Initiated practice 5: Shape Shifting

When attempting to work with the deceptive adversary that is our self importance it is necessary to have many tools. Practices like shadow exploration, working with the voice of impeccability, and virtue-based work can be immensely helpful (we’ll explore these a little later in the process), but for today’s practice we’re going to shift to a kinda fun and light-hearted way of loosening its grips on us: shape shifting. Shamans throughout time have been able to release their attachment to form and shift their consciousness into alternate forms, and this is only possible because they have released their attachment to self and identity so completely. Through the process of consciously identifying with other energies or perspectives—that of the wind, the trees, other species, etc—we can practice this art, and come into greater awareness as to the impacts and effects that our egoic self importance is having on us. Children practice rudimentary shape shifting all the time, pretending to be different energies and animals in play. The impact of this play is far from rudimentary or simple, however, and actually forms a necessary basis for relationship with all of life. Because of the hyper-availability of media and the general impacts of modern life I don’t think we are engaging in this play enough in both childhood and adulthood, and are instead becoming immediately focused on obsessed upon our self image and identity from a very early age. This practice track will take you into and through the experience of releasing attachment to form and self, and back into the fluid (and I don’t mean ‘gender-fluid’, please) and consciously connected reality that is the true, enemy-free state of human consciousness.

In this episode of the Initiated Series, we move from an exploration of initiatory tools and perspectives into a more direct focus on who and what helps and hinders us on this path. Episode 5 is an introduction to our ‘one true enemy’. This enemy is elusive, wily, deceptive, and relentless, and is both exceptionally difficult to notice in ourselves and yet, paradoxically, quite easy to recognize in others. It is also an enemy of enormous appeal and seductive power: not a foe that fights us directly, but that consumes our energy and focus through deception and distortion, and that can corrupt our spiritual path entirely should we not be on the lookout for it always. It is an enemy that has been spoke and taught about for thousands of years, appearing in nearly every lineage of teaching I have come into contact with, though especially within that of Shamanism and Buddhism. The rather astounding thing, I think, is that we seem to have come into a kind of adoration of this enemy in contemporary society, entirely forgetting the teachings of our ancestors and their wisdom with regards to its impact. I’m not a religious person, but if I was and I had any faith in the idea of the ‘end times’, I would be inclined to say that we are truly facing an ‘anti-christ’-like energy in our world right now in the form of our destructive relationship with this enemy, and how we are emphasizing the importance of its presence and demanding that the world around us revolve around it as well. Rather than exploring its damaging influence on us all, we are instead even encouraging our children even to uphold its perspectives and desires, and have become seemingly incapable of recognizing how far into its grasp we are placing ourselves. Aligned with the characteristics of the ‘anti-christ’, this enemy looks like a beneficial and necessary thing, and yet it is entirely destructive. It will, ultimately, completely annihilate social bonds, relationships, and the potential for spiritual growth if we do not become aware of it. And what is it? Self-importance, and our obsession with ‘identity’. Join me for this exploration of how self importance (and its correlate, spiritual materialism) shows up in our experience, how it is functioning in our world, and some practices that might, hopefully, assist you in releasing its grip.

Patience is profoundly connected to faith—faith in something larger and more wise than ourselves, and thus that knows when and how things should be happening better than we do—and to the willingness to be humble in contact with the unknown. Therefore, the most beautiful practice I know of to encourage the development of patience is the practice of prayer. This short practice track will lead you through a prayer practice meant to open your heart and mind, relax your ego, and release the pressures and expectations you may be placing on your life process.

I have made many, many jokes on the podcast about what an awful student I was to my primary teacher. And I deserve the mockery. Of the five years that I studied with her at least two of them were spent learning one thing: patience. Again and again, every time we met for instruction, the lesson would be the same despite the magnitude of my frustration: I needed to learn to slow down, to be more present, and to release the bounty of expectations I had regarding the speed I thought things should be happening at in my life. It took a long, long time for me to clue in that she wasn’t going to shift out of this teaching until I had really engaged with it, but I am so grateful she was willing to be patient with me through this (surely arduous) process. Once I really understood patience and the value of practicing it, so much in my life changed. Patience is something that our ancestors spoke frequently and seriously of, and has been viewed as one of the great virtues of a human being throughout history, and for good reason: a life lived with patience is a life lived largely without anxiety, frustration, and fear, and with an increased sense of faith and belonging within the system we exist as a part of. Patience is, seen one way, an expression of our trust that an intelligence larger than our own is guiding the process at hand, and that we are not necessarily the ones that know what is best or right for ourselves all the time. Patience is deeply connected to faith. I feel that with the advent and increasing capacity of technology, patience, like many virtues, has been cast to the side and replaced with ‘moving fast and breaking things’, or with the tendency to think it’s entirely appropriate to make demands of the world and other people simply because we feel entitled to do so. I realize this sounds judgemental, but our technology has inflated our egos and encouraged us to think that making demands of the world, our bodies, and each other is entirely appropriate, and that impatience, ironically, and raging at the world is actually the virtuous work. I disagree, and in this week’s episode I’m going to plead the case for why I still believe that patience is a critical skill and capacity on the initiatory path, and must be something readily available to us if we are to inhabit the space of authentic adulthood. I hope you enjoy.

Let’s go on a gratitude-expressing journey.

“We don’t see the world as it is. We see it as we are.” - Anäis Nin Today’s episode focuses on the biological and perceptual truths behind the idea that we ‘create our own reality’. Each of us has a ‘lens’ in our brain that filters our experience. The purpose of this lens is to limit the amount of stimuli and information coming in. This filtering serves a very important function, because without it we would go insane from trying to perceive everything happening around us! However, the way this lens works is important to understand, and investigate for ourselves, for it inherently shapes the world we live in. In essence, our brain effectively blocks or ignores information coming in that it has decided is irrelevant, uninteresting, or incompatible with the perspectives our mind currently holds. And how does it decide that something is irrelevant? Simply, just because we’re not paying attention to it. Whatever you consistently and repeatedly think about, negative or positive, is what your mind will ‘find’ for you in your environment, because it thinks you are interested in seeing more of whatever you’re focused on. As Anäis Nin suggested, this filtration of the world results in a reality that confirms the biases and perspectives we hold already, and effectively limits our exposure to experiences or perspectives that are not aligned with our current state of mind. Approached through this understanding, gratitude is not only a mental practice that cultivates calm and a pleasurable experience in this moment, but it also trains our brain to continue to seek the ‘good’ in our lives as we practice it more. More gratitude=more to be grateful for, basically. Gratitude is both a critical supporting practice on the (sometimes overwhelming) process of inititation—gratitude grounds, centers and refocuses us when we are questioning our path— but gratitude is also, like compassion, a primary characteristic of the ‘way our brain works’ after initiation, and so we are once again living our way into the answers of the path with this week’s work. And yes, I know there is a lot to find wrong with this world, and a lot that needs attending to. But in this episode I attempt to make the case that a continuous focusing on what is ‘wrong’ absent of conscious work to emphasize the beautiful, the good, and the joy we already have actually prevents us from every having anything but circumstances of lack.

In the Shamanic tradition (and others) there are very specific tools that we are guided to use to meet reality. These tools both form a framework and containment for the difficult process of Initiation—when you’re going through they provide a structure and reliable practice that will ground you—and are innately aligned with the quality of a matured, spiritually awake mind. Our souls are generous, present, grateful, and compassionate, and so we practice these ways of being so as to live our way into that state. We’ll explore two of these primary tools in this episode, compassion and blessing. By exploring the critical difference between empathy and compassion I hope you’ll recognize how important it is that we, as a global community, move away from attempts at empathic attunement and towards compassionate practice. Empathy is a wonderful and beautiful capacity for small systems and families, but it just doesn’t scale, and is increasing the division and conflict between social groups in our world.

Tonglen is, by far, my favourite blessing and compassion practice, all rolled into one. I’ve offered this practice previously on the podcast, but here’s an updated, cinematic soundscape version to hopefully walk you further down the path of open-heartedness, generosity, and presence.

After some deliberation (and finally admitting to myself just what is actually possible in my life right now), Initiated has been shifted from a video-based offering into a multi-episode series of podcasts on this channel. The complex process of putting such a large project out has just felt utterly overwhelming, but this way feels the very opposite: sweet, accessible, and really exciting. May these tools be helpful and supportive on your path, and I hope this is an easy way to access them. And so this is the journey: Every week for the foreseeable future I will be releasing a solo audio track offering the principles, practices, and philosophies of Spiritual Initiation as understood through the syncretic lenses of Shamanism, Buddhism, and modern Psychology. Along with the primary track each week you’ll also see a bonus experiential track featuring some beautiful ambient music from Belltower Audio (also known as my partner, Brent) and a practice aligned with each week’s subject to really support your experience. These practices have nourished and aligned me on my own path, and I offer them with the hope and intention that they will do the same for you. Life is beckoning all of us onto this initiatory path in anticipation and support of the next phase of our species’ experience. We are being transformed by life (as life has the habit of doing), calling us into alignment with our surroundings and into the potential for a truly interdependent and respectful human civilization. We can all see that we cannot continue to live as we are on this planet without destroying both ourselves and our environment, but how do we change? Why do we continue to relate to ourselves and each other in such damaging ways even as we seem to ‘see’ our behaviours and the patterns of our history? What is our true nature, and how do we express that more fully and beautifully? And how do we reclaim the soul self, and then build a world that protects the soul of every individual? These are the questions we’ll be exploring in the next many weeks, along with many, many others. I believe that the crisis and chaos of this time is asking us to ponder these questions and live our way into their answers, and I’m excited to do it here together. In this first episode we’re going to explore the principles of the initiation concept and process, what the ultimate ‘goal’ of the entire experience is, and take a deep dive into the importance of reflective, conscious belief formation as the ‘framework’ for this work. I offer here, with humility, several perspectives that I feel are fundamental to a powerful, awake relationship with life, and which have been distorted in the last few hundred years (and beyond) within the collective modern human consciousness. We once had access to ways of understanding our place in the world that encouraged connection, belonging, and faith, yet these have been skewed into ones that perpetuate suffering, separation, and instability. If we see the “problem” as something outside of ourselves we will be exhausted by attempting to change or fix it, but if we look within and towards the beliefs that form our world, massive change can and does happen. Please note that I offer these perspectives not as a form of ‘commandments’ that you have to align with, but as an opportunity to reflect and investigate your own beliefs, and to ask what the consequences of those beliefs are. With love and peace and the aspiration to grace for all of us.

This week’s floating, peaceful practice track will take you into a 30 minute seated meditation practice, and includes a brief introduction at the start, extended silence, and a dedication of practice at the close. I hope it serves you well.