Spiritual Healing, and various forms of Shamanism, are the earliest form of personal transformation and healing methods known to humanity. They pre-date traditional religions, including the modern forms of psycho-emotional healing as developed in the twentieth century by Freud, Jung, and many others. What is the goal of spiritual healing, and how is it said to work?
The two major themes within Spiritual Healing and Shamanism are:
- Your egoic sense of self, the person you think you are, is a false center of your authentic self. Spiritual healing aims to first encourage contact with your authentic self, and then become comfortable with both these two identities: your conscious ego self identity, with a history and a personality in this life, and the other as your authentic identity one that stretches out in time and space, and able to interact with a multi-dimensional reality.
- There are various forms of other selves that you share the universe with, and who interact with you in either a conscious or a non-conscious way. This includes lost or undeveloped aspects of yourself, forced into hiding because of the false perception of self (this is the Jungian shadow, or the Freudian Id), and , just as important, the influence and contact with other sentient beings in the multi-dimensional universe in which we all live.
A big challenge to spiritual healing and shamanism in the Western world is that it was banished to an underground spiritual system by the domination of organized religion, as well as science, which quite rightly viewed it as a competitor to their social and political power. But we can still see the traces of the deeper levels of spiritual healing in the world of the Western forms of Esoteric Magic.
This is not the stage magic for entertainment, but rather the mystical and magical tradition that understands the way the universe works, that has developed ways of spirit communication so as to gain greater understanding of the multi-leveled universe, and which prizes the marriage between the egoic sense of self and the more nuanced and hidden authentic self, as humanity’s spiritual goal.
The spiritual healer, and the culture-centric shaman, utilize rituals, knowledge of how the universe works, and the gaining of access to the astral world, as amongst the tools needed for spiritual advancement, as well as to help others with their health psycho-emotional wellbeing, and life goals. Conversely, organized religions (and smaller variants of the organized religious model known as cults) tend to tightly control the access of the individual to their own reality, and to their unique specialness.
Organized religions give you an ideal model of who you should be, and demand that you emulate that model. However, for the spiritual healer, our final goal is to be free from the control of the other, and to gain the spiritual marriage of the egoic sense of self with the authentic self, all in alignment with Universal wisdom and flow states. It is the development and activation of personal choice, and the freedom to follow our own unique path through the world, which is the goal of Western Traditional Magic.
In the past hundred years we have seen many of the known aspects of spiritual healing and shamanic techniques and knowledge appear into our societies. This important knowledge cannot ever be fully banished, but in order to sneak past the guardians of the gate of social and political control, it tends to adapt itself to modern sensibilities, and to update the language. Even so, they are all aspects or variations on Esoteric Magic, and shamanism, going back thousands of years.
One example is the development of “New Thought”, originating in the United States in the Nineteenth Century. New Thought teachings strip away the trappings of organized religion and centers on the mind as being that which we use to cure, and to influence, our lives. New Thought focuses on how beliefs impact our health and well being, and it is by changing our thoughts and beliefs that we create health in our lives. This conceptual model has new offshoots in the late Twentieth Century, emerging out of New Age movements, an example of which is Ester and Jerry Hicks and their work on “The Law of Attraction”, later popularized in the film “The Secret” (2006).
Another example of spiritual healing and shamanism entering the popular mind is the concept of channeling, a modern term for mediumship and the consultation with spirit beings, and formerly a part of Spiritualism. Spiritualism assumes the spirit world is always looking to communicate with the world of the living, and that what they have to say is important at the individual level. The more family-friendly term “Channel” is the modern spiritualist, and draws from this older heritage, but perhaps minus all the ectoplasm and table tapping of your late Nineteenth Century seance.
In the early to mid-twentieth Century the Theosophy movement, which sprang out of the work of H.P. Blavatsky, and later Charles Leadbeater and social activist Annie Besant, paved the way for a spiritual framework of healing and development that included all the religions, and yet drew heavily on the influence of hidden spiritual teachers. Hindu and Buddhist concepts became integrated into a far-reaching cosmology for students of spiritual development to explore.
Finally, there is a case to be made that both Freud and Jung tapped into the interplay between the egoic sense of self and the authentic self, a key component of spiritual healing and shamanism. By stripping away all the ritual magic and incantations, and leaving only the psycho-emotional revelation of the personal interplay of forces within us all, they formed what is now the influencial forces of psychology. Psychology and psychotherapy express one aspect of the shaman: ways of revealing the hidden apects in our lives, and then integrating those forces into a happier and more productive life.
My own form of spiritual and energetic healing is firmly rooted in the goals of Western Magic, although it avoids the ritual trappings of Magic, and the lure of spiritualism, where clients talk directly to spirit beings. My own professional healing work strives to activate the transformational work needed to bridge the egoic self identity with the authentic self of my client, while also drawing on both my own energy system resources, and that of those spirit beings that work with me, to maximize positive change and to balance health in my clients. As with every spiritual healer and shaman, I draw heavily on the past foundational knowledge of Esoteric Magic, with the goal of integrating it with modern-day realities.
Probably the biggest challenge for us all is that the Western Esoteric Magical system has been misrepresented so poorly in our modern world, equating Magical systems with witchcraft and black magic. But the adult mind has to also factor in these options, taken by some, where people will subvert a higher teaching for application towards something more lower and perhaps with a sinister agenda.
This material – the territory of the curse, of the focused bad intent of another and its impact on us, even at a great distance – is the subject of my online class “Psychic Attack: strategies and defenses”. In this class, as well as future content on my website and in online classes, we will open up to the healthy and spiritually-elevating use of both spiritual healing and shamanism, by drawing on the resources of Western Esoteric Magic.
Western Esoteric Magic is a system of how we can effect change in the world around us, gain access to universal resources, as well as how to navigate the differing agendas and selfish manipulations of others. Unless you know how it all works, how the curse works, how the universal energies function, you will tend to live a reactive life, bouncing from one external event to another.
But, metaphorically, if you come to know how the river works, how the boat of your personal self operates, you can steer around the rocks in your life, those that hinder or even attack you, obstructing where you want to go. With Spiritual Healing and shamanism you will be empowered, you will tend to choose your personal freedom and let go of the control others exert on you, and you will transform past the restrictions of your self-limiting egoic self identity. You will flower into your true self, and leave the restrictions of past history behind you.
© 2020 by Dean Ramsden. All rights reserved.
