My Introduction to Shamanism

“Indi­an con­juror” engrav­ing by G. Veen

My inter­est in shaman­ism began while read­ing Car­los Cas­tane­da as a teenag­er. Cap­ti­vat­ed by his writ­ing, I at last had a frame­work from which to explain expe­ri­ences I had from an ear­ly age.

Often while play­ing in the woods as a child, I’d sud­den­ly feel a shift in my per­cep­tion and the look and feel of my sur­round­ings would alter com­plete­ly. I would be in this state for sev­er­al min­utes before awak­en­ing back into ordi­nary real­i­ty. Read­ing Cas­tane­da gave me the lan­guage to explain these experiences.

Lat­er, while study­ing meta­physics at the Heal­ing Light Cen­ter (Glen­dale, CA), I learned about the tech­niques used by the indige­nous peo­ples of North Amer­i­ca. I also took a work­shop with Michael Harn­er that fur­ther deep­ened my expe­ri­ence with shamanism.

I began using jour­ney­ing and soul retrieval in my heal­ing ses­sions. And, I even got the chance to take a work­shop with Cas­tane­da him­self short­ly before he left this earth plane.

I then began study­ing the Tibetan Bön tra­di­tion which is shaman­ic at its core. And, here I am, years lat­er, still on a jour­ney to dis­cov­er a more mean­ing­ful reality.