How To Be A Student of Shamanism
FULL AUDIO FOR THIS ESSAY CAN BE HEARD HERE:
How do we become a student of shamanism? Well many of us were exposed to a certain kind of learning by attending schools as children. We recall from our school days textbooks and homework, outside playtime and bullies, math quizzes and book reports. In the schools of shamanism, there are no textbooks or book reports, but there are master shamans. So how do shamans train? Before shamans are masters, they spend decades being students.
The idea of apprentices might come to mind. Closely working as an apprentice under a shaman, learning rituals and astrology. This training does happen, but apprenticeship still will only get you so far. Apprenticeship alone will not produce our next great shamans. And here is where we must lift our elevation to a higher perspective of perceiving what it means to be a student. Far more central to a shaman’s toolkit than a shaman’s mirror and drum, is the essential tools of a strong heart and mind. The mind must be disciplined and wise enough to be empty of self at times. The heart must be strong. It must be able to sit with great suffering without shutting down or sending pain on to others. This is the subtle, yet fundamental, training for a shaman. Yet for all the interest in shamanism these days, it’s startling to me to see how little focus is put on this true training path for real shamans.
(Ulaanbaatar Mongolia, 2019)
There is a complaint I have heard often from people interested in learning shamanism or any path of sacred healing. The complaint is that there are many students and not enough teachers.
(To clarify, here I use “Shaman” as the appropriate word to refer to the sacred healers in Mongolia and nearby regions. “Sacred healers” is the term used to more broadly identify the healers found across all cultures who have been chosen by the spirits to work for them. All cultures have sacred healers, but what differs is the name of their healers and the methods used.)
Now this topic of not enough teachers is very near and dear to me. I’m going to risk some credibility here, but luckily I really don’t have much of it to lose. To my view, a problem we have in shamanism today is actually the lack of students much more than a lack of teachers. Ooooo…. This is sure to get some people going here. But perhaps hear me out. Or don’t. I’m eating the same lunch here today of dried reindeer meat, cloudberry preserves from summer, and coffee, whether you read this or not.
(My Lunch Today, Sápmi (Norway side), 2024)
I’ll start by saying I’ve been all I will describe here and worse. I’ve been a fool not worthy of a teacher, a student without a teacher, a student with a teacher who was not ready to have students, and now I don’t call myself a teacher but people do tell me they have learned some things from me. Quickly I will also add I am initiated into a lineage of shamans in Mongolia so sacred healing is my day job – although I don’t really call it a job. I’m being a bit cheeky here.
Now as I see it, on one hand we have a math problem. After a long history of eradicating the sacred healers like shamans and medicine people, we don’t have enough qualified sacred healers to “teach” the next in line. This is fact. True and clear karma unfolding. I see that not one of us is more entitled to a teacher than another. There just aren’t enough teachers for all of us. To my mind, it can’t possibly be that those without a teacher are experiencing personal karma alone. It’s not a criticism of your soul if you don’t have a teacher. It’s just that the lines of sacred healers above us all, for hundreds of years, have been largely killed or converted. And so now there is a scarcity of resources. Seen from here, we have a problem of math, not a problem that you aren’t worthy. You are worthy. We all are.
On my next hand, I’ll step into some ideas that may be a little more spicy for some. And not everyone will agree, and that’s ok. May I offer the space here for us to learn and grow together as we consider the thoughts I am sharing. What I have seen in my journeys is some people are cursed with finding a teacher too soon. Those who didn’t yet know how to be the student are at high risk of slipping into idol worship or, just as bad, they try to emulate the “teacher” without looking into themselves to see what unique path lies ahead for them. Students who came to this path before good preparation in mind and heart can bring a strong drive to please their teacher by becoming like the teacher. Lessons are there for such folks about how to become who you are meant to be, rather than copy notes from our teacher’s book. This lesson is a curriculum that I have seen some people working on for lifetimes. And it’s all ok. Karma sometimes has us meeting our teachers too soon. And then that’s just our path. There is no rush. We can take all the time we need for each lesson. Many lives ahead.
Others of us are blessed with finding a teacher after we no longer need them in the ways we had wanted one before. This was my path. This blessing comes only to those who learned how to become a student. And this is where I’d like to perhaps add some thoughts to consider.
To me, what is far more concerning than a lack of teachers is the shocking lack of students.
(MARS Artist Residency Converted Multi Use Bus, Just outside of Ulaanbaatar Mongolia, 2022)
Waiting for a teacher, searching for a teacher, feeling frustration, making excuses, fantasizing how your life would be much better if only you had a human teacher - this is not the way of a future shaman. To lament the lack of a teacher borders often dangerously near playing into identity as a victim. Ooooo.. spicy! But hear me out! I know because I was trapped in that zone myself for a good long time. I say this with love and a desire for everyone to find more ease and wisdom on our paths. We bring our own obstacles more than we realize. And because dang it we need future shamans, which means we need more understanding of what it is to truly set upon a student’s path.
My problem when I was waiting for my teacher in part was this. I approached learning and the idea of a teacher something near, not the same but a little near, how I had been raised to view school, with a classroom that was set inside four walls. There, teachers were the ones that brought me information. I learned to repeat it. It came easily to me. And I didn’t appreciate it at all. Rarely and semi-preciously, now and again I learned to make new ideas but really just by reassembling the old ideas I was given. I sought approval. I wanted certain outcome. I experienced lessons as being safe. Each school year I was building up more a sense of identity as Frances, like I was becoming more Frances, not less. Clearly I wasn’t ready to be a shaman then, because I passed all my classes. Which means I played within the rules I was given. Much to my shame, never once was I expelled. I didn’t test boundaries, skip school to watch the clouds, or miss a semester to raise a baby bat that I found on the road too soon separated from her mother.
As if that wasn’t shameful enough, the shame continues. I continued further along this someone training. I went on to university and, seeking further suffering, went further along to eventually earn a PhD. My advisor in graduate school did consider kicking me out of the program so I guess somewhere along the way I did get a bit wiser. But throughout my path, my ideas of being a student largely remained the same. I reproduced what I thought those above me wanted to see from me. I built up a sense of identity as Frances. And along the way the schooling system that I had been raised in resulted in me losing my natural drive of curiosity, wonder, and gratitude.
Shamanism, in contrast, needs students who are full of life, curiosity, and passion. On this path we cannot wait for our teachers. The most important role a teacher plays is activating you to learn for yourself. Yes, they can also teach you a few techniques and pass on rituals and traditions. That too. But before you have your teacher, we can all be students! We can learn how to work with consciousness, meditate, work with the land or in nature. Trees are amazing teachers. Sit beneath the boughs of a big mother tree as often as possible for the seasons and cycle of one year. You will be changed. Reconnect with the rhythms of nature within us, heal from our past, unlearn what we were taught in our schools, unlearn who we think we are - today! Today I call you - grow, change, expand, explore! Working on our minds and hearts is the most vital action we can take to become the future sacred healers that are needed so desperately in these times.
(Nuuk, Greenland, 2021)
I say this acknowledging sometimes life is too hard. I don’t want you to misunderstand my meaning. I am not offering some centering of self, new age, now you can manifest your dream life propaganda. War, poverty…. These things happen and lives are cut short. We are in impossible times. Many of us will experience more loss than is imaginable for most. This is because our life is just one life in connection with countless beings – all of us in an unfathomably large web of relations and connections and karma. This web we are weaving, we do have a role in it, and at the same time it is bigger than any one individual alone. There is still always the smallest bit you can do to reorganize what is inside yourself. We can always take each moment, even the hardest, to move something deep within our souls…. To reconnect with something bigger around us perhaps, maybe polishing off the smallest part of our hearts that will bring a more enlivened heart in our next life. Lessons are not always finished in a lifetime. The reality is people can and do die just as they are getting to know how to find their own heart. This is what the spirits have taught me again and again. No amount of internal restructuring is ever wasted in the multiple lives of learning for the shaman. Your drum is not coming with you to your next life, but your heart is. The work you do on your heart and mind now – they come with you.
Let’s open our perspective to a more accurate view of what it means to be a student. Some of us will be called to care for a sick family member for years, resulting in our own lives being put on hold. Some of us will unexpectedly lose a partner to cancer. Some of us will lose our mobility or speech due to a stroke. Some will find ourselves feeling too successful financially to allow ourselves to live the life beckoning to us, sitting with this soul tension eating us alive from inside. Be the student for all of it. The universe is your perfect teacher. She brings precisely the lessons you need to address the karma built up around your soul. She is a fierce teacher, but a wise one.
(Sápmi (Norway side), 2023)
Teacher smeacher! The idea itself of needing a human teacher sometimes is too much for me. You are a human in a life! Love it, hate it, but be present for it and take what comes, and know it all comes to teach you. The entire universe is your kind, wise teacher! And yes, the gift of a human teacher is rare and precious. And this may come as well. Learn to embrace all with a student’s mind.
As someone who works for the spirits, moving energy across realms, I will let you in on the shaman’s secret. It's not the rituals or objects that are bringing healing. They are many things and in some ways we can say a support and training. They are also the holder of sacred energies and spirits. It’s the heart and mind of the shaman in healthy connection with the right spirits that brings conditions for healing to occur. The rituals and the objects are the support for the shaman’s heart and mind, but that’s not what is doing it. A strong heart is the most powerful tool of all. I’d rather have one neighbor living nearby with an open heart channel, like a little old grannie who never leaves the house but she just knits and thinks loving thoughts all day and communicating with the birds in the trees, than have ten shamans as neighbours.
(Full Moon Watching Over Us, Outskirts of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, 2022)
Let us consider one reason why approaching our whole life as a student of our own hearts and minds is so vital. Feelings of insecurity and low self worth are one of the biggest epidemics in our species at this time. When we don’t love ourselves, we are not able to work for the spirits from a pure space. Ego becomes involved. We take the path of a sacred healer to try to change and become something other than who we are. One will say they are a sacred healer meaning “I’m better than you, I’m better than my old self” when it should mean “I’m in service of the spirits, dedicating my life to others.” These healers with clogged up hearts are some of the most dangerous sacred healers I have known, despite them being some of the nicest and kindness.
Finding a human teacher won’t alleviate this affliction of poor self worth in the soul. When someone hates themselves before they become a sacred healer, then the day they find their teacher they will still hate themselves. They can’t find right action, even when the strong desire is there to do the right thing. They can be a dedicated student of their human teacher, but they learn not with pure intention to help others. Part of their efforts learning the way of a sacred healer is also to prove themselves to others, believing they can patch up the wounds in their soul with achievements and admiration from others. Students of shamanism who have not begun learning from the universe how to be strong in mind and hearts, are on sure path to harm others and eventually themselves. Their dislike of self can block them from being a clear channel or medicine carrier. The self hatred becomes a poison that is delivered to along with the medicine of the spirits. This is how we get people as sacred healers, who underneath are wanting to grow a cult of personality, have a large following, and be seen as “more healed” or “more special.” The imbalances can be slight and very difficult to perceive in a sacred healer. But they always come to light eventually. And sadly sometimes not until after big harm has happened at the hands of the sacred healer.
Far too many people are rushing toward becoming a sacred healer from the place of lack of love for themselves. And they always get sick if they skip over this lesson. But we can be students of the lessons that come to us in this very day – lessening our load, and preparing our path to become the future great shamans and sacred healers that are needed for these impossible times. Listen to the universe. She will send you just the right podcast at just the right time, she will block your path when you are going in the wrong direction. She will bring in people and animals who love you, support you, and who teach you about loss and death. Sometimes only for a day. And honestly, hopefully if the universe is kind I think she’ll also bring in a few people who are jealous of you, and maybe even hate you. These are all precious experiences of heart. Sit with all of it. There is a great lesson in learning how to love ourselves when faced with someone who hates us. The universe loves you. She wants you to find and live in the place that’s already inside yourself where you are already completely worthy and whole. With student’s mind, we can begin to hear the universe speaking to us.
Seeing ourselves as a student of each moment, our path to accessing all the lessons we need begin to open naturally around us.
(Me with my teacher of the day, Sápmi (Norway side), 2023)
We need students much more desperately than we need teachers.
And even teachers need to learn with student mind. Let me share a true story about one of my lessons I needed. Now as I said I’m not ready to call myself a teacher, but I must also be fully accepting that people may see me as something close to this in their lives. I can’t push that away. That would be not accepting my fate as it unfolds around me. Even if I don’t feel ready.
For years, I was annoyed how people came to me with a lack of understanding their role and responsibilities. I felt great agitation seeing, or perceiving, that they wanted me to do their work for them. I was impatient with them. And then my aha moment came. Aha! This is perfect because this is just what it is! What I am experiencing here is the ripening of the collective karma of killing the sacred healers for centuries. Now many communities lack knowledge that was known about how to be a student of the sacred practices. With this realization, my resistance faded away. I understood it was not deep perceiving to take anything personally. By perceiving more deeply, I no longer took these experiences personally. I could see more clearly that this is just the fact of these times. It wasn’t about me. It never was.
(The true story of the time I had an opportunity in the last rays of day to reflect on all my personal failures as I waited for the tour boat operators to realize they had accidently left without me and I was stranded on a deserted island, just a few hours up the fjord from Nuuk, Greenland, 2021)
Addressing the current state of our collective karma, all of us need to see students and teachers perhaps in an expanded way. Students come to teachers not ready because many of us are from cultures like mine that - short hand - have grown people who are self-centred, and not aware of how to honourably engage in sacred work. Teachers have to meet students where they are. Our methods of training may therefore differ from the past, because the students today have a different topology of heart and mind when they come to us.
Shamanism is not in the past. It’s more alive than any of us here today. Shamanism and great teachers adapt to what is necessary now in each present moment. Now when people come to learn from me, I see my role as pointing out the path, and now also see my role perhaps as offering my thoughts about how one can learn to walk this path well. I can’t walk the path for them. But perhaps more than the pointing out, I can offer a little more support. I use methods that differ from shamans, perhaps including myself, in past lives. Now I hold a group on Patreon. I post essays here on Subtack. I must continue to bring my student mind with me as my path moves along. I’m learning as I go. I’m sure I will make mistakes. No matter how many lives I have been a sacred healer, I can guarantee you this is definitely my first life learning how to hold the energy of a group of people over zoom meetups about these things. And helping our community grow over time. I’m still in a very delicate place of trying to figure out how to a hold a group in a way where I am sitting within the responsibility of the group I am creating. At the same time I don’t want to be the expert. I want to be learning and growing together. There is no such thing as perfection. Sitting with a healthy heart I am ready to sit at the feet of my failures on this endeavour, and learn from them as well. I count it as one of my biggest blessings in my life that I have a sincere wish to be a student every day until my last breath, and in the moment that comes next as well.
So my sincere wish for you, whether you have a teacher or not, whether you are a master or a novice on this path, may you always be a student.
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