Learning Primitive Skills and Shamanic Meditation

As a teenager, I became really interested in Native American survival skills and shamanic practices. I had read all of Tom Brown Jr.’s books, about his experience of being trained by an Apache American named Stalking Wolf, in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.

I took three workshops with Tom Brown, at age 17, 18 and 19. In my first class, we learned the basic survival skills, like how to make fire with a bow drill, how to build a debri hut to sleep in and stay warm in the woods (without a tent or sleeping bag), and how to track animals - our final test included tracking mice over gravel - to do that you have to learn to expand your normal use of awareness and allow more information to come in, that we normally overlook. I think this was the best experience I could have had, as I was (technically) becoming an adult - I had my 18th birthday at Tom’s wilderness survival school.

These one week workshops were very profound for me, especially the last two shamanic courses, where we learned a particular meditation that was a process of moving into the Spirit World - which perhaps would be called the Astral Realm by modern day people. Based on what I learned with Tom, there are many layers to the Astral Realm, depending on the level of consciousness a person is at. In the lower Astral levels, the souls are quite unconscious and very stuck. They are basically bumbling idiots, wandering, lost and unaware of anything except whatever small perception of what is directly around them. Their minds and hearts are very dark and closed. But there are 13 levels, that I was made aware of. And there is a level in the astral realm that is designated for demonic beings. We were shown that level, as a warning. The message from Tom was that playing around in the astral realm can be dangerous, so don’t play around for your ego. You need to move around in the astral realm only with the guidance of God. There needs to be a Divine purpose to what you’re doing.

In the most conscious realms, the souls are full of Light and Presence. They can materialize in a physical body and dematerialize at will. The spectrum between the lower astral and the most conscious levels is vast. We have much evolution available to us here on Earth, if we consciously choose.

I always felt such a strong connection the Native people of the Americas. So, learning with Tom was a very natural attraction for me.

I wonder if we will return more the simple lifestyle of the indigenous people of the world, as the "advanced" and "civilized" societies don't seen to be able to create greater happiness or contentment for us humans. We appear to have become less at peace, less content the more stimuli we have available to us. The more distractions, the more split we are. We have lost our connection to the Earth and to those even in the same space that we occupy. I see humanity returning in many ways to our roots.

What do you think? Would returning to simpler ways of living be a positive thing, or not so much?