Shamanism As a Spiritual Practice for Daily Life by Tom Cowan & Thomas Dale Cowan

Author:Tom Cowan & Thomas Dale Cowan [Cowan, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780804152358
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Published: 2014-06-11T00:00:00+00:00

TAKING INSTRUCTION FROM THE SPIRITS OF NATURE

Our ability to communicate with the spirits of nature is not solely for our own benefit. The spirit world needs us as much as we need it. Religious literature from around the world is filled with episodes of angels and other spirits instructing humans to undertake important tasks and go on dangerous missions for some higher goal. The lesser spirits—the elementals and nature devas—may also have requests, although most likely not as dramatic. Nevertheless, reciprocity is a key theme in the encounters between spirits and mortals in almost all cultures. Communication between the worlds is a true two-way dialogue.

A practical application, for example, is gardening. Before you plant a garden, journey to various areas to find the spots most conducive for specific flowers or vegetables. Go between rock and soil in one corner of the garden with the intention of learning what kind of plant would thrive best there, or what type would not do well. Before you put the plants in the ground, journey to them in their pots or go between the seeds, and ask what section of the garden would be most suitable for them. Take their suggestions, and plant accordingly.

Once the garden is planted, you can communicate with the garden devas periodically by sending your spirit to the place between the soil and root or sunlight and leaf to ask what the plants and soil need. They may need fertilizer, more water, less water, looser soil, special ingredients. Gardening this way is an excellent practice for creating a partnership with nature right in your backyard. And it works. Results show that treating plants as conscious, intelligent beings invariably produces better, healthier crops. Plants tend to grow better or faster when humans acknowledge them, speak to them, sing for them.

As mentioned above, when you feel a particular element drawing you to it more than the other, respond accordingly and find out what it wants. It may want to teach you something. A Siberian shaman named Sereptie tells of his spirit teacher continually giving him the same advice whenever he asked to know something: “Find it out! Find it out!”6 The exhortation was for Sereptie to journey directly to the spirits of nature and the elements and ask them. It’s as simple as that: ask them.

From a shamanic point of view we can acquire information, advice, or instructions from anything in nature, because everything is alive and wants to communicate. George Russell, an Irish poet and mystic known by the pen name A. E., who lived at the turn of the last century, described a revelation he had one day lying on a hillside and realizing the intelligence and consciousness within nature: “Every flower was a word, a thought. The grass was speech; the trees were speech; the waters were speech; the winds were speech.”7 The well-being of the planet—flowers, grass, trees, wind, water, and us—depends on our being able to hear that speech, and to respond.

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