Entering a realm where experience is less mediated by language or culture can be quite scary. Language is kind of like a barrier against falling off your "cliff edge". So long as you can pin down the other person within language, you do not feel existentially threatened, but rather as if everything in life were firm, and always had been.
The opposite to this is to remove soft of the safety net of language by not relying on this so much. The fear of the loss of being is not to be guarded against by the rigid use of linguistic terms. That it is possible to do so is shown by sparring, wherein social conventions do not matter, but only the movement of the body itself, which conveys actions that one does not have time to interpret into "intentions".
Action versus the passive mode of interpretation are two very different levels of relating. I would not have been able to go to Zimbabwe and achieve anything like I did, helping a friend with his self-defence work, had I been concerned to lock meanings into place in any kind of rigid fashion. I think "identity politics" is precisely concerned with locking into place these kinds of meanings, so that others can seem more solidified than they are. However, you can't go under, over and around identity, if you are thinking in that way. I would have had to stay in the white suburbs for the duration of my stay, instead of passing freely between different realms.
Shamanic regression is related to a broader psychological perspective than that offered by moralists. One is not "better" for being at the top of society, for instance -- one just appears that way due to being able to pass off one's failings and guilt as belonging to somebody lower down in the social hierarchy. This is a fundamental shamanistic insight.
This is the the core insight of shamanism -- that the realm of society is not structured on the basis of morality, and nor can it be. If it is associated with a system of morality, or a way to become morally pure, or a way to prove others to be morally in the wrong, this is about as extreme a misunderstanding as I could imagine.
The opposite to this is to remove soft of the safety net of language by not relying on this so much. The fear of the loss of being is not to be guarded against by the rigid use of linguistic terms. That it is possible to do so is shown by sparring, wherein social conventions do not matter, but only the movement of the body itself, which conveys actions that one does not have time to interpret into "intentions".
Action versus the passive mode of interpretation are two very different levels of relating. I would not have been able to go to Zimbabwe and achieve anything like I did, helping a friend with his self-defence work, had I been concerned to lock meanings into place in any kind of rigid fashion. I think "identity politics" is precisely concerned with locking into place these kinds of meanings, so that others can seem more solidified than they are. However, you can't go under, over and around identity, if you are thinking in that way. I would have had to stay in the white suburbs for the duration of my stay, instead of passing freely between different realms.
Shamanic regression is related to a broader psychological perspective than that offered by moralists. One is not "better" for being at the top of society, for instance -- one just appears that way due to being able to pass off one's failings and guilt as belonging to somebody lower down in the social hierarchy. This is a fundamental shamanistic insight.
This is the the core insight of shamanism -- that the realm of society is not structured on the basis of morality, and nor can it be. If it is associated with a system of morality, or a way to become morally pure, or a way to prove others to be morally in the wrong, this is about as extreme a misunderstanding as I could imagine.
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