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I am sure that there is unlikely to be anybody reading these words who doesn’t remember Don Juan’s advice to the young Carlos Casteneda to “Follow the path with Heart”. How true it resounded. How right. How wise.
Yet, it took poor old Casteneda all of 20 years and seven books to even
start to know what his mentor was telling him.
Why is this? Why is it so hard to stay in our heart when it is clearly central
to our life and our destiny? Since the angels tell us that the Kingdom of
the Heart is the specific domain of humans, that we hold the balance between
the Devic and the Angelic realms in our hands, why then is it so difficult
to live a life coming from the heart?
It’s a truism, surely, to state that as a culture we live largely
in our heads. I suspect that this allows us to descend into life’s
experiences in the devic realms of survival, sex and power without a great
deal of understanding of the consequences of our actions. Thus, we can become
split. Our head says one thing and our actions tell another story. Instead
of our consciousness being joined in the heart, we become divided within
ourselves. We literally speak with forked tongue.
Indigenous shamanism knows this about our culture and has a remedy. Different
to most of the more organized systems of belief that think the Opening of
the Heart is a matter more of faith and grace, shamanism holds that the
individual needs to clear and balance each of his or her lower three chakras,
before rising to full possession of the heart chakra. In down-to-earth terms
this means that one needs to have solved one’s survival issues, to
have come to a balanced point in one’s primary relationships and to
have exerted one’s power in a responsible way before its is possible
to come fully into the heart. If there are any blockages or confusion in
any of these three lower chakras then this will diminish the amount of personal
power that we can bring to our intention.
This means that if we are drawn to the shamanic path we most probably need
to clear some aspect of our life to do with either survival, sex and relationships,
or power.
Apart from the clarity achieved by clearing the chakras, there is another
great, and somewhat unexpected, advantage to following the shaman’s
way. One initiated into these processes will have direct experience of other
entities and will know empirically that he or she is not alone in the Universe.
They will become familiar with the spirit helpers as well as coming to know
the animal spirits totemic to the shaman’s path. By realizing, and
then making peace with, the various different spirits the student encounters,
the rock spirits, the nature spirits of the devic kingdom, and the power
animals of the third chakra, he or she will find that they will have developed
a deep intuitive sense of oneness with the natural world which most conventional
religions preclude.
Perhaps this is one reason that shamanism is becoming so widely studied
in the West at this moment in time when a new and more caring relationship
with the Earth is so badly needed.
ANGELS AND SHAMANISM
In past times working with angels was considered the province of a very
few people. In spite of the fact that angels were more generally accepted
as real entities, only those who had worked at and studied the more esoteric
branches of Judaism, Sufism or Christianity, for instance, would ever claim
to be working directly with the angels.
All this, however, has changed with the new dispensation. Angels are making
themselves felt like never before, to a wide range of people. (2) Publications
like the Inner Voice are able to demonstrate that anyone with an open heart
and mind can communicate with their angels.
The two paths, the angelic and the shamanic, are by no means incompatible.
Often those who are starting on the angelic path will encounter their spirit
helpers and guides before they meet their angels. In fact, many people who
find themselves touched by angels are then gently guided by them towards
the shamanic path, the better to understand and clear their three lower
chakras.
In my experience, many of those who have moved through the shamanic process
can potentially form a very close relationship with their angels because
there is so little blocking the communication. They have cleared the way.
As if in a demonstration of this factor my companion, Urszula, recently
related a dream she had just had in which the shaman with whom she has been
studying came to her carrying a card which read Angelic Conspirator.
At this point in the evolution of consciousness on our planet all the secret
ways, the occulted knowledge, the vital information coded into ancient metaphysical
systems, everything which has hitherto been hidden from profane eyes through
the centuries, all this is being revealed. The addition of the Internet
as a research tool has made it possible to access a lifetime of information
on approaches to consciousness expansion.
The vital difference between mentally knowing something and shamanism, or
angelic contact for that matter, is that both these paths involve direct
experience. It is not simply book learning. The psyche is fundamentally
altered. This means that with application and diligence a student can expand
into his or her heart. Once in the heart the subtle whispers of the angels
become more clearly audible and the grand adventure of true species collaboration
can move to another level.
(1) ‘Talking with Angels: Budaliget 1943’, transcribed by Gitta
Mallasz and published by Daimon Verlag 1988.
(2) ‘Ask Your Angels’ by Alma Daniel, Andrew Ramer & Timothy
Wyllie, published by Ballantine Books 1992.
Timothy Wyllie © 1999
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