Articles and Poems
The following articles and poems are all by Dr. Steve Serr. They are copyrighted, but are yours to read and share so long as they are not used for economic gain. If you wish to use any of these articles or poems in book, magazine, journal or any other publication form either online or in print, please contact Steve for rights and use directly at drserr@shamanism-101.com . Thank you! Accounts of Intense Impact in Shamanic Experience “…it was around the winter solstice. I had mentioned to you I was going to hold a fire ceremony in the mountains during the eclipse and I did that. At 10,000 feet (of elevation) on winter solstice in Colorado the elements can be bitterly adverse. I had set my intent and was prepared for whatever the night would have to offer...” (to read further, follow this link) Before memories were born, when the frothy sea held only dragons, did I feel you swimming near me, in silence beneath the waves?
To Dance Around the Fire: 
A Sacred Earth Once Again 
The Earth was once admired, even worshiped, though human sensitivity has become distanced from our Earth and its natural forces. As a consequence, we have become distanced from the emotional and psychological wisdom and healing our Earth offers. With the myth of ‘progress’ and civilization, human-Earth relations are being lost. The loss of this intimate relationship is the core of what is becoming the single most toxic source of human and Earth problems.
In pre-history, shamanism ‘sprouted’ among people living in an intimate relationship with the Earth. Today, we most commonly know of shamanism...
(To read the full article follow this link.)
Recognition
Having Strayed
from the Garden of EdenIt is so hard for humanity to perceive itself as a part of Gaia. We see ourselves, by and large, as separate: walking across the Earth or flying through its air as if we were somehow just visiting. Indeed we generally think of ourselves as ‘showing up’ on the Earth when we are conceived (or in a more superficial way when we are born), and ‘departing’ when we die, all of which of course forces a metaphysically necessary religious proposal of souls, perhaps separating from the body at ‘death’, and inhabiting somewhere else, forever, or for awhile... (follow this link to read the rest of the article)
Imagine
Adults are often chided by other adults for behaving like children when they are given to imagination. Reality, it is said, is real, not imaginary. This is really quite humorous, because as it turns out, it is impossible to be an adult viewing reality from anything except an imagination! If we have different conceptions of reality it is because our ideas filter and sort the reality that we claim to see...
(follow this link to read the rest of the article)
Green Politics and Religion
The color ‘green’ has entered our economic, political and social color spectrum. Pressures for change in how we treat our world have begun to cast a decidedly green hue towards areas like industry and politics, and even into our day-to-day world. In the economic sphere, environmental constraints are being levied on industries; in the political sphere, politicians occasionally promote environmental protection (when it serves their constituency). In the social sphere? Well, I now keep a reusable bag to take with me into the grocery store in the pickup, and I am not alone in this.
However, it occurred to me that although I have heard about green economics and green politics, I haven’t heard much about green religion, at least explicitly.
(follow this link to the rest of the article)
Sweet Potato PieMy, my, sweet potato pie...
I bare my back beneath the sky,
and gladly grasp this ancient plow
to till the hungry soil...
(follow this link to the full poem)
Responsibility:Meditations Following
the BP oil disaster
in the Gulf of Mexico
We sit here, reflecting on ourselves, on the sun that came up this morning, on the lilies in the meadow, on the words on the computer screen about an oil rig that exploded and fell apart, trying to wonder through the manner in which things like this come into being. Unlike mayflies, who live for a day, we humans have on the average around 29 thousand days in which to take in the world around us. Unlike mayflies, we have a brain with innumerable neurons connecting in innumerable ways to innumerable others, capable of absorbing, contemplating, and reflecting on this world. Yet unlike any other creature, great or small on this planet, we have laid waste without equal.
It takes a glaring event to capture the vision of the news media, to funnel it through all the routes of economics, logistics and technology to our door. It takes a gush of oil, pocked deep beneath the ocean floor, pierced by human capability, to wash up across our southern shores as it drapes a mantle of death and plants seeds of ongoing death in the decades ahead. It takes an enormous disaster of human creation to capture the interest of our media, which then is sent through the circuitous routes of information technology to land before us, giving us pause to reflect...
(follow this link to the rest of the article)
A Vertical Perspective:
And the Problem of Human Identity
You know, we humans have a vertical perspective. Well, of course, you say. Yet I still find it curious how the stuff right in front of our faces can be hard to see.
All this goes back to a ‘gnawing something’ that has been digging into my forebrain for years, gradually expanding into a very different way of looking at our species, and our world, than I had before. You see, I grew up as so many of us humans do, in a culture imbued to the core with a broadly held ‘gestalt’.
This was a gestalt that I took for granted as a youth who awkwardly groped through his upbringing and human enculturation. I was human, and trees were different. Trees were part of the landscape, but less on the scale of the order of things than animals. There was me, then our household pets, then the animals outside in the wild, then the trees, then little plants, ending up with bugs... (follow this link to the rest of the article)