Where are we going?
Where am I going in writing about Ecstatic Trance? In what direction is the Cuyamungue Institute going? Five of my books on Ecstatic Trance have been published by Bear & Co. and are available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, the publisher Bear & Co. and your neighborhood bookstore. Where am I going with my writing? Felicitas Goodman, Belinda Gore, and Nana Nauwald have provided us with a great number of ecstatic postures, and the institute continues in this direction of identifying the intent of new postures. But beyond identifying and evaluating new postures and teaching ecstatic trance, Felicitas had broader interests. When I was first introduced to the ecstatic postures I learned from Belinda that Felicitas was quite interested in the research of Rupert Sheldrake who has been researching the mind beyond our personal mind, a mind available to us that offers us information from the beginning of time from what he refers to as the Morphic Field. With this suggestion from Belinda I began my pursuit of what Rupert Sheldrake has to offer us with regard to ecstatic trance. Ecstatic trance suppress our overly rational and conscious mind, thus opening the door for us to access the information available to us from the Morphic Field, or what I call the Universal Mind.
My reading of Sheldrake led me to other writers, Ervin Laszlo who extends this research, showing us how we are able to perceive this information through the cytoskeletal structure of our brain. His name for this universal mind beyond our personal mind is the Akashic Field. Then there is the research of extra-sensory perception that has been re-examined by Dean Radin. I have written extensively of this research in my books, and these concepts of a mind beyond our personal mind and extra-sensory perception have a lot to offer in where our knowledge of ecstatic trance can take us. Just as our hunting and gathering ancestors communed with their ancestral spirits, spirits of the Earth, and with animal spirit guides, spirits that showed them how to live sustainably on our one and only Earth, these same spirits are available to us through ecstatic trance. The only reason that we have not been listening to them over the last several millennia is that we embraced what we have call rational thinking, calling communing with the spirits a superstition. But we now better understand and are in the position to regain the power gained from communing with the spirits, from the Universal Mind.
What do these spirits have to teach us? From my experiences with ecstatic trance, I have experienced its tremendous healing power as I wrote about in my first ecstatic trance book, The Power of Ecstatic Trance: Practices for Healing, Spiritual Growth, and Accessing the Universal Mind, and also my most recent book, Ecstatic Soul Retrieval: Shamanism and Psychotherapy. Then with my continued ecstatic trance experiences I discovered that I was connecting with my distant Scandinavian ancestors, thus the book, Baldr’s Magic: The Power of Norse Shamanism and Ecstatic Trance. But with further trance experiences I realized that many of the spirits I was visiting were not specifically of my ancestors, but of the Earth, from those places I visited, spirits that came from the Universal Mind at those places. These spirits of the Earth during my time in Scandinavia, especially southern Sweden and Denmark, told me a more complete story of Beowulf, thus the book Beowulf’s Ecstatic Trance Magic: Accessing the Archaic Powers of the Universal Mind. But in considering our problems with global climate change and what we must do to prevent the destruction of life on Earth as we know it, I continued to go to the spirits of the Earth in an attempt to find some answers. This pursuit led me to writing Trance Journeys of the Hunter-Gatherers: Ecstatic Practices to Reconnect with the Great Mother and Heal the Earth. Ecstatic Trance is much more than just collecting a growing number of ecstatic trance postures. But where else can it take us?
For the last ten years our local ecstatic trance group has met, first weekly and then monthly. Over this last year my hearing has deteriorated such that I did not feel competent in leading our ecstatic trance group so Amalia Shatiel who has been involved in the group over the last several years was prepared to take over a leadership role. She has two monthly groups, one meeting in Spring Mills, not far from State College, PA, and the other below Sunbury, PA where she lives part-time. She is an exceptional instructor and I hope she will attend the instructor training at the Institute this next year. Along with other insightful people in the group such as Deb Kline, Amalia has been taking the group in a little different direction in that she has been selecting new postures from specific cultures, and we have been exploring what the trance experiences have to say about the culture from which the postures came. In my connection to Scandinavia, I did a similar thing in finding Scandinavia postures that led me to connect intimately with the ancient cultures of the far north, but now Amalia has been leading us around the eastern Mediterranean. Thus we have a new direction in keeping the postures connected to the cultures from which they come. We as an institute have much room to grow in new directions to understand and live the ecstatic powers that were available to our ancient hunting and gathering ancestors.
A side note, I have recently received a cochlear implant so I have high hopes that I will be regaining some of my hearing.
Nick
My reading of Sheldrake led me to other writers, Ervin Laszlo who extends this research, showing us how we are able to perceive this information through the cytoskeletal structure of our brain. His name for this universal mind beyond our personal mind is the Akashic Field. Then there is the research of extra-sensory perception that has been re-examined by Dean Radin. I have written extensively of this research in my books, and these concepts of a mind beyond our personal mind and extra-sensory perception have a lot to offer in where our knowledge of ecstatic trance can take us. Just as our hunting and gathering ancestors communed with their ancestral spirits, spirits of the Earth, and with animal spirit guides, spirits that showed them how to live sustainably on our one and only Earth, these same spirits are available to us through ecstatic trance. The only reason that we have not been listening to them over the last several millennia is that we embraced what we have call rational thinking, calling communing with the spirits a superstition. But we now better understand and are in the position to regain the power gained from communing with the spirits, from the Universal Mind.
What do these spirits have to teach us? From my experiences with ecstatic trance, I have experienced its tremendous healing power as I wrote about in my first ecstatic trance book, The Power of Ecstatic Trance: Practices for Healing, Spiritual Growth, and Accessing the Universal Mind, and also my most recent book, Ecstatic Soul Retrieval: Shamanism and Psychotherapy. Then with my continued ecstatic trance experiences I discovered that I was connecting with my distant Scandinavian ancestors, thus the book, Baldr’s Magic: The Power of Norse Shamanism and Ecstatic Trance. But with further trance experiences I realized that many of the spirits I was visiting were not specifically of my ancestors, but of the Earth, from those places I visited, spirits that came from the Universal Mind at those places. These spirits of the Earth during my time in Scandinavia, especially southern Sweden and Denmark, told me a more complete story of Beowulf, thus the book Beowulf’s Ecstatic Trance Magic: Accessing the Archaic Powers of the Universal Mind. But in considering our problems with global climate change and what we must do to prevent the destruction of life on Earth as we know it, I continued to go to the spirits of the Earth in an attempt to find some answers. This pursuit led me to writing Trance Journeys of the Hunter-Gatherers: Ecstatic Practices to Reconnect with the Great Mother and Heal the Earth. Ecstatic Trance is much more than just collecting a growing number of ecstatic trance postures. But where else can it take us?
For the last ten years our local ecstatic trance group has met, first weekly and then monthly. Over this last year my hearing has deteriorated such that I did not feel competent in leading our ecstatic trance group so Amalia Shatiel who has been involved in the group over the last several years was prepared to take over a leadership role. She has two monthly groups, one meeting in Spring Mills, not far from State College, PA, and the other below Sunbury, PA where she lives part-time. She is an exceptional instructor and I hope she will attend the instructor training at the Institute this next year. Along with other insightful people in the group such as Deb Kline, Amalia has been taking the group in a little different direction in that she has been selecting new postures from specific cultures, and we have been exploring what the trance experiences have to say about the culture from which the postures came. In my connection to Scandinavia, I did a similar thing in finding Scandinavia postures that led me to connect intimately with the ancient cultures of the far north, but now Amalia has been leading us around the eastern Mediterranean. Thus we have a new direction in keeping the postures connected to the cultures from which they come. We as an institute have much room to grow in new directions to understand and live the ecstatic powers that were available to our ancient hunting and gathering ancestors.
A side note, I have recently received a cochlear implant so I have high hopes that I will be regaining some of my hearing.
Nick
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