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26 A Journal of Contemporary Shamanism Volume 6 Issue 1 SPRING 2013 www.shamansociety.org 26 National Park again the climate there is literally hazardous to the health of the people who work or hike there the ozone is depleting the life-force of the place. It is conceivable that a visit there might ac- tually trigger depression in an otherwise healthy person Even people who tend to the land and enjoy a healthy relationship with a place cannot expect the reciprocating land to provide everything they need for life. In his discussion of the healing effect of song on both the human and natural environment theoretical physicist David Peat referring to Colin Turnbulls book The Forest People describes how certain African forest dwellers thread through the forest producing a kind of music that mimics the sounds of the animals because it makes the forest happy.3 The idea is that by serenading the forest it will stay awake and will not forget them. Sad to say our situation is such that our forests have mostly forgot- ten us. Few of us identify with a single locale anymore and very few of us sing to our trees. Even if we want to sink roots life pulls us in many directions. Our dreams are proof of this restlessness. The important thing is to recognize when the land is trying to tell us something and to pay attention. What allows us to navigate the dead or energetically comatose regions is a shamanic attitude that never lets us forget that what we offer is essential even though what is unfolding is far beyond our comprehension. Cultivating that attitude is exhausting but our sanity depends on it. Destroying Mother Nature I have come to believe that there are people in the world who are waging all-out war against nature not just to subdue or control but destroy Mother Nature. . .Nature and anything that stands in their way. For example as of this writing the USDAs current Bye Bye Black Bird program is responsible for poi- soning tens of thousands of birds since the dawn of this new century. In 2009 by their own posted count they killed euthanized over one million Brown- headed Cowbirds and close to a million Red-winged Blackbirds just one of whose distinctive call from the edge of the marsh is a sure harbinger of Spring. If one wanted to dream up a program for crippling the biosphere within a milli- second of geologic time aside from liter- ally blowing it upwhich we may yet do one might be hard-pressed to fashion a more effective strategy than what environmental writer Bill McKibben calls the unburying of all accessible coal and oil out of the Earth and burning it while clear-cutting and burning the rainforests of the southern hemisphere. Are people who promote and execute this environmentally disastrous agenda inherently amoral or evil or are they warped by some powerful Weltanschau- ung to behave in a way that defies reason science intuition and common sense but to them seems normal and reason- able Weltanschauung refers to the whole of how we view the world not conscious- ly but reflexively folding in the myriad causal and acausal factors that contribute to who we are living in this time and space. Perhaps warped isnt the right word because it implies mental illness. . . but on second thought maybe it is the right word You can say that someone is addicted to oil wealth or power but addiction or neurosis is treatable. This problem goes much deeper. Weltanschauungs run deeper than socialization and indoctrination and are even supported by their own brand of psychology and religion so the whole universe jumps in. When everyone is in the grip of the same madness no one is mad. It is only when two Weltanschau- ungs are at odds in the same land that people begin to question their neighbors sanity and right to exist. The most violent wars are the wars fought between the adherents of conflict- ing Weltanschauungs. The Romans and the ancient Celts come to mind the Aztecs and the Spanish the British and European newcomers to the New World and the Indigenous or First Na- tions people of Turtle Island Imperialist Japan and the United States and closer to home the American Civil War North against South are all good examples. But now we are living in a time when two people can look at an oil pipeline project or fracking and see utterly different things because of the emotions that well up. Sadly the day may soon come when those emotions will make or break gov- ernments shatter social alliances divide families and foment civil wars. Alone in the Woods Listening Dead zones notwithstanding Gaia is very much alive. It is essential that we realize that because one measure of our health and sanity is in how our lives re- flect and channel this great life force that sustains us. In explaining his intention to live spartanly in the woods by Walden Pond for two years Thoreau wrote I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately . . I did not wish to live what was not life living is so dear . . I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life.4 Rare is the person who is called to spend extensive time alone in nature where the Matrix of the middle world releases its grip on the psyche and where lucidity is a very real possibility. The point is we are not alone. Gaia is alive and ask any shaman there are coexistent realities. This helps explain why many of us are plagued by an omnipresent quan- dary that transcends the personal almost as if there are semi-audible whispered conversations being carried on within us above us around us causing us to question just about everything. The air is alive with signals and vibra- tions how naive it would be to assume that all of them are generated by our own business or even human business reducing them to mere projections of our dizzy brains. Its as if we are being