The Conceptual Framework and Shamanism

All Images Are From HERE Tatiana she is seeing it!

Shamanism is undergoing transformation, definitions are in flux and shamanic experience is also changing and the application of shamanism is evolving to encompass an enormous diversity

The Conceptual Framework

Each individual has a perceptional field, which can be understood as the imagination in the broadest possible sense, which includes all concepts, opinions and knowledge that comprises his or hers conceptual framework. The conceptual framework translates all experience through its own lexicon. Experiences are further translated down into the centralized identity, such as the mental ego construct of self.  The mind allows some conceptual energy into the file known as Reality (1), and other energy is filed under Fiction (2) and some is filed into Unlikely but not sure (3) as well as Likely but not quite sure (4).

Shamanism

 Shamanism involves connection to and adaption to the environment. Shamanism is about working with the living energies, that underpin and shape the environment. The environment is a living field of energy and consciousness, it is a lot more than the biospheric environment, that people commonly associate with the word. As such the environment is a dynamic changing and evolving lifescape.

Within the Earth’s environment we are living through an epoch with a dramatic emergence of technology, one aspect of this is the internet. The internet provides a framework of concepts. 

The conceptual framework of humanity has undergone an enormous expansion and complexification, the ideas, experiences, imaginings, opinions and revelations that are available are too expansive for any one mind. Regardless to how much individuals choose to take on, of this reservoir of information and perception within their reality framework and their belief system, is irrelevant, this extraordinary conceptual framework now exists. The informational landscape of the internet is part of the environment. The environment is going through an dramatic transition. 

Reality

Reality, which is an agreement of how we filter experience and engage with the physical dimension, is in transition and the agreement of reality is now increasingly becoming more fluid, relative and virtual. Ultimate reality (?) is not knowable to human beings at their present state of development.

Healing and Wholeness

Shamanism looks to heal the soul. Healing involves temporary stabilization where we feel healed, bu it is ongoing process of stability and growth.The soul is an evolving consciousness, evolution includes a process of involution or graduated descension of soul into the ego-mind that has formed through history, shamanism has its roots in the human species pre-egoic stages. The soul or the consciousness exists outside time and space as we know it and yet also encompasses all of the senses and the ideas and beliefs we encounter, the soul is not a fixed entity. The human soul is an osmotic self, that is seeking to integrate with the ego domain and therefore transform it.

Shamanism is a direct experiential practice and way of being and yet with that comes an increasingly sophisticated conceptual framework. We can no longer merely see shamanism as the ancient ancestoral experience, for the environment is no longer merely natural, but supranatural. 

The human species is attempting to become a planetary civilization, whereby the full diversity and complexity of the total living environment is experienced as a dynamic unified whole (not enclosed) and that whole interfaces with and adapts to cosmic energies. Healing is now reconnection and dynamic adaption to the dramatically changing environment. We cannot find a blissful state of stability for all time, we must now accept that the journey is one of navigation and adventure within the flux state environment.

Chill out Dudes and Learn from Others

The practice of shamanism involves stretching the conceptual framework.  The experience we get from plant medicines or even LSD catapults us into an experience beyond our established conceptual framework and way beyond the walls of our identity.

However even after hundreds of entheogenic journeys the conceptual framework although radically reconfigured can still retain limitations, I have seen it. Cultural diversity and exposure to new ideas and beliefs has to be part of a shamanic path of development.

An understanding of how the Earth is changing and how a planetary culture in a planetary environment is emerging is an essential part of contemporary shamanism.

The Shamans of today,  if they are to be totally relevant, cannot be politically naïve or complicit with the mainstream illusion in any way, in any corner.

So we must recognize that one shaman is unlikely to have it all mastered, this opens the door to a multiplicity of shamanic approaches. 

It is an absurdity to dismiss other peoples experiences if you are undergoing shamanic development.

A respect for traditional shamans and an openness to the best of the neo-shamanic approaches and the best of the new age cosmic modalities is the way forward.