CONTINUED FROM SAINT LAWRENCE 8 9-03-25
THIS ENTRY IS SAINT LAWRENCE 9 9-24-25
We need to develop a comprehensive psychology of higher states of consciousness. This new psychology will draw from tribal insights, as well as modern transpersonal insights.
The rejection of the love of a spirit results in illness, bad luck and injury.
A beautiful soul is a disposition toward shamanism
The union between a shaman and his spirit is founded on love, and in some cultures considered a real marriage.
Married to a spirit, the shaman can freely live out sexual fantasies without disapproval.
Modern psychology and anthropology considers spirit weddings pathological. We have another example of psychology, anthropology, and sociology judging as pathological that of which they have no knowledge.
A feeling of insignificance and smallness is necessary for any peak experience.
The shaman experiences alternating waves of joy and despair. From which he emerges a shaman. This experience would be labeled manic depressive in western culture.
Intense emotions move the shaman to song. Songs arise from the heart, as praise to God. Or from intense concentration, a dream, or in a moment ofrelaxation. A song might arise after a psychotic or physical break, from the spirits of the dead, or another spiritual realm. Songs of power, to invoke conversation with the spirits, or invoke healing powers are central focus to many shamanic cultures.
In all tribal cultures, no one stands between the initiate and natural or divine powers. Tribal people allow those beset with shaman sickness to engage natural and mystical powers. The supernatural forces that guide the changing weather and action of wild beasts are trusted to guard the path of the initiate. There is a basic trust that natural and divine and forces will teach, guide, protect, and empower. The tribals , hence are of greater faith and trust than modern, western man. Psychiatry has assumed as its duty the universal normalization of behaviors. And in so doing has all but blocked the path to empowered spirituality. Meaningful prayers for health and wholeness, and peace of the nations are destroyed before they are conceived. In destroying those powers that would serve peace, health, and justice, psychiatry stands as no less than a conspiracy against the hopes of man. And what is called schizophrenia, is a label used against some people for the purposes of social and political control. We have psychiatrists, with their political machinery playing the role of God – and not doing a very good job of it. In the name of healing stifling those who would truly heal, and be healed. +.
The Papago Indians make a pilgrimage to the ocean. And then returning to their village begin a sixteen day fast to complete the rite of passage into adult warriors.
Life and death battles, the killing of an eagle, the strenuous pilgrimage to the ocean, or fasting during menstruation are all used as vehicles for visions or receiving a power song.
Warfare is considered a path to sacred experience, indicating a high level of psychic integration. The “song of power “lies dormant in us. It is awakened by great suffering. The shaman’s power song is received from holiness, God within. It is healing brought into the world.
According to Ab Maslow peak experiences and states of ecstasy are a biological need of man. Song is a basic need as well.
While suffering extinguishes negative mental structures, and opens our eyes, it helps us transcend three dimensional limitations. Euphoria and bliss are clear indications of transcendence.
On a higher level even physical structures are composed of harmonious sound.
Once the shaman has had an illuminating experience, he will always carry a part of the celestial with him. His power song is like a key unlocking a door to heavens joy and healing power.
Healing and prophecy lay at the center of God, and the center of the shaman’s soul.
The song of joy is the joy of being united with our higher nature. Sharing sacred intoxication. There are songs of personal healing, and songs used to heal others.
A super sensory ability to heal and foresee is brought on by sound.
Certain tonal frequencies can kill or damage a human being. Japanese Samuri will use a scream, at certain pitch to paralyze an opponent. Modern science speaks of matter coming into being as condensation of light and sound.
6-1-91 12:30 am
Good Reverend,
I’ve been at the plow all day. Working at my studies, shamanism. Identifying, isolating, understanding, laying hold of that power some would call sainthood. Do not even the mysteries follow the logical patterns of the contemplative mind? The logical patterns that some call mystery. One sees, and comes to know, there is no impenetrable mystery.
Courage is the foreknowledge that God will intervene. Vision and healing are children of purity. Our problems reflect our materialist and fleshly preoccupation.
It is good to live alone. Here it is peaceful. I am healthy now, not burdened by the disease of others, which I carried for so long as an inmate of the system.
What happens when a soul is at wits end, and there are still miles to travel? I would say finish the journey kneeling before the altar of Our Lord. The Lord here sends a sign. Our world, because of sin, is in evermore dangerous waters. Man in God, could manifest the Kingdom. Distracted, however, from our first duty, which is salvation, the vision of apocalyptic horrors still looms.
No one acts sane, when the world is his burden. Especially when prayer is said to be a sign of disease. I would have given more, carried the cross a little bit further, but was not allowed to do so.+.
Now, I am again in the human realm. And for myself have won much light, space and peace.
I was asked, “what one thing should a person do for the good?”I answered, ‘get down on your knees and pray, pray long and hard, every single day”. I feel I have touched history, and lifted the veil of mystery, in a small, very small, way. I seek the face of our God always, and in His Blessed Mother.
SACRED DRUGS
The shaman during his initiation receives pointers, intuitively, to the needed herb, root or blossom. There is an explosive expansion of reality. The curtain in front of a larger stage of life is drawn aside. A vision is experienced.
Initiates must partake of ritual cleansing, in the form of isolation and fasting. When the drug is taken, a fear of death sets in. This fear the initiate must overcome. The jaguar mother appears to the initiate, and guides and protects the initiate through the completion of the ritual. Mythical heroes, gods and demons appear, guiding the initiate through the secrets of the universe.
Drugs will not produce a shaman, unless there is a call. Drugs draw out latent qualities, they do not produce them.
There are many different thresholds, or a hierarchy of shamanic powers. The lowest is the ritual singer and dancer. The highest is a shaman and priest who invoke spirits of protection, protection and healing. He is in league with the mythical heroes of other times and realities. Experiencing another world is ascending. The entranced shaman must learn to ascend to the celestial realm.
Psychedelics are not forbidden , but contrarily used to strengthen psychological, social, and spiritual structures. The tribals subdivide the drug experience into three phases. I).Wonderful hallucinations, star and flowers. 2).Dreamlike scenes, rolling clouds, the reenactment creation, the construction of the first musical instrument, and the first communal home. The individual dies when drinking the potion, and returns to the womb of the great mother. There he is reborn, and then returns to his ordinary existence. The kettle in which the medicine is prepared is called the place of origin, the uterus, or the place of death. 3). In the third phase are seen wide open spaces, gentle breezes, and soft lights. Soft and beautiful music.
In the Tukano tribal culture, training takes place under the direction of an experienced priest. It is done in the wilderness, and can last up to year. Women are not allowed near.
The initiates hunt, fish and gather, and at night they dance and sing, smoking tobacco and taking narcotics.+.
The initiates learn to master questions about the acquisition of food, and medicinal herbs, or the invocation of supernatural aid. Psycho active drugs reduce the filtering efficiency of the brain and the doors of perception are pushed open, allowing an altered state. Peyote is chewed, as well, to unite man with God.
Fasting, exhaustion, meditation, concentration, and extreme temperatures can affect the mind in the same way as do drugs.
A successful drug experience must involve more than mechanistic preparations. The rituals of purification are more than bio-physical manipulations. The user of hallucinogenic drugs is crossing the barrier between the ordinary realms of consciousness into the presence of a divine or super-natural entity.
Those preparations which are called ritual purifications, work like fasting or prayer, not only to cleanse and alter the biochemistry, but to invoke the guidance, power and protection of supernatural forces. There is a science to successful and effective drug experiences. It involves both cleansing and the invocation of supernatural protection. The strengthening of the constitution is involved, as well.
I choose to include this writing on the drug experience because I experienced this as true. However I must interject a comment that enlightened can be sought without drugs
Plain and simple, divine grace is needed for a successful drug experience. Supernatural favor is invoked through fasting, sexual continence, and ritual prayer. The exact measure of these spiritual preparations is a science in itself.
The text agrees with my last note, that introspection, prayer, confession, humility, honesty and self awareness are needed for a successful drug experience.
These, yes, as well as love, self sacrifice, and trust, and blessing in the drug or plant itself. One must accept his hallucinogens with thanks to God.
Drugs provide important mystical insights and more meaningful perception of oneself. Especially the realization the inner man cannot ever be truly separate from external reality.
The psycho-therapeutic effect of psychedelic drugs is the most radical and complete form healing known to us.
With hallucinogens, one sees deeply, visits other worlds, talks to God.
Psychiatric interventions initially may seem to block the path, but now I see that the path cannot be blocked.
Clairvoyance and divination also become possible with hallucinogens.+.
The shaman’s power may be inherited. But the passage of power is formally celebrated as well, with the gift of a sacred cloth or special object in a ceremony.
Shamanic powers can be inherited through deceased relatives, or from a living parent or grandparent. Wherein the parent or grandparent may lose his powers.
Powers may be transferred by rubbing the novitiate, rubbing by the master’s hands. The power is light, and the shaman may sometimes glow. Powers can be transferred by blowing, exchange of breath, or the gift of power objects. Sacred power objects sacredly, mysteriously, received.
Sexually abnormal people, homosexuals, androgens, transvestites, hermaphrodites, the most sensitive, and the loner are the ones chosen to become shamans. “My powers were not freely given, but had to be fought for and won”.
A refusal to submit to the powers of the beyond results in torment, never ending sickness, madness, even death. It is suggested that psychosis is being trapped between normalcy and the transpersonal-those who are half healed and half sick. Sometimes the spirits will chastise the unwilling novice. However the call can be cancelled by another powerful shaman, who can suck the crystals of the call from the novitiates body.
“I have been an eager and willing virgin, full of enthusiasm to give my life to God”.
Human resistance to the call is a struggle against the responsibility and change new powers bring.
Sickness and suffering must be seen as a process of purification and preparation. Sickness annihilates the ego. This annihilation is necessary for growth and positive change.
In some places, shamans are not respected. Often the shaman is financially poor. There are many dangers, physical and spiritual. There are many demands. Demands of dietary and sexual strictures, and complete mental and physical control.
Some shaman, upon Christian baptism, lose their powers and spirit guardians. Others, at baptism, send them away. Some lose powers by overtly or accidentally breaking a covenant, like sexual promiscuity or excessive alcohol. Some shamans lose powers in psychic wars with other shamans. The shaman may be maimed or disfigured by the powers he once held, or perhaps lose his mind.
Whoever sets foot on the spiritual path will, in one way or another, remain under obligation, under penalty of physical or mental illness.
Loss of power may occur when power objects are carelessly used, dreams, visions, or taboos ignored, healing powers improperly used, or ritual procedures handled negligently. The sacred path must be kept from impurity, upon penalty of sickness or death+.