Cross-cultural perspectives on shamanizing

Everybody has a different need from shamanistic experiences, therefore everybody's encounter with the void will not be the same.   I had two aspects to my identity when I migrated from Africa. One was that I was barely socialized.  I did not relate so much to people as to pleasures and experiences.  The second was that I was extremely emotional repressed at the level of individual expression.  To summarize both points, I had no self-image.   I didn't consider myself to be a "self" with an identity of any sort, but rather a mobile locus of experience.   This remains largely true of how I am today.  Although I have developed quite a number of sophisticated notions about identity, I can often let self-image slide, and just be totally spontaneous.   It's actually a task for me to remain within the ideology of self-image, since this isn't how I was brought up.   Consequently, if someone attacks me, through their image of me, I'm usually inclined to think they're going mad.   I don't have very much invested in my image of myself, but I do have a lot invested in relationships.   Images have to do with Western culture and its mores, but as Toyin Falola says, only a fellow African can know his true name.   The rest is just image and idea.

This is why I keep injuring myself on the sharp edges of Western culture.   I don't take anybody's idea of their "true identity" very seriously.  How can I, when I don't even take my own self-image all that seriously? So, losing and gaining aspects of identity is, for me, a natural course.   So long as I have my rich, African experiences at my core, nothing else seems to matter.   For others, shamanistic experiences may pose a real threat to the identity they've managed to build up.   For me, they represent a return to myself and the African wilderness.  My encounters with representatives of Western morality have always followed the pattern below, whereupon I get returned to the shamanistic void (and by default, to the African wilderness of my early childhood experiences):

"Drown me! Roast me! Hang me! Do whatever you please," said Brer Rabbit. "Only please, Brer Fox, please don't throw me into the briar patch."
"The briar patch, eh?" said Brer Fox. "What a wonderful idea! You'll be torn into little pieces!"
Grabbing up the tar-covered rabbit, Brer Fox swung him around and around and then flung him head over heels into the briar patch. Brer Rabbit let out such a scream as he fell that all of Brer Fox's fur stood straight up. Brer Rabbit fell into the briar bushes with a crash and a mighty thump. Then there was silence.
Brer Fox cocked one ear toward the briar patch, listening for whimpers of pain. But he heard nothing. Brer Fox cocked the other ear toward the briar patch, listening for Brer Rabbit's death rattle. He heard nothing.
Then Brer Fox heard someone calling his name. He turned around and looked up the hill. Brer Rabbit was sitting on a log combing the tar out of his fur with a wood chip and looking smug.
"I was bred and born in the briar patch, Brer Fox," he called. "Born and bred in the briar patch."  [emphasis mine]

Tough and sparse the "briar patch" may be, but people like me need this kind of experience, indeed we thrive upon it.

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Shamanic encounters have taught me more about individuality than I knew at the age of 15 (when I had migrated).  I had to train myself against colonial authoritarianism (and the expectation of paternalism, which never gratified me in this current culture).  I learned to take advantage of each of my thwarted expectations of society by going inward.  On this basis, I developed a different kind of individuality from that based on self-image, one that is extremely hardy and robust.