Francis Rico - A Shaman’s Guide to Deep Beauty

As has long been predicted, we are entering a time when the world as we have known it is falling apart and a new world is emerging.

Ancient indigenous wisdom traditions as diverse as those of the Mayan, Hindu, Siberian, African, Native American and many others have predicted that this would happen. They were aware that time/space flows in long cycles, and they were able to calculate and project time and events with a degree of accuracy that is remarkable even in this age of atomic clocks.

The similarity of these predictions is astonishing. In almost every account, these traditions state that were at the end times of the fifth world and at the beginning of the sixth the previous worlds being advanced civilizations that we know very little about civilizations that faced challenges that they were unable to meet.

What we do know is that we are now in a time when the elders of all world cultures are simultaneously hearing a call from within to speak up and to speak out.

As a shaman and elder, I can assure you that you are not alone in feeling anxiety, fear, and distress regarding the way the world is changing. But if you listen to any of us speak, what you will find is that we are encouraged by the opportunity that this transition presents, and our message to you is one of hope and light there is a path to well-being and harmony that will bless our own lives and the lives of future generations.

My response to this time of transition is to offer you this guidebook. Most guidebooks provide you with maps, charts and photos of the territory being covered, along with descriptive highlights of what you can expect to see. Here, instead of telling you what youll see, A Shamans Guide to Deep Beauty offers shamanic practices that will help you remember how to see.

I encourage you to take heart and consider that we are at an extraordinary moment in the evolution of our species.Were moving from a world of ignorance, scarcity and limitation, controlled by greedy, frightening and frightened people, to an age of enlightenment. Were becoming a world where thriving is replacing simply surviving, where love is overcoming fear, and where cooperation, collaboration and compassion will become key components of our global social, economic, educational, healthcare, political, and ecological structures.

Given the worlds current state of endless war, famine, drought, floods, economic collapse and manmade ecological disasters, we can all agree, at the very least, that things are looking rough. However, its not an impossible dream that places us at the beginning of a new golden age.

Humanity has more than a passing familiarity with this new world. It has been the territory of shamans, seers, saints, visionaries, and mystics since long before the dawn of conventional history. And yet, while we hold the highest regard for our visionaries, mystics and spiritual teachers, and we feel a great reverence for their messages of love and compassion, just take alook at the damage we have done to each other and to the living ecosystems of the earth in just the past hundred years.

Its obvious that we consider our spiritual teachers to be impractical dreamers. Their offerings of wisdom and guidance have been disregarded as being essentially irrelevant in the affairs of the real world. In a state of what can only be described as global hypnosis, our species continues to hold these messages of peace, love and brotherhood high, as lofty standards of what we will someday attain; meanwhile, the reality of our actions reveal that quite the opposite is true. War, fear, hatred and ruthless exploitation are the hallmarks of our modern worlds dominant so-called civilization.

But, there are those who have searched and found a crack in the worlds hypnotic trance. We could call them practical dreamers . Most often found in marginalized indigenous cultures, these travelers have slipped through the crack and have explored a magical realm of exquisite beauty and abundance.

These practical dreamers discovered a source of deeply relevant wisdom in a realm where rainbows light the path; where trees and animals speak with insight and clarity, becoming companions and guardians on the journey to the center of Creation; where vast fields of light sparkle and crackle with lightening bolts of inspiration. Within the radiant field of being at the center of this other world, situations presented for healing, guidance and resolution become illuminated. Then, with hearts true to their mission, these practical dreamers return back through the crack, into what we call normal reality with profoundly helpful gifts. They return with healing cures, solutions, and inspired opportunities that emerge from the light of awareness that underlies life in all dimensions in every time and place.

The new world that is now becoming for us has always been present, but has remained hidden to those hypnotized by our civilization and thats pretty much all of us. This mysterious field of awareness, hidden-in-plain-view, is called the divine Presence by shamans of widely separated cultures and times. It is called divine not in a religious sense, but rather in recognition by practical dreamers worldwide of the presence of the loving wild heart of Creation.

Around the world, these practical dreamers also called shamans continue to actively explore the mysteries of life, searching for healing and life-enhancing solutions, guided bythe heart of Creation.

In indigenous cultures, becoming a shaman was not something that you could just decide to do. Creation selected her shamans, testing them for their capacity to care for the totality of life, and for their ability to move energy without cracking up. And, of course, having illuminated the DNA of these individuals from the inside, Creation has continuously evolved through established shamans and their lineages in the selection, initiation, and training of new generations of shamans.

Until now, shamanic wisdom, resources, tools and practices have always been held in reserve for the initiated for those who, through training or natural giftedness, have learned to speak, hear, feel, see, understand and communicate in the ancient sacred language of Creation, Deep Beauty. Just as a practical matter, shamans have hardly been able to communicate their navigation of the indescribable dream-like wonders of other-worldly dimensions, even when theyve wanted to, because most of the experience and knowledge gained in their travels simply does not translate.

Our modern languages are pale, weak, deconstructed imitations of the original sacred language, and are unable to communicate the information, energy and vibration of the original language. Visionsof the world of magical divine Presence have always been highly valued by humanity, but their transformative power has been held safely contained in poetry, music and the arts, and is only marginally incorporated into the fabric of normal reality. Even trapped within these forms of containment, visions of divinity cannot be prevented from emerging and shining on special occasions like weddings and funerals moments when the sacred emerges with wings from within human life experiences and cannot be denied. But as far as our fluency in the language of Deep Beauty, it is rarely heard or understood in the modern mainstream media that dominates our daily consciousness with if it bleeds, it leads.

Theres an additional contributing factor that has until now prevented Deep Beauty from being included in everyones education: shamanic allegiance to ecstatic wild beauty runs counter to the accepted moral, religious and cultural norms of civilized humanity at least it has for the past five or six thousand years. Now, however, as the beginnings of a new world age overlap and gently rock the foundations of our troubled and distressed modern world, we are finding that the tools and resources that generations of shamans kept alive have become essential to our ability to navigate through this time of transition.