Lately I’ve been wondering a lot about this new shamanism trend. As someone who has searched all over for spiritual guidance for many years, having now found my own spiritual “compass”, I see and hear people looking all over for new ways to “get high”.
And don’t we all…? I used to try all kinds of weird and sometime dangerous crap to feel high myself, and that ranged from physical stuff to smoke, eat or sniff, to more elaborate practices with more or less spiritual people.
Having been brought up by atheist hippie parents born from French Catholic parents on one side and British Anglican parents on the other side, I was obviously going to get a bit confused anyway, right?
But I’m glad I got confused, because it seems that some people are so certain that their spirituality (or what they believe to be spirituality) is the one and only, that they are actually ready to kill in order to prove the world that they’re right and the rest is wrong…
So I questioned, I traveled and investigated, and realised that being religious didn’t necessarily mean that one was spiritual, and vice versa. I believe that religions are protocols, pathways to spirituality. I believe that they all intrinsically tell the same tale, but that the word got translated and interpreted to fit the time and place where they were spoken first.
When you dig deep into your local heritage, no matter where you are, you eventually realise that spirituality has no beginning and no end, that humans have been trying ways to connect to the Universe, the Source, the Divine since humans have started walking the Earth.
Yoga is not a religion, but if you practice it long enough, you might realise how deeply spiritual it is. Beyond the postures lie an amazing path for whoever has the courage to take the first step.
And the cool thing about it is that you don’t need to be religious or atheistic, you don’t have to give up on anything that you already are, and although it is not at all the only way to reach the Unity and Infinity we all long for, it certainly is an accessible one. At least I think so, don’t you?
