Why Shamanism Now - A Practical Path to Authenticity

When we are not aware of our soul's true purpose or simply not aligned in our actions, contemporary life can fill quickly with dis-eases of the soul. People, high and low functioning alike, feel a sense of alienation and betrayal that runs deep while the source of those feelings remains a mystery. Many are so depressed or fatigued that they don't have the energy to care about what is authentic or what aligns with their heart. Many others find that, though they are doing all the right things, that passionate sense of meaning and purpose just isn't happening. "Contemporary life is filled with so much promise of happiness and fulfillment, but to access what life promises, we all need skills, healing, and support in our transformation," explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt. Many are betrayed again and again by the failure in our culture to offer valid and effective paths back to our soul and its purpose for being here. Join members from the Last Mask Center Community as they interview Christina about finding the most direct path to living your soul's true purpose.

Walking with Bears: On Bridges to Earth’s New Era, by Will Taegel, PhD, completes a trilogy including Wild Heart and The Mother Tongue, that addresses a human return to Earth-based consciousness as a response to the shuddering crises of our times. In this third groundbreaking book, Taegel takes us to the confluence of modern science and ancient wisdom to a bridge that links us from where we are in the Old Story to where we are going. Join us this week as Will Taegel and host, Christina Pratt, explore what it will take within each of us to walk across the bridges that lead into the New Story. In the tumult of climate change, nuclear threat, traumatic distress, and political chaos we can find prophetic hope in our intimacy with the flow of Nature, capacity to heal, and to love.

A true teaching story is about the mechanics of transformation. To learn from them, you must pay attention to the function of the parts of the story along the way, not just where the journey gets you. Today we are very clear on the value of story for more effective teaching, manipulating, or getting a point across to the masses. But we have lost the art of learning from story in part because we have lost the art of telling true, teaching stories. To tell true teaching stories we must work diligently to get out of the lies we’ve been told, the lies we tell ourselves, and being lost in the Cultural Story of our time. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we learn from true teaching stories. We must recover from our desire to be told only the stories we want to hear, the stories that tell us we can have it all without changing, and remember how to access to our indigenous minds.

In preparation for this upcoming Solstice Fire Ritual, we create two arrows, Life and Death. The Trickster’s alchemy and wisdom about true sacrifice helped us to discern what must go into the Death Arrow and into the fire. The Visionary inspired our vision and the creative stages of transformation that must go into our Life Arrow at dawn on the first day of our New Story. This week we receive our final guidance, write our story, and create the seed that must be planted to tend our inner fire in a new way. With the solstice upon us, we continue to work together with hearts open to our global connection, clearly visualizing that web of human light, and using this ritual as a gateway to leave our old stories behind. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.

In preparation for this upcoming Winter or Summer Solstice the Healer asked us to stir our old stories. The Warrior guided us to sort through these stories with curiosity and compassion to find what needs to change to tend our inner fires. The Teacher Trickster now asks us to identify the Judges, Controllers, and Righteous Zealots that keep our strong hearts in the shadow. Through the Trickster’s alchemy and wisdom about true sacrifice, we discover what must go into the fire. This week we continue to work together with hearts open to our global connection, clearly visualizing that web of human light, and using this ritual as a gateway to leave our old stories behind. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.

What will you do differently and how will you make the desire for change in your heart real in your world today? This week we move on to Part 2 of the preparation for this upcoming Winter or Summer Solstice. The Healer asked us to stir our old stories. Now the Warrior guides us to sort through them carefully, with curiosity and compassion, to find what need to change to tend our inner fires. With Why Shamanism Now listeners are spread around the globe we hope to unite and empower each other’s ritual work. Let’s open our hearts to that global connection, clearly visualize that web of human light, and use this ritual as a gateway to leave our old stories behind. Together we step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of humanity.

The depth of the systemic political, financial, and social misuse and abuse of power at the core of the old story is revealed more fully each day. Now what? What will you do differently and how will you make the desire for change in your heart real in your world today? The old stories can be changed when they are changed within you and me, and only then. So, let’s step up. Why Shamanism Now listeners are spread around the globe. This part one of a four-part series is offered not only as a way to prepare for your winter, or summer, solstice fire ritual, but to unite and empower each other’s ritual work. By opening your heart to that global connection and clearly visualizing that web of human light, you can use this ritual as a gateway to leave your old ways behind and step into the empowered sovereignty that is at the heart of your humanity.

We are not actually entitled to anything, not the water we drink or the air we breathe. Everything is a gift. For the gifts to flow we must give thanks. Gratitude is not only something that we needed to feel; it must take form. Gratitude must be part of the labor, love and wisdom of your day. It is not enough to say, “thank you”; gratitude must be made concrete through action and intent. How then do we show true gratitude for the gifts that come to us through the door of pain, betrayal, heartbreak, and less than perfect parents. This week host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores how we give sincere thanks for the hard stuff in life. Gratitude as spiritual bypass sounds suspiciously like “everything is as it should be” and “they did the best they could” and it is still a bypass. How do we give thanks for those people, experiences, and events that show us what we do not want to see within ourselves?

John Lockley is one of the first white men in recent history to become a fully initiated Xhosa Sangoma, the traditional healers of South Africa, who are seers, dreamers, prophets, and shaman. In his new book, “Leopard Warrior: A Journey into the African Teachings of Ancestry, Instinct, and Dreams” John shares powerful and effective practices for people from anywhere to connect with their own ancestors, spiritual traditions, and the natural world. Join us this week as John and host, Christina Pratt, explore how we can respond to the challenges that arise when our ancestors come to us in dreams and guide us to step outside of the lines of tradition. With great heart, John shares the years of practice, dedicated personal work, and inspiration needed to pioneer a new way that we can be together in this world.

Grief itself offers us great compassion. It comes and goes, tailoring itself to each heart that is experiencing loss and bereavement. It takes its time, never forcing us to do it all now, for if it did we would surely not survive. Grief has profound importance in the health of the heart. It shows us where we have made a heart connection, even when we didn’t mean to. It shows us where we gave too much and where we regret not really showing up. To grieve fully is to grieve enough for the heart to cleanse, renew, and return to the serious business of intimacy with life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, this week as she explores grief as a part of the fall season, as a process that touches each of our lives, and as a ritual to cleanse and restore the greater capacity of the heart to love, connect, and make meaning in our lives.

Grace in transition does not come easily to modern people who live in the climate controlled illusion that they have mastered nature, wilderness, and the Unknown. In transition we are neither here nor there and as a result we are either losing or gaining energy. This is why in the transitional seasons of spring and fall we often experience erratic emotions, “spring colds”, and fall depressions. How we attend to these transitions determines the quality of energy we bring to our engagement with life. Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, as she explores working with the seasons to draw the unique richness from each stage of the cycle of a year on earth. Each season is its own spirit. Akin to the spirits of the land, seasonal spirits have profound influence on us, regardless of our ignorance to their presence. To engage with the season spirits openly and honestly is to engage in simple elegance, rich blessings, and the refinement of presence.

Integration of transformational processes is an intention process that requires the conscious awareness of bringing together something new into somewhere new over time. The liminal space of altered states that initiates the transformation is not the point; it’s the possibility. Peak experiences can become the opening to true, permanent transformation we seek when we intentionally engage in skilled and focused integration. Join us as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, continues to explore both the elements and the phases of a successful integration. This week we explore examples of successful and failed integrations of shamanic healing, ritual, and ceremony.

Shamanic peak experiences, whether experienced in ritual, ceremony, or shamanic healing, often feel as if they have changed our lives in the moment. And then, over time, our lives return to a new version of the original pattern, leaving us to seek the peak experience again and again. In sharp contrast, by intentionally engaging in skilled and focused integration, your peak experiences can become the opening to true, permanent transformation. Join us this week as host and shaman, Christina Pratt, explores integration and the qualities necessary to turn the potential we have touched in the peak experience into our new way of being. Integration, whether solo or assisted, is needed for you to let go of who you have been and step into the person you could be.

Author, professor, and peacemaker, Stephan Beyer, joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to discuss the use of plant medicines (plant hallucinogens or entheogens) in shamanism. Drawing on his vast experience as an academic and deep experience as a shamanic practitioner, Steve will talk with us about the personalities of several of the sacred plants used in traditional shamanic healing and ritual. We will explore their relevance in shamanic practices outside of these traditions, the contemporary search for healing and transformation, the “selling of spirituality”, and what can we say about authenticity with these powerful teachers. Perhaps most importantly we will discuss these plants as teachers who open to us “the dark and luminous realm of the spirits.” In his new book, Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon Stephan seeks “to understand one form of shamanism, its relationship to other shamanisms, and its survival in the new global economy, through anthropology, ethnobotany, cognitive psychology, legal history, and his own experiences with two master healers of the Amazon.” For more information go to www.singingtotheplants.com

Author, professor, and peacemaker, Stephan Beyer, joins us this week to discuss his new book, "Singing to the Plants: A Guide to Mestizo Shamanism in the Upper Amazon." Stephan explains, “Singing to the Plants seeks to understand one form of shamanism, its relationship to other shamanisms, and its survival in the new global economy, through anthropology, ethnobotany, cognitive psychology, legal history, and my own experiences with two master healers of the Amazon.” Join us as we discuss the use of plant medicines (plant hallucinogens or entheogens) in shamanism in the Upper Amazon and its relevance—should we or shouldn’t we—in shamanic practices outside of these traditions. We will reach into the depths of Stephan’s personal experience to discuss the healing potential of shamanism as well as the potential to do harm through attack sorcery. Ultimately we will explore the idea that shamanism is “irreducibly social” such that all shamanic healing as well as harming takes place within a cultural context where shared values like trust, reciprocity, or generosity are at the root of personal illness and suffering.