An acquaintance of mine is studying “Transpersonal Counseling” at an institution that shall remain unnamed. Expressing an interest in working with the Sacred Medicines he was told that not only were the chances of such work having any benefit very slim, but the dangers of adverse “side effects” all to real. This from an institution which uses “the shamanic model” as it's philosophical underpinning!

Whilst I am aware that work with the Sacred Medicines is not without it's perils, nor for everyone, the same can be said of bus driving or golfing. Admittedly this information is based on a second hand account and I have not direct and ongoing communication with the naysayers involved, but it all too closely matches the nature of my own experiences.

Graham Hancock, the well known BBC journalist, has this to say on the subject.

“Above all else, we who say that we are “free” in the economically advanced and democratic nations of the world, and who arrogantly set up our societies as models for others to follow, need to pause and reflect. What do we have to preach about, when we as individuals are not even free to exercise that basic sovereignty over our own consciousness that our ancestors claimed as their birthright? And on what authority do we portray our kind of “freedom” as a universal example, or claim to possess great and useful knowledge about the human condition, when we ourselves are denied the freedom that is still granted today to any peasant-farmer or hunter gatherer drinking ayahuasca in jungle clearings in the Amazon - namely the freedom to investigate the mysterious depths of our own minds?” Supernatural

This assumption of superiority and possession of pivotal understandings comes ready and neatly packaged in such populist productions as The Secret and What the Bleep do we Know. Whilst perhaps useful, these metaphors run the same risk as any other doctrine, that of fundamentalist interpretations. Do we have the right to tell the woman raped in the refugee camps of Darfur that her fate was as a result of the Law of Attraction and an insufficient focus on “the positive”? Do we really believe that the musician in Zimbabwe struggling to survive on an income of less than one dollar a day, and in the face of a murderous regime is poor only if he believes this to be so? I certainly do not have this audacity or strength of denial.

Graham Hancock highlights the fact that we in “advanced and democratic nations” do not have the “freedom to investigate the mysterious depths of our own minds”. If I apply the “Law of Attraction” model to this instance, I come only to the conclusion that we have no such freedoms because we are terrified of the contents therein, and will create great edifices of thought and government and culture, anything in order to avoid the reality of our condition.



In comparative mythologist John Lamb Lash's excellent book, "Not in His Image: Gnostic Vision, Sacred Ecology, and the Future of Belief , Derrick Jensen describes our position thus..

"Ninety percent of the large fish in the oceans are gone, taken by this culture. Native forests are gone, taken by this culture. Native human beings are gone, taken by this culture. A spontaneous and free love of our own bodies and our own lives is gone, taken by this culture. The culture is systematically destroying the planet, our only home. It is systematically destroying us. It is time that we put a stop to it. But before we can put a stop to it we must see it for what it is."

Abrahamic, monotheistic religions have convinced us as a species (in fact mainly the male of the species) over the last 2000 years, that our position on Earth is that of landlord, able to exploit the Earth and her creatures as we see fit. They have convinced us that we are ourselves are flawed, despite this privileged position, and as such everything "beneath" us in creation is also flawed, to be subjugated and controlled such that any trace of the much feared chaos of the Mystery, of the Dark Mother is erased.



Alas, elements of the "New Age" teach that we ourselves are capable of manifesting whatsoever we desire, and if we do not it is a result of our own "flawed thinking". This attitude unfortunately feeds very conveniently into centuries of psychic programming, that of retribution wrought upon sinning humans by a wrathful father deity for their sinfulness, leaving those who do not "manifest" their desires responsible for their own failure, thus further entrenching the notion that they are in fact flawed. Within this construct expressing distaste viz. certain external factors, say culture, is defined as an expression of negativity residing in the dissenter, and thus the dissenter's discourse is excluded from that of the new cultural elite, those who know "The Secret". The end result is a further fragmenting of society, and thus the psyche, a maintenance of the status quo, and an increasingly limited space for cultural discourse.



The narcissistic attitude that the universe is geared entirely for the individuals wish fulfillment, that indigenous mythologies and practices can be culled of their more irksome notions and subsumed into a safe, effortless intellectual process to further the spread of an increasingly neotenised global human culture would be laughable, if it did not have the potential for such disastrous consequences.



Even the most conservative of modern political figures are recognising the need to at least pay lip service to the notion that individual actions impact upon the whole, that human action influences it's material environment. Species ARE extincted daily, ecosystems ARE destroyed and many, despite their best attentions given to remaining positive, have bleak and increasingly difficult lives.



There is much debate about "The Environment", and yet there is a knee-jerk response to the act of directly communicating with the environment by consulting readily available technologies known to millions throughout the world. It seems in this culture, despite thousands of years of accumulated wisdom of indigenous and mestizo populations, that work with the Sacred Medicines, with the Plant Teachers is not only decried by those who purport to be transpersonal in their perspectives, but prohibited by law!



I am certainly not alone in my perspective that we are at an increasingly precarious position in our species evolution, and although there is tentative hope, averting catastrophe seems to require concerted and collective efforts, the recognition that there is not ONE way to proceed, respect for all life on the planet, and a vast and immediate reconsideration of our cultural mechanisms. Whilst individual change is imperative, we must pay attention to the unconscious and subconscious forces which drive us, and have driven our cultures if we are to see a way through which affords us, and the other species about us, a habitable biosphere in which to manifest our material desires!