BIOREGIONAL ANIMISM, IT PUTS YOU IN YOUR PLACE

I was explaining Bioregional animism to a new freind the other day who is an enviromentalist, and it slipped out of my mouth...

"Bioregional Animism, it puts you in your place!" We figured out that that had to be Bioregional Animisms moto, that by maintianing and establishing an animist relationship with the land one lives within, it humbles you and provokes a respectful relationship dynamics... it also shows you your place in the world is one with the place where you live...
Many people ask this question in life whats my purpose, whats my place in this world... and bioregional animism puts you in your place!

Neo-Shaman"ism" as western psychotherapy in disguise.

I want to ask the members of this community is, do you feel that bio regional animism is giving you a stronger, more grounded and integrated point of view in regards to shamanic practice?
The whole point of this work for me at first was to find a way to address and assist in creating Effective ways for us to rekindle shamanic practice in our communities. I found without a grounded in place, integrated in ecology and community animist cosmology we could not have effective shamans or effective shamanic healing...
And I have found that shaman"ism" does not exist... the shaman is a role not a belief system, and its a role that emerges only within animist belief systems or life way systems... the word shamanism is a silly as the word therapistism, or doctorism, healerism...
The problem with the term shamanism is that it perpetuates this idea that we can have shamans with out directly addressing the way we live our lives and relate to life itself... we can have a westernized Neo-Shaman"ism" psychotherapy with out having to De-colonise first, or at the very least have an animist cosmology... that's the issue honestly... with out the cosmology, with out the foundation and the groundedness in an animist cosmology, how can we have shamans?
Another question is is what we are seeing in westernised Neo-Shaman"ism" actually the work of shamans or Jungian psychotherapists playing Indian, if they do not have a grounded in place integrated in community and ecology animist cosmology?
Because from what I can tell... every shaman that has ever lived has had a grounded in place integrated in community and ecology animist cosmology, every single one...

to quote Graham Harvey...
" I am suggesting that the claim to be a shaman would be more convincing if claimants were changed by their experinces in ways dissimular to changes in duced in Western psychotherapies. Shamans might be expected to criticise the individualism and anonymity of modernity, rather than to re-affirm thier self-centeredness. Shamanic Journeies could be expected to change peoples beleifs and not merely be an additional life style accesory."
" Few New Age shamans inhabit or even visit the profoundly animated world that most Shamans of traditional societies live in. When spirits Become archetypes or parts of the "self," Shamans become people who talk to themselves."
Contemporary Paganism, Harvey 1997.

COMMUNION

Communion...

As I've mentioned i didn't go looking for communion with nature spirits or anything of that nature it just happened quite randomly one day while taking a day trip on the Oregon coast. I was sitting in a nice secluded, forested glade, on a park table with my girlfriend at the time. Both of us were enjoying a particular entheogenic compound known as lsd (entheogenic or psychoactive substances have been used since the beginning of human history some speculate, for the purpose of healing and divination and enhancing their natural intuitive capabilities). We were sitting, meditating, focusing on working with the energy centers of our bodies when some really amazing events began to take place. first wee noticed that a high wind was blowing the tops of the fir trees, it was spring and the air was filled with yellow pollen from the trees. we both felt spontaneously that we were being blessed by the trees. I started to focus on my energy body attempting to open my self to my surroundings, suddenly i felt a huge surge of energy going through my body like being struck by lightning it was amazing the feeling stayed with me and transformed into the feeling of my body becoming a tree it self. I then saw something that really just blew me away, root like patterns were being attached in the grass around us both my girl friend and i sat perplexed as we watched the grass literally lay down as if some one was making a small scale crop circle! The roots could be seen intersecting and forming small circles while all growing out to form a larger circle. It was magnificently beautiful. I had never shared a physical paranormal experience like that before with any. To see the same thing as each other were seeing on an entheogen was amazing and confirming of something I had always instinctively felt was possible with entheogens. we sat transfixed feeling an over whelming amount of security, As if we were being protected in a magic circle. My mind began making associations left and right about how the roots of some tree create a sphere of chemicals which can work as both fungicides, herbicides , and insecticides, was what I was experiencing something manifesting on a subtler level of consciousness?

Interrupting my thoughts my head began to feel physicaly turned to my left, to a dense thicket of wild rose, rodidendrums and fire trees on the edge of the glade. I mentioned this feeling to my girl friend and she was experincing the same phenomena, her head being physicaly moved to look at the bushes. I focused on the energy center on my forhead, I was experimenting I had no idea what i was doing, I just thought that maybe there might be something to this third eye thing maybe i could see something i normaly could not. I felt a release of pressure and a soft popping sensation under the skin of my forhead, and then I saw something moving towards me it was a green leafy vine, growing towards me moving like a tenticle. I knew that it wasn't physicaly happening that it was a vision. But my eyes were open, I told my girlfriend what i was seeing and she was seeing it as well. It reach out to my forehead a pink bloom of a wild rose formed and then I saw everything change. I felt another voice inside of me utilizing my own thoughts to communicate with me telling me that the work we were doing was good and rare and that the spirit or intelligence communicateing with me appriciated us doing that work in that place. It told me that it had created a safe protected place for us to do that work and then it started showing me pictures, events...it told me that all of the people who had come to this place had had such good intentions...

There were images in my minds eye of young men on motor sycles and large four wheelers tearing up the gound and ramming the four wheelers into small trees trying to nock them down by the roots, I felt pain and anger, not my own but of the plants the soil and the trees. Then something even more unbeleivable happened a tree limb came down at one of the men on the motor cycles like a great arm striking him. Not the wind moving it but it moving of its own volition. The branch knocked the man off the bike and he seemed to be injured. I was told that the forest had protected itself from these men.

The images stopped and the vine moved over to my girl friend, but it moved to her waist she doubled over with cramps, it was tugging at something inside of her. She felt it was doing something to her, trying to help her but she didn't understand so it stopped, as did the communication. As things settled down we still felt it pressance but we decided it was time to go. We felt as if it wanted us to stay. We gave thanks to what had communicated with us and left.

A few days later I stumbled into a pagan book store and talked with one of the locals. I made a point of not giveing any information as to why I was asking about this part of the forest at the beach but asked if he had ever heard of anything out of the ordinary happening there. He old me that he had heard of one stroy a few years back where a few young guys took their four wheelers and motorcycles to the place and started ripping it up. One of them said that all of a sudden it was like this big fur tree swang a branch like a big arm at this guy on his motorcycle with such force that it broke his sternum and rib cage. He had to flown out of there by a coast guard helicopter. They swore the tree just swung at them closelineing the guy. I then told him my story which fit perfectly to what he had heard and what i had seen. He went on and on about ents and tree wizards and native women going to that place to ask the spirits to take away unwanted pregnacies, which I found interesting due to my girlfriends exprience with the vine going to her midsection.

That experince made me a beleiver in nature spirits. I didn't assume to know exactly what i had experinced but that it was definitley a spiritual intelligence within nature. Over the years since that experience I dedicated my spiritual path to the practice and study of animist traditions that encoperated psychoactive plants, leading me eventualy to work study with a Bolivain cerremonialist, who worked with ayahuasca and san pedro. Over the years I have had numerous experinces of animals and plants and forces of nature communicating with me. Helping me in doing healing work, giveing me information on how to live my life well and in harmony with my suroundings. i have seen eagles fly down and turn into old men and sit and talk with me, I have seen wolves walk up to me transform into men and tell me very powerfull answers to some of my hardest life questions. Yes these experinces were had while in another state of conciousness. But I have come to learn that perceptual diversity or working with many forms of perception byond or normal waking rational state of conciousness, is almost essential to living a life that is in harmony with its surroundings.

Tara W. Lumpkin a transpersonal anthropologist has pointed out that cultures who embrace multiple states of conciousness such as fasting, trance possesion, entheogenic plants, and dream practices have more options available to them for problem solveing and are better suited to creating more wholistic sollutions to problems which can be seen as a systems approach to problem solveing. She also points out that indigenous cultures that embrace multiple states of conciousness have a greater ability to take care of and know an ecosystem on a deeper level ( to learn more about Lumpkins work see Perceptual Diversity: Is Polyphasic Conciousness Nesessary for Global Survival in the journal of the Anthropology of Conciousness).

Through altered states of conciousness and shamanic expereinces I have come to experince all of my surroundings as intelligent persons. I have also come to understand much of what Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme have discussed within they're work with the new cosmology. I would say that They are rigth in saying that the universe has become self-relfexive, self aware but that it has done so through many, many other life forms as well as other then living beings. I am not saying this because it makes logical philosophical sense to me. I am saying this because this is what I have experinced first had, as have animist people around the world. It may actualy be that animist beleif systems have all developed out of our experince and relationships with other than human beings aorund us.

Developing polyphasic culture...
Part if the aim of the bioregional animism project is do discuss stratigies for developing multiple modes of conciousness that will better allow us to work as one with our enviroment, to help deepen our level of communication with our other then human neighbours, so that we can work with nature instead of utilizing.
Some of the things I will be looking into will be the deep ecology practice of the council of all beings as well as the practice that has developed out of this which is done in bioregional congress. I will also be discussing very old practices of working with communicator species also known as entheogens and or psychedelic plants, along with other very ancient practices and new practices of altering ones perceptual modes. I will be discussing alot of shamanic practices and shiaring what I have learned of my five year study of south american shamanry.
I would like to invite you to leave your comments here as well as contact me if you have ideas or wish to collaberate with me on this project. It takes diversity for an ecosystem to be healthy and it takes diverrsity of ideas and perspectives for this work to get done. Bioregional animism is'nt my idea its something that we can tap into through developeing an intimate relationship with ones bioregion. I invite you to my table!