Pilgrimage in the Modern World

Every year, thousands of pilgrims gather at the Neolithic Stonehenge monument in Wiltshire, England to celebrate the summer solstice. Thousands more trek to Nevada's Burning Man Festival to burn a towering effigy and the hopeful ill journey to Lourdes, France seeking a cure as they have for centuries. Although pilgrimage may seem an antiquated religious ritual, it remains a vibrant activity in a modern world of gadgets and instant gratification. As increasing numbers of us seek refuge from the demands of modern life and its electronic distractions, venturing to a sacred place in search of spirituality has never seemed more appealing. That pilgrimage continues to exercise such a strong attraction is testimony to the power it continues to hold for those who undertake these sacred journeys.
 

Pilgrimage is broadly defined as an outward journey of a religious or spiritual nature, typically to a shrine, temple, site or rite of significance to those of a particular faith or belief system. There are pilgrimages associated with all the world's spiritual traditions. Perhaps best known is the Hajj, an annual journey to Mecca considered one of the five pillars of Islam. Another famous pilgrimage is the Camino de Santiago, a journey made by Christians to the shrine that houses the remains of the apostle Saint James in Galicia in northwestern Spain. Jews make pilgrimage to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, while Tibetan Buddhist, Hindus and Jains circumambulate Mount Kailash, the holiest mountain in the Himalayas. Every 12 years, Hindus in India gather at one of four sites along the Ganges river in what is known as the Kumbh Mela, considered the single largest gathering of human beings in one place on the planet.
 

The purposes for undertaking a shamanic or religious pilgrimage traditionally range from fulfilling a spiritual vow, finding or deepening one's faith, seeking a remedy for physical or spiritual problems, requesting guidance from spirits or deities of Nature, undergoing initiation rituals, paying homage, to realigning with one's innermost purpose and passion. For many, pilgrimage is a way to mitigate and resolve karma, the sum of a person's actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences. Undoubtedly pilgrimage benefits those best equipped to receive its effects, pilgrims with a developed meditation ability, an unfolded responsiveness to the inner world and a receptive vision.
 

Since ancient times, sacred sites have had a mysterious allure for billions of people around the world. Legends and contemporary reports tell of extraordinary experiences people have had while visiting these places. Different sacred sites have the power to heal the body, enlighten the mind and inspire the heart. A growing body of evidence indicates that there is indeed a concentration of holiness at pilgrimage places, and that this holiness or field of energy contributes to a wide variety of beneficial human experiences. The value and benefit of pilgrimage is often only revealed long after the physical journey is over. The pilgrimage never ends. To learn more, look inside The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker's Guide to Making Travel Sacred.

The Lost Art of Resurrection

An excerpt from my memoir, Riding Spirit Horse: A Journey into Shamanism.

 

Like a golden luminous jewel, Palenque perches above the lush tropical rainforest in the foothills of the Chiapas Highlands of southern Mexico. Humid air hangs heavy in this jungle acropolis overlooking the coastal plains of the state of Tabasco. Shrouded in morning jungle mists and echoing to a dawn chorus of howler monkeys and parrots, this temple city has a serene, mystical atmosphere. In antiquity, the Maya city was known as Lakamha, meaning "big waters." Tranquil spring-fed streams meander through the city and the temple summits offer spectacular views of the ruins and surrounding jungle. Flourishing in the seventh century, Palenque is an architectural masterpiece of unsurpassed beauty and spiritual force.

Palenque's most prominent structure is the Temple of the Inscriptions. The elegant temple crowns an imposing eight-stepped pyramid 75 feet above a great plaza. The temple gets its name from hieroglyphic inscriptions on three stone tablets, known as the East Tablet, the Central Tablet and the West Tablet, on the structure's inner walls. These large carved tablets emphasize the idea that events that happened in the past will be repeated on the same calendar date. The edifice was specifically built as the funerary monument for K'inich Janaab' Pakal, also known as Pakal the Great, ruler of Palenque in the seventh century.
 

Deep in the heart of the pyramid, Pakal's remains were found in a stone sarcophagus, wearing a mosaic jade death mask and elaborate jade jewelry. The intricate carving on the top of the seven-ton sarcophagus lid itself is an iconic piece of Classic Maya art and was crucial to understanding how the ancient Maya viewed death and rebirth. The magnificent bas-relief shows the cross-shaped World Tree -- which manifests in the dark night sky as the Milky Way or "White Road" to the Underworld -- and Pakal's relationship to it in death. The king is depicted at the moment of his divine resurrection in the unen or infant form of the lightning deity K'awiil, ascending from the Underworld on the starry Milky Way road to paradise and eternal life.
 

At Palenque, the Maya carefully encoded instructions for gaining eternal life in their architecture, art and hieroglyphic inscriptions. The Maya believed that the real purpose of our lives is to grow ourselves into godlike beings of power and beauty. Survival of the personal aspect of the soul was the goal for Maya shamans. They believed that there are two souls. Every human being has a "life soul," one that is linked to the body and that, should it depart the body, would cause death. It remains within the body until the moment of death. There is also a second soul, or "free soul." The free soul can roam free from the body without harming the person. It corresponds to the dream or astral body. Upon death, it journeys to the pool of souls from whence it may reach back to us and communicate with us through portals to the Underworld -- caves and pyramids.
 

The resurrection of the free soul was what the ancient Maya shamans hoped to achieve. The Maya believed the soul to be regenerative to its core; ultimately its purpose is to regenerate itself. The human soul manifested from the Otherworld paradise through the portal jaws of the great Vision Serpent. If it succeeded in growing into its divine potential by nurturing itself through education and ecstatic bonding with the gods, it could recreate itself after death wearing its own individual "face," then dance forever on the surface of the infinite otherworldly sea. The lightning-serpent energy that fueled the soul's resurrection came from the rain deity K'awiil.
 

The Maya shamans believed death is "behind the times," caught up in a previous and less advanced era, lacking knowledge of the art of resurrection. There is a dramatic difference between the idea of resurrection and a belief in the soul's immortality. Resurrection -- raising up again -- means that something has truly died and then brought back to life. Immortality, on the other hand, assumes unbroken continuity of the soul's existence after the death of the body.
 

The ancient shamans of Palenque built a resurrection generator on a large elevated plaza in the southeast corner of the city surrounded by jungle covered hills. Archaeologists call this ch'ulel "power plant" the Cross Group or Temple of the Cross complex. It is made up of three pyramid temples arranged in a triangular pattern. The shaman architects who designed the Cross Group believed they had discovered the earthly site of the three hearthstones of creation. In Maya cosmology, a triangle of three stars in the Orion constellation represents the hearthstones of the cosmic fire the gods had set to begin the present world age. Using geomantic divination, they detected the location of the invisible stones and built the temples over them, forming the shamanic infrastructure that powered the resurrection process.
 

The Temple of the Cross is the largest and most significant structure. They placed it on a hill at the northern apex of the cosmic hearth. On the inside back wall of the temple sanctuary, they installed a carved stone tablet depicting the branching World Tree at the moment the Maize God lifted it to the sky. At the western corner of the triangle, they constructed the Temple of the Sun and erected a tablet on the back wall portraying warfare, human sacrifice and a shield adorned with the Jaguar Sun God. At the eastern corner of the hearth, they built the Temple of the Foliated Cross honoring the deity Unen K'awiil, a personification of young maize, and placed within it a tablet showing the World Tree as a maize plant. It depicts King Pakal, wrapped in his death shroud, rising up from the Underworld in his "resurrection body."
 

The shaman-astronomers arranged the pyramids so that as the night sky wheeled through its yearly cycle to reenact the events of creation, the three temples would engage this celestial pattern and reactivate the sacred time of that first awakening. On August 13, a date the Maya associate with creation, the night sky goes through a cycle from dusk to dawn that recounts the story of the transition from the third world into the fourth world when humans were created. During that evening, when the stars and constellations took up their creation-resurrection positions, and the glowing Milky Way/World Tree rose in the heavens, the temple complex came alive with Otherworldly forces.

Why Do We Fear Death?

65 million people die each year in the world. That is 178,000 each day, 7425 each hour, and 120 each minute. Unfortunately, many people are so removed from death that they are unprepared for their own death and the deaths of loved ones. The stories we have been told about where we go when we die shape our reality about death. Millions of people are terrified of death because they have been told a story of hell and damnation. When a person fears retribution for misdeeds, the soul may turn away from the bright light. However, it is not the divine that judges us -- we judge ourselves and condemn ourselves to the hell of separation from the divine source.
 

The truth is that dying is part of life; it's just that simple. Death, as we understand it in scientific terminology, does not really exist. As Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, a pioneer of the hospice movement, explains in her best-selling book On Death and Dying: "Death is simply a shedding of the physical body like the butterfly shedding its cocoon. It is a transition to a higher state of consciousness where you continue to perceive, to understand, to laugh, and to be able to grow." The only thing you lose is something that you don't need anymore: your physical body. That's virtually what death is all about.
 

Death is not an end; rather it is a new beginning. When death is accepted as a natural part of our journey, an extraordinary amount of previously diverted energy can be redirected toward finding your calling, following your heart and helping others. Shamanism shows us that the end of our life is just as important as our birth at the beginning. Living in fear of death distorts our lives, robbing us of death as a great ally for how to live well. "It is not death but an unlived life that should terrify us," explains shamanic teacher and author, Christina Pratt. "When we understand how our unlived lives and unreconciled relationships bind us here at death, we understand what is needed to live well."
 

Reincarnation is a key belief within Hinduism, Buddhism and other eastern religions. All life goes through birth, growth, death and rebirth, and this is known as the cycle of samsara. Life and death are a continuous circle. Through reincarnation and maintaining an open mind, our souls can evolve and grow without limit. We are each on a long journey of the soul, however we can't move forward on this continuous path without a free and open mind. As soon as we close our minds because of religious dogma, fundamentalism or fanaticism, we stop evolving.

Finding Your Spiritual Dharma

The concept of dharma, or the "eternal spiritual path," is a key Hindu and Buddhist concept, referring to a law or principle which governs the universe. For an individual to live out their dharma, they must act in accordance with this law. In Hinduism dharma is both the eternal order that rules the universe and the duty or law that governs one's life. In Buddhism, dharma is the doctrine, the universal truth common to all individuals at all times, proclaimed by the Buddha. Dharma, the Buddha, and the sangha (community of believers) make up the Triratna, "Three Jewels," to which Buddhists go for refuge. In Buddhism, dharma additionally means acting in accordance with the teachings of the Buddha. The Buddha's teachings and the path to enlightenment are symbolized by the Wheel of Dharma.
 

On an individual level, dharma can refer to a personal mission or purpose. Fulfilling one's dharma or purpose in life is considered the way to transcend suffering and the cycle of birth and death. It is said that all beings must accept their dharma for order and harmony to exist in the world. If one is following their dharma, they are pursuing their true calling and serving all other beings in the universe by carrying out their authentic role. According to the Hindu scripture "Bhagavad Gita," it is better to do your own dharma poorly than to do another's well.
 

Finding your spiritual dharma, or purpose, is more about introspection and self-discovery than about following the same path as others. The most important thing you can do is to develop a spiritual practice. A spiritual practice is the regular performance of actions and activities undertaken for the purpose of inducing spiritual experiences and cultivating spiritual development. This is where you practice a variety of techniques on a daily basis that are designed to expand your awareness with the intention of achieving higher states of consciousness and spiritual enlightenment. Here are a three techniques to finding your spiritual path:
 

1. Mindful Meditation: Meditation is probably the most ancient and well known spiritual practice. To meditate means to focus the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity in order to train attention and awareness, and promote calm and clarity. Mindfulness is the idea of learning how to be fully present and engaged in the moment, aware of your thoughts and feelings without distraction or judgment. Combining meditation and mindfulness together into a single practice optimizes the effects of both.
 

To practice mindful meditation, sit or lie comfortably, and then close your eyes. Begin by silently asking yourself: "What is my dharma or purpose in life?" Then simply focus on your breath and observe whatever comes up without judgment or attachment. You do not need to do anything to your breath. Just breathe naturally and focus your attention on where you feel your breath in your body. It may be in your abdomen, chest, throat or nostrils. As you do this, your mind may start to wander. This is perfectly natural. Just notice that your mind has wandered, and then gently redirect your attention back to the breathing. Stay here for five to seven minutes. It helps to set aside a designated time for mindful meditation each day.
 

2. Mindful Drumming: Drumming is perhaps the oldest form of active meditation known to humanity. It is a simple and effortless way to still the mind's internal dialogue in order to access personal revelation from within. Combining these two ancient practices -- drumming and mindfulness -- can be life-altering. Just like a yogi or a monk, who exists in a spiritual state most of the time because of constant devotional practices, we can readily induce profound states of deep meditation and heightened awareness by using a drum as an aid to meditation. Mindful drumming is a way to connect straight to the heart. The energy that comes in from the source is directed through our hearts. The essence of mindful drumming is the experience of direct revelation, which comes through as a feeling, impression or intuition.
 

To practice mindful drumming, sit comfortably, and then close your eyes. Silently ask yourself: "What is my dharma -- my purpose in life?" Next begin drumming a steady, monotonous rhythm and simply focus on the beat. If your mind wanders, gently redirect your attention back to the beat. Drum for five to seven minutes, maintaining a nonjudgmental awareness of sensations, feelings and insights. The punctuated sound of a regularly beating drum stills the incessant chatter of the mind, enabling you to achieve a mindful state almost instantly -- the fast path to self-revelation. This ease of meditation with a drum contrasts significantly with the often long periods of isolation and practice required by many other meditative disciplines before significant effects are experienced.
 

3. Shamanic Journeying: When we are unaware of our soul's true purpose, or simply not aligned in our actions, we often experience a malaise of the spirit. We can engage the blueprint of our soul path through the vehicle of journeying. Shamanic journeying is a time-tested medium for individual self-realization. We can journey within to access wisdom and energies that can help awaken our soul calling and restore us to wholeness. Journey practice connects us with our deepest core values and our highest vision of who we are and why we are here. It heightens our sense of mission and purpose, empowering our personal evolution.
 

Shamanism is based on the principle that innate wisdom and guidance can be accessed through the inner senses in ecstatic trance. Basically, shamanic journeying is a way of communicating with your inner or true self and retrieving information. Your inner self is in constant communication with all aspects of your environment, seen and unseen. You need only journey within to find answers to your questions. You should have a question or objective in mind from the start such as identifying your innermost purpose in life. After the journey, you must then interpret the meaning of your trance experience.
 

To enter a trance state and support your journey, you will need a drum or a shamanic drumming recording. The drum, sometimes called the shamans horse, provides a simple and effective way to induce ecstatic trance states. When a drum is played at an even tempo of three to four beats per second for at least fifteen minutes, most novices report that they can journey successfully even on their first attempt. Transported by the driving beat of the drum; the shamanic traveler journeys to the inner planes of consciousness. Try a shamanic journey.

Vajrayana Buddhism: The Blissful Drum

In the seventh century, a major movement within Mahayana Buddhism arose. This form of Buddhism, called the Vajrayana, is most prominent in Tibet and its surrounding regions, although variations of it are found in China and Japan. The term vajra (Sanskrit: "thunderbolt vehicle," or "diamond vehicle") is used to signify the absolutely real and indestructible in a human being, as opposed to the fictions an individual entertains about himself and his nature; yana is the spiritual pursuit of the ultimately valuable and indestructible. The Vajrayana understands itself to be an esoteric form of Mahayana Buddhism with an accelerated path to enlightenment. According to the Vajrayana view, enlightenment arises from the realization that seemingly opposite principles are in truth one.

Vajrayana Buddhism includes practices that make use of mantras, mudras, mandalas and the visualization of deities and Buddhas. All ritual in Vajrayana practice can be seen as aiding in this process of visualization and identification. The practitioner can use various hand implements such as the bell, vajra (dorje), and drum (damaru), each with an elaborate symbolic meaning to create a special environment for practice. At its simplest, or most profound distillation, the bell can be said to represent "the wisdom of emptiness," the vajra embodies "compassion," while the drum -- such as damaru or Chod drums -- express "bliss." Ultimately, together they express "the compassionate wisdom of blissful emptiness."

Chod Drum: The Voice of Emptiness

Chöd is a Vajrayana practice that combines Buddhist meditation with ancient Tibetan Shamanic ritual. Chod combines the path of Enlightenment and Shamanism into one. In Chod practice, the practitioner journeys into the night world -- the dangerous regions of ghosts, spirits and the damned, to bless all souls lost for a time on the wheel of existence. The selflessness of the practitioner's compassion, his or her contact with spirits of the otherworld, and the making of himself into a vehicle of healing, provide a quick method to realize emptiness and achieve perfect enlightenment. Emptiness is the true nature of reality and the goal of all meditative practice.

The iconic symbol of Chod is the Chod drum. The Chod drum's sound, often with small bells attached to the drum, are said to be the "voice of the Dakinis (tantric deities)" and carry blessings, but also help propel the intense meditation visualization of Chod practice. The sound of the drum also reaches beyond the mundane, calling out to (or blessing) all sentient beings of all realms. When you play a drum, the sound can be heard by the spirits throughout all realms of existence. Sound is regarded as one of the most effective ways of establishing connections with other realms, since it travels through space, permeates visual and physical barriers, and conveys information from the unseen world. Sound, therefore, is a means of "relationship" as well as a "transformation" of energy.

Due to it's complexity, Chod practice generally requires a teacher and instruction to perform. Playing the drum, in any of its forms, does not, and is of immense help to meditators around the world. Using the drum for mindfulness practice does not require a teacher or extensive learning, and in fact could be considered easier to practice than meditation on the breath. Mindful drumming could not be simpler: take a good seat, focus on the beat, and when your attention wanders, return. Even one session of mindful drumming demonstrates how powerful this meditation method can be in our stressful modern lives. The powerful and compelling rhythm of the drum can still and focus the mind -- the fast path to mindfulness and well-being.

Trevor Hall - The Fruitful Darkness

Joan Halifax's 2004 book The Fruitful Darkness is a great inspiration behind singer-songwriter Trevor Hall's latest album of its namesake, which is currently in the midst of a four-part release. Hall was in the middle of recording the album when he discovered Halifax's insightful book. Her deep study of shamanism, Buddhism, tribal wisdom, and their interconnections resonated with Hall on many levels. "The book really helped me finish the album," Hall said in an interview.

In her book, Halifax delves into the fruitful darkness -- the shadow side of being, found in the root truths of shamanic traditions and the stillness of meditation. In The Fruitful Darkness, Halifax writes: "Both Buddhism and shamanism are based in the psychological grammar that says we cannot eliminate the so-called negative forces of afflictive emotions. The only way to work with them is to encounter them directly, enter their world, and transform them. They then become manifestations of wisdom. Our weaknesses become our strengths, the source of our compassion for others and the basis of our awakened nature."

Shamans, Halifax notes, develop mystical abilities by surrendering to darkness and that which attacks them. Her reflections on the Buddhist path and the shamanic journey -- a spiritual journey of learning to befriend darkness -- spoke to Hall's own difficult walk through darkness. Hall's latest album tells the story of his own journey through darkness in song. Nearly three years ago, his health deteriorated as the result of a staph infection, leading to his hospitalization and many canceled tour dates.

Hall says he became completely disconnected from the beliefs and inspirations he had previously based his life on. As his idea of himself disintegrated, he found himself feeling alone in the dark, filled with doubt, asking "Who am I? What do I believe?" It was a feeling he couldn't shake.

Halifax's reflections on the Buddhist path and the shamanic journey immediately spoke to Hall's own difficult walk through darkness -- his own shamanic initiation. Initiation is the death, dismembering, and dissolving of old forms/structures/ways of life. Shamanic initiation serves as a transformer -- it causes a radical change in the initiate forever. An initiation marks a transition into a new way of being in the world. It tells us something about the mystery of life and death.

Completing this restorative rite is precisely the task of the shaman. As Joan Halifax explains in her book Shamanic Voices, "The shaman is a healed healer who has retrieved the broken pieces of his or her body and psyche and, through a personal rite of transformation, has integrated many planes of life experience: the body and the spirit, the ordinary and non-ordinary, the individual and the community, nature and supernature, the mythic and the historical, the past, the present and the future."

While writing an album reflecting on the wisdom he'd gained navigating a period of hardship, Halifax's message was the very guidance Hall needed. When it came time to title his record, Hall knew he wanted the album to share the same name as Halifax's book. He wrote to Halifax, who serves as the Abbot of Upaya Zen Center, requesting her permission to title his project The Fruitful Darkness. She gave him permission to use the title for his album, which echoes many of the book's themes in its lyrics. On the title track of the album, Hall sings:

The dark within my dark
Is where I found my light
The fruit became the doorway
And now it's open wide
The fruitful darkness
Is all around us

On "Arrows," the eighth track that Hall has released from The Fruitful Darkness, he sings:

The dark is all around me
But I'm so glad it found me

Hall has come to know the fruits of darkness well. In a recent interview Hall said, "It's been a journey to get to this point. The spiritual path is like a razor's edge. Every tradition says that -- Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Jewish. It's not a walk in the park."

Quantum Theory of Soul's Existence

In his book, "Biocentrism: How Life and Consciousness Are the Keys to Understanding the Nature of the Universe," Dr. Robert Lanza explains his new theory of biocentrism. Biocentrism teaches that life and consciousness are fundamental to the universe.  It is consciousness that creates the material universe, not the other way around.

The theory implies that death of consciousness simply does not exist. If the body generates consciousness, then consciousness dies when the body dies. But if the body receives consciousness in the same way that a radio tuner receives radio waves, then of course consciousness does not end at the death of the physical vehicle. In fact, consciousness exists outside of constraints of time and space. It is able to be anywhere: in the human body and outside of it. In other words, it is non-local in the same sense that quantum objects are non-local.

In support of Dr. Lanza's theory, two world-renowned quantum scientists claim they can prove the existence of the soul. American Dr. Stuart Hameroff and British physicist Sir Roger Penrose developed a quantum theory of consciousness asserting that our souls are contained inside structures called microtubules which live within our brain cells. Their idea stems from the notion of the brain as a biological computer, "with 100 billion neurons and their axonal firings and synaptic connections acting as information networks".

Dr. Hameroff and Sir Roger have been working on the theory since 1996. They argue that our experience of consciousness is the result of quantum gravity effects inside these microtubules -- a process they call orchestrated objective reduction (Orch-OR). In a near-death experience the microtubules lose their quantum state but the information within them is not destroyed. Or in layman's terms, the soul does not die but returns to the universe.

Dr. Hameroff explained the theory at length in the documentary "Through the Wormhole," which was recently aired in the US by the Science Channel. "Let's say the heart stops beating, the blood stops flowing, the microtubules lose their quantum state," Dr. Hameroff said. "The quantum information within the microtubules is not destroyed, it can't be destroyed, it just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If the patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says 'I had a near death experience'. In the event of the patient's death, it was possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body indefinitely -- as a soul."

This quantum theory of consciousness explains things like near-death experiences, astral projection, out of body experiences, and even reincarnation without needing to appeal to religious ideology. The energy of your consciousness potentially gets recycled back into a different body at some point, and in the mean time it exists outside of the physical body on some other level of reality, and possibly in another universe.