Saturday 11 May 2013

new age "shamanism"



Jennifer Frances Armstrong shared a link.
38 minutes ago · 


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    • LeeAnne Fourcrows Hensley There are truly no short cuts to the other side.
    • Jennifer Frances Armstrong No. Actually a lot of what is misnamed "shamanism" is actually a self-esteem movement, designed to gain a mystical identity, enhance sensitivity to something, and (most unfitting of all) a way to gain an aura of moral self-improvement. That's why it ought to be pointed out that you don't improve yourself through shamanism; you just regain the capacity to be natural.
    • LeeAnne Fourcrows Hensley Yes. The only "shamanism" I had been introduced to before I began to read your blog entries and watch your videos had to do with assigning yourself some animal spirit for guidance. That's as insane as believing that there is a bearded man in the sky wi...See More
    • Jennifer Frances Armstrong Some people get half way there with the new age philosophies, but then they get fatefully stuck. They want everything to be nice and beneficent and for the universe to have a positive message for them. It's very one-sided. You have to experience the negative side, too, which is more important than having any positive feelings or notions.
    • LeeAnne Fourcrows Hensley Oddly enough, when I came to accept that the universe is basically unaware that I even exist, (as it is not an entity, so it isn't capable of awareness like people would pretend their god is,) and that I'm really on my own here, I tapped into amazing s...See More
    • Jennifer Frances Armstrong Yeah, that is what I've been trying to say. What we are when we accept we are "ordinary" is our highest glory. It's a strange thing to say, but you have to really experience it directly.
    • Jennifer Frances Armstrong This is very different from combating ego, too.
    • LeeAnne Fourcrows Hensley It's not so much an effort to strive, to become, it's more of a letting go, rejecting things that are foreign and don't belong to us, and letting ourselves see things as they are. Letting ourselves sit and observe, not having to immediately react, or put on airs. Just being.
    • Jennifer Frances Armstrong Most forms of new age shamanism are a mixture of Christianity and nature mysticism. The psychology gets lost
      5 minutes ago · Like · 1
    • LeeAnne Fourcrows Hensley New age alternative religions will tell people that they must assume a different artificial form if they want to transcend. Nonsense. They'll get no further that way than they would under Judeo-Christian influences. To remove the silly moral structures...See More
    • Jennifer Frances Armstrong It's too much of a shift, though, because people have internalised these moral structures and rely on them as support
    • Jennifer Frances Armstrong even in some of the better books by US neo-shamanism guys, they often lean on metaphysics by referring to "feminine energy" or something that is really not there.
    • LeeAnne Fourcrows Hensley They may "drink the Kool-Aid" if they wish. I won't stop them. But I will laugh at them from a distance, because they take themselves so seriously, even though they represent nothing real.
    • Jennifer Frances Armstrong I think they encounter what they've repressed in their own psyches, they stop short of integrating it and instead reify it -- they make the abstraction of 'the feminine' into something concrete. It's definitely a way of limiting oneself unconsciously
    • Jennifer Frances Armstrong You will often see some stuff on Facebook from "shaman tube" which says "we" have repressed "the feminine" or "feminine energy". Very American.
    • LeeAnne Fourcrows Hensley Oh, yes. I've encountered several of these charismatic personalities who are surrounded by blind followers, and they will all profess this bullshit about how men contain this destructive force, and women contain a healing, rebuilding force, and they must be brought together in harmony, etc. This whole "raising kundalini" nonsense that they took from Eastern religions and adopted into their little belief system. Puke. So dull. They'd have us think we need to give them sex in a special way in order to achieve enlightenment.

      • Jennifer Frances Armstrong If they were really kind to their followers, they would tell them to face the worst things in themselves and to free themselves by encountering these. In other words, to leave the leader and go their own way.
      • Jennifer Frances Armstrong Hmmm... yes, it seems like it's a sado-masochistic system built on the reinforcement of metaphysics.
      • Jennifer Frances Armstrong The whole hero-worshiping BS of the "spiritual leader", too
      • LeeAnne Fourcrows Hensley They're just like preachers in a Christian church, the way they keep telling their followers that no man deserves worship, and that a servant of good is just that, a lowly, humble servant. But if you question their ideology, you will see an inflamed ego erupt, and narcissism will pour out like a volcano.
      • Jennifer Frances Armstrong yeah, yeah. The old character structure is still there.
      • LeeAnne Fourcrows Hensley Yeah, the spiritual leader is generally the most delusional of the whole group. The biggest narcissist of all.
      • Jennifer Frances Armstrong Or similarly, some people embrace a cult of suffering as if suffering had some value in itself
      • Jennifer Frances Armstrong Like some ape said to me last night, "You're just like me!!! You're so sensitive!" I told her this was completely untrue, but even if it had been true she would have no way of making an accurate judgment that fast.
      • LeeAnne Fourcrows Hensley Yes, and that's concerning. That they have gotten as far as to identify that we are built by our tribulations, but to make the very serious mistake of thinking that the suffering is feeding us life, to a degree that they self-inflict harm...that's very, very bad.
      • Jennifer Frances Armstrong There are all the errors you can make along the way, which involve metaphysics (creating an explanatory system beyond physics) and reification (treating abstract ideas about things as if the concrete things were actually just signs of those ideas you already have in your head).
        2 minutes ago · Edited · Like · 1
      • LeeAnne Fourcrows Hensley Men have often told me I'm too sensitive, and women tell me I'm insensitive. I've decided that either I don't know what that word even means, or they don't. I sense things. I don't let my ability to sense things cripple me. I don't know where that puts me on the universal sensitivity scale. But, yes, it's incredibly weird to have someone assess your sensitivity for you.
      • Jennifer Frances Armstrong It's another Americanism. I think it denotes some kind of compensatory spiritual awareness in reaction to some attribution of male insensibility or something.
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