How Are We Wired?

Can a person exercise compassion and simultaneously wage war? What do you think?

Outside Politics and Into the Portal: A Joyous Journey Begins

When I began this blog I wrote about portals, what they are and how to access them in one's daily life.

Now let's go deeper. What about learning a core shamanic practice? The practice of "journeying."

"Journeying" refers to an altered state of consciousness that some call trance. It is a technique of travelling to non-ordinary reality to communicate with spirit helpers, especially teachers and power animals, primarily to get answers to questions and for healing.

These helpers are viewed as compassionate beings concerned with helping people solve problems, restoring harmony to the individual and to the world. For thousands of years shamans have journeyed to the spirit worlds to get help for others--healing and information. Shamans have traditionally been the people who "journey."

Years ago shamanism was systematically wiped out by many religions and governments around the world. Perhaps because shamans communicate directly with the spirit world, and are thus, outside heirarchies and outside politics, they were perceived as a threat to religions and governments.

But now, with the resurgance of shamanic practice, people other than shamans may learn to "journey." The opportunity to learn how to "journey" for oneself is a sacred gift.

One way a person may learn this ancient practice of "journeying" is by studying with with a shamanic counselor. Although derived from shamanism, the ancient practice of healing and divination, shamanic counseling is different. Unlike shamanism, in shamanic counseling there is no patient to be healed, and the counselor does not "journey" on behalf of the client.

The salient difference is that the counselor teaches the client how to "journey" on their own behalf. The clent learns how to "journey" to non-ordinary reality and with the assistance of spirit helpers they meet there, the client finds their own answers. The client learns a method of problem-solving based on "journeying."


Shamanic counseling is the radical practice of giving the reins to the client, or perhaps it is more accurate to say, "teaching the client to ride with the horse." The shamanic counselor teaches clients how to "journey" to solve their own problems--to find guidance from a compassionate source.

The compassionate beings that inhabit the Upper and Lower Worlds of non-ordinary reality are seen as experts, and in a series of sessions, the counselor teaches the client how to communicate with them directly. From an information exchange point of view, communicating directly with these beings is akin to obtaining information from a library of infinite primary sources. From an experiential point of view, communicating directly with the compassionate beings is thrilling and astounding.

In their "journeys" the client may ask questions about important issues, practical life difficulties, life's mysteries, about problems that the client has worked on but hasn't yet resolved. The client may ask anything and will receive answers.

After the client has mastered the procedures, the counselor encourages the client to practice "journeying" to the Upper and Lower Worlds to seek teachers and power animals. When the client feels comfortable "journeying" alone, they have accepted the reins and ride with the horse. They're on their way to experiencing a relationship with a radically different cosmos. A relationship in which they direct their path in a new way, bringing humane and compassionate solutions and actions to their life and to the world we live in. Compassion starts here. Outside politics. A joyous "journey" begins.

I'd love to read any comments you would like to make on this post or any of the other posts. At the bottom of each post there's a place called "Comments." If you click on that, you can write a comment in the box. When you finish, click on "Publish." That sends the comment to my email address. It does not show up on the Blog. If you'd like your comment to show on the blog, please let me know that and I'll post it under "Comments."
I look forward to hearing from you.


c Alesia Kunz

Compassion In Action: Let's Get Real

Media reports chaos: war, torture, killing, lying, profiteering from others’ misfortune, systematic neglect of people and the environment--all touted as necessary problem-solving strategies by governments around the world. Unpleasant surprises pop up. The U.S. government using a chemical weapon, white phosphorous, against Iraqi people and secretly spying on U.S. citizens. Genocide in Darfur. Displacement and death in Lebanon, Gaza, and Israel. The U.S. government continues making proclamations about Iran that look similar to those it made to justify invading Iraq. In attempting to censor the press by expanding the Espionage Act of 1917, the U.S. government attempts to curtail citizens’ first amendment rights, and has eliminated the right of Habeas Corpus for non-citizens. Ours is a problem-studded universe. A political maelstrom in which combat strategies abound.

When we question local and world leaders about the absence of compassionate strategies, we receive a myriad of answers based on the assumption that this is the nature of existence. When we suggest strategies for humane solutions, we’re told either that we don’t have all the information and therefore, that we don’t understand, or that we’re traitors for disagreeing with our governments’ policies. We’re often told that the information we need is classified. Cutting off access to information about what our governments are doing denies us the opportunity to act responsibly, to check misuse of power. A cosmology of chaos, fear, and secrecy is constructed. A political cosmology that discourages us from taking action, from being responsible participants in our lives.

Thousands of years ago many cultures had the view that a deep harmony structures all existence. An ordered existence in which people, animals, plants, and elements work together in harmony to solve problems. Even today Indigenous, religious, Buddhist, and shamanic communities use compassion as a core principle in solving problems--compassion in action.

All around the world shamans have carried on the ancient tradition of compassion in action through their effective healing and divination practice. But some religions and governments systematically wiped out this method of problem-solving by jailing and killing shamans. Is it because there are no religious or governmental intermediaries between the shaman and the source of compassionate strategies?

Although Buddhism is different from shamanism in many respects, the practice of compassion is core. In Tibet Buddhism was an essential element of the culture, as shamanism was in communities around the world. In 1959 there were more than 6,000 monasteries in Tibet. Within twenty years the Chinese government had destroyed all but eight, and had tortured and killed over 100,000 monks and nuns.

We can offer many hypotheses for the destruction of these and other communities the world over, but it appears that because it is outside politics, compassion is seditious.

Compassion is a neutralizer, offering different perspectives. Compassion counterbalances impulses of greed, domination, and fear. The more compassion fills us, the more we may be willing and able to seek kinder non-combative solutions to our personal, local, national, and world problems. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa is an example.

While governments cut off our access to information, compassionate practices encourage us to ask questions and interact in a world of infinite information, thus, offering us the opportunity to discover humane strategies and to take responsible action on our own behalf. Agency in our daily lives.

“Journeying” like a shaman to the spirit world for compassionate strategies, and thinking like the Dalai Lama won’t guarantee cessation of death, destruction, torture and war, the cynical strategies of world governments. But we can exercise our individual choice and try. Taking action can set a wave of compassion in motion, making war and destructive strategies more unsavory, thus, more difficult to employ.

Sometimes we spontaneously feel compassion. Seeing an old person struggle to cross the street, an injured animal, a person with no shelter. Global atrocities. Many of us have felt the deeply moving experience of someone expressing compassion toward us. It is an instantly transforming moment filled with grace.

We can also do specific things to activate our compassion-- think about it, talk with others about it, meditate on it, let ourselves feel, study one of the compassionate ancient traditions, start our own. We can join the beings that are devoted to helping one another solve problems, restoring harmony and health to them and slowly perhaps, to the world.

The opportunity is available to experience a radically different cosmos. A relationship in which we direct our path in a new way, bringing compassionate solutions and actions to our lives and to the world. We can continue an ancient tradition of compassion in action. The newly elected U.S. Congress has this opportunity. Will they stand up and speak compassion? Make compassion public.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on this and on any other posts. If you'd like to comment, click on "Comments" at the bottom of the post. Then write in the box. When you're finished, click on "Publish." That sends your comment to my email address. It does not show up on the blog. If you would like your comment to show on the blog, let me know and I'll post it in the "Comments."
I look forward to hearing from you.

c Alesia Kunz

Jumping In: The Spirit World

What about we just jump in? Into the world of spirits.

What is the spirit world? It's a world where spirits live. People and beings who used to live in the Middle World, where we live now, who have passed out of this world into another. Our grandparents, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, dogs, cats, trees, plants. All inhabit the spirit world.

We can talk with them. And they wish to talk with us.

The most incredible information is that the spirit world is inhabited by compassionate beings. All the spirits are compassionate beings. I have learned many things from this world but by far the most important for me is compassion. Each time I enter the spirit world I am shown compassion. As a result, my compassion blossoms. With every contact I make, the color of my compassion spreads and deepens. It is a remarable gift.

c Alesia Kunz

Collaborating with the Wild: Portals in Nature

Entering portals in nature. Sheri Tepper, in her science fiction novel, Grass, uses the ordinary plant, grass, as the central image, the portal into a mystical, real, thrilling and terrifying world. All kinds of grasses cover the earth like a sea-- currents waving and undulating seductively on the surface, hiding an underworld teeming with beings. Are they predators, victims, the hunted, or the hunters?

"Grass!
Millions of square miles of it; numberless wind-whipped tsunamis of grass, a thousand sun-lulled caribbeans of grass, a hundred rippling oceans, every ripple a gleam of scarlet or amber, emerald or turquoise, multicolored as rainbows, the colors shivering over the prairies in stripes and blotches, the grasses--some high, some low, some feathered, some straight--making their own geography as they grow. There are grass hills where the great plumes tower in masses the height of ten tall men; grass valleys where the turf is like moss, soft under the feet..."

The reader and the writer move through the portal of grass into a world of compelling, frightening, poignant relationships between humans, unfamiliar beings-- Peepers, Hippae, Hounds, Foxen-- and a plague. Humans and the environment.

Grass, like all books are, is a portal into other worlds. With each page we turn we move deeper and deeper into a fantastic landscape that provokes a visceral response. When we close the book, the green stuff that grows as lawns and on hillsides is no longer a benign prettiness, but a numinous pulsing sentient entity. We have been changed by moving through the portal.

Interacting with Nature can be like reading the novel. A complex experience, different for different people. Delicious, wonderful, terrifying, gross, soothing, provocative.

I invite you to take a chance. Walk into Nature. It's wild. In our daily material life, collaborating with Nature, like reading, is a pathway into a different world. But unlike reading a novel, collaborating with the wild is opening to the world of spirits. Moving into this world takes focus and intent. Every element in Nature is a potential portal into the world of spirits. Do we want to pass through a portal, deep into the wild, into Nature? It's a serious and thrilling step. It's worth thinking about.

If we want to collaborate with Nature, we've got to have the intent to communicate, and the focus to do it. We've got to talk. Talk with some element, force, being of Nature. Wild beings. Images of the Divine.

Communing with Nature isn't a new idea. Rather, it's newly out of fashion. Communing with the elements of nature is ancient and modern (shamans world wide for tens of thousands of years, Indigenous Peoples all over the world, American Transcendentalists).

So, how does one talk with spirits of Nature? We do it all the time. We can talk silently or we can speak out loud. Let's take a flower, for example. Stopping to look at a flower. We notice it. We admire it. We appreciate its scent, the form of the leaves, the colors, the textures. We may even talk to it. "You smell so sweet." If we're with someone we might invite them to appreciate it. "Wow, smell this!" We're communing, talking with that flower. This is a way in. A beginning. Greeting the portal.

If we're serious about going further, really wanting to know the flower, we pursue that intent, and go deeper. Just as when we want to get to know a person, it means spending time with that being, talking and listening. It requires a committment.

Talking is often easier than listening. Listening is complex. What is the language of wild beings, anyway? Can we understand it? Often we need to enter an altered state of consciousness in order to hear what Nature has to say. Why? Because we're listening to a spirit. The spirit of the flower. We need to enter their world in order to have a two-way conversation. Like picking up the telephone. Both parties need to be on the phone. Or, Instant Messaging, if we want to be connected at the same time. Or, in telepathic communications, often people open themselves at a synchronized time to transmit and receive, putting themselves in an altered state in which they share intent and focus. It's an agreement and wish to collaborate.

Collaborating with a spirit of the wild is like collaborating with a person in some ways. Getting to know them is important. Getting to know them gives us information about whether or not it's a good match. And, the being we want to work with must agree to work with us. Just as in collaborating with a person in the material world, we wouldn't just say, "I choose you," and expect that person to agree. That would be rude and presumptuous. It's the same in Nature.

Entering into the wild is thrilling. Many people have had the experience of snorkling. Picture being under water next to a reef, revelling in the brightly colored schools of fish surrounding you. Suddenly a black eel slips out from a reef in front of your face. In a flash of thrill and fear you realize that you are in their world. A wild different world. Or, when you're in the woods and you come upon a bear, or when the earth and everything around you is shaking out of control in an earthquake, you know you are in the world of Nature, a wild place.

Entering the wild, entering portals in Nature is mind expanding. Communicating and learning from wild beings, spirits of Nature, is an experience that can change you forever. If you choose to proceed, it may seem difficult at first. Listening to and hearing from the spirits of Nature is easier for some people than others. Be encouraged. Keep trying. They appreciate our efforts. Intent and focus are crucial for every kind of entry and collaboration with the wild.

c Alesia Kunz