Nicholas E. Brink - Trance Journeys of the Hunter-Gatherers: Ecstatic Practices to Reconnect with the Great Mother and Heal the Earth

TRANCE
JOURNEYS
OF THE
HUNTER-GATHERERS

Nicholas Brinks Trance Journeys of the Hunter-Gatherers suggests ecstatic trance is the most visceral way to be one with Earth. We speak the language of the goddess when we use sacred body postures to embrace our inherent shamanic powers. His hugely important book matures our ecstatic trance work since 1977, the year Felicitas Goodman found the magical key into the hunter-gatherer world. Sacred postures are now spreading all over the world, helping us regain our full spiritual consciousness, the fabled New Dawn. As more and more people use daily ritual to stay directly connected with Earth, the Great Mother nurtures them by offering her knowledge. This book is a must-read for anyone who wants to explore shamanism to help save the Earth.

BARBARA HAND CLOW,
AUTHOR OF THE MIND CHRONICLES AND
CERTIFIED TEACHER FOR THE CUYAMUNGUE INSTITUTE

We are indeed entering a new era in the eventful history of humankind on the planet. This can only be an era where we recognize our common origins and essential connections to each other, to the Earth, and to the cosmos; for it will either be an era of this re-cognition or it will not be an era at all but the end of the human adventure. Nicholas Brink helps us access this deeper reality the ancients called the Akasha and that the new physics knows is the deeper reality of the cosmos. His book is a precious resource and a great contribution to our shared future.

ERVIN LASZLO, AUTHOR OF THE IMMORTAL MIND

Trance Journeys of the Hunter-Gatherers is a masterful call to action with a passionate vision for how we can effectively participate in the time-critical, eco-spiritual awakening that is occurring now in Earths evolution.... Nick Brink has formulated a brilliant new spiritual lexicon to help us access and unlock the deeper meaning expressed in our multidimensional metaphoric journeys. For anyone who has had an experience with the ritual postures, or is considering learning more about them, reading this book is as close an experience that one could have to intrinsically feel the magnificence of what is truly possible in regaining our cosmic spiritual citizenship as evolutionary co-creators with Mother Earth.

MARIANNE CARROLL, ASTROLOGER AND
CERTIFIED INSTRUCTOR IN THE CUYAMUNGUE METHOD OF
ECSTATIC RITUAL TRANCE POSTURES

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The two persons who have influenced me most in writing this book are Thomas Berry, author of Dream of the Earth, and Felicitas Goodman, author of Where the Spirits Ride the Wind. Berry so clearly stated that what is needed in the ecology movement to save the Earth is to listen to our dreams and waking visions and to regain our shamanic personality, while Goodman has shown us how to fulfill this need when she unveiled to us the shamanic ways of ecstatic trance. Thank you.

FELICITAS GOODMAN AND THE CUYAMUNGUE INSTITUTE

The Cuyamungue Institute promotes the original research and findings of Felicitas Goodman. Dr. Goodmans work, known as the Cuyamungue Method, focused on the use of ancient sacred practices and postures that, when properly used, provide an experience that creates a doorway to an ecstatic experience of expanded reality. Dr. Goodman captured the essence of her work and findings in the book Where the Spirits Ride the Wind. I received formal training in the history and proper usage of the Cuyamungue Method at the Cuyamungue Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico. To learn more about Dr. Goodmans original work in ecstatic trance and her development and use of the Cuyamungue Method visit the Cuyamungue Institutes website at www.cuyamungueinstitute.com.

Among the many pieces written by essayist and naturalist Gary Gripp that he has shared with me, this prologue well describes a person who believes that the ways we have been living our lives are all wrong. Gary, whose life has been dedicated to the remote regions of Central Oregon, has done his best to live his own life in a manner that is at one with the Earth. The Meaning of Life describes how he was led to his current beliefs and offers the groundwork for how we should lead our own lives in order to save the Earth, if it is not already too late. There are those classic naturalists who in our collective past brought alive this enchantment of the Earth: Henry Thoreau, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, to name a few. But it is rare that any of us have the opportunity to personally know such a person, and I rank Gary among those great figures. Through his childhood experiences in nature, and thanks to the support of his mother, he has been able to maintain his connectedness with the Earth, a connectedness that is so natural for young children. This naturalness of children is generally destroyed by our educational and religious systems as well as through a lack of parental understanding of the importance of our connection with nature. Gary has written many essays that I have found most enlightening, essays that are available on his website, www.wildearthman.com.

PROLOGUE

THE MEANING OF LIFE

By Gary Gripp

Many a human being has pondered the meaning of life, and the results represent a range from no meaning at all (the nihilistic perspective), to some institutional (religious) perspectives, to the highly personal. My own take on the meaning of life is nowhere on this continuum, because I represent a perspective that is not necessarily human-centered, even though I am a human, and the product of a human-centered culture. Within that culture, and the society it informs, I am a near anomaly, and as such, part of an extremely marginalized minority. Amid the controversy about meaning and meaninglessness I hold to a position that I regard as rock-solid... well, really, more solid, more dependable, more enduring than any rock ever was or will be. But before I share with you the meaning of Life, I want to briefly explore how I came to the moral stance of giving my first allegiance and loyalty not to my own kind, but to the Whole, to Mother Nature herself.

When I was eight, nine, and ten, I lived on a remote lake in Northern California. It was far enough out in the sticks that I had to walk or be driven three miles on a dirt road to get to the school bus turnaround, which was itself fifteen miles outside of the six-hundredperson town where the school was located. This entire area, even today, is still remote and unsettled enough to have no franchise fast-food outlets whatsoever. But it was not the school or the town that had such a big effect on me; it was the lake.

The lake was on the Pacific Flyway, which then supported six million waterfowl migrating South, then North, then South again with the changing seasons. Our lake was in sight of Mt. Shasta, except at those times when the ducks and geese were on the fly and so filled the sky with their wing beats and raucous cries that they made the mountain disappear. There were lesser and greater Canadian honkers, and it was a delight to see them fold back their wings and stretch out their webbed feet as a squadron of them cruised in for a landing in the lake that was our front yard. The ducks would poke around in the tulles and cattails, feeding on whatever they could find there. Grebes would also fly in with the ducks and geese, and for some reason we called them hell divers. There were also black-bodied white-billed coots, which we called