To set the stage for this conversation, let me share with you a phrase that was ‘downloaded’ to me nearly a decade ago. In 1998, as I was teaching a group of students the techniques for attaining the shaman’s state of awareness, I found myself using the term ‘luminous awareness’ to describe the state of consciousness the students were striving to master. As a shaman, I accepted the download as a gift from the powers that work through me, and I’ve used it ever since in the trainings.

Many teachers and practitioners of shamanic and visionary arts speak of the energy body or the luminous body in which the physical body resides. The particular awareness that is based in that energetic, or luminous, part of our structure is what I call ‘luminous awareness’. 

The word luminous is used not only because that ‘body’ emits light (photons), but also because it is made of light. The term ‘luminous awareness’ recognizes the fact that the unique sensing ability of the shaman rises from his conscious perception of energies (including those at the frequencies of light) as they enter his luminous architecture and are recorded by his sensory systems. Both the luminous body and luminous awareness are what we call non-personal, meaning they do not arise from the ego structure or the personality. Because of its non-personal nature, the luminous is free of assumption, judgment, and other personal limitations and demands. The luminous is free to perceive and speak what is actually so, moment to moment. [The full technology behind these phenomena is explained in detail in the first level of the Shaman’s Light training program.]

Shamanic work of its nature is luminous – it must be carried out in luminous awareness. The actual technology underlying all shamanic work is based on this conscious, direct awareness of the behaviors of all energies. If we were to take a stroll through the great traditions of conscious human development and evolution we would find, over and over, references to light, to the light of consciousness, the light of insight, the light of awareness and creation. It is a unique ability that humans have been gifted, to be able to perceive, solely through sensing, the energies that give rise to our world, and to allow that sensory experience to generate powerful, image-based language that returns us, fully awake, to the knowledge of who we truly are.

Now let’s enter the conversation together, with these few comments as our context, holding a shaman’s understanding of luminous awareness.

As our culture becomes more and more information-laden, our word-based language is becoming increasingly empty. It is becoming rare that we feel what is spoken, and we are tending toward an understanding of language that is based on assumption – our own personal assumptions of what words mean, and our own personal assumptions of the contexts that create those meanings. In ordinary states of awareness we are usually so focused on ourselves that the context of our personal experience supplies our only understanding of the world around us.

Context creates meaning. For the shaman, who works in service to the greater good, the personal cannot be the context that generates meaning. In mastering the shaman’s awareness – luminous awareness – your context shifts from you to your environment, or to the situation you are working with as a shaman and visionary. You, personally, are no longer the arbiter of meaning.

In luminous awareness, your perception is no longer ‘I’-based, meaning you have released your ordinary mind and your ego’s attachments are no longer defining your experience. In luminous awareness, the shaman knows that there is a ‘self’ for him, but he is neither focused on ‘self’ nor working through it. He is working through a greater part of his conscious being, his energetic structure and the non-personal, luminous awareness that is seated there.

In mastering luminous awareness your ‘language’ shifts from words to sensory experience – to color and texture, sight and sound, scent and taste. Different parts of your structure take the lead, parts of you that don’t use the language of words, but the language of the senses. The shaman lives in a world of sensory knowledge, and the speed at which shamans seem to know and understand things reflects the speed at which your sensing systems actually work. The trick, and the difficulty, is to activate an awareness that is not driven or defined by the word-dependent personal. This is the skill of the shaman.

Let’s consider words for a moment. We take for granted that we use words to communicate. We know how a great word revives our feeling experience, and brings the imagination alive, the curiosity out of hiding, and passion to the fore. One of the most marvelous features of the human nervous system is that incoming sensory data provides the basic neuronal building blocks for the generation of words, understanding, and speech. In luminous awareness the shaman uses the power of direct sensory experience to understand what is so, and then allows that same direct experience to generate language. He does not think up prescriptions or interpretations with his ordinary mind.

Great understanding, and great language that expresses understanding, are both products of full, conscious sensing. Our own poetic tradition, a large part of our Western European shamanic tradition, is a result of our skillful sensing awareness. Our patterns of cognition are embedded in the poetry, eddas, and odes of our ancestors, and the ancestral lineages provide a great source of experiential wisdom. We return to their language, using poetry and metaphor as tools in the training, because they were closer to the magic than we are today. We are seeking conscious connection to a realm of ultimate wisdom, the source of all we long for, and we will need to know the languages – some word-based, others feeling-based, still others purely energy-based.

Wittgenstein said that we cannot know or connect to any world for which we do not have the language. To enter the conversation of the shaman’s consciousness, we will need the language of sensory-based awareness.

It is vital that we be clear in shamanic work. In true luminous awareness we will have no misunderstandings – in the shaman’s awareness we do not interpret because our information is received directly into our awake sensing centers. It does not go to the personal mind for interpretation. The shaman’s awareness maintains a clear connection to the context of each situation, giving him awareness of the meaning that is pertinent to that situation.

In the training we begin with simple awareness work, waking up our physical senses and quieting our ordinary minds. But we do not empty out; we fill our awareness with sensing experience of the 'other'. We learn to focus on the other, not on self. At this point we can begin waking up our most powerful receiver and sender, our own luminous architecture. Then we are ready to proceed into more technical (you can read that as more powerful and magical) realms of shamanic expertise.

Copyright Marti Spiegelman, MFA, 2007

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I was working on a horse that had not responded to veterinary medicine. As I was doing a divination, the horse began to heal. I saw it, and everyone else saw it too. In that moment, I understood how the training with Marti had tuned me so this healing could happen. The work is powerful, and I am so grateful to Marti for her vision and mentoring.

– Ellen Bachmeyer, LMT, LCSW, and initiated shaman, Florida

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Copyright Marti Spiegelman, MFA, 2007