision and purpose deepened after four years of being held in this work by a contemporary shamanic community.

We are given so many stories by our culture that limit how we use our power. Often these stories involve what it means to be a man or a woman and what we are allowed or not allowed to do as a result. What if you were given the tools to dismantle every single story except I am one with all things. What would it feel like to viscerally experience your innate divinity, your connection to all living things and that your power and ability to co-create your life in alignment with your purpose is limitless? And then what if you could use that power to create the more beautiful world your heart knows is possible for the next seven generations? This week Langston Kahn, guest host and a senior teacher at the Last Mask Center, will interview students involved in the third year of the Cycle of Transformation, the 4-year training process offered by the Last Mask Center, which continues in year three with a week-long residential workshop: The Sacred Self. They will explore together the inner transformation required to step up as leaders in their own lives and how their lives have changed and their experience of power, choice and how they use their energy has deepened after three years of being held in this work by a contemporary shamanic community.