I’m still groggy so I don’t know if I will find anything to write about this morning. I would spend this waking up time reading, but I don’t have any good books right now. Collin was home sick on Thursday and Friday so I didn’t get to the library this week.

I have one book here that I tried to read last week, but I got really disgusted with it. I didn’t quite realize what it was when I checked it out. I somehow had the mistaken notion that it was legitimate. It’s in that whole genre of white person initiated into the secrets of the natives, like the Lynn Andrews books, Carlos Castaneda books, Mary Summer Rain books. At least those three could sort of pull it off. They were all good writers, good storytellers, and they were (though I know plenty of people will dispute it) tapping into Truth to an extent. They weren’t just totally spinning wild yarns. But this guy is so full of it. I can’t tell if he is doing it intentionally—making crap up—or if he has also deceived himself into thinking he has tapped into Truth. What especially gets me is that he goes around the country giving workshops and seminars on shamanism! What a charlatan.

No true shaman would advertise and promote himself. No true shaman would try to profit from his gifts. And no true shaman would try to deceive masses of people into thinking that they too could be a shaman if they took a few workshops!

A shaman must apprentice with the land and the elements. He must be willing to surrender the little self. You can’t teach that stuff in a workshop. It has to be lived out there in the real world.

This kind of hooey just aggravates me. Does he realize how totally disrespectful he’s being of the true shamans, how disrespectful he’s being of native ways and native knowledge?