Contemporary Social Ritual: September 2011

Tuesday 27 September 2011

Spirituality and mental health

Apparently William Bloom teaches a whole module of his spiritual guardianship course about how spiritual emergence is often treated as mental illness.

Monday 26 September 2011

Schizophrenia and Shamanism

Of course I'm not the first person to see it like this :)

I just googled it and found:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12018978

http://scandinavian.wisc.edu/dubois/Courses_folder/shamanism_readings/8_10_11/noll2.pdf

http://www.hayehwathainstitute.org/pdf/science/krippner/Perspectives.pdf

http://www.crowcity.co.uk/mad/

http://spiritualemergency.blogspot.com/2006/01/shamanism-schizophrenia.html

http://www.1stpm.org/articles/shaman.html

http://www.jungcircle.com/roberts2.html

http://www.breakingopenthehead.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1818

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

I want to be free. I want to be free to read all of this and more and keep my goats and create the path forwards.

I believe the response for me is not to go and study this and get sucked into creating more research papers. The task is to create experience and form. The school of contemporary social shamanism. The Centre for Contemporary Social Ritual. Something like that.

The task is to create it!

Not alone...

I'm still broiling on Henry's Demons.

He was sectioned during a rather extreme wander.

He tried to swim across the estuary in all his clothes. Of course he had all his clothes on; he'd need them on the other side. Of course he swam across. He was trying to wander keeping the most direct contact with nature possible. Feet on land, and swimming through water. One or two thousand years ago I bet it was perfectly common for young men to swim across bodies of water in all their clothes during a journey, just to get to the other side and keep going.

This is not cause to section someone. It is an indicator that they are in a deep part of what Bill Plotkin terms 'stage 4' - the wanderer, opened to a spiritual awakening, yet to find clear purpose.

Of course he felt guided by the wind. I feel guided by the wind. It is a clear conversational partner, a clear interlocutor and now that I have learnt how to read it I trust it's guidance. During a personal development course near Bristol just two weeks ago a registered therapist told me to trust the wind more. I should strengthen my alter practice, I said. Alter practice is a widely recognised method of prayer, aka technology of discourse with the non-material aliveness - across various religions. Yeh, he had said, you could do that, but it sounds like you have already got your practices of talking with the wind and nonsense singing. Why not stick with those and deepen them?

Another thing I do is sing random nonsense until wisdom starts coming out of my mouth. When it comes it becomes firm and useful guidance.

How vastly vilely awful that he was captured and trapped and deadened. I see it like that. I feel it like that. When did this start? This is just a modern version of burning witches, killing shamans. How did we get to this?

It must change.

The problem is with the more extreme behaviour. What is that about?

I would imagine...

Wanderers without well developed survival skills can act oddly and be picked up for it. Eg Henry did not know how to deal with the cold when he got out of the water on the other side so he got back into the water for that was warmer. There he was picked up by a fisherman. I wouldn't know how to deal with that situation either but there must be a way. That's a survival skill - and, recognising this, Plotkin counsels the stage 4 wanderer to become well equipped with them so that they can find the experiences in nature that they need.

The paranoia - I don't know, I felt very paranoid when I lived in Brighton and smoked a lot of fags and drunk a lot of beer and didn't exercise or have a clear sense of purpose. Paranoia can be overcome by establishing a healthier way of life. Not by medication and imprisonment.

Is it political this treatment of our shamans and if so would we have a fight on our hands to rescue them?

The point of opportunity I see is at those very early stages before the medication and the incarceration weakens them so.

He seemed spaced out, says his mother. Well you and I would be if we were shut in a small cell and surrounded by other incarcerated now-mad people!

The response I think is to create great appropriate forms of ritual, clarify the role of the shaman, gather and nurture the great contemporary social shamans, and create a culture of practice within which the young can find path.

I'm struck by the way that the connection between the shamanic and the schizoprenic encourages us to not bleach the magic out of ritual.

The 'schizoprenic' experience, the visions and voices, is all about the magic. And the potency is all about the magic.

By magic I mean connection with the non-material aliveness.

Henry's Demons

I've just heard extracts from Henry's Demons on Radio 4, a father and son account of living with Schizophrenia.

It strikes me as completely tragic how people with what I perceive to be emergent shamanic characteristics are treated. The system jumps upon them and tries to deaden them. It simply tries to deaden them, and the person experiencing them. And it succeeds - it succeeds in a deadening effect. It does not succeed at health or healing.

I tried to send this to Patrick Cowburn, the co-author, but he's proving hard to connect with.

Dear Patrick

I have just heard Henry's Demons on radio 4.

I would encourage Henry to read four books:

Nature and the Human Soul by Bill Plotkin

Soulcraft by Bill Plotkin

Talking with Nature/ Journey into Nature by Michael J Roads.
Shamanism: Ecstatic Techniques of Ecstasy by Mircea Eliade, and

I am a social researcher and I have worked for, for example, the think-tank Demos and Government departments.

For the past two years I have been contracted to research practices of collective joy, which has led me to an understanding of ritual, rites of passage, and the role of the shaman in shamanic cultures.

It is my strong belief that what Henry is experiencing is not schizophrenia but shamanic characteristics trying to come into life.

Many of the experiences he reports - following the guidance of the wind, 'hearing' messages (not with one's ears but with one's mind) from nature and so on - are perceived by many, including US psychologist Bill Plotkin and myself, to be healthy.

Moreover, the shamanic role can provide a powerful service to community wellbeing and our culture is, to my eyes, thirsty for it.

I am currently writing a book about this.

I too had a kind of 'breakdown' when I was in my first term at Brighton University. I went on to study political science at Berkeley, graduate with a first, and have a healthy life and career. I lost my dear childhood friend Charlie to schizoprenia and, later, suicide, a week after his thirtieth birthday. His death was not said to be due to a particularly bad bout of symptoms and symptom/system conflict. Rather it seemed to be a measured decision; one has expectations of how life should look by the age of thirty, and, upon reaching it, Charlie saw how his life compared to those of his old friends and decided to step aside.

Coming to understand the role and characteristics of the shaman I see these in Charlie. My friend Jo lost her brother Ed to schizophrenia and suicide and seeing videos of him, one sees again these characteristics - the deep and instinctual empathy, the instinct for music and poetry, the ability to see and voice the subtle, the connection to nature, the sense of spiritual opening to messages from the non-human world.

These are qualities that we all too easily dismiss as psychopathy and try to suppress with drugs and institutionalization, but these responses do not seem to work.

I write this to you with hope for Henry.

I am a social innovator, I have created successful social projects before and I am currently mulling about What To Do With This One. It is not yet clear but is becoming so.

I am also a singer, by the way, and I hear voices! They're what I rely on. I've sung on cheesy pop chart records but that is not the musical world in which I find utter magic; it is more in the circles of Zimbabwean Shona music, which has a totally different understanding of the spiritual world, where I hear these voices, and I follow what I hear, and what I then sing to others brings them a sense of magic. I am receiving teaching in this from Chartwell Dutiro who used to teach Ethnomusicology at Soas.

O, on that note, I would also recommend The Healing Wisdom of Africa by Dr Malidoma Some.

I wish Henry, you and your family all the very best with what I hope can become a healthy growth out of and beyond this situation.

Yours sincerely,

Briony

Initiation and facebook

Briony Greenhill
We need to initiate our young. That's one of the most profound conclusions of my last two years' research. "If the young are not initiated into the village, they will burn it down just to feel its warmth" [African proverb]

· · Share · August 10 at 7:24pm

Dave Hampton, Charlie Davies, Gavin O'Carroll and 10 others like this.
- Isabel Rock Savage Pollock yup, i'd go with that. community presence and voice. its a good thing :)
  
  August 10 at 7:38pm ·
- John Manoochehri ‎"THAT's now how to chuck a brick, my son. THAAAT's how you chuck it."
  
  August 10 at 8:07pm · · 1 person
- Isabel Rock Savage Pollock that's the one!
  
  August 10 at 8:09pm ·
- Rachel Millward preach it, lady.
  
  August 10 at 8:14pm ·
- Dan Mobley Interesting. What form would this initiation take, who would do it and who would decide its content?
  
  August 10 at 9:01pm ·
- Briony Greenhill social innovation, baby. i'm working on it.
  
  August 10 at 9:12pm · · 2 people
- Rachel Millward so i LOVE rites of passage. think these are really vital things for communities. friend of mine in states did a 'coming of age' ceremony for 16 year old godson - musician friends played, read poems etc... i think it's totally doable in personal, imaginative ways... or just dead simple. posh kids get proms and stuff - but it can be made more meaningful and for everyone... barmitzvah but not at all barmitzvah, no?! B I am sooo looking forward to more conversation in Sept! x
  
  August 10 at 9:17pm ·
- Isabel Rock Savage Pollock but in many communities rites of passge include acts of violence. like shutting new boys on the building site in barrels of freezing cold water. like dan says.... who decides?
  
  August 10 at 9:22pm ·
- Isabel Rock Savage Pollock and not only posh kids get proms..... i've witnessed a 12 year old being subjected to the prom. it made her anxious for weeks!
  
  August 10 at 9:24pm ·
- John Manoochehri ‎"Standby for initiation. Priming yobbo for a life of petty crime and shiftless violence in 5,4,3,2,1."
  
  I jest.
  
  I think initiation is pretty nifty, but I am not so much in favour of the idea of women getting involved in initiating men.
  
  Call me gender-normative, go on, but I am quite interested in the idea of boys being initiated to manhood by men. I mean, there's all sorts that can go wrong. But there's something in that too.
  
  The idea of poems being read out and a 'friend' musician playing for me when I was 16 as some kind of weird 'initiation' would DEFINITELY drive me to boost JD Sports within seconds of it ending.
  
  August 10 at 9:38pm ·
- Pax Amphlett I'm all for the idea of initiation of the young; the question in my mind is, 'initiate into what?' It seems to me that the first, monumental task is that of discovering, recovering, growing or engineering a new myth: it has to be both coherent enough to provide focus and a sense of direction, and simultaneously open and flexible enough to be acceptable and comprehensible to all in our multicultural world.
  
  It makes me sad to say it, but I suspect that inner-city gangs currently offer more genuinely effective initiation rites, into more personally-meaningful, personally-relevant mythologies (from the point of view of their members) than we do in our schools... Tribalism is alive and well and thriving in the larger, and largely uncaring, wilderness of the city.
  What greater 'tribal identity' can we offer to these kids that will not seem, to them, hopelessly contrived?
  
  August 10 at 9:59pm · · 5 people
- John Manoochehri Whoah!
  
  August 10 at 10:00pm ·
- John Manoochehri That's one of the first interesting things I've read in this whole debate.
  
  August 10 at 10:00pm · · 1 person
- Rachel Millward please note I do not for a minute think many city gang boys would like their godma's to read poems for them! this was in a tight NYC black community - they were all black poets and singers - and apparently it freakin rocked. was just an example! Like ALL rites of passage (weddings, baby dedications, what have you) I think each (community and individual) to their very own! for me the idea is about standing with community and getting their support and connection and guidance for this next step. I really found getting married was a rite of passage for us. we did it in a way that said 'we stand together in this community'. i've also been with the Samburu tribe when the warriors were all 'graduating' into elders in Gatab, North Kenya - that was a 2 week slaughtering & dancing fest in the forest which completely excluded women (but they let us in cos we somehow didn't count, not being in the tribe). So yeah - different strokes.
  
  August 10 at 10:17pm · · 1 person
- John Manoochehri I will arrange a two week slaughtering and dancing fest with Mobley, we will report back.
  
  August 10 at 10:23pm · · 1 person
- Jess Gold Its funny when all my friends and siblings were having their bar and bat mitzvahs at the age of 12 and 13, at the time I thought we were so grown up. Being the youngest of 4 children, 3 boys and myself, I also hoped that after their bar mitzvah, they would suddenly grow up and stop teasing their little sister! But obviously these things don't happen overnight. Now that I am 'grown up', I don't regard 12 and 13 as quite so grown up. However barmitzvah is powerful. The community says to the child "You are now a full member of our community, we hope you will take your place". I guess this is only significant if the young person identifies as a part of this community already.
  
  August 11 at 6:38am ·
- Hege Saebjornsen In Norway (where I grew up) most 15 year old kids choose either a christian 'confirmation' or a secular equivalent. I had the religious one mostly because it is my family tradition, the party (and presents) and a chance to argue with the priest about the biblical stories. To me is was about being seen, being the centre of the family's attention for a short while, being made a fuss about briefly, connecting with by community/something bigger than me and my friends, and also imbedding a sense of transition and responsibility. I got an experience that I mattered - in a loving and supportive way. A rite/ceremony can create a new context in which this 'new' person can show up. I'm very interested in what your thoughts are Briony. Look forward to hearing more.
  
  August 11 at 11:29am · · 2 people
- Josef Davies-Coates I'd like this comment if facebook didn't give me an error every time I like something
  
  August 11 at 1:03pm ·
- Briony Greenhill It looks like rites of passage are needed in the journeys into, and out of, adolescence. Experts differ in their ideas of what the journey out of adolescence and into adulthood entails and when people might be ready for it. There are countless different ways of approaching it, but it is best supported by wise elders. 'Wise elders' can mean many different things too. Gender is one of may important element of the issues covered in adolescent rites of passage, and the roles of guides of different genders
  
  August 12 at 6:47pm ·
- Briony Greenhill oops!... Gender is one of many core issues addressed in adolescent rites of passage, and the role of guides of different genders is also a fundamental element of the design of such transition support processes. The need for cultural resonance is, just as Rachel says, obvious. That's a bit of what I can tell from the literature so far.
  
  August 12 at 6:49pm · · 1 person
- Briony Greenhill p.s. all these comments of yours have been really fascinating!
  
  August 12 at 6:58pm ·
- John Manoochehri So if rites of passage can mean anything, and wise elders can mean anything, I think we may as well stick with the rite of passage of 'Sacred Looting Ceremony' and the Wise Elders of 'Sacred Magistrates Court Sitting at 4am to Send You Down'.
  
  I mean this semi-seriously. I think being punished is a pretty nifty form of adolescent wake-up/ritual.
  
  What I find a bit lame is the idea that it's all smells and bells and stick-waving and hugs and waking up a man or woman or metrosexual whatever one is inculcated as in the post-gender normative world.
  
  The problem with post-modern concepts of tradition, and ceremony, and rite, and community, and wisdom, is that they don't necessarily deal with the hard edge, i.e. the painful, the definitive, the trade-off.
  
  By and large it's hard to see a lot of this as more than consumerism in another guise - consumerism of 'culture' and 'emotional development'.
  
  One of the purveyors of the rite of passage idea in modern society is a men's movement guru called Robert Bly, who says that, at least for men, there is a requisite to rites of passage involved a 'wound' / or 'shame', some katabasis in essence, from which, in acceding to adulthood, people can come back from.
  
  What it all seems to be boil down to is some willing and willed curtailment of the will, as it were: accepting that you can't always get what you want. I'd like to hear more about that, i.e. kids learning that a good negation is psychologically transformative, if done right, rather than what to me sounds like hug-a-hoodie smells and bells, ritual-for-ritual's-sake.
  
  I'll just say, for myself, as an extension/sidenote, that men are fuckin' useless. I sort of stand at a boundary which has to be carefully defined which I would say is heteronormative without being remotely homophobic, gender normative (i.e. suggesting that gender structuration is functional) without becoming gender prescriptive (i.e. without suggestion that gender transgression is remotely bad, per se).
  
  With that caveat, I blame men. They suck. Mummy's boys who play tough and have almost zero life skills. Dads and fathering is long lost art, and is, to be sure, the antithesis of patriarchy. I think a lot of these kids need dads.
  
  August 12 at 7:11pm ·
- Steve Wheeler ‎"smells and bells and stick-waving and hugs" - Mm, so don't do it like that then!
  
  August 12 at 8:13pm ·
- Steve Wheeler The problem, as Pax points out, is that we are so dis-embedded from any kind of functional bounded community that any attempt to enforce a "curtailment of the will" through human agency will seem contrived, alienating, and, ultimately will just be ignored and avoided by dem yout. This is where nature comes in - the fundamental reality check of being out in the wilderness and realising that the world does not conform to your wishes, that the human-made environment is not the totality of existence and that certain impersonal absolutes cannot be blamed, tricked or negotiated with, but have to be accommodated. Also, bring back national service. :)
  
  August 12 at 8:19pm ·