That dreadlock bit is silly cause if a white person doesn't care for their hair it naturally will form dreadlocks. I don't think you can should be persecuted for something that naturally happens to you. Doesn't matter if your white or black your hair can still form dreads. And if theirs people getting mad that white people have dreads then I think they need to find less hate and more love and a better way to spend their time

I think it's high time we put race culture and dogma behind us, clearly these are our greatest enemies to true growth as humans

That's actually untrue - if you're from N. Europe, you're hair will form a matt rather than dreadlocks, which are distinct.

And, again, it's easy to say we should all put race and culture dogma behind us when it's not being shoved down your through. I'm sure there are people of color all over the united states who would LOVE to put race behind us, but can't because we live in a society that cares deeply about race. We can't put race behind us until police stop shooting black people and The State stops using their bodies to make a profit on incarceration.

None of us WANT to focus on identity politics, but we have to because in our culture, identity matters. As much as I would love to say 'gender is a fiction, let's all just throw it out,' I can't when my trans friends are many times more likely to be murdered just for having the gall to wear a dress and a beard at the same time.

Blessings
~ND

Shamans, prophets, medicine people, healers, sages, the list goes on. Who cares what you call yourself or what others call you? As long as you're not hurting yourself or others, then its all good.

Stealing a culture and manipulating it to make a profit IS hurting others. Syncretism is not bad, but it's important one is aware of the genesis of each belief, and what it means in a traditional sense. And as long as c one keeps their syncretic beliefs to themselves, and they don't spread it like it's gospel.

People on here like to reference those people that hang a dream catcher while chanting "om mani padme hum" under the influence of aya. Nothing wrong with that. However, if that person starts charging people and calls themselves a shaman, healer, medicine wo/man, ayahuasquero, curandero etc. just because they like to trip is pretty irresponsible and downright disrespectful. I can't believe those weekend shaman courses are real. That's the biggest problem, the rise of the plastic "shaman", and the greed behind it.

So, this is where we are now. I am observing the same incidents and all I can do, is to face them and most important, decide how to deal with them, now. What do I want to make out of it. How to go on from here?
1) Face and accept that it seems to be like this, right at this moment. Neglection and defense are always a sign that I have not found a way to cope with it, that I can not integrate it right now in my system (because I-ego feel/s offended), that I close myself for/ don't understand the information behind it.
2) "Work" it through, what is it? Is this behaviour/mental concept which I produce logical/rational and is it functional, that means, does it improve our all-living-quality in life? How do I want to deal with it from now? How do I reproduce myself in the now? What am I giving in and where does my behaviour lead to? I decide for myself and create new patterns
3) I am the change and enhance the new patterns I have developed
See the "A matter of focus" thread.

All I can control is my own behaviour (thinking is also a behaviour), my own physiological and psychological reproduction in every moment. "Society" will follow, we are all humans, we all correspond in love, we want to feel "good", we want to love and be loved. It is an evolutionary step to experience unconditional love as greatest pleasure/force in a human experience. Because we all want to feel happy, we un-consciously check everyone around us, to improve the resoltuion of our human experiences. When I see someone who appears happy and content, I check to find out what this human is making different than I do, to eventually learn from her/him and "improve" myself.

Thus, all I have to/can do is to consciously reproduce myself, oriented on my values. It seems that the wheels of the mills turn "slowly", but this is evolution on a psychological/spiritual level.



tseuq

I think yes, but you must surrender for the DMT molecule itself to become one. That is, everything is included, such as (techno)-animism, (techno)-shamanism, chaos magick, christianity, synthetic telepathy, alien contact, oversoul, etcetera.

The "biggest" challenge is to find a way, how to cope with it, how to deal with it, how to integrate it. Don't stop in defining problems and surrendering in your own illusion of incapacity.

F.e. that fear occurs during a trip is pretty likely and even if I put a lot of effort in preventing myself from fear, it is possible that fear shows up and pulls away the chair I wanted to make myself comfortable with. Thus, keep standing, learn how to juggle and smile.

tseuq

It's kinda important what someone calls themselves because people tend to expect people using certain titles especially respected ones, to be able to supply the service often expected.

Where's the accountability if someone uses the services of someone who uses a wierd term of DM SHAMAN? For example, if you use a Curandero in say Peru, if something bad happens, you can always goto the Authorities, and they will at least know roughly what sort of thing they do, and can help support you. However a DM SHAMAN? WTF does that mean?? How do they train for that, and why would they avoid the most respected master teacher plant??

How about a Xylophone Shaman?

and what would he think about that?

I find that offensive

Which is in turn offensive to people who master the xylophone to supreme levels, or are these artistic people excluded and on what base?

I'm sorry that you took it offensive.

Edit: I was driven by the idea that shamanic powers could be empowered by more things than the obvious. Then I thought maybe by anything that takes a healer person to create social benefits.

Well, if a marimbist and a xylophonist were to both play Brahms lullaby on each other's instruments, it would be same same but different from their perspective.
Some xylophonists who play the marimba play classical, some play jazz, some smash the marimba with their bruteish, hairy knuckles.
The music don't change, just the names.

Appropriation of culture aside (as it seems this thread is venturing into vast discourse on other matters), I am interested to know whether there exists any ancient traditions of smoked tryptamines in a shamanistic context? Entheogenic-gnosis, you mentioned that dmt shamanism is ancient.. were you just referring to orally activated dmt/snuffs? or is there something you know that your not telling us .. I think Horuscope was more referring to smoked dmt which is considerably differen't at breakthrough doses to that of the common dose of snuffs/aya..

i'm also interested in anybody else's view on the pro's/con's of a shaman figure guiding people who are on high dose "breakthrough" experiences with smoked dmt.. there hasn't been much discussion of this so far in the thread

to me the breakthrough experience seems best left to take its course with the individual, without the disruption by a third party.. I think there's lots more that can go wrong with another present who is making noise.. they'd want to be pretty confident of they're abilities..

I think this is a great thread, and clearly touches on subjects that are important for growth.

I think the larger question is weather freelance shamans, ones operating from their own modality rather than one handed down by a teacher or culture, can have as much legitimacy as those classically trained shamans. I think for me the answer is yes, but that is requires great dedication and the amount of training or work these shamans must go through to become legitimate is not less than the amount of training a classic shaman goes through.

My understanding of shamanism is that you are working with in tangible energies in different ways then we work with things in the everyday world. In everyday world we expect things to be concrete, define able, you put in this and you get a physically tangible result.

When working with spirits airs winds whatever you want to call them we are using our own intent to push these energies in certain directions. In this way I believe that if you put intent behind a method and visualize it to be, then it is. This is the power of our intention, which is a common theme through all forms of shamanism.

So to give an example let us say there is a classic shamanic technique wich uses paper figures to represent spirits or airs. Negative spirits can be trapped in these figures and positive ones can be called on and invoked.

What these spirits really are (from my understanding) is they are thought forms, collections of energy given life by our simple acknowledgment of their existence. That doesn't mean they aren't real though, because as we know, our thoughts and intentions CREATE our entire reality. So in the spiritual realm thought and intention have great power to create manifest and manipulate.

So returning to the paper figure technique let's say there is a new technique that an independent shaman has created where instead of using paper figures to represent spirits, they use (just for example I am making this up) certain stones to represent spirits or thought forms that are both positive or negative. This shaman may not even refer to these as spirits, it doesn't matter, what does matter is he is working with thought forms of energy, and although he is not using paper figures and uses different techniques and labels, in essence he is still working with the same energies. The process of the stones merely helps him to visualize and quantify and work with these energies.

Shamanism is not static, it lives and breathes and moves within us now, and to deny our own capacity to work with spirit, we are dishonoring our very birthright as humans, not as white or black or Indian, but human

So what can one do? All i can think of is pushing for some sort of accreditation or at least acknowledgment from masters, but that can also be abused.



I was more referring to the OP, and not recognised practitioners. Obviously, a title is important if you are providing a service for someone.

This thread is nth thread about shamanism. At work currently, so I can't check other threads, but this just seems like a matter of semantics.

If we could agree on the term shamanism I suppose it would involve a social role by use of altered states of mind/soul tuning. This proposed definition would not say how exactly. In my eyes a shaman could even work on a situation solo with the 'patient(s)' on his mind.

Whether he/she uses light/colors, dark, icaros, rattles, ayahuasca, sober, silence, xylophones or dmt is IMHO of no matter and only adds grist to the mill of quarrel. I did my part in provoking a bit but there was this point behind it.

* * *

How long and intricate is the route of ayahuasca in history? Given such inertia to other ways of approach, dmt for example, could change it's general reputation.
If someone could fit that proposed definition above with the aid of dmt, more power to him/her, but being practical it would be more interesting to see if we can have at least one example of it. If not, then why faffing about it?

Yes, you have a point. However, like a Siberian Shaman uses a drum to induce states of consciousness, i'm sure a xylophone could equally be used. These tend to be instruments that are used repetatively over time. DM would seem like a bad choice since it is a fast changing phenomenon. I would have thought that part would have been obvious. In fact it seems like the kind of tool any self respecting Shaman would 'steer clear' of.

Now if we spoke about a longer lasting and 'stable' style compound like say '2cb', then that might seem more appropiate, and lazy me who can't move his elephant feet can be bothered to find links, but i remember reading that some Afrikan Shamans use it.

https://erowid.org/chemi...s/2cb/2cb_article1.shtml

I would consider changa more fitting than freebase and both classifying under DMT. Second, a low dose like 15 - 20 mg FB can really whirl my consciousness for the rest of the day TBH.

I don't really understand how a synthetic compound could be used as an entheogen by traditional healers.

Changa Shaman...sure.....why didn't the op ask about that? DM Shaman? Pewrhaps with a small dose, but even so, it's useability is still questionable. Surely it's silly to avoid vine, when it's ever present. This thread was doomed from the start because of that. Psychonautics, yes...Shamanism...NO.




Then you don't understand the mechanism of action. It has a long lasting action, and is said to have potential in psychotherapy because of its empathic but smooth qualities...

I understand the mechanism of action, I just don't understand the "traditional" part and synthetics.