Test Of The Shaman

The culture and the civilised pathology we are all born into creates the automaton which we learn to call 'I'. It acts as our interface with the world. Mostly, we mistake it for our own true Self, and that is the saddest thing.

Ego pops up through the ego-producer of this robot, this construct, this puppet - it also shows up leaking through the other chakra centres, and we make a great mistake when we take this ego leakage for the authentic Self.

My own persona seems to me like unto layers of papier mache laid down by years of stewing in the culture: each thin layer hardening and eventually glazing to a thin, brittle shell. Nothing like the Russian Doll, these layers are very close together with virtually no space between them. Cracking and peeling them off is a hazardous occupation, as the layer one is after often takes chunks of the next layer off with it, or else the layers stick together in places, so that when you think you have done with one armour plate, you find bits of it is still adhering to your shell.

I've found that recovering the authentic self is the work of a lifetime - and I started late. The part of the Whole who is who I really Am has slept like a thunderstorm before the Summer. And now it doesn't just burst through the glazed-shell automation but seems to drift in trans migratory style through the artifice . Enveloping it, transcending.

But here,the true test of the Shaman is simply this:

You can have empathy with a fellow human, and with many fellow animals. Almost anyone can do that, put themselves in the other's place and feel as they feel.
But can you know yourself as a bank of cumulo nimbus clouds?
As the planet Jupiter?
The Horsehead Nebula in Orion?
And then, can you exist in the exact same space as a Pied Wagtail?
How about that pink Ranunculus over there (in here)?
The zooplankton?
A sulphur molecule?
A charmed quark?....

This is not a test of your histrionic abilities. It is rather a measure of your Knowing who and what You are. In the swagger of the Crow and the stalk of the Panther. In the cycle of the Universe and the cold wind blowing sparks across the Void. You Are.