Tags

, , ,

Most of my current friends are well along on spiritual paths. In their past venues they have been official leaders of religious groups. One a decade long leader of a Seventh Day Adventist society, another a Southern Baptist, another an Irish spiritual guide, another an Irish holy water distributer, several who are advanced in the fields of Eastern religious practices, and many more. I would have difficulty counting, but there must be at least twenty friends that have been accepted as guides in official organizations. Other friends would hesitate to call themselves holy persons because they are strict atheists, or agnostics, but they are promoting that world view with all the vigor that the others are promoting their spiritual understandings and their many varieties of godliness.

In the midst of all this mental splendor I have only a little social hesitancy to proffer my ideas on each and every subject each of them proposes. My stated purpose is not to challenge the validity of their ideas, but to advance each of them in their quest and to move them from being mature practitioners of their faiths over into being Sages. I have defined this as moving from their promoting other people’s seeming sage-like ideas, to illustrating with their own personal actions and words their discoveries and making their discoveries more real with a new terminology that emphasizes what they have discovered.

I promote the idea that for an idea to be accepted by people, the people must be in a positive state of mind, because if they are stressed and fearful they can only fall back into defensive states of mind and behavior that they are already aware of and practiced with. Thus, it is best to make stories develop in such a way that people feel expansive while listening to them, and come out of each story feeling that now they have a new tool for coping with their problems in a more effective way.

Each shaman can be more productive if their stories are based on personal experience and analysis and conclusions.