A Kind of Reasonable Ambiguity

The gentle push or gigantic shove towards an Earth-centered, or in some ways a shamanic consciousness seems a particular art of the storyteller or musician. The riddle, a drumbeat, or the logically unaccountable and ambiguous sequence of words in a hypnotic confusion induction all propel one towards a loosening of our ordinary world hold, and the potential to enter the non-ordinary world unconstrained by the ‘rules’ of unquestioned, ordinary thinking.

The Zen koan, for instance, has the effect of forcing the meditator into a realm where ordinary ways of thought and conceptualization are insufficient. The drumbeat induces through brain-wave entrainment and focus (thereby limiting the effects of ordinary reality distractions) a freedom to move into the non-ordinary consciousness. A confusion induction is a hypnotic tool utilizing, for example, the inappropriateness of words, perhaps out of order, that present an element of confusion that beckon the brain to ‘give up’ in ordinary mentation and enter a hypnotic state. Since the world in which one lives is seen, grasped and understood as a consequence of our consciousness of it, the effect of such techniques is that one is propelled into another ‘world.’

There is a deep and ancient relationship between shamanic consciousness and the realm of twilight, the time of dusk or dawn. This is sometimes known as the ‘betwixt and between,’ the world in transition between the ‘is’ and the ‘not is.’ This is a Celtic shamanic practice, where in nature, non-ordinary consciousness of ‘another world’ has been found for millennia in areas where elements of nature come together, places like the constant back and forth flow between the land and sea, or the intermediate zone between day and night. In terms of pure consciousness practices, this realm is also mentally found in the midst of an ‘impossible’ (in ordinary thinking) confrontation imposed by the koan, a classic Buddhist riddle that forces the meditator to dwell between an ‘is’ and a ‘not is.’

The shaman and the Zen master are both comfortable in multiple constructions of reality. These are ones who navigate different realms of reality and successfully incorporate them all.

They have arrived at a kind of reasonable ambiguity.