Shamanic Spirituality

by John Omaha Copyright, 2024 by John Omaha All Rights Reserved

Shamanism is a spiritual practice; it is not a religious practice. A distinguishing characteristic of contemporary shamanic spirituality is atheism. Religions—Christianity, Hinduism, Islam—are theistic; they believe a god or gods created the heavens and earth. Creating a god allows humans to project their most destructive impulses onto their god, as when Genesis declares that god gave humans dominion "over all the earth." The god man created in his own image is cruel and murderous.

Contemporary shamanic spirituality believes in a scientific description of the origin and evolution of every living thing. Some "living things" are animate and some are inanimate. The animate living things comprise everything from bacteria to bisons, whelks to whales, rhododendrons to redwoods. The inanimate living things are rocks and water, glaciers and geysers. All originated from elements created in an unfathomable Big Bang and the ensuing innumerable supernovas. Shamanic spirituality accepts that the origin of whatever exploded in the Big Bang is presently unknowable and so shamanic spirituality is essentially a Mystery tradition.

Arising from its holistic world-view, shamanic spirituality is free of the arbitrary distinctions—us versus them, Christians versus infidels, Israelis versus Palestinians, Russians versus Ukrainians, Republicans versus Democrats, capitalists versus socialists—that are the cause of wars and genocides. Creation of an "other" taps into a vicious violence arising from the deep human unconscious. Shamanic spirituality has never perpetrated a genocide; it has not murdered thousands of children or razed entire cities. Shamanic spirituality would not invent nerve gas, nor would it invent and then use nuclear weapons to incinerate hundreds of thousands of human beings.

Religion has spawned derivatives, most notably capitalism. Capitalism is a destructive offshoot of the us versus them dichotomy. Capitalism relies on the distinction between owner and worker, which gives rise to poverty versus wealth and rich versus poor. In the contemporary world, poverty is associated with sin, and the wealthy are given dominion over the impoverished. Work is the creation of religion and capitalism. Industrialization and the concept of property are creations of capitalism. The very concept of time itself is a creation of capitalism. Timekeepers (clocks) are necessary to capitalism's functioning assuring that people work during work hours and then worship the system of domination and control during their "time off" from work. In a shamano-spiritual society, collaboration is the highest value, and ruinous competition does not exist.

Misogyny is yet another derivative of religion. Women are othered in contemporary male-dominated society. Their opinions are devalued. They do not make as much money as men for the same amount of work. They are abused and raped. In a society founded on shamanic spirituality, women and men are equals. Women hold positions of power. As in indigenous cultures, the grandmothers have an final say on important matters.

The values that animate a shamanic-spiritual society are fundamentally kindness, cooperation, and a deep transpersonal connection with every living thing. In the capitalist world-view, a tree is merely a profit potential. In shamano-spirituality, the tree is a fellow living being worthy of respect for its contribution of oxygen for all our relations to breathe. In spirituality a human will sit in mediation with a tree, opening to communication with the tree. Shamans bless a tree before cutting it down and express gratitude to the tree for its giveaway of wood for a fire and warmth.

Reflect on your thoughts as you read this essay. Did you find yourself dismissing the possibility of an alternative to religion and capitalism? Did you judge negative the vision offered by shamanic spirituality? What emotions came up for you? Your answers to these questions expose the degree to which religion and capitalism have infiltrated your thoughts. Did you hear a small voice wishing the world of shamanic spirituality could be real? Well it can be. We can collaborate with each other to grow our food. We can design a social system that will produce doctors and engineers who are motivated by kindness and cooperation. We can climb off the hamster wheel of capitalism and reclaim our lives for the purely human pursuits of spirituality and mutuality. We can realize the dreams of humanity rising, which will always materialize if we work for them.

A'ho Mitakuye Oyasin