For a number of weeks now, I have been a student of Joan Forest Mage. I started attending her Shamanic Foundations workshop after meeting her through the Life Force Arts Center. It didn’t take me very long to sense the deeply spiritual and life-affirming nature of her work. And since I started working with Joan and the members of our workshop, I’ve met the most remarkable people, learned how to connect with my spirit guides, and experienced moments of deep healing and profound transformation. All of this in just a matter of a few weeks!
The following experience came about as a direct result of the work I have been doing with Joan and our circle of shamans. I am so grateful to Joan and the space she has provided for our shamanic work through the Life Force Arts Center.
The Shaved Head
Not that very long ago, I shaved all the hair off my head and spent the night chanting. I should say that this was not a typical weekend for me. As far as weekends go, I have had my share of wild ones, and some that have been way out there. But what was unique about this weekend in particular was how everything that transpired came about so spontaneously. How it all just flowed. It totally caught me off guard.
I had been planning on just relaxing that night. However, at the same time, I had been receiving signs throughout most of the day indicating that perhaps there was something in store for me — some kind of lesson or initiation. Whenever the universe begins sending me signs indicating that the aetheric realm is about to pay me a visit, I have found it best to remain calm. A voice in my head kicks in and says, “Flow with it.” Likewise, as a result of my shamanic work, I have learned to maintain an attitude of complete acceptance, a centered but vigilant poise. The shaman in me always tells me to expect anything to happen, just don’t let it overwhelm you.
That’s why on this night I was able to simply follow what my body and my intuition were telling me, which was to let go — “let go, completely.” And so I did.
I took out my shiny black obsidian crystal and started whispering to it. It started whispering back! I then started burning some white sage, at which point my whispering turned into a humming and my hands started moving round the obsidian, creating a sphere of light all around it. When I finally picked up my rattle, something clicked in my consciousness. I felt a surge of energy that began to pour out of me in the form of a deep and resonating chant. At that point, I entered into a state of ecstasy, losing all sense of what I would call, for lack of a better word, “mundane reality.” It was a feeling of wild exuberance, of complete release; I was in deep communion with the world, at a very primal level, and feeling free — free in every way and of everything.
I should say that the feeling was not entirely new to me, and I was familiar with the power of the rattle. The spirits had already taught me about the rattle as a fundamental shamanic tool. What was new to me was the spontaneity of it all, and of the range — in terms of energy — of the chanting itself. It was as if I were reaching down deep, very deep, and getting in tune with energy frequencies that were of a very instructive nature. They (the spirits? the ancestors? the universe?) were teaching me things, empowering me, healing me, guiding me. And it all just seemed so meant to be — fateful, aligned with the universal scheme of things — so natural.
After about two hours of this I did what any sane person would do; I went off to the bathroom to shave off my hair. And there I was in the bathroom with a pile of shaving razors and, because I was not completely out of my trance state when I started, the whole thing turned into a long and arduous ordeal. It was messy, sometimes painful, and very slow — very, very slow.
By the time I finished, I was a mess. There were places where I had accidentally cut myself and had started bleeding, and because it was 7 in the morning and I had not slept or rested, I was in a state of complete exhaustion. I realized at that moment that there had been a lot more going on through the whole painful, slow process than just a shave. The idea that flashed through my mind was “ego dismemberment.”
I don’t know what happened next; I only know that I came out of it a few hours later with the sound of my phone ringing. It was a friend of mine calling me to ask if I wanted to go with him and his girlfriend to the forest. They wanted to immerse themselves in nature, feel the earth beneath their feet, meditate with the trees. I didn’t actually pick up the phone because I still was not completely back from my trip. I couldn’t quite figure out, in that state of mind, what I was supposed to do when the phone rang. But I did listen to my friend’s voice on my answering machine, and listening to his voice snapped me out of my trance.
The Right Place
My mind returned back to the world of the mundane, and as it returned, I got up and figured that I was supposed to be somewhere. I then started making my way to LFAC. Joan and Liza (a member of our shamanic circle) had already started the shamanic workshop. Fortunately, I got there in time to join them. It all began to make sense. The minute I saw Joan and Liza, I knew — I knew I was in the right place.
We talked and we shared and I got to rattle and chant. I enjoyed it beyond measure. Joan and her strength! Liza and her fire! Yes! (The memory of this brings a smile to my face.) At that moment, I thought, “The world is good, the NOW is good, the spirits are very good.” And we got the chance — but is it ever really by chance? — to share the moment with another “Jose” (my name is also Jose) who was there working in the space. He had a tattoo on his arm of an Aztec god. Of course!!! “And it’s all bliss, all bliss,” I thought at that moment.
Being there with Joan, Liza, and Jose reminded me of Joseph Campbell’s writing about bliss, “I even have a superstition that has grown on me as the result of invisible hands coming all the time — namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the door to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”
Love, Bliss, and FaithSince the time I began actively engaging in the study and practice of shamanism, I have been asked what I am learning and experiencing. I am still very new to the practice, but based on my current experiences and studies, I have learned how important it is to approach all aspects of this sometimes slippery subject with an open mind. I believe that to be a shaman you must learn how to transcend ideology. The shaman is now the only figure in our contemporary society capable of transcending all social constructs. Shamanic reality deconstructs consensual reality in irrevocable, sometimes traumatic ways. It’s a very Plutonic type of energy. It tends to escape even the sharpest of minds.
However, what I have discovered on this path is not so much ideas or a system, but simply some very basic, irreducible, fundamental truths. I have gone very deep down. And down in the deep, I have found love, bliss, and faith.
In my pitifully limited way, as a human — we are after all nothing but hairless and tailless monkeys, aren’t we? — I have come to believe that love is the engine of the universe. I repeat: love is the engine of the universe. (Are we not all here because of love?) The times I have spent chanting, communing with spirits, mother earth, and the ancestors, have all led me to this realization.
But this was a difficult lesson to learn because it demanded sacrifice. I found that in the way of love stands the ego, and the ego needs to be sacrificed. Likewise, I encountered shadows, shadows surrounding the ego that needed to be fought against and banished. It’s true that the spirits and the ancestors were always there guiding me, but I still needed to undergo the ordeal of experiencing this truth directly, almost viscerally. The spirits said, “Fight the good fight!”
I began to sense how my struggle resulted in an initiation of sorts. I had become initiated into a circle of spiritual warriors. Transcending the ego, battling my way through the shadows, I found there, waiting for me on the other side, the angel of love. Joyful acceptance and complete openness to the world and everything in it — this is its wisdom.
Bliss is what I mean by energy. Bliss is energy: energy is bliss. Potent shamanic formula! Shamans will tell you that, when they’re working, they are partaking of an energy that is running through all of creation. Shamans understand fundamentally that we are swimming in an ocean of energy! Is this not a wonderful conception? And it is a conception that is beginning to take root in our collective consciousness.
I believe that shamanism within our culture is in the process of initiating an archaic revival, a powerful archaic revival. It is returning us once again back to that time when we as a species still maintained a deep and primordial connection to the great mother earth. The shaman teaches us how, if we wish to understand bliss, we need simply lay our hands upon the mother earth. Find that primal connection to the mother earth — Gaia — and you will find bliss.
And faith? A voice in my head once told me when I was floundering down in the depths, “Have faith in the process. Have faith in the process! The shit might be hitting the fan, the sky might be falling all around you, but do not for a second doubt. It’s all for the good. It’s all for the good…. Just enjoy the ride and hold on tight.” I’m smiling again. My sense is that we have been on this ride now for thousands of years, and we’re nowhere near the end — not yet. I’m still holding on tight, though.
Jose De Leon has been working as a ritualist of the Western Esoteric Tradition for the last five years, and is a recent student of shamanism, sacred plant culture, and yoga. He lives in Chicago.