This week’s Notable Blog posts come from a variety of sources. On the home front, Innerbodyexperience commented on the challenges of being a shaman and a parent:
“lunch so late, was meditating all morning to lovely drums and seem to be missing a child now, hmmmm”
Perhaps the mystical experience, whether drug induced or not, is what moves us into, and beyond, our personal religious views. Yet, when we come back to this reality, we need to make sense of our experiences in light of our own understanding of the world.
“Ayahuasca: a love story” wrote about this trans-denominational experience:
I once asked a veteran shaman here in Iquitos, who is also a Christian, if it was difficult to reconcile religious dogma with the nature of ayahuasca. “Oh no,” he replied. “Quite the opposite. If you believe in Jesus Christ, you drink ayahuasca and feel his love more than ever. If you are a Muslim, you drink and feel the love of Allah more than ever.”
Silk Road Visions noted the news of the world seems to be turning darker, then offered a song of encouragement.
Song for the Journey – by songwriter and Shaman from Peru, Josie (Tamarin) Raven Wing – is as much incantation as it is poem. It celebrates one of the Shaman’s chief roles, the struggle with the darker forces in a given situation.
Shamanism – like all spiritual Paths – begins with the daily practice of standing one’s spiritual ground in the face of “dark times”: insidious temptations of one’s inner flaws, pressures of group and social mind, lost directions in cultural chaos, and the oppression of political power.
These are indeed Dark Times. Perhaps they always have been, here on Earth. In any case, taking a stand has never been more urgent, and yet has never been so easy. For the possibility of our awakening, and of our strength through unity, is at a high point in human history. Just when we needed it most, the world wide web was born – this most “Aquarian” means of grass-roots global communication and action. It has given us a power to change the world which, as Flower Children, we could only glimpse in our dreams.
And finally, Eaglesbrothert, a First Nations artist, showed us his work, and spoke about his life.
I hope you find these blog posts helpful. Please share your favorite blogs and posts with me as well!
Dreaming the World 
Hi Michael,
Thanks so much for your selection of Josie Raven Wing’s Song for the Journey and my small preamble…I can be found most often now at my Aquarian Reflections site, where I have added your lovely blog to my blogroll.
I’ll be back to visit here often…Happy Journey, always…Carol
Aquarian Reflections is at http://aquarian-reflections.blogspot.com/
hi Carol,
I deeply enjoyed your post and happily included it.
Your new blog is clearly a work of love and artistic focus! By the way, I originally studied counseling with a Jungian analyst. Although much of my current thinking comes from working with the elders, there is much that I have retained from Jung. I suspect that Self is more complex and less unitary than he seemed to think. We’ve had the Red Book for a while but I have not had time to really look into it. Best to you, Michael
for a while