Feb 25, 2022
We talk about how to use the concept of "Shamanic Creativity" to free our imaginations and minds. Our guest is Evelyn Rysdyk.
You can find her book on the subject at Amazon: Shamanic Creativity: Free the Imagination with Rituals, Energy Work, and Spirit Journeying
Thanks Evelyn!
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TRANSCRIPT
Please note we do not guarantee 100% transcript accuracy. The below reflects a best effort. Thank you for your understanding.
Jim Harold 0:00
Fleeting glimpses of things seen through a veil darkly. Do we
understand the meaning of these visions of life? Why we are here
and how little of our existence we truly understand. Tonight we
will talk about these things on the other side. Welcome to the
Other Side. I am Jim Harold. So glad to be with you once again. I
think we're going to have a fun show today. And we're going to talk
about a new book just out called Shamanic Creativity: free the
imagination with rituals, energy work, and spirit journeying. And
our guest is the author of the book, Evelyn C. Rysdyk. She is an
internationally recognized shamanic practitioner, and author of
several books including The Norse Shaman, Spirit Walking, and the
Nepalese Shamanic Path. Along with her writing, she is an
impassioned teacher and a featured presenter for sounds true, the
shift network and other international and online programs. She
finds creative inspiration and renewal on the coast of Maine. And
you can find her website at EvelynRysdyk.com. Evelyn, welcome to
the show today.
Evelyn Rysdyk 1:14
Oh, good to be with you, Jim.
Jim Harold 1:17
So I, when we talk about the word, Shaman when that comes up, I
mean, it's such an evocative word that maybe people think about it
in different ways. How do you define shaman and in how do you
define shamanic practitioner?
Evelyn Rysdyk 1:38
So the shaman is the one who can expand their awareness, I don't
like to think of it as altered consciousness so much as stepping
into that larger sense of who we are. They've gained a facility in
being able to do that, for the purposes of initially solving the
problems of survival that were beyond the reach of our ordinary
senses. So I'll give you a great example. If you're a hunter
gatherer group, and you depended upon a migrating herd any
particular time of the year, you have 30 people roughly on foot,
old people, young people, and you have to intercept that herd. And
I learned when my partner and I went to visit the caribou migration
in Upper Canada. The people who sponsored the tour had had built
residences there so that you could stay for the week, and they had
everything all set up and the trip was canceled because the caribou
decided to go a different way. So now, if you have a helicopter,
and you have GPS and all those things as we do no problem, right?
But it would be a terrible problem in the past when we were hunter
gatherers. It's a, it's a natural ability, we all do it
spontaneously, we have those experiences where we perceive
something. Some people are seers. Some people are feelers, some
people have an auditory experience. But the one that got facile at
using that ability, became the summons just like the one who was
particularly good at making cordage was in charge of making snares
and nets. And the one that was really good at napping flint got the
job of making arrows and tools. So it's a natural human ability
that became a kind of technology through through practice, and it's
common around the globe. Not every place, certainly, but it's
pretty common because it has roots in our on our earlier past, the
earlier versions of us, let's put it that way. And as far as being
a practitioner, I don't call myself a shaman, because I think
that's reserved for people who are indigenous. So I'm a Western
practitioner, and I call myself a shamanic practitioner.
Jim Harold 3:58
And that makes sense. I'm glad. I'm glad you pointed that out. Now,
some people may look at this and say, Oh, shamanic creativity. I'm
not a shaman or shamanic practitioner. That seems like maybe that's
beyond me. Is this something that everybody can incorporate into
their lives?
Evelyn Rysdyk 4:16
Absolutely. I believe that every human being no matter what the
make and model, age, height, race, whatever. You were imbued with
onboard technology of creativity. It was passed to us from our
incredibly resourceful ancestors. And part of our problem in
Western culture is we tend to think of creativity in a very narrow
band. Usually, things like paintings and plays and operas and
pieces of music and what have you, poetry, because there's a whole
business involved with the assigning monetary value, shall we say,
to the byproducts of creative energy. And those objects, because
they have to, you know, they have great market value have been
swapped for what creativity actually is. So we tend to look at the
painting and go, Oh, that's, that's from a really creative person.
Well, it's, that's not true. It's somebody who has the same onboard
creative energy, and then worked really hard to gain technique to
be able to produce something. But that's not the creativity, the
creativity is the way our minds work, to solve problems to
innovate, to find solutions that are not readily available, yet, we
have those leaps of idea, you know, we have that flash of insight,
we have that spontaneous, you know, I think I could build a better
mousetrap, you know, all those wonderful entrepreneurial creators
that are out there. Now, you know, you can fund their projects with
Kickstarter, they, they have that idea in their head that there is
a better way to do this. And then they go about the search, and
playing with ideas until they come up with a solution to the
problem. And that's really part of all of us. So if you combine
what is an onboard technology of your creativity, with your
capacity, every human being has the capacity to expand their
awareness. What you wind up with, is not only an enhancement of
your everyday creativity, it's excuse me, it changes how your brain
is wired. So I complained a little bit about that. Go ahead.
Jim Harold 6:50
Go ahead. (overlapping speech) No, no, I said, go ahead. Explain a
little bit about that, please.
Evelyn Rysdyk 6:56
We're on the phone, we can't see one another. So we, we have this
expression in the culture about being either right brained or left
brained. And the bucket that we call right brain is our spacious,
nonlinear mind. It's the part of us that is online, in our dreams.
It's the part of us that's online, in that liminal state just
before sleep or just after waking up, but you're not fully awake
yet. It's a state that you can access through shamanic journeying,
certainly. But there are other ways that people have spontaneous
experiences of that more expansive sense of who you are. Certainly
all those who all of us that experimented with different substances
several decades ago in the 60s, and now that's all coming back in
medicine, believe it or not, that expansiveness where you feel
connected to everything, you have a sense of yourself existing, not
only filling your body, but extending beyond the limits of your
body. That brain state is parallel, I think, to when you're in the
creative, when you're in a creative activity, when your mind is
working in that way. That aspect of us, what we have termed the
right brain is essential. Because it's a much better innovator than
our linear brain, the way we were taught in school, we memorize
states and capitals, and learn how to do arithmetic and all those
things that are linear tasks. And we kind of made that part of our
brain a little, maybe a little too muscular, a little too much on
that side of our brain. It's a great implementer. But it's a
terrible, innovator.
Jim Harold 8:49
Interesting, interesting.
Evelyn Rysdyk 8:51
If we step into that other part of who we are, we then have the
best of both worlds. We have the one that's coming up with ideas,
and then we still have that healthy part of our left hemisphere,
that linear brain that can then follow the steps to accomplish
it.
Jim Harold 9:11
Now, here's something I'm curious about. And I've always wondered
about this. I've had my personal theory, but I'd like to get your
far more erudite thoughts on it. It seems to me that, for lack of a
better phrase, there's kind of a creative field that we can all tap
into. For example, I'll give you a perfect example of what I mean
by this. If you look at maybe particular inventions that came
around before the era of instant communication on the internet,
you'll find that many times scientists across the world that had no
knowledge of each other were working on exactly the same ideas at
the same time. Television I think is one that comes to mind. Other
things are when you have a songwriter who maybe has like their
their let's say it's a, pop songwriter. And they have the biggest
hit of their career. Like it's a song everybody knows. And they'll
say something like, that was the easiest song I ever wrote, it took
me 15 minutes on the back of a paper bag. And it's what they're
going to, you know, it's going to be in their obituaries, like the
lead thing that they did in their life. And it seems to me when you
hear these things, and then people will literally say, I don't know
where the idea came from. Where do those ideas come from?
Evelyn Rysdyk 10:31
I think you're really on the right track here, for sure. There is
this, because we're all wired as a species, we interact with each
other all the time in the non local field. There's all kinds of
research being done now about our emotional states, and how my
emotional state can affect other people at a distance. The
Institute of Heart Math has a whole body of information on that. So
I believe there is a larger kind of consciousness for our species.
And within that, we share information. They, it may not be
conscious always. But it's there nonetheless. With certain
inventions, say television is a great example. I think a lot of
people saw the need for visuals. How can we come up with a way to
not just hear one another on the radio, but how can we present
imagery, we're missing imagery and as a primarily visual species,
it makes sense. The same thing with songs where it's sort of in, in
the ethers, as we say, of our consciousness, and it's, and it's
like whoever radio happens to be on first, how it comes from them.
So there's this beautiful interaction, we have our individual
selves, which we love to cling to, here in the United States, our
rugged individuality. But then we have this other aspect of us to
steal the name of your show the other side of us, that is wired, in
a extraordinary way to each other. And we can go beyond that and
understand that there's also a consciousness of the the earth as a
whole, all the organisms together having some sense of a unified
consciousness that we can tap into. Because on some level, we we
are like living on a terrarium, you know, everything is an enclosed
system. And within that closed system, all the different species
interact with one another to make life possible. You know, the ones
that are giving off oxygen, the plants and the trees, the ones that
take in oxygen, all of this and beautiful harmony, as long as we
don't screw it up any further. So that sense of connection is
something that we are starting to relearn. I think our deep
ancestors understood that, they practiced what we now call animism,
where they had the understanding that everything around them even
landscape features were alive, that they had a sentience that we
would call a spirit. And that you could interact with those
spirits, the forces of nature as well, the lightning, the thunder,
the rain, all of that was alive. In so in our time now, in the 2022
year here, we have this growing awakening of our interconnection,
the fact that we are not just connected as a species, but connected
to all other species on the earth. That sense of interconnection
is, I think, essential as with creativity, those two things are
essential in helping us to come together as as close to being a
unified species as is possible. To solve the big problems that we
have to solve. We have enormous problems to solve, because now
we're jeopardizing our closed system. So we need all of the
creativity, all of that all of those fired up minds, you know, we
think about the way they've been able to chain together,
electronically chained together computers to make supercomputers.
Sure, why do you have a bunch of computers around the planet that
are all working in unison? Imagine if there were 8 billion of us
because we're getting close to 8 billion that understood that we
were connected and could be that creative force that we need to
sort of think of us as this. You know, 8 Billion Strong
supercomputer that is not only serve the brainpower, but also has
compassion that also looks at at the world with gratitude. I mean,
I think we're moving in that direction, because there's really no
other place for us to go. That's going to work.
Jim Harold 15:16
Well, it's interesting. We're all in. We're all now in the same
boat, even though we don't realize it. We're poking holes in it.
And, and we don't realize it. We're all we're all in this thing
together, whether we like it or not. In the book, you have a
chapter it's called shamanic journeying to the lower and upper
worlds. Could you talk to us about that, what the lower and upper
worlds are and how we go about journeying to them?
Evelyn Rysdyk 15:47
Well, the idea of a low world, middle world and upper world are
ways that we can translate that which is formless, into something
that we understand. Our minds have been wired for the three
dimensional world, we, we understand that. And we move through that
world. Now when you step into what is essentially a non physical,
I'll use the word landscape, I'm making air quotes. But of course,
you can't see those on the phones. When you move into a place that
does not have that three dimensional feeling, we, our minds can
work in synergy with the invisible world to create some kind of
template to help us move our consciousness to that expanded state.
So in journeys, whether they're done with a repetitive stimulus of
some kind, drumming, rattling, chanting, repetitive dancing, or
through using an entheogen, when we step into that state, we are
making that transition in some ways from imagine walking from the
left hemisphere across the corpus callosum, that bundle of fibers
that unites the two hemispheres of our brain and going over to the
right side. That is, what you're engaged in doing. But you have to
have some kind of metaphoric translation device, so that the mind
which has this structure of three dimensional world, to be able to
follow along. So in a typical journey, you would start in place
that is familiar, you would use whatever tool you're using to
expand your consciousness, whether it be drumming, rattling,
chanting, whatever it might be. And you would follow the idea that
you are moving through a landscape to somewhere else. And somewhere
else, is typically described as having levels, you know, think you
know, you can get certain things on certain levels. I think of
that, I think of that, in some ways as also experiences of our, of
our moving to a more and more expanded experience of the world. So
you're kind of moving through imagine that there spheres, like the
Ukrainian nesting dolls, where there's a little doll in the middle,
and then it's number one around that that's a little bigger,
another one around that that's a little bigger, and you're making
that transition from where we are in that in that small doll, out
through the layers and out to what is perceived as different realms
to receive insight, guidance, healing, support for whatever it is
that's coming up in your life. I hope that explains it a little bit
better
Jim Harold 18:47
That certainly does explain it, that certainly does explain it.
And, you know, this is, is this something that people can build to,
you know, maybe jumping in with both feet sounds kind of
intimidating is something people can start with baby steps, and
what would those baby steps be?
Evelyn Rysdyk 19:07
I like to say to him that we sliced the Bologna in our culture ever
sooner, and we tend to differentiate all these things very, very,
very, you know, we we say, well, it's imagination. Well, it's
dreams. Well, you know, these are all separate things. Our
ancestors didn't think that way. So we are stepping into that state
all the time. We step into that expanded state when you drove home
and had no awareness of how you got home, which we have all
done.
Jim Harold 19:37
Right? Like, it's scary actually.
Evelyn Rysdyk 19:41
Yeah, it is scary. But we were in in that expanded state not paying
attention here to the earth plane. Now, I don't recommend that is a
habit, but it happens spontaneously. When we have those kind of
flash daydreams where you have an insight you've been working on a
problem, working on a problem, and you sort of set it aside, you're
doing something else, and you have this moment of reverie, you are
stepping into that other kind of experience itself. So it's, it's
not so foreign. It's about learning to do it intentionally. And we
get good at things when we practice.
Jim Harold 20:20
Yeah, that's, that's true. That's true. And you do things that you
don't even realize, you know, whether it's, you know, and I've got
a long way to go. But I've been podcasting for 17 years. So things
I used to think about consciously, just kind of happen. And you
don't even you don't even realize you're doing it. Now, there's an
old saying out there, and I've heard multiple scientists say it's a
myth that we only use 10% of our brain. But do you think that we
only let's put it a different way? We only tap into a small piece
of our potential?
Evelyn Rysdyk 20:56
Oh, I absolutely believe that. Absolutely. And I think that's why
we, we tend to culturally deify people who express themselves in
extraordinary ways. So talk about somebody who's very good at their
creativity, you know, they have honed their skills, that they
produce beautiful work, or they're particularly brilliant
scientists, like where did that come from? We all have those
capabilities. That because we're mostly in our linear brain, you
know, we go to work, we come home, if you if you're leaving the
house, you you know, you have a list of things that you have to do
most of the stuff that you do every week, you're in that kind of
rat race, for lack of a better word, where you're, you're following
the steps that are already preset for you in life. And I think
that's part of the source of so much depression and anxiety,
because that is really soul deadening. You know, if you're doing
that every single week of your life looks the same. You are not
living like our deep ancestors did. Now, granted, there's probably
a lot more hair raising than ours are. But we limit ourselves for
the illusion of safety. We limit ourselves to think if I have a
plan, and I follow these steps, everything's going to work out and
then we're horrified and you know, really rocked back in our chair
if an unexpected event comes.
Jim Harold 22:37
You know, that's so true. I just want to interject that is so true.
Because I'll give you a perfect example. I worked for years in the
media. And, you know, I always thought, well, if I go out on my own
and do my own thing, you know, that's so risky. That's so risky.
But I can't tell you how many people that I worked with, who, you
know, some bean counter in New York, you know, the local management
may have loved them, but some bean counter in New York said, ah,
they make too much money. There you go. And they supposedly have
this secure situation. The truth is, you know, I'm talking about
professionally. There's a lot of, it's not like the old days in
America, where you work for a company and you got the gold watch
and whatever. Now you can be tossed out like yesterday's garbage at
any, any point. And I think that's a lot of the reason we're seeing
what we're seeing now with people saying, hey, you know what, I'm a
free agent. I'm gonna do what's right for me, because corporate
America is not gonna look out for me. But there's always was this
illusion. And remember, when I started podcasting full time, 10
years ago, and people kind of looked at me and said, Oh, that's
risky. Oooh. What are you doing? That's risky. You've got a wife
and two kids and a mortgage. And I'm like, Yeah, that's risky. And
so I was going to work every day, I could get hit by a car, I could
get in a car accident, I could get fired. You know, and if this
doesn't work, I'll just go out and I'll find a job somewhere. You
know, I think sometimes we live in cages of our own building. Not
I'm not saying all the time. I mean, sometimes things are tough.
And in you have reasons you can't step out on faith, I guess. But I
think sometimes we build our own cages.
Evelyn Rysdyk 24:26
Oh, I absolutely agree. And that quest for safety means you're
surrendering away a part of yourself. And I think that's what
people don't yet understand. I mean, you kind of get it in the
swapping paycheck for time model, right? But there's more than
that, because you're not able to really be all of who you are. You
have to stay particularly in corporate America, you have to stay in
the box. And I have to say years ago, I was in corporate America, I
worked in advertising years ago. And there was no, you know, you
had to sell things that you didn't really believe in, you had to be
a corporate person, which is, which is a thing of corporate first.
And, you know, some part of us gets traded away for that, for the
idea that, Oh, I'm going to get a raise this year, and this and
that. And when I, when I quit, I quit with no net, probably the
same way you did. over 30 years ago, now. Instead, I can't do this
anymore. I have to do something else. And I moved away. I'm
originally from downstate New York. And on on Long Island, close to
the Queen's border. And I knew that this was killing me. It was
literally killing me because I could feel myself diminishing,
having no time for life, because I spent most of my time engaged in
the workplace work that was not fulfilling. And so like, I bailed
with no net. And here, now I'm sitting in the front room of a house
that we bought, Gosh, 29 years ago, 30 years ago, I guess. And the
sun is shining. And I've been able to make a decent life for myself
that feels good, that I feel enriched, that I enjoy getting up in
the morning. And I never know, what is going to come next is going
to be a project like talking to you on the phone, or is it going to
be a new book project? Or am I going to be working with a group or
whatever it might be? It's always fresh. I'm never doing the same
thing that I did the day before. And that is, yes, it's sometimes
hair raising? Of course it is. But I'd rather have the bit of hair
raising and go to sleep at night going, Oh, this was such a good
day.
Jim Harold 27:14
Yes, I couldn't. I couldn't agree more. A lot of what you just said
resonated with me. And my story is, although it's only 10 years for
me, but I know exactly where you're you're coming from. Now. I'm
one thing and I know that I had to fight it through life. And still
I think guys still sometimes have to fight it. But I've gotten a
lot better, is negative self talk. So for example, my dad, who was
thankfully still with us, he's in his 80s, but he's doing well. But
he was always the eternal pessimist. You know, he, and he still is.
And he was a steel worker working class family. I was the first one
of their immediate family. To go to college. I think I think a
couple generations back I had an uncle who was a teacher who went
to college, but of my group, I was the first one. And it was always
well, you can rise so far. But you you know, you don't know people.
So you can't do this. And you can't do that. And you can't do this.
Oh, you better not do that. That's risky. He'll still call me.
He'll still tell me. You know, your mom didn't think it was a very
good idea when you when you went out on your own and started
working for yourself and doing these podcasts. And I feel like
saying mom wherever you are, you were wrong. (laughs) But but the
point being, how, even though scripts today sometimes will pop up
like oh, well, you know, you don't know the right people. Maybe you
won't be you know, how do you how do you fight that?
Evelyn Rysdyk 28:47
Well, you know, what I learned from the tribal shaman that I
studied with is shamans spend the lion's share of their time doing
ceremony of gratitude. So they make offerings to the spirits. They
put offerings out on the land, they do ceremonies that that are
about honoring the, the landscape and the animals and the the
seasons or everything about life gets honored. And the Nepalese
Jhākri, which is their word, one of their words for shaman that is
a friend of mine, I mean, he has different actions that he can take
each day based on all the different spirits that he works with. So
that action is so critical to shamanic practitioners, to tribal
shamans, because it puts not only the world in balance, but it puts
us in balance. So when we are feeling gratitude, or appreciation,
or love or compassion, they all have the same effect on our
physical body. It is the stress reliever. So your respiration comes
down, your heart rate comes down, the hormone of well being DHEA
goes up, cortisol and adrenaline go down. And uniquely, in every
one of our cells, our DNA molecule actually relaxes into its
perfect conformation. What has come out recently in the last 1010
to 20 years, is that the actual shape of the folded molecule, you
know that a misfolded protein, for instance, can cause disease.
When the, when the DNA is a wound tighter onto itself impairs its
ability to do its job. And DNA is responsible for cellular repair,
it's responsible for basically keeping everything in giving the
master instructions for keeping us motoring along you know, to to
have your cells behaving correctly to have your entire system
working correctly, is still has a place in the DNA through the
epigenetic field, all the things that impact our genetic code. And
it's no wonder we have so much stress related disease, because we
are not doing like our ancestors did, who honored everybody,
including the ancestors like your, like your mom, you were just
talking about. They honor them, because they understood that they
were part of life. They were part of us being here now, as are all
the aspects of nature, they're responsible for helping us to be
alive. So that use of gratitude. And I think it's easier for us, at
least in this culture to remember something that we're grateful for
until we have those feelings again. Because we confuse love with
lust and codependence and and we're not quite sure about compassion
is that empathy is that sympathy, you know, we kind of get that all
confused. But we all have the feeling when you're really grateful
for something.
Jim Harold 32:19
And I would say (overlapping speech) Go ahead. No, I was just
thinking, everyone listening to the sound of our voices, I think
has a great deal to be thankful for just the ability to not saying
that my shows are great or anything, but to listen to something
like this a presentation like this means that you have a certain
amount of wealth, and you may not look at it that way. But compared
to many people who may not have access to technology and things and
that's that in of itself is something to be grateful for, not
saying that people that don't have that access are lesser or
anything like that. I'm not suggesting that. But I'm suggesting
that even by the act of being able to listen to this show, whether
you have the brand new iPhone, or you have the the bargain
basement, you know, the 10 year old phone, that you're listening to
this or computer regardless, you have access to something that, you
know, people throughout history never had access to, to look up the
world's information and that alone and being able to have access to
something like that is something to be grateful for.
Evelyn Rysdyk 33:31
Absolutely. And the fact that you woke up this morning, I'm of a
certain age...
Jim Harold 33:35
Absolutely, that's right. But you know, that's the that's the thing
people think, though, but I know plenty of people who have passed
very, very young, we assume that just because we're X age that
we're gonna wake up tomorrow, I was just reading an article about
people who have sudden death at night. And then and then it gets,
you know, as you said, it gets scarier the older you get. And yeah,
exactly. It's a what is it? It's better to be seen than to be
viewed.
Evelyn Rysdyk 34:07
Yes, exactly. It's like a friend that used to say, Ah, it's a good
day, I woke up on the right side of Assad.
Jim Harold 34:14
Exactly. I love it. And as we close out, and I'm going to give you
an opportunity to tell people where to find the book and your
website, and so forth. But before we do that last piece of wisdom
that you'd like to share with everybody listening, you'd like to
have them, have them be aware of it and think about a little
bit.
Evelyn Rysdyk 34:34
I want to give you an anecdote to think about: when you feel your
most limited. When you feel as though you're sort of hanging by the
rope that you've tied a knot in and you're at the end of it, to
remember that you have extraordinary capacities that if you choose
to open them up, will transform your life in amazing ways. Part of
your onboard technology. It's a little like getting a car and not
deciding to turn on the air conditioner. Use all of who you are.
Explore the breadth and depth of yourself as a human being, because
you, are you. Because you are unique, you're extraordinary. And you
have something to provide our wonderful collective. It may seem
small to you, but all those little small things like all the little
small plants that provide food and oxygen for us, are not to be
taken lightly. Step into your fullness because it's fun in
here.
Jim Harold 35:40
There you go. There you go. Well, Evelyn, where can people find the
book and also more information about everything you do?
Evelyn Rysdyk 35:48
The book is available everywhere you can find books, you if you're
an online person, you can use Amazon or Barnes and Noble, but your
local bookstore probably has it as well. And if not, they can order
it for you. And I like to promote independent bookstores. If you
have one. Go and buy the book from them. It might cost you a buck
or two more than Amazon, but you're keeping a family together by
doing that. And as far as websites, go to my bigger website, which
is spiritpassages.com. That's where you'll find things about my
classes and articles and probably a recording of this podcast, if I
put it up.
Jim Harold 36:30
There you go. Well, the book is shamanic creativity, free the
imagination with rituals, energy work and spirit journeying and we
just scratched the surface of do check it out. Our guest has been
Evelyn Rysdyk. Evelyn, thank you for joining us today. It's been a
lot of fun.
Evelyn Rysdyk 36:50
Oh, thanks a lot, Jim. It's been a blast.
Jim Harold 36:53
Thank you for tuning in to the other side and we will talk to you
next time. Have a great week everybody. Bye bye.