Barbara-Lynn Freed, Contributing Writer Waking Times From the dawn of history to the advent of the Roman Catholic Church, the veil between the worlds was much thinner than it is today. This meant that the people enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with the natural spirits of the heavens, and land, making their lives interdependent with the Law …
Peter Clark, Guest Writer Waking Times So what is the current state of the world and how can shamanism relate to it? We are on a wild ride perhaps, with many twists and turns. On the one hand, we see our human created structures: financial, religious, political, health care, business, shaking and at times crumbling …
Chris Bourne, Openhand Contributor Waking Times It feels important to raise the topic of psychedelic drugs and their involvement in spiritual awakening. It seems to be a growing trend for evolving people to want to short-cut the natural evolutionary process by involvement with transcendental experiences induced by drugs such as Ayahuasca and DMT. Openhand’s direct experience …
Dylan Charles, Editor Waking Times Sound influences our lives in countless ways. As subtle energy, it can heal the body and create harmony in the outward world. As not so subtle energy, it can be used to control people, cause damage or make the world dance. The legendary comedian and philosopher Bill Hicks once stated: …
Waking Times As we pass through life on the physical plane, things happen. We contract flus and colds and viruses, and we sustain physical injuries, like falling off our bikes as children or experiencing sports injuries. As adults, we may throw our back out or experience a serious car accident, in the process, acquiring bruises, …
Hank Wesselman, Guest Writer Waking Times In the Western world, when we hear the word “shaman,” most of us tend to conjure up an image of a masked and costumed indigenous tribal person, dancing around a fire in the dark, involved in some sort of mysterious ritual, accompanied by singing and drum beats. But inside …
Howard G. Charing, Guest Writer Waking Times Ayahuasca – Plant Spirit Medicine of the Amazon “We are not talking about passive agents of transformation, we are talking about an intelligence, a consciousness, an alive and other mind, a spirit, which of course we have no place in our society. Nature is alive and is talking …
Christina Sarich, Contributing Writer Waking Times “Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.” -Werner Heisenberg, Across the Frontiers Buckminster Fuller has described himself as a modern Pythagorean. His geodesic dome has been recreated over 300,000 times according to www.bfi.org. Other visionaries have identified with Pythagoras too, such as Plato, Leonardo …
Jade Wah’oo Grigori, Guest Writer Waking Times Shamanism is humanity’s oldest and most enduring spiritual practice. From the very origins of the human race there is evidence of our relationship with the Divine expressed through ceremony as a means of maintaining harmonious union with Creation. Whether in the placement of flowers upon the graves of our …
Christina Sarich, Contributing Writer Waking Times From ancient Vedic times in India, to the sanctuaries of Greece, including the Temple of Delphi, to the terraced Mayan hills in Central and South America, and spirit journeys of American Indians, to the DMT and mushroom induced trances of the aboriginal Australians, to the opium dens of China, …
Howard G. Charing, Guest Writer Waking Times In traditional wisdom and knowledge, life is a continuum that does not end at the moment of death. One of the most important traditional tasks of the seer, shaman, medicine man or woman is to assist people who are either dying or the spirits of those who have …
Waking Times La Pequeña Muerte is a short, beautiful film by Republic of Light Productions about the healing journey that 2 North Americans took to the Peruvian Amazon to find cures for physical and emotional ailments that were seemingly un-treatable by Western medicine. It has been said that many illnesses are purely psychosomatic, that is, …
Sharon Brown, Sacred Fire Contributor Waking Times Can we prepare ourselves so that the transformation of 2012 is a time of celebration instead of lamentation? An interview with OmeAkaEhekatl (Erick Gonzalez) Erick Gonzalez was born in Guatemala in 1959. At two, paralyzed by polio, he was taken to traditional Mayan healers by his grandmother. He recovered and, as …
Singing to the Plants We have discussed the idea, widely held in the Upper Amazon, that human beings in general, and shamans in particular, have powerful urges to harm other humans, and that the difference between a healer and a sorcerer comes down to a matter of self-control. And on that there hangs a story. A …
Z, Contributing Writer Waking Times “For what one needs in this universe is not certainty but the courage and nerve of the gambler; not fixed conviction but adaptability; not firm ground whereupon to stand but skill in swimming.” –Alan Watts “Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does …
Tlingit warriors would fast and pray for day to lead them in to the right trees they will use to make wooden collars. The trees were selected by a shaman. The area became protected and the trees gave permission to be killed, Abraham said.
Options for 2012: Impending doomsday disaster? Global financial market collapse? Earth changes? Or perhaps a consciously held combination of all three? What about an impending quantum shift, the presence of higher human or divine values in the commerce and exchange of relationship? What about the possibility of a world-changing tsunami of consciousness? And if the latter is my choice, what are the steps necessary to have that call to consciousness heard and made manifest?
