To Cal Roeker's comment on church - I couldn't agree more, or I wouldn't go - there is that sense of holiness around the Eucharist (communion) that makes it all worth while. There is also something more - the realization at church that one is simply one human being among others, not any more special or chosen. For some of us, this is a necessary lesson, repeated weekly.
Yet, don't we all want to experience heaven or god or benevolent spirits face to face? That is the lure and promise of shamanism. I do have my fears, as stated in the former blog, but I had yet to read to the end of Harner's book when I made that comment. According to Harner, the only place where bad spirits inhabit - and where there is badness in general - is here in Middle Earth. Many have said that they have "spent my time in hell" and they may be on to something. This is, as Harner says, the world of pain - and indeed it is. The great unsolvable mystery is why we would have to live it at all. To answer this (since I cannot do so logically), I referred to the I Ching, which relies on synchronicity, and got two hexagrams: "Before Completion" and "Deliverance." Perfect! In Before Completion, we are waiting and working for fullness, which will come in its own time if we are resolute. In Deliverance, we are almost there, waiting for the final act that will take us to our desired destination. Read in the context of the question, life truly is all about learning - just as the New Age gurus say. For some reason, this process is necessary for humans, and humans in this capacity are necessary for the completion of the Truth in the universe. It is, I suppose, as water is wet - just the way it is. We are promised by many accounts to understand one day. For now, it seems our task is to grow and learn.
Harner also brought up something that almost shocked me concerning 'synchronicity,' or non-causal coincidence. While this has puzzled and interested great minds, including most famously Carl Jung, Harner's understanding is that synchronicity is the work of spirits - either in coordinating events, or in signaling their presence. Why they would signal their presence he explains - on the one hand - that they WANT to be recognized (why this is so I do not know, unless they share more human traits than we might give them); and on the other, that something is happening or about to happen or might possibly happen that has important ties to the spirit world (of any level, as far as I know).
This reminds me of a book by famous author Joan Didion whose child died - and who for a year or so believed that the child communicated to her by leaving pennies about or drawing her attention to certain things that reminded her of him/her. In other words, she believed the child was contacting her through synchronicities. To my disappointment, she finally concluded that this was all wishful thinking, and she determined thereafter to learn to live with the pain and loss. But was she correct? There are many, many others who have had the same things occur and have concluded differently - to the point of finding things or learning of things that they could not have ordinarily (this includes some experiences by a close relative of mine who lost a teenage son). Oddly, until this reading I had not put the two together, that of spirits and synchronicity. Now I might have to - with the caveat that in a paranoid world, ALL things come together to make some kind of sense. That is the problem - but sometimes things really are connected. This might be something to keep in mind next time a penny turns up on one's deceased grandmother's Bible. FK
Yet, don't we all want to experience heaven or god or benevolent spirits face to face? That is the lure and promise of shamanism. I do have my fears, as stated in the former blog, but I had yet to read to the end of Harner's book when I made that comment. According to Harner, the only place where bad spirits inhabit - and where there is badness in general - is here in Middle Earth. Many have said that they have "spent my time in hell" and they may be on to something. This is, as Harner says, the world of pain - and indeed it is. The great unsolvable mystery is why we would have to live it at all. To answer this (since I cannot do so logically), I referred to the I Ching, which relies on synchronicity, and got two hexagrams: "Before Completion" and "Deliverance." Perfect! In Before Completion, we are waiting and working for fullness, which will come in its own time if we are resolute. In Deliverance, we are almost there, waiting for the final act that will take us to our desired destination. Read in the context of the question, life truly is all about learning - just as the New Age gurus say. For some reason, this process is necessary for humans, and humans in this capacity are necessary for the completion of the Truth in the universe. It is, I suppose, as water is wet - just the way it is. We are promised by many accounts to understand one day. For now, it seems our task is to grow and learn.
Harner also brought up something that almost shocked me concerning 'synchronicity,' or non-causal coincidence. While this has puzzled and interested great minds, including most famously Carl Jung, Harner's understanding is that synchronicity is the work of spirits - either in coordinating events, or in signaling their presence. Why they would signal their presence he explains - on the one hand - that they WANT to be recognized (why this is so I do not know, unless they share more human traits than we might give them); and on the other, that something is happening or about to happen or might possibly happen that has important ties to the spirit world (of any level, as far as I know).
This reminds me of a book by famous author Joan Didion whose child died - and who for a year or so believed that the child communicated to her by leaving pennies about or drawing her attention to certain things that reminded her of him/her. In other words, she believed the child was contacting her through synchronicities. To my disappointment, she finally concluded that this was all wishful thinking, and she determined thereafter to learn to live with the pain and loss. But was she correct? There are many, many others who have had the same things occur and have concluded differently - to the point of finding things or learning of things that they could not have ordinarily (this includes some experiences by a close relative of mine who lost a teenage son). Oddly, until this reading I had not put the two together, that of spirits and synchronicity. Now I might have to - with the caveat that in a paranoid world, ALL things come together to make some kind of sense. That is the problem - but sometimes things really are connected. This might be something to keep in mind next time a penny turns up on one's deceased grandmother's Bible. FK
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