The term, "shamanistic doubling', acknowledges a sense in which present and existing reality seems to acquire 'a double' in the process of transition from one state to another. One moves within one's own nature from a deeply involved perspective to one that is detached, and in so-doing, one sees things differently and thus opens up room to understand the world differently and to become new again.
One sense of it is in having a vision that takes into account the likely or possible effects how identities can expand or contract in response to particular kinds of violence or provocation. I call that awareness shamanistic doubling.
Shamanistic doubling involves seeing beyond the person to the kinds of responses they are likely to have to different types of pressure. All individuals respond in different culturally and politically directed ways (as well as on the basis of their individual personalities), by changing and/or by hiding something of themselves. In every interaction where physical or psychological pressure is imposed, subjectivity changes -- sometimes with lasting effects.
Insight into this kind of dialectic* of change ought to be more normal or everyday, but because we in the West adopt a metaphysics of fixed identities, we fail to see the world in a process of transition.
Where one has such insights about the realm of possibilities after undergone extreme experiences (akin to shamanistic initiation, through a close encounter with physical death or ego death), one can refer to the method of attaining these insights as 'shamanistic doubling'. That is because seeing into the realm of actualising or not yet actualized possibilities is akin to seeing into a parallel spirit realm -- although 'intellectual shamanism' takes the idea of a spirit realm metaphorically.
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* Shamanistic doubling invokes a sense of dialectics, not as a compromise but as a creative process:
Lonely one, you are going the way of the lover: yourself you love, and therefore you despise yourself, as only lovers despise. The lover would create because he despises. What does he know of love who did not have to despise precisely what he loved!
Go into your loneliness with your love and with your creation, my brother; and only much later will justice limp after you.
With my tears go into your loneliness, my brother. I love him who wants to create over and beyond himself and thus perishes.
One sense of it is in having a vision that takes into account the likely or possible effects how identities can expand or contract in response to particular kinds of violence or provocation. I call that awareness shamanistic doubling.
Shamanistic doubling involves seeing beyond the person to the kinds of responses they are likely to have to different types of pressure. All individuals respond in different culturally and politically directed ways (as well as on the basis of their individual personalities), by changing and/or by hiding something of themselves. In every interaction where physical or psychological pressure is imposed, subjectivity changes -- sometimes with lasting effects.
Insight into this kind of dialectic* of change ought to be more normal or everyday, but because we in the West adopt a metaphysics of fixed identities, we fail to see the world in a process of transition.
Where one has such insights about the realm of possibilities after undergone extreme experiences (akin to shamanistic initiation, through a close encounter with physical death or ego death), one can refer to the method of attaining these insights as 'shamanistic doubling'. That is because seeing into the realm of actualising or not yet actualized possibilities is akin to seeing into a parallel spirit realm -- although 'intellectual shamanism' takes the idea of a spirit realm metaphorically.
***************
* Shamanistic doubling invokes a sense of dialectics, not as a compromise but as a creative process:
Lonely one, you are going the way of the lover: yourself you love, and therefore you despise yourself, as only lovers despise. The lover would create because he despises. What does he know of love who did not have to despise precisely what he loved!
Go into your loneliness with your love and with your creation, my brother; and only much later will justice limp after you.
With my tears go into your loneliness, my brother. I love him who wants to create over and beyond himself and thus perishes.
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