July 2008
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A SHAMAN'S CHALLENGE
By Tom Cowan

One of my favorite quotes from an indigenous shaman is this one from the Huichol shaman Matsuwa: “The shaman’s path is unending. I am an old, old man and still a baby, standing before the mystery of the world, filled with awe.” I think we could meditate on these simple sentences for the rest of our lives. We could probably meditate on any one phrase in this statement for the rest of our lives. 

But it’s the word “awe” that intrigues me at the moment. Maybe because as I get older, I sometimes worry that my natural response to the world around me will grow less awe-filled. The world will begin to feel more familiar, less awesome.  It’s part of our folk wisdom that age and experience can produce a jaded, even cynical individual who’s seen it all and is no longer impressed.  Trying to maintain that “beginner’s mind” that sees the world fresh and new and glorious can be a challenge especially when all the hopes and dreams that we had as young people are clearly not going to be fulfilled in our lifetimes. Perhaps this is a normal condition with aging.

But we are not aging like just anyone. Because we practice shamanism, we look at the world differently, we ask different questions, we see behind and beyond the surface of things. We can take the long view held by our ancestors and even that of our descendents yet to be born. To capitalize on this different way of being in the world, I would like to suggest that we adopt Matsuwa’s observation about himself as a challenge.  We must not see our work as coming to an end, we are not either babies or elders but both, we must never stop looking and wondering about the mystery of the world.  And we must never lose that awe, that speechlessness, that utter humility in which we stand before the mysteries that caught our attention and curiosity years ago when we first discovered shamanism.  Because we are shamanic people we experience the universe as larger and grander than anything that meets the eye or ear.

Awe can be inspired by beauty or power, but interestingly, Webster’s dictionary includes terror. Yes, terror can be awe-inspiring. I am reminded of ancient people who both worshipped and feared their gods.  Today we are witnessing the vast powers of the earth rampage—hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, forest fires, floods, blizzards, droughts— and we stand in awe, and in fear, and are confronted with the transient quality of life just like the ancient ones who walked here before us. In our hearts we know that fire fighters and levies and warning sirens and all the sleek technology that meteorologists flaunt on the weather channel will not stop the rain or the river or the twister or the avalanche. For all the technology and knowledge that we do possess, human beings will always be part of the whole, and only part of the whole, and maybe not the most powerful or important part of the whole. Terror will always leave us awestruck, standing before the mystery of the world.
Shamanism is about power, and if I am listening correctly to anthropologists, I get the impression that the earliest shamans were valued for their power to help the community survive. Today we use shamanism for psychotherapy, for improving our relationships, for making career decisions, for determining personal health care strategies, and other problems that are unique to our modern culture.  In the old days of our most ancient ancestors, shamanism was about food, shelter, clothing, seasons, and honoring the godlike powers of the natural world. It was about being on the good side of those awesome mysteries of the world, those powers much greater than ourselves.  It was about honoring and worshipping what we might also fear.  Well, we are now back there again, or maybe we have never left those early times—we have only forgotten them awhile. Providing and affording food, shelter, clothing, and fuel, and preparing for the unpredictable seasons are once again at the base of our worries and are instilling fear in many of us.

I am not trying to create an Al Gore-like state of gloom here.  I go back to Matsuwa for hope.  I want to acknowledge the mystery behind the things I fear about climate change, extreme weather, and global warming.  Even the political and economic structures that I must live with during these natural crises are mysterious powers that I don’t claim to understand.  All I can say is that these are the conditions of the world where I live and they call forth my speechlessness, my sense of awe, my feelings of humility before a mystery that is much greater than I am, and unending.

Matsuwa said, “In ancient times when balance was lost on the planet, a great flood came to destroy all that which was on the earth so that the world could be reborn. A similar imbalance seems to be occurring in this generation; we have forgotten our life source, the sun, and the sacred sea, the blessed land, the sky, and all things of nature.” He warned us, you “are not getting (your) love up to the sun, out to the ocean, and into the earth.  When you do. . . (it) brings life force into you.”

He said that shamans and elders could not teach us how to honor the powers of the gods. Only silence and solitude could teach us what we must know.  I would add that only by standing in awe of the mysterious powers of the universe do we learn these things.  Because when we stand in awe, we are speechless, we are alone, and then we can hear the earth speak to us. And if we can get our love out to the earth and up to the sky, even as we witness those changes that frighten us, we will have the Life Force in us. I am sure that Matsuwa wanted us to do these things. Can we?  This is his challenge.

(Quotes are from Joan Halifax’s classic work, Shamanic Voices: A Survey of Visionary Narratives, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1979.)