Awakening to the Spirit World

Awakening to the Spirit World



Shamanism is the most ancient spiritual practice known to humankind and is the “ancestor” of all our modern religions. As a method, it is a form of meditation combined with a focused intention to accomplish various things, as will become apparent in this book. As a spiritual practice, shamanism can become a way of life that may utterly transform the one who practices it.

The word “shaman” comes from the language of the Evenki peoples,

a Tungusic tribe in Siberia. This is a word whose meaning has to

do with esoteric knowledge and extraordinary spiritual abilities and as

such a shaman is often defined as an intermediary between the human

and the spirit worlds. In shamanic cultures, the word “shaman” has

come to mean “the one who sees in the dark” or “the one who knows.”

Most of what we know about the ancient practice of shamanism

comes from ethnographic fieldwork done among the tribal peoples of

Siberia, Asia, Africa, Australia, Greenland, from North, Central, and

South America, and from cultures of northern Europe such as the

Saami of Lapland. The existence of technical papers, monographs, and

books about shamanism is only expanding, but suffice it to say that we

have come to know that the shaman is a universal figure found in virtually all the world’s cultures.

There are certain commonalities in a shaman’s worldview and

practice across the world that allow us to make certain broad

generalizations about shamanism. In the majority of indigenous

cultures, the universe is viewed as being made up of two distinct

realms: a world of things seen and a world of things hidden, yet

no distinction is drawn between them. A shaman understands

that these two worlds present themselves together as two halves

of a whole. The shaman is the inspired visionary, a man or a

woman who learns through practice how to enter into this “world

of things hidden,” and once there, he or she typically encounters

extra-mundane personalities or archetypal forces that the indigenous

peoples refer to as spirits, ancestors, and even gods.

All true shamansÑand by association all authentic modern

visionariesÑdiscover, often by accident, that they possess the

ability to go into trance very easily, which allows them to make

contact with this hidden world. Trance in this sense is not an

unconscious state, but rather a state of expanded consciousness in

which the individual intentionally dissociates his or her focused

awareness away from the everyday world and enters into an alternate

or parallel reality that indigenous peoples regard as “the

spirit world.”

Through practice, shamans develop relationships with these

spirits, allowing them to do various things, initially on behalf of

themselves, and then increasingly on behalf of others.

Copyright © 2010 Sandra Ingerman and Hank