Quotes about Shamanism

"'Eveything is made of light,' he said, 'and the space between isn't empty.'"

The goal is, then, having attained that balance, that wisdom, that connection, to then rise up to a level of universal meaning; in other words, to break through the machinery of cultural conditioning, in the same way that the shaman does, and to attempt to discover something authentic—something authentic outside the self-generated language cloud. And to my mind, what this authentic thing is, is—it’s hard to know how to put it, but—it’s the animate quality that resides within the psychedelic experience—that the universal mind is alive, is sentient, is perceiving, is there to meet you when you come through from the other side. So we’re not talking about psychedelics as a spotlight to be turned on to reveal the detritus of our own personal unconscious. It is not a spotlight. It is not shining from behind you; it is shining ahead of you. It is actually that the same organizational principles which called us forth into self-reflection has called forth self-reflection out of the planet itself. And the problem then is for us to suspect this, act on our suspicion, and be good detectives and track down the spirit in its lair. And this is what shamans are doing. They are hunters of spirit.

The thought of initiation scared me more than dentists. I pictured shivering naked in dark caves, eating raw meat and insects, stumbling deliriously across miles of scorching desert, hanging from my pierced chest for days on end. “Perhaps it doesn’t have to be so painful,” I mused between drags on a damp Pall Mall while thumbing for a ride in a light mist of rain outside Grosse Tete, Louisiana.

Many of the concepts behind Potentiation Electromagnetic Repatterning and the Regenetics Method outlined in this book may strike the reader as “cutting-edge.” While they may indeed appear that way in this day and age, most of them are also, paradoxically, extremely old. They stem from time-honored practices rooted in the curative power of prayer, shamanic medicine, and specifically the balanced use of sound and intention to heal in ways that can seem miraculous to many Westerners.

Your power animal represents the entire species of the animal that is protecting and helping you.  For example, you don't have the spirit of a specific eagle, kangaroo, or squirrel protecting you.  Rather, you have the protection of the spirit of the entire species of eagle, kangaroo, or squirrel.

As we press upon one another with our intentions, From our hearts fly luminous butterflies, That intermingle and crossover to be absorbed. In abeyance our hearts await.

"He (the Shaman) is a self-reliant explorer of the endless mansions of a magnificent hidden universe."