Why do we remain in the US

[ryan]

I just finished the book up last night and on the last page it stated that Daniel still lives in NYC. Today I checked out this message board and most of us are US residents, as far as I can tell. I am young and very unexperienced as a world traveller. But, I am sure that between the members of this forum the entire planet has been visited, twice, so why do we remain here. I am not trying to provoke, but rather to understand.

I would think that when trying to obtain a level of shamanism the idea of being a criminal and constantly surrounded by anti-shamanic people would not assist in the process.

I have often assumed I would relocate to a different country after my education, am I being naive?

[daniel]

Hi Ryan,

It's a fair question. One answer would be: Did the Fellowship run away from Mordor? No, they went straight into its heart.

Life is paradoxical. The US is the center of power and negative forces, yet somehow it still seems to be the center of the world's psycho-spiritual evolution at the same time. I have traversed Europe enough to feel that this is true. Of course it may change, or it may be changing. So far, I have not found a similar vitality in any European scene - and I don't think Burning Man, for instance, would have been possible any place else on the planet.

New York remains a great place to be if you hope to transmit messages across the world. Despite all of the saber-rattling by the government, we still have free speech in this country - the fact that free speech and freedom of religion and thought are founding principles of this country still somehow matters. These traditions cannot be uprooted in one moment.

And my other answer is that, depending on what happens, I might split.

Yet another answer is more spiritual. I kind of trust "Mr. Iboga," who told me, when I asked him for guidance: "Everything is safe in God's hands."

[Halfglass]

In "Journey To Ixtlan", Genaro, having had a revelation of sorts on his way to that city said years later, "I will never reach Ixtlan." Castaneda asked, "What was the final outcome of that experience, don Genaro? How did you finally reach Ixtlan?" Genaro said,"In my journey to Ixtlan I found only phantom travelers. (People) were no longer real. After my encounter with the ally nothing was real any more." I was glad when I read this because for years I have wanted to move back to New Mexico where I lived as a kid. I still want to go but it's always in some vague future. Since my own journeys on The Path, I find myself less anxious about being stuck on the East Coast. I hike the green Pennsylvania hills on my way to Santa Fe, by way of Philadelphia each summer and find I can practice my religion just fine--I'd have to I invented it!

[Argon Steele]

I'm planning on making my journey sometime before december 21st, 2012,

until then it seems I have work to do here in Babylon, mon.

[Proteus]

Hey Ryan (and other friends): Great question--one that comes comes up for me again and again.

Just an observation about shamans to throw into the mix:

While this may not be the actual fact in the few (and vanishing!) tribal cultures remaining in the world, myths from around the world depict shamans as living on the outskirts of the village. If we're talking about the Haida, a mostly assimilated tribal people living on the Queen Charlotte Islands off British Columbia, shamans were both crucial to the tribe and feared. In their sacred stories, when people go to consult them, they have to leave the village and hike a ways. The Delphian Oracle lived in a cave on a rocky plateau--and a very tough hike from the fertile coastal plains below. And even when people don't have to hike, they often have to gain access to the inner sanctum of a temple to gain access to the mouthpiece of the gods.

My point? Deep spiritual attainment--and the kind of commitment it would take to live half in and half out of the spiritual world--automatically alienates the shaman from the "average dude." It does so because the shaman's center of gravity isn't in the every day world of job, kids, spouse--it's in a realm that most are more than a little afraid to see.

This condition wouldn't change if America decriminalized entheogens tomorrow (although that would certainly be a positive thing). A shaman would still be a strange and somewhat scary figure even in an enlightened society where anybody could legally and easily taste the Otherworld through entheogens.

i noticed in BOTH that several Westerners that Daniel mentioned began shamanic training but stopped at a certain point--the woman who became a Jaguar comes to mind. Why did they stop when they were obviously onto something True and important? i think it's because they realized that the next step they took would be an irrevocably off the reservation where their friends, family, and society live. They could never again take a break from the shamanic calling and go home for Thanksgiving or whatever.

To the shaman, living in a culture in which the experience of entheogens is more or less taken for granted, every society is Babylon--a distraction from the concentration they need in order to heal, prophesy, and commune with the Otherworld.