Listening has always been an intellectual and spiritual practice of mine. Whether it’s small talk, big talk, a ten seconds video clip I’ve always had a gift for reading between the lines and understanding intention. I am the nod and smile type so this likely doesn’t convey. But, then there is absolutely NOTHING about my outward appearance or mannerisms that remotely match my inner world. I’ll go in to that some other time. But, as a middle-aged, overweight, American white woman with a thick southern accent there is unfortunately no chance of anyone seeing me as I really am. I’m relegated to the circle of stereotypes like Honey Boo-Boo’s mom, or the Nanny Maw character on Tiktok. I ADORE Nanny Maw! She is epically hilarious and does a great job at poking fun at all of us southerners. You don’t really look at characters like this and think: “sage, deep wisdom, pointed, discerning, wisdom teacher, guru, intellectual, etc.” I do not look the part that I play in my current cosmic dance. And, it’s frustrating for me. Internet banter does nothing to alleviate the stereotype of my body type, race and nationality.
So, in getting out my message to the world I understand that from the jump I am disadvantaged in being heard the way I deserve to be heard. I will never walk on to a stage and have the immediate reaction from my audience that say a male Indian guru would have. The audience will always and forever be surprised that what comes out of me, from my mouth, my words is of the same essence and deep wisdom as say Sadhguru. Who is currently my favorite wisdom teacher. I encourage everyone to hear what he has to say. His wisdom is broadly applicable to all religious contexts as well as to those who are atheist. He’s a good thinker. Truly. My task is that first I have to clear my own path before I can even get my voice heard. That path is filled with the preconceived ideas of others about my disposition. My disposition. My appearance. My context. It all makes my thoughts more questionable than if they came from Sadhguru or some other well known guru.
A few years ago I became acquainted with an amazing yoga teacher. One of the biggest hearts I’ve ever known. So wise and kind and insightful. A trauma specialist. White and very much like me in the context of our nationality and skin color. She practices as a shaman. It never occurred to me to question what she called herself or knew herself as. She touched my life in a profound way and still does. She is without a doubt a shaman. In my current friend circle I am thankful to be surrounded by progressive thinkers, fiery activists who put everything they have in to defending and supporting and promoting the disenfranchised of my area. They open their mouths and succinctly hand racists and hypocrites their a** on a daily basis. They’re smart. They are educated. They are passionate. And they have seemingly endless energy to argue. Words matter. Am I right? This is one reason I write the way I do is because to me words are everything. Especially in the absence of forethought and consideration. In spite of my admiration and generally on-board nature with the message of their activism I felt a bit disappointed and disillusioned by a recent post one made about shamanism. Basically he said, “unless your skin is brown or black it is an insult to call yourself a shaman and if you are white and calling yourself a shaman then you are actively participating in cultural appropriation.” That is a huge and entirely faulty blanket statement. Here’s why.
Many shamanic cultures believe in reincarnation. There are two schools of understanding on reincarnation. One is that once a body dies and the soul is disconnected from its bodily form then the entirety of that soul gets recycled and put into another container whether it’s a human body or animal body. The other (which is the one that I subscribe to) holds that since soul has no shape then when it is detached from the solid energetic form that we know as body, the energy is no longer bound to a singular body. It disburses and spreads out and degrades. It is made up of ribbons or strings of energy. Once those ribbons of energy are loosed from the body many of them will join themselves to other stronger energy forms. In other words the spirit when disbursed it expands until it breaks off into pieces. These then find their way into other bodily forms. So, if you believe that an ancestor reincarnated into your new baby it’s more likely that part of that ancestor did but not the entirety of their previous energetic soul form. For those unfamiliar with the science of energy it may be good to state here that the first law of thermodynamics is that “energy cannot be created or destroyed it can only be changed from one form into another.” Yes, you can be a Christian and believe in reincarnation. The early church never had a qualm with the concept of reincarnation but due to power dynamics and edits to the Bible to force it to fit into Roman thought we lost the richness of that mystic component of our faith. At any rate, the point that was lost upon my friends is that if shamans believe in reincarnation and that concept is a major part of the society that they operate in then it follows that those shamans understood that once they left their own bodies they very well could come back in another human body that may or may not have resemblance or relativity to the culture that they were healing. Words matter because they shape how we are seen and understood and how our gifts are received. So, in my opinion this did a horrible disservice to any seekers who saw that post. Plus, the shamans of 2022, regardless of their cultural context cannot look like the shamans of earlier centuries. Why should they? Why should we? If the modern age brings us anything it is the understanding that modernity and mysticism can coexist. It’s about the message. It’s about the medicine. Not the body that it comes from.
The Catalyst 
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