Crazy Wisdom, Uncomfortable Questions

Crossposted from Amora Obscura

The Party

In 1975 during a seminary in Snowmass, Colorado, respected Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, founder of Naropa University, and originator of Shambhala Buddhism, hosted a Halloween party. Two attendees, a couple named William Merwin and Dana Naone, mingled for a bit before retiring early for the night. According to witnesses, Trungpa was irritated that the couple had left early, and he ordered his followers to bring them back to the party “at any cost,” but William and Dana refused to return. According to one witness, negotiations between the guru and the couple went on for a few hours. An angry crowd of partygoers gathered outside their door, threatening them and attempting to break into their room. Tensions escalated until a chair was thrown through the glass balcony door in an attempt to force them out.

William and Dana were then escorted down to the party by Trungpa’s guards. Their guru reprimanded them, directed racially-charged remarks toward Dana, and threw a glass of sake in William's face. Then, they were asked to remove their clothes. When they refused, Trungpa ordered the guards to do it for them. They were stripped naked as Dana screamed for help, begging for someone to call the police. No one did. When another attendee tried to intervene, witnesses say that Trungpa punched him in the face. Dana alleged that Trungpa repeatedly hit the man who was stripping her because he was taking too long.

William and Dana were not the first attendees to be stripped that night. A woman named Persis McMillen had been forced out of her costume by the guards earlier in the evening, and was left feeling violated, "sick," and "really trashed out." An attendee named Jack Niland had also been targeted by Trungpa. The guards removed his clothes and threw him into a pool.

Once William and Dana were fully disrobed, the couple held each other, helpless and exposed. William Merwin allegedly implored, “Why us? Why are we the only two people in this room standing here naked in front of you?" So, the other guests removed their clothing, too. At Trungpa's behest, the dancing resumed, as if nothing had happened.

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Mythical Beasts and Weirdness: Working with Helping Spirits

A mythical beast is a beast that we believe never existed in physical form, like dragons, the basilisk, and the phoenix in the Harry Potter novels. But never is a long time. If they never existed, then why do similar mythical beasts appear in different stories the mythology of peoples who never spoke or met? Whether you believe they were real or are imaginary, mythical beasts are very special helping spirits to work with in shamanic altered states. "You need to pay attention," explains host and shaman, Christina Pratt, "There is a quality of being not of this world when we engage the mythical beasts. But we work with them because they remind us that our souls are not limited to this world either. Mostly we engage the mythical beasts to grow up and stop acting like our silly, violent, consumerist culture has anything to do with the real reality and why we are here.

**This show original aired June 21, 2016.**

Tuesday, June 26, 2018 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Mainstream — UPDATED

Crossposted from Reflections Journal.

The Gateway: Gizmodo's New Podcast About
Controversial YouTube Guru Teal Swan (TRAILER)

The Gateway is a six-part series about Teal Swan, a new brand of spiritual guru, who draws in followers with her hypnotic self-help YouTube videos aimed at people who are struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts. Some followers move to Teal’s healing center—a spiritual startup in Atenas, Costa Rica—where they produce content and manage social media accounts. Teal insists her therapy saves lives, but her critics say Teal’s death-focused dogma is dangerous.

**TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with suicide and other awfulness.**

Episode Reviews: Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4, Episode 5, Episode 6
Further Update: Teal Tribe Kerfuffle
Another Update: In which teal lies about Cameron... again

Last fall Gizmodo gained incredible access to teal's operation. Reporter Jennings Brown not only interviewed teal several times, he was allowed to take a crew into Philia, her retreat center in Costa Rica, to observe one of her high ticket Curveball retreats. The result of his year-long investigation is a six-part podcast series that is by far the most extensive profile of teal yet by a mainstream media outlet. Days before Gizmodo first interviewed teal, she was interviewed by reporter Addison Nugent for OZY, an international, online magazine. The interview was uncomfortable for teal, which she expressed immediately, and somewhat intemperately, on her blog. Neither the resulting OZY article nor "The Gateway" podcast series — which began airing at the end of May and has aired three episodes to date — have been mentioned by teal or her team.  (In the interest of full disclosure, I was interviewed by both reporters and my statements appear in both pieces.)

The day ends.  The house falls into the dark silence of sleep.  The next morning we board a plane to Paris.  I have one more interview to do; a segment for the provocateurs section of OZY.  This interview marks the end of this European tour.  I have five minutes to change my outfit before the camera is switched on in our hotel room.  The style of this interview is not what I expected.  There are two different styles of interview, one is supportive and the other is antagonistic.  In a supportive style interview, you are already going into the interview being loved.  The entire structure of the interview is set up to make you look good.  In an antagonistic style interview, the majority of the focus is placed on challenging you.  No one holds your hands in support in this type of interview.  Instead, the interviewer gives you the opportunity to fight though the power of narration to earn people’s good opinion by putting you on the spot.  The interview started off with this: “I have interviewed spiritual leaders from everywhere and many of them have been doing this for more than 30 years and to be honest, none of them have the amount of controversy, hatred and dedicated antagonists as you do.  There is so much written against you out there in the world, they call you things like ‘the suicide catalyst’, why do you think that is?”  In an antagonistic style interview, you spend your time trying to answer questions while simultaneously trying to caretake the vulnerable aspect of you that feels targeted and like hiding under a blanket while sucking its thumb.  Sometimes the interviewer is already biased against you and is simply setting up the interview as a trap to make you look bad so their pre-conceived, concrete concept of you can then be shared by the world in order to make them feel personally validated.  But if the interviewer is genuinely non-biased, the antagonistic style of interview often leads to the best content.  Nonetheless, it is always awkward when this style of interview ends because everyone acts as if nothing just happened and everyone is really friends when in reality both you know and they know that it was an antagonistic interaction that made all parties involved socially uncomfortable.  I decided to order minestrone soup after the interview was over to comfort myself and take a bath before I fell asleep. [all emphases added]

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Plants and Elementals: Working with Helping Spirits with Daniel Abney

Elemental Spirits are often ignored as we reach for helping spirits in the vast range of land spirits, from the smallest garden sprite to the great mountain spirits and all the many manifestations between. And yet the spirits of the elements are constant teachers of balance and flow, the two fundamental energetic principles for physical health and mental well-being. Join us this week as geomancer, Daniel Abney, joins host and shaman, Christina Pratt, to explore our health and its relationship with the plant and elemental spirits. In our addictive rush to the altered states offered by the plants like ayahuasca, San Pedro, and peyote, we miss the powerful medicinal force of plants as helping spirits and the exceptionally direct and wise restorative force of the elemental spirits.

This week's guest:
Daniel Abney, LMP

Daniel discovered a strong relationship with plant spirits and elemental spirits through his exploration of shamanism and decades of dedicated spiritual practice. Today he offers himself as a geomancer and healer to the energies of the earth, the elementals, and the plant spirits who are often set awry by unconscious human action. He is a founding member of Last Mask Community and is regularly called upon to work with the earth elements at the retreat sites and ritual locations that house the Last Mask Community's work and teachings.

Daniel's massage training commenced at the Brenneke School of Massage in 1992. He has been active in advanced training and certifications since, accumulating over 3000 hours of formal massage education. Daniel's curiosity and fascination with the human body and its amazing and beautiful inter-supporting systems is the inspiration for his drive to keep studying and learning.

**This show originally aired June 14, 2016.**

Tuesday, June 19, 2018 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Working with the Spirits of the Land with Ana Larramendi

"Nature communicates through energy, not words. It communicates with us through signs, symbols, omens, and feelings," explains our guest Ana Larramendi of thehollowbone.com. Ana joins host, Christina Pratt, this week to share her wisdom and experience in communicating with the vast range of spirits of the land, from the smallest garden sprite to the great apu spirits of the volcanic mountains of the ring of fire. Ana cautions that our human tendency to approach all experience from an anthropocentric perspective is our greatest hurdle in communicating with our most abundant and ever present helping spirits. We need to slow down, be silent, visit regularly, and always engage with gratitude and respect. When we help the spirits of the environment around us they are able to help us live more vital, vibrant, and interconnected lives.

This week's guest:
Ana Larramendi

Ana H. Larramendi has spent her life weaving together her spirituality with nature skills to create a skill-set of tools for land healing and teaching students to detect and heal earth trauma. Of Spanish and Basque ancestry and born in Spain, Ana is a full-time shamanic teacher and healer, at The Hollow Bone, a private practice in Madison, Wisconsin. She offers a full range of shamanic healing forms, space clearing, and various land healing practices and offers a range of shamanic course work and her Earth Tenders Apprenticeship for more advanced practitioners.

Ana has been studying shamanic traditions since 1989 and is an international teacher of shamanic healing practices. She is a minister, public speaker, Vision Quest leader, wilderness enthusiast, ceremonialist, chef, translator and an initiated mesa carrier in the Inka tradition. Ana has studied extensively with teachers from many traditions including: Alberto Villoldo, the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, Sandra Ingerman, Angeles Arrien, Betsy Bergstrom, Tom Cowan, Dr. Larry Peters, Marko Pogaĉnik, indigenous Alto Misayoqs of the Andes, and Weather Shamanism with Nan Moss and the late David Corbin. She also studied for 6 years with Tom Brown Jr. of the Tracker School, learning tracking, survival and wilderness awareness skills.

Ana has been a lecturer for the University of Wisconsin Medical School, as well as teacher and Peruvian guide for Madison Area Technical College. She is a founding member of the Society for Shamanic Practice and was a keynote presenter for their first annual conference in 2005. Ana's work has been published in The Journal of Shamanic Practice.

**This show originally aired June 7, 2016.**

Tuesday, June 12, 2018 at 11:00 AM Pacific

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Teal Swan Down Under

Her ladyship Teal Swan recently voyaged to Australia as part of her international career as a spiritual leader on the world stage. She met with some challenges, courtesy of Australian customs agents, but such is the price of fame.

Ironically my trip here this time started on that note.  It turns out that we didn’t procure the correct type of visa for this trip.  I’ve become big enough that like any celebrity, I will be made an example of if anything is not exactly as it should be.  As a result, I had the worst experience of my international career upon arrival.  After a 15 hour flight, I was separated from the rest of the team and I was taken to a white jail like room with a window looking out at a collection of officers all debating what to do with me and making phone calls and reviewing security tapes.  For hours, I was interrogated, cross-examined, threatened and then shamed for not knowing better in my position as a ‘leader of something that is so much bigger than myself’.  I ended up in tears.  I came so close to not being let into the country, sent back to the US and being banned for years from re-entering, it is actually mind blowing that someone made the final call to let me in.  It is so strange to experience the contrast that comes with fame.  On the one hand some people and some places give you special treatment and special welcome.  On the other hand, some people and places oppose you as if you are a monster.  Being treated like a criminal for hours upon arrival was a bad way to start the trip.  It was a genuinely traumatizing experience, not just for me but for the members of the team who traveled with me.  It was one of those defining moments where you have no option but to move up to a different level.  I can no longer travel to any part of the world without involvement from immigrations agents and special invitations.  I so hate this aspect of the society we have created.  After that experience, I completely get the fear that the Mexican immigrants in the United States live with every day.  It is a fear that no one should ever have to live with.

I'm pleased to report that Mistress was able to turn that situation around and went on to have a lovely, successful trip. She was even able to "meet and greet" attendees of her workshop "The Mirror." It is always amazing to witness the way she absorbs energy from her adoring fans. Even on such an exhausting trip, she emerged as lovely and renewed as Lady Bathory. But it does not come without risk. Mistress has many enemies and such events must be scrupulously vetted by her security team. Mistress marshals on, through thick and thin, because, as she says, hers "is a mission worth dying for."

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Deities and Archetypes: Working as Helping Spirits with Langston Kahn

Deities have a long history of engaging as helping spirits with people in shamanic altered states. What does it mean when a deity enters your journey scape? How do we navigate cultivating right relationship with a being who has a living tradition and long history with humans, expects certain protocol we may not know or understand, and has their own agency? And how do we know the difference between big, intense energies like deities and archetypes and why should we bother with them? Join host and shaman, Christina Pratt, and her guest Langston Kahn of Occupy-Your-Heart.com, as they discuss how to navigate right relationship with deities and archetypes, the distinction, the cautions, and ultimately, the gifts that they offer to those who are willing to step out of the safe constructs of the mind and enter the deep waters and intense currents of a nonordinary life.

This week's guest:
Langston Kahn

Langston Kahn is a shamanic practitioner specializing in emotional clearing and radical transformation. He stands firmly at the crossroads, his practice informed by the western modality of Inner Relationship Focusing, initiations into traditions of the African Diaspora, the contemporary shamanic tradition of The Last Mask Center and the guidance of his helping spirits and ancestors weaving it all together.

Langston has studied and facilitated Inner Relationship Focusing, developed by Ann Weiser Cornell for the last 8 years. He has completed 5 years of training with Christina Pratt in the Cycle of Transformation and also serves on the leadership council for the Last Mask Community, a community of contemporary people striving to live in alignment with ancient shamanic beliefs and principles in a way that answers the unique challenges of our time. Additionally, he holds initiations in several traditions of the African Diaspora.

Langston, who is centered in New York City offers sessions in emotional clearing and shamanic healing and classes both in person and online.

**This show originally aired on May 31, 2016.**

Tuesday, June 5, 2018 at 11:00 AM Pacific

Log on to Listen
Why Shamanism Now? on Co-Creator Network
Questions? Comments? Call: 1-512-772-1938

All episodes are now available in the iTunes Podcast Library.