What's a Shaman?

“…I started a job as a trade consultant for companies who do business in Mexico. Almost immediately a series of disasters occurred. First, the government became unstable with a change of presidents and almost went bankrupt. Also, the small trade consultant company that I had contracted with was unable to pay me. On top of that I had an angry ex-wife with an aggressive lawyer. And so, when the company failed to pay me, I ran out of money and got behind in my child support payments. My ex-wife then had a warrant placed on me for non-payment of child support. This meant that if I showed up in Georgia, I'd be arrested until I could meet the payment conditions and clear the mounting arrearage in support payments…

I found myself marooned in Mexico, unable to come back to the States to seek new employment because of the warrant. I wasn't able to see my children and I was faced with a new culture that felt quite overwhelming. And so there I was! This process went on for two years. I was unable to close any contract no matter how hard I worked or how many meetings I attended. Nothing seemed to work.

My new Mexican partner, Diana, is involved in various spiritual pursuits… One day she invited me to go to a meditation retreat in Cuernavaca, and I agreed to go… I was surprised to find that I meditated very easily. On the third day, during an afternoon break, I was walking in the garden of the retreat center, feeling relaxed and expansive, and I found myself talking to myself about some deep philosophical questions. As I began to ask myself those questions, an apparition, of a very old Indian man, small and very weathered, wearing a red headband, began to appear… I immediately panicked and rushed out of the garden, "Diana, there is an old Indian man talking to me," "Well, find out what he wants!"

… So I got up my nerve and I walked back out to the garden. And there He reappeared!.. "You're afraid, aren't you?" "Yes, I am!" "Do you want me to go away?" He asked. "Let's take this one step at a time and see where it goes." "You're really torn up about this thing with your kids, aren't you?" He said, "Yes." "You know, I could use someone like you. I'll make a deal with you," He said, "I'll fix this thing with your kids, if you become a shaman." I enthusiastically said, "Yes, I agree." I paused for a moment and asked, "What's a shaman?" "You've got a lot of time to figure that out." And then He disappeared.

I ran back into the retreat center where Diana was talking to some of the participants, and I said, "Diana, He said He's going to fix this thing with my kids, and that all I have to do is become a shaman. What is a shaman?" She looked at me with a disconcerted expression. "Don't worry about it. I'll look it up in the dictionary!" “A member of certain tribal societies practicing a magico-animistic religious belief system who acts as a medium between the visible and invisible spirit world for the purpose of healing, divination and influence over natural events. "What in the hell is that?" I shouted. Then I calmed down…because He was going to take care of this thing with my kids…

He appeared the next day and woke me up in the morning before sunrise. I was very startled, "What is going on?" "It is time to get up. We have to go to work. We have a deal!" "The first thing you need to learn is how to pray; you can't do this sort of work unless you know how to pray!"… He continued to add on activities that became more challenging for my mind. I wondered if I was crazy… when I asked who He was, He would say, "Don't worry. Let's just stick with what we're doing." Then, a few months later, He said, "Now you need physical teachers. And you'll also learn more about me and who I am."…

I met Eliot and he seemed to understand what I was going through. He also knew a Huichol shaman, named Don Lupe González Rios, with whom he was apprenticing. A month later he took me to meet the shaman near Nayarit, Mexico. Don Lupe, who anticipated my arrival, finally diagnosed the being talking to me as Tatewarí, the God of Fire, also called Grandfather Fire… Tatewarí had me go to an old Nahuatl weather shaman named Don Lucio Campos Elizade… I began my apprenticeship with him as a trabajador del tiempo, working as an emissary for the weather beings to help bring beneficial weather… I had to learn that Divine isn't something that I, can manipulate for my own desires…I began to embrace the phenomena of life as a living intelligent being. My trust issues began to resolve… I could participate in life rather than being fearful…

Diana and I had a habit of sometimes taking our evening meal at a restaurant in Cuernavaca, Mexico… we were having a meal and I suddenly felt a strong urge to drink some hot chocolate and smoke a cigar. Now this was very strange because I don't smoke… smoking the cigar and drinking the hot chocolate seemed to amplify my ability to hear Him talking to me. I said to Diana, "Hey, it really helps me hear him. Go ahead and ask me some questions." I felt my heart racing, which I thought was the effect of the tobacco, and then I felt a surge like an acceleration similar to taking off in an airplane. I found myself waking up in a great deal of confusion, not remembering what had happened…Diana informed me that my expression and presence changed dramatically and Tatewarí had suddenly started talking with her. She found it wonderful.

When Grandfather is speaking through me… He says that He only has to slightly amplify His presence which is already in us. When this occurs, my body temperature increases to 104 degrees and I'm in a coma-like state. This, He says, puts my mind to the side. Therefore He uses my "suit," as He calls my body, and He generates an audible form. Although the form looks like an individual speaking, He says He's not speaking as an individual, but as a presence in the world. “ I don't call Him; He calls me!”…

At first it was very disconcerting… Something happens… he sets the mind to the side. I evidently have to undergo a difficult recovery process in which my memory seems to be temporarily affected and I have some impressions of being very cold. Evidently, after the heat leaves, there's a temperature crash. I also have a really bad taste in my mouth as He has been noted to blaze through 12 to 14 big cigars and a large quantity of hot chocolate in an evening… it takes time. The mind can be shown clear evidence and it will try to find a way around it. That's when you discover it isn't about evidence; it's about control. The mind doesn't want to admit the obvious and therefore relinquish territory. So it took work through His guidance - such as successful apprenticeships with Don Lupe, Don Lucio and Eliot Cowan - to create a process that helped me build trust and begin to learn how to deal with my mind and its desire to dismiss what you could call the phenomena of spirit. But that is very tough work and some people aren't ready for it.

At times, Tatewarí can be painfully direct in pointing out what your mind doesn't want to face. He also absolutely loves to taunt the mind or individual ego with hidden or direct humor. He can leave a piece of bait to purposefully generate doubt and then pull the rug out in order to confront the ego's assumptions. The ego takes itself very seriously and wants to have its own kingdom. Therefore, it can hide from what confronts it. The ego sees the energy of fire as an unreasonable and potentially destructive dose of humor or clarity in the face of this confrontation. If you're open, you begin to laugh at yourself for the mind's absurdities. Tatewarí generates this laughter as transformation.

In our modern materialistic society there is a great deal of pandering to the mind. You're supposed to always get what you want. You're not supposed to believe anyone that contradicts you because you have the right to be right. Isn't that what all the advertisements tell you? In the spiritual-learning area I find people who prefer to read books rather than deal with a teacher because they can keep whatever perspective they like. They don't have to face a teacher who may point out something that might make them feel uncomfortable. Therefore, there's an ego/mind benefit to remaining a lone ranger.

In contrast, Tatewarí, as fire and connection, deals with bringing perspectives together. That requires people who are willing to relate to each other. In response to your question I can say this: "Try it, you'll like it." I find that if you're open to listening to what He's saying, then, even though the "suit thing" must be a little weird for people in a modern European-based culture, He makes very practical sense. He puts the world in the middle, with all of its beauty and warts, and gives a perspective on how to embrace and deal with it all. There's no simplistic "all the good guys are on this side and all the bad guys are on that side." I personally have come to find it refreshing. But it requires openness because the world is a very complex place compared to the capacity of the mind to understand. As some famous author once said, "Truth is stranger than fiction."

… my life is completely different. As a marakame or shaman in the Huichol tradition, and a healer and weather worker in the Nahuatl tradition, I'm a village shaman in Tepoztlán. I have a healing and counseling practice. I am involved in the village life: welcoming new births through baptism, counseling people with a variety of spiritual or relationship problems, performing funerals and so on. So attending to the needs of daily human life, plus being involved in the Sacred Fire Community and traveling on their behalf keeps me busy.

Whenever He sends me on a trip or when I am doing a pilgrimage, which is one of the main ways to learn in the path of Huichol shamanism, I can't help thinking that this is quite a bit different than becoming captain of industry and making my first million dollars. Even though there is a lot of hard work involved, I consider it a blessed life, and wake up every morning looking forward to seeing what the Divine will bring. He's told me that what He's doing isn't unusual, although it may seem strange for people living in these times. But our current cultural perspective, which is heavily shaped by European "Age of Reason" ideology built on a previous foundation of Judeo-Christian views, is only 500 year old. If you focus on the United States, which He calls "the great anti-royal, tenant-farmer and merchant-class revolution that took possession of what is now the country and disposed of the original inhabitants," this cultural perspective is less than 250 years old. In terms of the multi-thousand-year-old cultural history of the world, this is nothing.

In other parts of the world that have a very old cultural basis and traditions, He says that these types of interventions have happened, even though they weren't well recorded. He says that He shows up during various times in various ways to give a little "grease" as He calls it. He says that, despite all the material and technological things we seem to have going for us in this epoch, our lives are growing colder, more confused and separate. He says His interest is to awaken His voice as heart within people and therefore bring more warmth, connection and heart-guidance to their lives. And He's said that there has been a lot of drift between what the heart voice truly is and what the mind has co-opted and presents as heart. So He's presenting Himself in this fashion in order to help us gain a form of calibration. He presents it as one of those rare moments. Maybe we'll get a glimpse of where Divine is taking us.” ~ 'Don' David Wiley