The Buddha and the Shaman

A metaphor I like to work with which helps me to be in right relationship with healing is of a Divine Being which divides itself in two different archetypes: the Buddha and the Shaman.  The Buddha sits at the metaphorical "top of the mountain," already whole, home and free.  The Shaman comes down the mountain like the Holy Shepherd seeking lost sheep, to guide them home with love.  The Shaman is the story that is unfolding in space-time, working in partnership with the Buddha who is without story, existing as primordial being beyond space-time.  The Shaman is the map, constantly in flux, but always ordered and always tied to its counterpart, the Buddha.  So when I talk about healing at its most basic level, I simply mean deepening conscious recognition of the story of life as connected with wholeness, a marriage of the two aspects of existence and of our own being.  I do not see one as "better than" the other, but both as integral to the functionality of the multi-verse we inhabit.

When taken together with the Buddha, the role of the Shaman (the part of us that is living a story here on Earth and that is constantly evolving and growing) can be approached without judgement or pressure.  There is no "right" or "wrong" to being in a cycle of life that is more about BEING or in one that is more focused on BECOMING.  When we talk about healing we tend to focus on BECOMING, that is, the part that is in story, moving, shifting, striving for balance and transmutation of suffering.  Remembering that BEING is just as real, ever-present, and available as BECOMING helps take the stress and criticism out of the journey of BECOMING, and fuels it with life force that is constantly available and can be rested into.  Knowing we are not actually truly lost despite how lost we might feel, and that our very lostness is itself part of the point, can help us to relax more fully into the challenge of the journey of healing, personally, collectively, planetarily, and cosmically.