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SHAMANIC DIRECTIVES

FOR ADDRESSING SELF-CONTROL

For whatever a person succumbs to, to that he is enslaved.

2 PETER 2:19 

SHAMANIC TEACHING

The more human beings have tried to control nature, the more out of control both have become. This pertains to both our inner and outer natures. Taoism teaches that we should not push against the grain or purposely try to make things happen. It teaches us to join with the natural currents of life and surrender ourselves to the Greater Mind that is nature itself.

For the Christian shaman, the same Taoist surrender is voiced through the prayer, “Let it be Thy will.” There is no better shamanic classroom than facing the stubborn problematic habits that have become part of our lives and committing ourselves to shamanic experimentation with them. Consider this work your basic shamanic laboratory.

A habit that is problematic often takes the form of excess—excessive smoking, drinking, napping, fooling around, or shopping, to name a few possibilities. Some problematic habits come in the opposite form—you don’t spend enough time and energy on something that you wish to address, whether studying, practicing, or working out. Whatever your habit structure, you can begin addressing the habits that concern you in a shamanic way. As before, you will take the serious concern and stretch it toward absurdity, helping bring forth the horizontal arm of the cross.

DIRECTIVE: LET ME COUNT THE WAYS

The next time you’re tempted by a temptation—a habit you feel you pursue in excess—immediately go to the phone book and open it up. Randomly select a residential phone number and dial it. When you get an answer, ask the following question, “Do you sell ___________?” (Fill in the name of whatever is tempting you.) Reflect on the response to your inquiry. Are you told, “No, you have the wrong number”? Or does the person silently hang up? Consider how many ways there are to say no and to correct mistakes.

Considerations

• You may want to consider not fully dialing the number. Dial every digit but the last one and then hang up. Pause and think about how the person may have responded.
• You can choose to only call businesses listed in the yellow pages, rather than individuals listed in the white pages.
• Purchase a toy phone and pretend to call important people in the world to ask them if they sell your temptation. Try calling the president of a country, a renowned spiritual leader, or a famous biblical character from the past.
• Get a tin can and attach a string to it. Run the string outside your bedroom window and tie it to a tree. Imagine that you are calling the tree.
• Try doing the exercise in Morse code. Tap the name of the temptation with dots and dashes.

DIRECTIVE: HOLY NO’S

Go to a business supply or hardware store and purchase two large letters, n and o. Then go to a religious store and purchase two tiny crosses. Attach each letter to one of the crosses. Place one lettered cross in one pocket and the other lettered cross in another pocket. Carry these with you at all times, knowing that you are always carrying a spiritual “no” with you.

Considerations

• Consider doing this with extremely small letters and crosses.
• When you sleep, place a cross at the top and bottom of your bed. Sleep inside a “holy no.”
• Create another “holy no” for a friend who will appreciate this kind of shamanic work. Go someplace together where you can both carry your crosses and use them in a beneficial way.
• When you feel that you have acquired a strong and effective way of saying no, make yourself a “holy yes” in the same manner. This will require three letters and three crosses.
• Consider how you will carry your “holy yes.” Might you carry a letter in each pocket and tape the third lettered cross over your heart?
• After becoming comfortable carrying your “holy yes,” practice carrying both your “yes” and your “no.” You may have to get creative to find enough places on your body to carry all five crosses and letters.

DIRECTIVE: SHAMANIC SQUIRT

Purchase a squirt gun. Fill it with water you have blessed with a prayer, place it in a plastic food bag, and carry it with you to a social situation. At an inappropriate but safe time, squirt a friend. Before they say anything, tell them you’re sorry, but you’re trying to practice controlling your impulses. Say no more. If they ask you why you can’t say more, tell them this, too, is part of learning to control your impulses.

Considerations

• What prayer will you say to bless the water? Consider a three-word blessing, a twelve-word blessing, and a paragraph-long blessing. Write them down and have them available for the blessing recitation.
• What source of water will you use? Try finding and purchasing different bottled waters from around the world. Perhaps you might look up where a particular saint lived, and find a bottled water that comes from a region close to a place at which he or she performed a miracle or had a vision.
• Rather than squirting a friend, squirt a plant or a rock or a building. Don’t forget to apologize and explain your action.
• Before going to work in the morning, squirt yourself. Immediately say, “I’m ready for the day.”

DIRECTIVE: WALKING WITH THE DEAD

Arrange to walk around the outside of a church or cemetery. Walk at your normal speed and time yourself. Stop when you’ve walked five minutes and return to where you started (total normal walking time: ten minutes).

The next day, take the same walk, but stretch it to twelve minutes—walk six minutes in one direction and six minutes back. You may not exceed the distance you went the day before, so you will have to slow down. Repeat until you can do the walk naturally in twelve minutes.

Considerations

• For the first five minutes, look at the cemetery. When you return, try not to look at it or think about it. Look to the other side.
• Hum a church hymn as you do your walk. Adjust the tempo so that it is in sync with your steps.
• Try another cemetery. Make it a fifteen-minute walk that becomes a twenty-minute walk with practice.
• At the end of the walk, consider saying a prayer for the souls who rest in peace.
• Take a photograph of the cemetery. Try walking somewhere else while carrying the photograph. Pretend you are walking around the cemetery.

DIRECTIVE: WAVE READING

Read a spiritual essay at a much slower rate than what you’re accustomed to.

The next evening, read the same thing at a slower rate than you did the day before.

Considerations

• When you read at a slower rate, underline the important ideas. Take your time underlining and do it more slowly than you ever have before. The next evening, underline the important ideas at an even slower pace, using a different color marker.
• Alternate reading rates for each paragraph. Read one paragraph quickly and the next one slowly. Continue reading in this way. Call it “wave reading.”
• Arrange to have two sources of reading material—a spiritual essay and an unspiritual essay (however you define the latter). Read one paragraph of the spiritual essay at a slow rate and then read a paragraph of the unspiritual essay at a fast rate. Practice variations of this exercise.
• Read the first paragraph of a spiritual essay slowly. Then read the last paragraph quickly. Return to the second paragraph for a slow read, then go to the next to last paragraph for a fast read. Continue until the two reading directions meet in the middle. Cut out that paragraph and carry it with you for a while. Consider that this paragraph holds an important clue for your spiritual development.
• Write a special prayer about keeping in rhythm with the spirit. Say it aloud, but alternate the speed of your speech for every other sentence.

DIRECTIVE: SOUL WHISPERER

When you’re in a stressful social situation talking with someone, do the following:

Reach over as if you’re making an adjustment to your shoe, and whisper, “I’m spiritually adjusting myself.” Make certain that no one can hear this but you. Repeat the process at least three different times, each time in a different situation.

Considerations

• Every once in a while, say, “I’m spiritually de-adjusting myself.” After doing so, adjust the other shoe and say, “Now I’m getting spiritually adjusted again.”
• Rather than adjusting your shoe, calibrate your watch. Take it off and set the time five minutes ahead of the correct time. After five minutes, adjust it back to the accurate time.
• Don’t forget to mumble the magic words.
• Consider tapping your head three to five times while saying silently, “I’m spiritually tuning myself.”
• Purchase a tuning knob from Radio Shack and carry it with you. Turn it when you need an adjustment.
• Pretend that your cell phone buzzed you. Open it and pretend to listen. Say aloud in front of the other person so that he or she can hear, “No problem, I’ll adjust the situation. It’s always possible for things to get better. Thanks. See you later.” Then hang up.

DIRECTIVE: HIDDEN BLESSING

Write down the following message on a piece of paper: “Bless this moment: I am managing what others see.” Fold it neatly and hide it in your room or office, making sure it is out of everyone’s sight.

Considerations

• Consider placing it in a menu at a restaurant.
• Hide it in a phone booth—inside the phone book, taped to the ceiling, or elsewhere.
• Place it in a public toilet stall.
• Place it inside a church hymnbook or Bible.
• Hide it in a psychotherapist’s office.

DIRECTIVE: KEEPING TRACK OF YES AND NO

Carry a pad of paper and a pen with you at all times. Make a mark every time you hear the word no. At the end of each day, add up how many no’s you heard. Write down that number, fold it up, and use it as a spiritual offering. Do this for at least a week, keeping track of how many no’s you collect each day.

Considerations

• Note the time of day at which you have accumulated a dozen no’s.
• Note which day of the week has the most no’s. Consider saying fewer no’s on that day of the following week.
• Which day has the fewest no’s? Consider whether you will try to say more no’s on that day next week.
• Drop the folded-up numbers in an offering plate. Be sure to add some money in order to balance your action.
• Do the same exercise for the word yes. Find out where, when, and how yes’s appear in your world.

DIRECTIVE: SPICING UP AND NAILING DOWN THE TEACHING

Go to the grocery store and buy a spice you would never eat. Carry this spice with you as you go to a hardware store. There, purchase a nail, particularly one that seems different in some way from the others.

Carry the spice and the nail with you and go to a religious bookstore. Leave the spice and nail on a shelf near a book in which you limit yourself to reading one page.

Considerations

• Consider returning to the religious bookstore each day to see what happened to the spice and nail. Read another page of the book at each visit.
• Repeat the exercise. This time, simply sprinkle a tiny bit of the spice on your hand before you open the book. Rub the nail when you put the book back on the shelf. Make three visits so that you will have read three pages of the book in this shamanic fashion.
• Try the directive in this way: First, find a book you are curious about. Then go find a spice that seems to be appropriate for the particular book. Determine the length of nail that is appropriate for the book (for example, long books may require longer nails). Now go back to the book with your spice and nail and whisper to the book what you have done. Make sure someone is watching, but don’t be too overt.
• Buy a spice with which you are unfamiliar and then purchase an unusual nail. Take them with you as you search for what you would consider an unusual book. This may be a nonspiritual book, or a book from another spiritual tradition.

DIRECTIVE: ERASE IT

Using a tape recorder, record your voice speaking the names of as many temptations as you can think of. Go to every room of your house with this tape. Stand in each room for exactly five minutes, holding the tape, but do not play it! Say only, “With an honoring of Abraham, I stand here now.”

The next day, go back to each room with your tape and tape recorder. Erase the entire tape once in each room—erasing it again and again as you visit each room. Don’t forget to verbally honor Abraham in each room.

Considerations

• Tape yourself saying the word “temptation” over and over again. Then erase it. Do this every day for a week.
• Purchase a cheap microphone and carry it with you. When you face a temptation, get out your microphone and hold it in front of the temptation. Say nothing, and then walk away to write down your experience of the procedure.
• Get a cassette tape and wrap it with packing tape. Wrap it again with another kind of tape. Wrap it with as many different kinds of tape as you can find. Consider this the taped tape. Make one for every temptation in your life.
• Carry a tape recorder with you for a full day. Do not use it. Say nothing about it. If anyone asks, say, “It’s really nothing” or “It’s not as interesting as it seems.” When you think about why you are doing this, say to yourself, “It’s really nothing” or “It’s not as interesting as it seems.”
• Send a brand-new, unopened, blank tape to a friend who appreciates strange experiences. Ask them if they have heard this tape before. Tell them you were tempted to tell them what was on it, but didn’t give in to the temptation.

DIRECTIVE: SPREADING AND UNSPREADING THE WORD

When you get up in the morning, write down on a piece of paper something you wish you could tell a friend about Christian shamanism. Immediately throw this paper away and go on with your day.

Considerations

• What people would you like to share some of your knowledge of Christian shamanism with? Include people from the past.
• Write a letter to Jesus and ask him three questions about Christian shamanism. Address the letter to Jesus, The Heavenly Kingdom. Place a stamp on it and place it under your pillow.
• Pretend you have a temptation to place the letter in a church offering plate, but do not do so.
• Write the words Christian Shaman in your Bible, as if it were your name. Write over it every day, so that you write the words many times. Believe that this is making you stronger. As the words get heavier with ink, your spiritual muscle gets more developed. Think of this strength when you need it.
• Tell a friend something about Christian shamanism that you feel they would not understand. Interrupt yourself when you are halfway through your presentation. Do not allow them to convince you to complete what you were going to say.
• Write C.S. after your signature once a day. Do not allow yourself to do it more than once each day.

DIRECTIVE: TV SPIRITUALITY

At the beginning of the week, examine the television program listings and select one program you have never seen. Watch only five minutes of this program. Read a randomly selected biblical scripture. After this, return to your everyday viewing habits.

Considerations

• Is a television program more or less interesting if you hold your Bible or a cross or a powerful symbol while watching it?
• Call your own phone number while watching a television program. If you don’t have a cell phone, call your own number from a friend’s house. When it is time to leave a message, read every other word of a Bible verse. Listen to this message before you go to bed.
• After reading the Bible verse, ring a bell three times. Turn the television off and on three times, and then return to your viewing.
• For one minute, watch an evangelical television show that you feel is a sham. Mail them one cent and consider how much it will cost them to handle that penny. Encourage others to do the same. See this as a way of helping curb their temptation to be rich.

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

The Christian shaman, like everyone else, must confront temptations and issues of self-control. For the shaman, however, these can become times for merry play and radical tinkering. Doing anything different with a habit structure can be transformative—whether it is changing how long a behavior lasts, where it takes place, any of its ordered sequences, its color, sound, audience, and so forth. Doing so with the spirit of play empowers the shamanic work. It lightens the situation and facilitates a stretching toward new possibilities.

Problem habits just seem to drop into our lives for no reason. They are like random inserts into the flow of everyday living. They need no reason for their placement in our lives. They are just there and we find ourselves stuck for no reason at all. The shaman meets this absurd situation with counterabsurdity. For no reason at all, the stuck habits are met with random acts of nonsense and tomfoolery. This engagement of chaos and illogical encounter helps undo the stuck doings, freeing us for other ways of dancing through the next chapters of life.