Saturday, February 27, 2016

Shamanic balance in an Oracle card reading

Shamanic balance isn't just about  harmony between nature and the human world.  It is also an actual experience of a kind of attention that exists when two forces are held in mutual tension.  Barbara Meyerhoff  describes this in "Shamanic Equilibrium: Balance and Mediation in Known and Unknown Worlds,"

Shamanic balance is a particular stance.  It is not a balance achieved by synthesis, it is not a static condition achieved by resolving opposition.  It is not a compromise.  Rather it is a state of acute tension, the kind of tension which exists...when two unqualified forces encounter each other, meeting headlong, and are not reconciled but held teetering on the verge of chaos, not in reason but in experience.


This is the tension required between the conscious and unconscious mind in an Oracle card reading.

 

In our daily life, the conscious mind is like this skiff moving over the surface of the water. Lots of roar and a big wake.  While we sit in detached inattention to what is going on beneath the surface. We are going too fast to hear the forces that are speaking beyond our conscious control.


An Oracle dissolves the surface view of a situation and empowers our awareness of these forces. Suddenly we find ourselves in a landscape of the imagination,  One that brings the unconscious and it's imaginative meaning into play.  This creative dialog  between the unconscious and the conscious is a shamanic balance, a creative tension that teeters on the verge of chaos.    


Yet when we learn to inhabit this dense weave of forces that are shaping our experiences, our anxieties, fears and desires emerge to be recognized and resolved, and a transformative balance is achieved.

Happy sailing from the Journey Oracle, my partner John and Pearl, the best sailboat ever.