Building on Inspiration

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea." Antoine de Saint-Exupery.

When I teach shamanism to people, sometimes I will talk about and demonstrate techniques. More often, however, I will work at inspiring the students. Inspiration is the key to all drive for knowledge. When we inspire we infuse a person with the spirit of the subject matter. Sometimes we inspire when we don't even know we are doing it. Sometimes we know we are setting an example and follow through for the sake of not just ourselves, but the ones we are inspiring. Both do benefit.

I have always been an avid believer in the right to a free mind. Free thinking is what leads to innovation, invention, and true progress. If we don't progress we are doomed to stagnate and fail. This is why I also am very able to learn from my students in turn. I don't see myself as the big kahuna from whom everyone must learn and to whom everyone must bow down. My students are my best teachers. They are able to look at life and see possibilities that I have not even thought about. As a result, I quickly grow to catch up to them and then we are all that much better off. In fact, I don't even like calling people my "students" and only do so for a frame of reference. I see all of us as teachers and learners in life.

Once inspired, we are able to take quantum leaps into the previously unknown territories and make our way to new understandings of the world in which we live and the universe of which we are all a part. To do this, we most often have to discard our previous thoughts about the way things are and embrace the way they could be. It's a big universe out there. Why would we ever want to limit it to only what we think we know?

Blessed Be
Trent
www.deerhornshamanic.com

Seekers

“Do not search for truth, just do not have any prejudices.” Master Taisen Deshimaru.

So often I encounter people who claim to be spiritual seekers, and some of them are truly embarking on a journey of self-discovery. There are also some (too many) who only equate seeking with reading books. These ones, I have learned, think that they know everything there is to know about spiritual connection but have never actually put it into practice. I almost want to use the term “book learned blockheads”, but I know that this is not entirely their fault. They have been raised in a culture where knowledge is equated with wisdom, and knowledge is supposed to be academically based. They are a product of their environment. So I write this not to bash them in any way, but to compassionately educate them in print, so that they may also come to understand a few things.

First off, knowledge is not wisdom. Knowledge is the gathering of information. Wisdom is the appropriate practical usage thereof. Just because we know how to split an atom does not mean that we must create an atomic bomb. This is wisdom.

Secondly, if we have knowledge and do not put in into practical use, that knowledge is lost and can never be applied to experience in life, therefore does not develop into wisdom at all. We can read all there is about how to build a sweat lodge, but until we do the task and then experience the sweat ceremony, we have no wisdom from the experience. We only are left with a technical manual for how to build a sweat lodge. This alone leaves us empty.

Thirdly, when we seek we must do so in a passive and receptive way. We can’t take something we have gleaned knowledge on and then lord it over all other information we gather, using it as a tool through which to determine what is “correct” and what is “wrong”. There are many ways and many paths up the same sacred mountain. To think that ours is the only way is to hold prejudice against others’ ways. Yet their way may be exactly what works for them to get them up that same mountain. Who are we to judge? All we can really do is allow the process to be what it is for us, and to be what it is for them. The truth of the matter is that there is a sacred mountain and, being a mountain, it has many paths. If it were only one-sided it would not be a mountain; it would be an illusion; nothing more than a cardboard cut out. So when we allow ourselves to be open and receptive, we make vast discoveries on a spiritual level and on all others levels as well. We don’t have to search for truth; we simply need to be open to it unfolding from within our consciousness. It cannot do that if we are going to laugh in its face as being something silly just because it is different from what we have discovered to date.

Perhaps a better term than “seeker” might be “explorer”. That way we would have not such a predatory aspect to the gathering of information, and would instead have a receptive spirit of discovery. When we allow ourselves to explore, we allow ourselves to be open to a vast universe of possibilities.

Blessed Be

Trent Deerhorn