Resistance to Change: In my role as an Australian shaman and life coach I am inspired by the infinite potential for human growth, development and understanding. Often however, I find that individuals who contact me hoping to change their life so that they can embrace a spiritual purpose and meaning are stalled in stagnant pools of fear and doubt!

Because the metaphysical principals of shamanic thought are not part of our main stream Australian culture many people resist taking the necessary steps that will eventually lead them to understanding the universal peace of mind, freedom, happiness and wellbeing that has been experienced by cultures steeped in shamanic traditions for thousands of years.

Resistance to growth, development and understanding is not limited to one section of our community or another. It ranges from the very tip of our community and spiritual leadership to the well meaning spiritual teacher or student who finds the comfort and security of their familiar belief, modality or practice impossible to alter or change.

The resistance to change is not uncommon in everything we do as human beings. Most people prefer to follow familiar patterns in their work, home and family life. It is often much easier to go with the flow of other peoples demands and expectations than rock the boat and cause a disturbance. Even our national education system is inflexible and grounded in patterns of teaching and learning that will suite some students, some of the time, but by its very nature will never suite everyone.

Currently there is a widening gap in Australian spiritual teaching that fails to address our natural universal connection to the environment we live in, and rely on, to provide our daily needs. This gap continues to expand because of an education system that promotes the belief we are all individuals separated from the air, water, plants, animals, land and each other.

The separate nature of self does not provide the necessary common ground or metaphysical framework from which we can learn to act, think or create as one wholistic life force energy.

Human ego creates the possibility of separation of individual self from the whole. It has been the challenge of the greatest spiritual teachers of all time to help us understand the traps and pitfalls of ego thinking and to help us discover our true spiritual purpose and meaning for human life on earth. They have been successful to one degree or another but the challenge to understand the traps and pitfalls of  human ego thinking is far from over.

Imagine that you are nothing more or less than the thoughts you allow yourself to have.

Shamanic thinking allows you to become an integrated part of the whole human experience.

A shaman perceives common ground in all things. No room for ego there. In shamanic thought there is no separation in creation. To clarify this point, shamanic thought perceives the energy of the human life force as an evolving experience. This means that from first to the last, the human experience is a cumulative experience that is occurring over millennia and connected metaphysically by what world renown psychoanalyst and shamanic researcher C.G. Jung  regarded as the collective unconscious.

Human thought naturally collects everything outside of its personal ego need into subjective groups. We do not individualise each person in other countries. We do not individualise every tree or creature in the sea, but we individualise to the point of specific details the occurrences in our own daily lives. The ego fills us with an inflated sense of self importance for survival reasons that when checked and measured against the reality of all that has occurred to this point in time, makes the individual thinker no more relevant than a single drop of water to all of the oceans on Earth.

When individual human thought is given space to evolve and include the notion of our collective human unconscious as being the key to a doorway that awakens universal shamanic understanding, the purpose and meaning of human life on Earth takes on a grander perspective in the reality of our infinite potential for human growth, development and understanding. Peace to all Darren John Maxwell Australian Shaman