You can come as you are, or  Bring your children or grandchildren with you for a fun and relaxing Shamanic Journey to Another World
Boje's Level 3 ROCK DIVINATION presentation Slides for the 2020 Aug 1 Gathering of Circles Zoom event

NOTICE:Noon Mountain Time US, (check your local time zone) Meeting ID in Zoom: 838-849-9873
Any questions, Please Contact David M. Boje, Ph.D. (shamanic practitioner & host facilitator) Cell 575-936-9578; email davidboje@gmail.com

This outreach is to organizational scholars and organization storytelling practitioners. Participants in this series of meeting are working in or consulting to 'storytelling organizations' (Boje, 2008, see book 'Storytelling Organizations' Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishers) and interested in 'relational process ontologies' (Boje, 2019, see book Organizational research: Storytelling in action. London: Routledge Publishers and book about 'Indigenous Ways of Knowing' (IWOK) by Grace Ann Rosile (2017) Tribal wisdom for business ethics. London: Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Practice in Shamanic Tools can impact our understanding that Nature is animate, the planet is living systems, and we humans are embedded participants, part of Nature of 'Middle World'. 

How? We learn Shamanic practices that help us connect to the Living World. We invoke a Shamanic Relational Ontology that recognizes how non-human Middle World has agency (Hoskins & Jones, 2017 book 'Critical Conversations in Kaupapa Maori' Wellington, NZ: Hula Publishers).

We are already in relationship to material objects in the Middle World. We can open a space with Kaupapa Maori, and IWOK ontology movement to rethink the social sciences with a an ethics and praxis of where things are NOT artifacts, bur rather are 'agential speaking subject[s]' we can listen to what this living Nature might have to say to us humans (Hoskins & Jones, 2017: 50). Our power animals of Lower World and our Spiritual Guides of Upper World help us to listen to the animate of all living things, and how these living things have effects independent of human thought and will (IBID. p. 51).

We live in Middle World environments formed by powerful and weak forces and things of "live natural world' that human kind negotiates with in mostly unexamined cultural practices. We humans are already in Nature, its plants, rivers, mountains, deserts, and we "meet its dispositions and participate in its balances" (IBID. p. 52).

I can talk about the East Mesa arid desert where I live with desert plants, walk the arroyos, and the biotic aliveness. I am the arroyo and the arroyo is me. I am the mesa and the mesa is me.  I am the tarantula and the tarantula is me.  I am the mesquite and the mesquite is me. I am "animated embodied river, mountain, or ancestor" of these desert living things (IBID. p. 52).

How can this be?  What I learned from Maori elders when I went to stay in New Zealand, two years in a row, as visiting professor to University of Canterbury, is that the living things are also animate things that are agential, volitional, exerting quantum living energy force and if I  can listen carefully they are instructing me. In short, these are not inanimate matter, the desert is living. In the Maori ontological frame of IWOK, "all beings and objects are experienced as having mana, a form of presence and authority, and a 'vigour, impetus, and potentiality' call mauri" (IBID. p. 52).

In a Shamanic relational ontological context, the things in the desert live and we can learn to listen in co-presence by enacting relationship connections of land-earth.

Do you have a relational ontology worldview?  Does Earth, water, sky, wind, plants, animals, fish, and biotic you are encountering have an "ongoing becoming" (IBID. p. 53)? How does a Shamanic relational ontology restory the material world? (see work on restorying by Cast, M. L., Rosile, G. A., Boje, D. M., & Saylors, R. (2013). Restorying a hard day’s work. Research in Occupational Stress and Well-being, 11, 257-281; Flora, J., Boje, D., Rosile, G. A., & Hacker, K. (2016). A theoretical and applied review of embodied restorying for post-deployment family reintegration. Journal of Veterans Studies, 1(1), 129-162).

This takes us beyond in several ways
1. Beyond empirical separation of us and things in western social sciences.
2. Beyond linguistic turn to constructivism and onto the vibrant matter in Jane Benett's (2010) work ( Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Duke University Press.).
3. Beyond humanism worldview to post-humanism, such as in work of Karen Barad (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Duke University Press.

Figure 2: Onto-story as Shamanic Exercise in attuning to the intra-activity of vibrant matter assemblages

Onto Story Practice Exercise. Onto-story is something I keep writing about, and keep exploring, and Shamanic practice is a way to do that new kind of listening and a new act of seeing what is "the true" (Bakhtin, 1993: 62, see his book Toward a Philosophy of the Act), about our answerability ethics.

In Jane Bennett's (2010) work she proposes an onto-story (meaning ontological story) of the vibrant matter, energetic force in an assemblage of objects. She calls ‘onto-story’ of materiality, how human activities and (non-human) thinghood overlap, becoming vital players , Being-in-the-world (ontologically):

“The strangely vital things ... — a dead rat, a plastic cap, a spool of thread — are characters in a speculative onto-story. The tale hazards an account of materiality, even though it is both too alien and too close to see clearly and even though linguistic means prove inadequate to the task. The story will highlight the extent to which human being and thinghood overlap, the extent to which the use and the slip-slide into each other. One more of the story is that we are also nonhuman and the things, too, are vital players in the world” (Bennett, 2010: 3-4).

 

Look at an assemblage of things found in your own environment today. In this exercise, you can practice being in relational ontology instead of the usual western human-centric way of perceiving material objects as sense data. What objects are there, in front of you? What is there energetic signature? What is their speculative onto-story?  Give an account of the materiality, and how the animate energy of thinghood overlaps with other objects, and how each is vital player in a quantum storytelling/

The shamanic invitation is to engage with the new sociomaterialist ways of attuning to vibrant matter. Foreground what the vibrant matter of an assemblage of things is saying by consulting with them, attuning to the "vibrant, vital energetic, lively, quivering vibratory, evervecent and effuesent" (Bennett, 2010: 112). 

For example, in the photo above, there is a vinyl rain gutter I fashioned into tray, filled with rainwater  I harvested, sitting on my desk, with five segments of a pool noodle, each holding a seedling, as grow lights shine on them, just a couple feet away from the desert sun light streaming through the window. What is this assemblage of things, each animate, possibly saying to me? Each has vibrant energy. Each is an actant in the assemblage on the desk, that came from an oak tree. Each is a "substance in its intra-active becoming - not a thing, but doing a congealing of agency" (Barad, 2008: 139, see Barad, K. (2008). Posthumanist Performativity: Towards and understanding of how matter comes to matter. I S. Alaimo & SJ Hekman (Red.), Material Feminisms (s. 120-154).).  On my desk is this vibrant matter, a multiplicity of quantum forces a "churning assemblage" (Hoskins & Jones, 2017: p. 160).

Figure 3: We all need a helping hand during this time

Core Shamanism is helpful self-care and other-care during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. Shamanic drumming meditation daily practices calms the spirit and improves mind and body health and our connection with Nature. Meditation journeys to to compassionate helping spirits in Lower and to Upper Worlds is a way to find healing from corona-fear. Shamanic healing practices include journeying with the intention of asking question (what, how, how, why, where). It includes divination, soul retrieval, extraction, and healing. Dancing, drumming, rattling, while singing your song --- are ways to uplift your own spirit.

Be comfortable during Zoom Session: pillow & blanket or mat to lie on, eye mask or scarf for meditating. Get drum or rattle to use or just tap your body. Be ready with a pen and notebook to record your intentions and meditation journey.

Setting our Intention: To practice shamanic drumming and journeying as taught in Michael Harner’s FSS Basic Workshop (which we recommend to newcomers, at earliest opportunity). We practice using common methods of the shaman to enter non-ordinary reality for problem solving and healing.

We are organizing Virtual Sessions on Zoom

Structure: Zoom virtual sessions with breakout groups for sharing :

1. We begin by opening the circle with Ghost Dance Song
• I circle around, I circle around, the boundaries of the earth (2 times)
• Wearing my long wing feathers, as I fly (2 times)
• I circle around, I circle around, the boundaries of the earth (1 time)
  
2.  Introductions in breakout rooms for storytelling time checking in with each other
   
3. Calling in our own personal power (rattles, drums, dances to your own rhythm)
   
4. Shamanic meditation to quantum world while David facilitates and drums (relax, close your eyes and journey to Lower World of helping animal spirits)
   
5. Responding to healing requests (our ethics requires prior permission from whomever we heal), and
6. Closing the circle with a song  (Greeting the Sun).
   
• Morning sun, come my way (3 times)
• Come my way, take my pain (3 times)
• Down below, cool waters (3 times)
• Morning sun, I thank you (3 times)
  

Process: During the coronavirus we will be in virtual meeting spaces, such as on Zoom. You can use electric-lit candles.  We will open the circle with a song, followed by a time for drumming and rattling, and dancing to invite spirits into the circle. We will have a time for personal sharing. A time will be set aside for healing (only with express permission of person seeking a healing). We use shamanic journeying, aided by drumming and other techniques for experiencing the shamanic state of consciousness and for awakening dormant spiritual abilities, including connections with Nature. We use methods for journeying to meet and study with their own individual spirit helpers in non-ordinary reality, a classic step in shamanic practice. Participants learn how the journey is utilized to restore spiritual power and health, and how shamanism can be applied in contemporary daily life to help heal oneself, others, and the Planet.

Content: Content is determined by level of experience of members present. It is set at or just beyond experience level. We will repeat exercises in Basic Workshop to give all participants a solid foundation.

Today's Session

Today we journey between ordinary consciousness and non-ordinary quantum state. Our ethics says we only help those who ask, who give permission. To do this work we need to be power-filled so will call in our personal power. We have a way to do this that you can do where you are. Bring back the bits of yourself, from all the relations. Prepare a sacred space. Create a resonance field, a safe place. Put a shield around you. We do not take on illness of another. We become power-filled to help in healing others. 

How can we be part of the quantum energy flow of a helping spirit? How can we get into harmony with the quantum energy field? Quantum storytelling is a way to understand our attunement to creativity, joy, harmony, and caring for others.  During this time of quarantine we can appeal to the heart of care (the thumb), to the fingers (spirit, intellect, emotion, and physical) – healing the whole helping hand. A person can have blockage of love (care), spirit, intellect, emotion, and physical. The soul loss, the power loss is in these areas. As shamanic practitioner and as quantum storytelling scholar, I want us to change the quantum energy field. People in the care professions give away parts of themselves with caring for others, and that entanglement in soul loss. So we do calling in your personal power, we do meditation on extraction of the things affecting the healing hand of our quantum energy field world

After we do power-refilling ceremony, we will do Extraction of spiritual energies that do not belong, that are harmful to the helping hand (love & care, spirit, intellect, emotion, & physical). We will look for the intrusions and invite them to leave.  I will do the shamanic ceremony of extraction for all who give permission. If you do not agree, then you can observe. Otherwise I will do my shamanic practitioner work, and seek out intrusions in your quantum energy field, and invite them to leave. I will send them to the ocean, which can handle viruses and intursions, and reprocess them. 

I did a shamanic drumming meditation this morning (Mar 31 2020) and bats showed up four times in Lower World.  The message was clear. We humans have a responsibility to future generations on this planet. Being scientific, after the meditation I took some card decks with animals, insects, birds, fish in it. And three times I drew the bat card. What is this telling me? On one cared was the message: “You have power to transcend failure and move into a limitless future.” What does that mean?

Drumming circle is led by a consistent facilitator: Facilitator, David M. Boje has completed FSS basic workshop and has assist 3 times with instructor Charles W. Conaster. Boje has also completed the Dying and Beyond, Extraction Healing, Creativity, Divination Training, Power Soul retrieval workshops with Charles Conaster cwconatser@aol.com or cell 806-790-4128