«Тело шамана» kitabından alıntılar, sayfa 2
In a shaman's view of the city, the spirit is everywhere, waiting to dance. The shaman would advise you not to feel badly if the people around you at work seem boring or impossible; like wild animals, they are the spirits that provoke you to reach your own totality.
Shamans heal by reminding you of the dreamingbody. they model awareness and the dance of the spirit. Archaic systems of ecstasy, the community's living centre, give a village its life. the tradition of community healing, the idea that one person's suffering is part of the whole community, creates human warmth and contact. Without such trance dancers, a group of people becomes an abstract and meaningless entity, a city whose members are obligated to fulfill empty duties. No one can lead a meaningless life for long or tolerate cities with no purpose.
(...) the master's teachings are always somehow incongruent. They speak about living the nagual in everyday life, yet they always seem to take place mainly in an ashram or a wilderness. Most masters do not work in town. Most will not run for political office. (...)Why do great teachers live only in our dreams or in seclusion? Why does their path of heart take them into mountains or into an ashram? Is it because they do not value ordinary life? Or is it that some teachings do not deal with relationships, everyday life, and today's world? Perhaps we must become the new teachers, who sit in the midst of a fist-fight or a race riot and claim that this is the right hunting ground. Teachers who say that fights are bad, that people should not riot, and that the city is somehow wrong may simply mean that, like us, they do not know how to deal with the world as it is.
(...) find the Tao, you know you are on track, because, whether you are working hard or not, you feel like you are not using any energy. Everything happens on its own accord, and you seem to be riding a wave on the path of least resistance. Though you may be in the midst of a whirlwind, still it is the path of least action, the path sometimes referred to in Taoism as "not doing" or "wu wei".
There is a crucial difference between Western and Eastern teachings, between what you might call modern European and aboriginal or spiritual thinking.
(...) Systems based upon the development of ego consciousness stress stability and individuation. Self-knowledge is the core. Indigenous systems stress becoming everything or worshipping nature and finding a path with heart.Each system has a part of the truth. The right tradition is the one you believe in at any given moment. When you interested in the future of the world, however, you find yourself searching for paths with heart. They make you keep a watchful eye on your own sustainable and available energy and upon relationships to others. indigenous heartful systems include community and environment. The ego systems informs you more about the nature of specific parts of yourself. When you need answers about your individual nature, you find yourself with therapists (...). When you have questions about life as a whole, the environment and path of heart are the teachers.To find the path of heart--to follow the stream of nature--you need more disciplined awareness than self-knowledge.
The less connected you are to yourself, the more you make teachers and gurus out of people who are connected to themselves.
Worship not the object, but the spirit that animates it; not the content, but the creative element in the background.Anything you see, hear, feel, or relate to is real, whether or not it can be repeated. If you suddenly fantasize something, then its pattern is there; it is trying to happen. It is your life energy--your greatest, perhaps you only, possession.
You identify with your past and present pursuits, your gifts and your problems. You must erase your personal history; otherwise, you are at the mercy of what others think. Your identity limits you by forcing you into a social role or mold needed by your community. In this sense, other people's thoughts of you have power over you.
When the world speaks to you, it is impossible to tell whether the world is doing things to you or you are doing things to it. You may perceive yourself as causing some events and being the recipient of others, but you never know for sure whether you send messages and get responses or whether the world sends you messages to which you respond.This inherent message symmetry or invariance means that you cannot assume that you are the center of the universe, initiating or creating things. You are an aspect of the world. This radical shift in identity from being the center to being a participant is the goal of mystical and spiritual traditions.Sensing yourself as a part of the entire world would create an identity crisis if you let yourself experience the environment. However, synchronicities, though momentarily shocking, are not enough to shake apprentices like you and me out of our person-centered world. We may need another lesson.
If for example, I ask a member of a couple, family or group a question, it can be a perceptual prejudice to expect an answer from the individual addressed. The answer may come from any part of the environment; someone else may speak up, or the environment may announce itself in other ways. Of course, there are times when each person must speak for himself, but you should be careful not to become one-sidedly attached to the paradigm that the individual is located only in your own body. You must consider the possibility that each of us is a channel for the world, just as the world is a channel for each of us.
