I recently interviewed author, visionary teacher and healer Sandra Ingerman about how to tackle the difficult yet enormously important challenge of integrating the spiritual issues of our time with the ecological crises we’re facing.
After reading her most recent works, How to Thrive in Changing Times and Awakening to the Spirit World: The Shamanic Path of Direct Revelation, I wanted to find out more about Ms. Ingerman’s intriguing ideas for healing both our soul and our planet. A couple of weeks ago we got to chat about everything from how to overcome despair and defeatism in light of the tremendous problems humanity is faced with to the shamanic symbolism found in the Gulf oil disaster.
citisven: You write: "It’s time to create more balance by integrating spiritual work with the scientific, environmental and political changes now being explored."
How do we do this? How do we integrate the spiritual into our civic lives, and how do we bring it into our political/public discourse without being discounted as "woo woo?"
Sandra Ingerman: Bridging my spiritual work into the environmental and political issues I’m interested in has been one of my biggest challenges. In today’s world, the spiritual work is discounted by many people as being very "woo woo," and this is part of the challenge that we’re facing right now. I think as we've moved into a technological culture we’ve forgotten that we are made up of body, mind, and spirit, and so is the world. When you take away our physical body, when you take away our thoughts, we’re basically spiritual beings, reflections of the creative force of the universe, or God, or however you want to look at that.
What I’ve found in my research is that for many thousands of years every single spiritual tradition that exists has been talking about how everything starts in an invisible realm before it manifests into the physical. What this means is that all our thoughts lead to a particular outcome. So we need to reframe our thoughts from a defeatist place of "there is no hope, we’ve gone too far" to "change is possible, we can work together as a global community to create change." We were given this god-given gift of imagination, and from a spiritual perspective, we create the world through our imagination. Some shamanic cultures in South America have been saying that we’ve been dreaming the wrong dream. Once we align our thoughts and imaginations with the outcome we want to bring into being and recognize that we are spiritual beings, we’re able to radiate light into situations instead of feeding the energy of despair, which I think is what many people are doing right now.
"We want change in the outer world, but we forget that change actually starts from an inner process."
cs: It seems that the underlying theme of your books could be summed up in Gandhi’s "Be the change you wish to see in this world." (or dream the world into being) Can you talk a little bit about the times when these personal thoughts and changes seem too small to deal with the immensity of the global problems we face? How do we avoid going straight from denial to despair?
Ingerman: There are a lot of people in crisis right now. When you look at our collective consciousness, we’ve really been addicted to a disharmonious way of life, thinking that gathering more material possessions will bring us happiness. The way we’re dealing with oil and fuel, we really are an addicted culture. If you’ve ever been around one, sometimes an addict has to hit bottom before they actually go for treatment or are ready to hear about a change. I think that from a bigger perspective — and I’m saying this from a compassionate point of view — it’s almost like the collective hasn’t hit bottom yet. It’s only once we as a collective decide that this is no longer working for us that there’ll be an opening for a shift to happen. So for people who are moving into a place of despair it’s important to understand that there’s a bigger perspective going on: The collective first has to hit bottom.
But this isn’t the time to move into despair, this isn’t a time to give up hope. There is a process that’s going on and people are more interested and engaged in spiritual work. From my point of view, the spiritual work is where we have power right now in a time where so many of us feel overwhelmed and moving into a place of despair. But while the rest of the collective is still needing to get the wake up call, for those of us who have received a wakeup call, start to dream that world that you want to dream into being. Start to do the inner work, so you can be the change you wish to see. What Gandhi was referring to, as all spiritual traditions refer to, is that the outer world is simply a reflection of your state of consciousness. If you don’t like the outer world, then change what’s going on within you. So that’s the work that we can be doing right now, which starts to build an invisible world of substance as the current fabric of reality is dissolving around us.
cs: It’s almost as if once we become conscious of our despair we find that despair is not very helpful. I’m reminded of the REM song "It’s the End of the World as we Know it, and I Feel Fine." There’s a seed that grows in every compost.
Ingerman: (Laughs) It’s a death/rebirth process. Every change we go through involves a death, that’s the nature of change. And that’s what we’re seeing right now. But the despair brings us to an end, whereas what we’re seeing is a transition, so it’s important for us to find ways to stay inspired during this time to keep on going. My philosophy is, why give up now? We don’t know what the outcome is going to be, we really don’t. This isn’t the time to give up, this is the time to keep forging forward and to feed the possibilities of what this transition is about instead of seeing it as an end, which is where despair leads us to.
"It's the end of the world as we know it,
it's not the end of the world."
cs: Let’s talk a little bit about shamanism. The imagery of oil and its darkness seems very symbolic/archetypal. What part of our consciousness does the oil spill in the Gulf represent? Are there any shamanic interpretations for the darkness coming from deep down below the surface of the earth?
Ingerman: We all have a spiritual part of ourselves that’s immortal, a divine light that radiates like the sun and the stars above us. On the other hand, we all have the shadow aspect. Just like nature, the sun rises and then sets again, leaving the sky dark. The shadow nature is in the parts of ourselves that we often keep hidden. The angry parts of ourselves, the parts that feel betrayed or disappointed. I’ve written in my own work: "We’re the exploited and we’re the exploiters." A lot of what’s coming up with the Gulf right now is that people feel the environment has been exploited. Well, whenever something is being exploited on the outside we have to look at the part inside ourselves that is the exploiter also, that tries to manipulate the environment, our environment, our light, our world, and how to bring that back into harmony and balance. Basically, what we’re seeing from a shamanic point of view is the shadow state coming back and a reflection of the imbalance of ourselves that needs to be looked at.
"Shamanism teaches us that everything is connected,
there's only one web of life, there isn't an us and them."
cs: A hypothetical: If you were to guide a shamanic journey for western capitalism, how would you approach it? What would you take with you? What power animals do you think might show up? What would your diagnosis and advice for healing be?
Ingerman: There could be a couple of ways in which I would approach that. One is, I would tell people to take a helping spirit, whatever power animal or teacher they work with, and ask to meet somebody who represents to them a capitalist figure, someone whose philosophy they don’t respect...
cs: ...like someone from Wall Street?
Ingerman: Yes — and to go meet that person as a human being. See what’s driving him or her, what might be the wound that he or she is carrying. Then go inside yourself and find that same wound, find that there isn’t an "us" and "them." That’s what’s asking to be healed right now: we’ve moved into this "us and them," and there isn’t — it’s just an "us." I actually did this journey once with George Bush where I got to have compassion to see what brought him to the place that he got to, and then I journeyed inside of myself to find that same place that needed healing within me, that would make me act out in a way that I didn’t particularly appreciate. Shamanism teaches us that everything is connected, there’s only one web of life, there isn’t an us and them. It’s all the same. Shamanism is the original spiritual tradition that talked about unity consciousness. Quantum physicists are talking about it now, but shamans have been talking about it for many thousands of years. So the journey would be to go see the wounding that created this capitalistic society of "I need more" from the outer world, because there’s a bankruptcy in the inner world.
"Technology has enabled us to keep going seven days a week, and it’s creating a lot of unhealthiness, both physical and mental."
cs: I’m interested in simplicity. It seems that most of the consumption and waste that have created this ecological crisis comes from complexity, both of industrial systems, and our mind. How do we de-clutter?
Ingerman: (Laughs) I think reevaluating our goals, re-prioritizing our lives, for one thing. The priorities that people have in their lives, their "shoulds," always come first, before taking time to regenerate, time to be still. And stillness is what’s required from people to be able to take a timeout from all the busy-ness. I often use the metaphor of a river of life: modern day western culture is always walking against the river of life, which is creating a lot of emotional and physical illness. Just because we have technology doesn’t mean we don’t have to acknowledge the seasons of life, the times to slow down, to regenerate, for that new life to burst forth again.
Technology has enabled us to keep going seven days a week, and it’s creating a lot of unhealthiness, both physical and mental. When you have a constant list of what you should be doing, your mind keeps spinning. People really need to take some time to be in nature again, to take walks, sit by a river or the ocean, to let their minds just empty out and allow themselves to go into those trance states. See what happens when you stare into a fire, when you watch a river or the ocean, a stream or waterfall, or sit on a high vista and look as far as you can see, and let the wind clear your thoughts. It’s a real healing process for people to be out in nature and find a way to slow down and reprioritize. I’ve met a lot of people over my years as a healer and psychotherapist who were facing death, and at the end of their life they always say "my priorities were mixed up." You know, "I should have taken more time to slow down, I should have taken more time to be with my family, I should have taken more time to experience the joys of life." We really need to get that message while we’re alive that how we prioritize our lives with all the "shoulds" is not healthy for us on any level.
cs: I really appreciate talking to you, thank you so much.
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Full interview at
Dreaming the World into Being – Part I
Dreaming the World into Being – Part II
Check out Sandra Ingerman’s monthly column The Transmutation News. Ms. Ingerman also appears in The Invocation, a documentary about God and World Peace, directed by Emmanuel Itier, and is in the process of co-authoring a companion book to go along with that movie.