The Shaman as Storyteller

I did not seek to become a shaman. Rather, a number of experiences at different moments in my life led me to actively question the nature of reality. That search eventually developed into a sense that destiny was calling me. For 13 years I journeyed, studied, prepared, and paid attention, until I was initiated by Spirit and ready to teach. Until that time came I did not teach as a shaman, nor did I call my work shamanic. Only as I was unknowingly taking the final steps in response to the energies that called me to the heart of this land and deeply into my own heart, did I call together a group of men for a shamanic adventure called "Journey to the Heart of Being”. Little did I know what that journey would entail.

The events that took place during that time not only changed my life, but also gave me a number of extraordinary stories to share with people – stories that could be told in sacred places, in wild country around fires at night, when seekers met with an openness to hear the truth of lived experience, and when a doorway opened to allow moments from another time to come into the present.

Shamans have always told stories. One of their major ways of teaching has been to share their own experience in story. Stories of journeys through time into other dimensions, travels in consciousness beyond this life, into the realms of the dying and the dead, stories of learning the process of remembrance, of coming into being, remembering who we are, where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going. In a culture such as ours, where the monochrome of literal thinking is washed over our mental processes, where reliable guides are few, the stories that come seem bewildering, fantastic, unbelievable, and at times psychotic and severely weird. These reactions tell us more about our culture at this time in history, than it does about such stories and the persons who are telling them. Sometimes, in inappropriate contexts, the stories seem tales of madmen, and their madness. And sometimes this is true, for few complete their shamanic preparation without visits to places in themselves that the unknowing, the unprepared and the cultural arbiters of truth will label in this way.

In the first year or two after my initiation as a teacher, I did not know what to do with the stories I carried, until a good friend, who over time also became a fellow traveller and at times a worthy opponent, simply said, "Just keep on telling the stories”. He had spent many years with indigenous shamans of this land, and had some inkling of the power of stories that come from the interaction between the Spirit of this country and the human heart.

So, here are some stories – stories of the making of a shaman, of a man blessed and challenged by Spirit, who was foolish enough, courageous enough, and wise enough to dive into the beyond and to allow himself to be touched by the deep mystery. Some people want to know if the stories are true – yes, they are. Others want to know if the stories are the truth – that is a different question. Many times after men and women that I have journeyed with over the years have encountered aspects of the deep mystery, they will relate their experience and then ask, "Is it real?” My response still remains a simple question, "What did you experience?”, for experience and reflection is all we ever have in regard to these realms. How others choose to judge our experience is another matter. The arbiters of intellectual fashion, social taste, acceptable human behaviour and cultural knowledge, along with the guards who stand at the borders of acceptable human knowledge, will wholeheartedly label these stories in harsh ways.

In the shamanic world, some perceptions can be mistaken, some accounts can be incomplete, and sometimes, because of energies moving in us of which we are unaware, we are deluded. Shamanic storytellers describing both their own and others’ experiences certainly have to come to terms with this. This issue is centrally important, but it is a matter for another day and a different book. It is enough to acknowledge it here.

Contemporary shamanism that does not derive from one of the great indigenous traditions still exists within the great flow of Spirit, out of which these traditions come. Seekers who have been formed in contemporary ways, who through Spirit’s guidance have found other paths into the Source, also have stories of how we come from the stars and of how we exist simultaneously across several different dimensions, each with its own laws and separate reality that weaves in and out of the one that most westerners think is the only one.

Often these stories are of different states of awareness, of challenge, confrontations with forces that can rip us apart, dismast out sails, and leave us rudderless on the ocean of life. There are also stories from eternity, that realm outside of the third dimensional flow of time, and stories of the great heart of which we are all a part.

The stories that follow provide understanding for one way in which a contemporary shaman was formed. They are also the stories that I sense are appropriate to share with a wider audience at this time.

>> 1960 The Young Lad