Shamanism at the initial stages is about exploration. Fundamentally, we allow ourselves to return to an innocent, or pure or pristine state where we are able to go exploring.
It’s like what happened to the first time you encountered water as a child? The amount of joy you had playing with it, and exploring it, and interacting with it to understand its properties? Or the first time you had a BBQ and you were fascinated with the open fire – despite your parents’ warnings, and you just had to touch that flame… Or the fun times making mud pies – mixing earth with water and leaving it out in the sun, allowing the sun to remove the water and baking it into works of art…
Exploration cultivates in you a certain curiosity about the world. As you begin to explore this curiosity again, it is a way to re-ignite your curiosity about how things work, how things are, how things are structured and what’s behind certain forces.
One useful application of Shaman work is that you can see the world and see your life through Shamanic eyes in everything you do.
For instance, many people find it a challenge to link Shaman work with a business. What do they have in common?
Well, people who are more earthy-like form the foundation for the business to grow on. They are the ones who are the bedrock, the steadiness, taking on order and thriving in systems and accountability for the business. The people who have fire as an element are the ones who are often seen driving the business. They are the ones with passion and love for the business, and they represent the desire for success. The people who are inclined to water are the ones who facilitate and flow among the people to make things easier. They are the flexible ones who harmonize and rally cohesiveness within the business, and are able to jump in and take on any role that the business needs. Whereas people who tap into their air element qualities are those who focus on reaching out to the world, in roles such as marketing and business expansion to communicate what the business stands for to the world. Being shaman allows us to understand the world in simplistic ways that are yet still functional because ultimately, the elements form a balance and harmony of the world.
Forming a map that taps into the Shamanic work allows us to see the world in a way that makes sense without having to go through complicated terms and modernistic frameworks that are more pseudo-scientific than anything else.
The discipline to be able to see things for what they are in its simplicity allows us to deal with things in simple ways. That is the way of the Shamanic world.