The Dark Shamans lose sight of this reality? I offer you this… Can one be said to lose touch with reality and remain able to actually perceive physical reality?
This happens to hermetic adepts too, but not as adherence to the dead, but because of a change in frequency. Indeed, it’s easy to lose balance. Even working with the archons or astrological powers can drive the adept beyond tolerance. No malice needed on the part of these powers.
Alternative realities do not require us to delete physical realities, do they? They require no such deletion. If you should happen to ever meet a schizophrenic in person, their delusions make reasonable sense seen in the context of what it is they believe they are experiencing.
Like those that encounter cthulu or the old ones inevitably go insane. Well, in that case, and people often don’t really contemplate this much these days…
Isn’t it a matter of where you are focusing your attention? Focus determines everything as far as functionality goes yes, but we tend to rely heavily on assumptions that lead us to believe in a reasonable reality. A reality we feel we can understand, or if not understand then one that will remain in keeping with those parts that we do understand. If this was proven untrue, what would the consequences be? If your sense of a reasonable reality was destroyed, could you really accept the reality you discovered in its place?
The mind maintains continuity like it’s life depended on it. It actually took the shamans of the Native Americans to help their people fully perceive what they were seeing when Europeans came with all their strange technology.
Yes, the boats. They could not see them. The villagers just couldn’t even take note of it. It was seen in the shamans “vision.” I offer all visions are actually like this. If your sense of the real were completely destroyed, you would cease to be functional. Your psyche or soul would be lost. This was the basis of the shamans soul retrieval practice. Their rituals included long held tribal symbolism and ritual enactment of the stories they tell to understand the world, and they use rather extreme methods to put the lost soul into a “teachable” state where they commence to reconnect them with the world as they knew it. If they were not reconnected to the tribal story, they would remain able to think and feel, but their alienation would be so intense as to render them unable to assist the well-being of the tribe in any meaningful way.
Is being enlightened sort of like gaining a new reality? Being enlightened is actually gaining the meta-reality. This insight is what allows the shamans spirit journeying, but until they have gained experience and spiritual strength, it leaves them also vulnerable to being swept up in the reality of the spirits rather than human concerns. The emotions of the land, of the earth mother, of “nature” are intense.
What about naturally intuitive people, the same applies? It can indeed apply. In fact, a shamans training is really just doing for the intuitive ones in the tribe what a braves training did for their warriors and hunters, familiarizes them with the land and gives them skills to better be able to deal with it in a useful way.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~