Excerpt from an Interview with Hank Wesselman

There was an Ogalala Sioux Medicine Man and Shaman named Black Elk who passed more than 50 years ago and he revealed that with the ending of this cycle of ages, the ending which is happening perhaps in 2012, that the primordial spirituality would re-emerge and re-establish itself and that it would be on that platform, on that foundation that the next cycle of ages would be built.

This is very interesting because as many are aware, over the last 30-40 years, there's been an increased interest in the transformational community in the path of the shaman. At the center of that path is the direct transformative experience of the sacred.

This is a quest, a spiritual quest which unites a large number of people. A large number of people today are aware of the fact that out there in the trail, this experience awaits them. And so the Shaman's voice is important because this is one of the easiest ways to access this transpersonal experience.

Over the last 15 years, as a Shamanic teacher, I've watched intrigued as non-tribal western people often journey successfully into the transpersonal worlds on the very first attempt and they return with accounts that would past muster at any aboriginal campfire.

This is quite startling when you think about it. It contrasts with the years of discipline practice which are required and the contemplative philosophies like yoga and meditation before significant consciousness shifts are achieved. The Shamans path is a very easily learned way of accessing the transformative experience of the sacred that defines the mystic and more and more western people are actively seeking that.

What we discover sooner or later in our path through life is that we have these inner allies, these inner teachers if you will. You could call them spirits, I often think of them as transpersonal forces or archetypal forces and when we turn in their direction, life can become an incredibly enriched adventure. This is a major focus area of the transformational community which is taking form in our own time today.

The Transformational Community

If I were to describe the transformational community it would be as a cross section of society, crossing ethnic, sociological, and economical boundaries.  These are people who hold a system of values and beliefs that differ from the general public. These are people who understand that there is more than one level of reality.

There's the everyday reality in which we have lives, careers, families, friends and lovers, where we eat and sleep and make love but there are also these inner worlds.  The inner worlds are the worlds of things hidden, of the indigenous mystic where the laws of cause and effect don't work in the same way. The transformational community consists of people who understand that it's possible for individuals like us to learn how to access these inner worlds for power, for protection and for support.

These are folks who know that within these inner worlds, there are personalities, there are beings, the indigenous people call them spirits, and these are compassionate forces which are willing to come into relationship with human beings in order to help us in various ways. But first we have to turn in their direction and ask them to do so.

These are people who know that everything is connected to everything else. And that underlying the fabric of reality that we all take so much for granted, there is a net or a grid or a matrix of power. This is one of the signatures of our consciousness age, the awareness of these interconnections between everyone and everything everywhere. It's creating an emerging sub-culture which is increasingly finding its voice in the time in which we live.

Four Stages of Spiritual Unfolding

As western people turn toward the spiritual path, they discover that there are four stages of spiritual unfolding: belief, faith, direct experience, and personal transformation. Now belief is the first stage and there are lots of different kinds of beliefs. There are mythic beliefs, there are magical beliefs, there are rational beliefs and there are scientific beliefs.

Mythic beliefs would be an example of somebody delegating authority to some god figure or angelic figure and if you believe strongly enough to where you do ritual and ceremony long enough, that deity will come through and create something that you wish to achieve.

A magical belief would be the belief that you can affect other people through the power of your own intentionality. The power of intention, the law of attraction, these are belief systems.

Rational beliefs of course are a step up where we attempt to de-mythologize religion and explain the mysterious in terms of cause and effect and the intellect.

Now beliefs are fine in the short term but not much changes in ones life in the long term so we find that ten years down the road, we've been believing in God or believing in angels or believing in Jesus and our life is in the same place it was ten years before. In other words, no growth in consciousness. So this is usually when the second stage steps in. Faith.

Faith soldiers on when belief systems no longer compel us and faith can take us in one of two different directions. Faith can spiral us back into belief, and this is what fundamentalism is. In my opinion, fundamentalism is a monstrous trap on the spiritual path because it will not bring you into connection with that which you are seeking. When faith is doing its job, it takes us in the other direction, it takes us up the hill, not down the hill and there it brings us into connection with the third level of spiritual unfolding which is direct experience.

When you've had direct experience of the spiritual realms and the spirits that reside there, it takes you immediately to the fourth and final stage of spiritual unfolding which could be called spiritual transformation because once you've had that experience; you're never the same again.

Research paleoanthropologist Hank Wesselman is one of those rare cutting edge scientists who truly walks between the worlds. He did his undergraduate work, as well as his Masters Degree, in Zoology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, then went on to receive his doctoral degree in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley. He has spent much of his life working among traditional tribal peoples, primarily in Africa and Polynesia. He served in the US Peace Corps in the 60's, living among people of the Yoruba Tribe in Nigeria for two years. For the past 30 years, he has conducted research with an international group of scientists, exploring eastern Africa's Great Rift Valley in search of answers to the mystery of human origins. He is also a shaman in training, now in the 20th year of his apprenticeship.

Hank’s Website: www.sharedwisdom.com