Summary
John Lockley describes how dreams, suffering, and encounters with African spiritual traditions led him toward becoming a Sangoma. He explores dreams as possible encounters with ancestors and guides, and emphasizes recovering a deeper sense of human connection and purpose.
Questions This Interview Explores
- What role can dreams play in spiritual growth and discovering one’s life purpose?
- How can suffering become part of a spiritual calling or path of healing?
- How do traditional African teachings understand the soul and its connection to ancestors?
- Can dreams provide guidance beyond ordinary thoughts and imagination?
Key takeaways
- Soulful dreams can reveal guidance, calling, and connections beyond ordinary mental activity.
- Traditional cultures may treat recurring loss of dreams as a sign of spiritual disconnection.
- Suffering can open people to prayer, deeper purpose, and the search for healing.
- Healing involves connecting with the whole person, not only treating the body.
- Ubuntu reminds us that all people belong to one human family.
- Remembering dreams and acting on their guidance can help reveal one’s vocation.
Transcript
Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. I’ve done over 420 of them by now, and if this is new to you and you’d like to watch previous ones, please go to batgap.com, B-A-T-G-A-P, and look under the Past Interviews menu, where you’ll see all the previous ones archived in various ways.
This show is made possible by the support of appreciative listeners and viewers, so if you appreciate it and feel like supporting it to any degree, it means a lot to us, and it makes it possible for us to do this. There’s a PayPal button on every page of the site.
My guest today is John Lockley. I’ll read his bio here, and I’m going to pronounce a couple of these names incorrectly, but John will pronounce them for us correctly as we go along. John is a traditionally trained African shaman known as a Sangoma from Nelson Mandela’s tribe. Say that, John.
John: Xhosa.
Rick: There’s a click in there which I can’t do. The Xhosa Nation. He also has a background in Zen Buddhism and was a student of the late Zen master Su Bong from South Korea. He holds an honors degree in clinical psychology and specialized in health psychology, with an interest in trauma and how people recover from life-threatening illnesses like cancer.
For the last 10 years, he has been running Ubuntu humanity retreats worldwide, helping people to reconnect to their essential humanity, their bones, which means their ancestors, their dreams, and ultimately their life purpose. His mission in the Western world could be summed up in the Xhosa word Masiyembo, involving a profound remembering of the human spirit.
As John says, when people can remember their dreams and connect to their life purpose, then their true vocation surfaces, namely being in service and acting as guardians to our planet. John has written a book, which I enjoyed very much and read cover to cover, called Leopard Warrior: A Journey into the African Teachings of Ancestry, Instinct, and Dreams. So, welcome, John.
John: Thanks, Rick.
Rick: I’m going to start by having John do a little chant that’ll kind of get us into this. This is a traditional chant from the tradition in which John is a shaman. So, go ahead, John.
John: I just ask people to drop into their hearts. The more available you are in your heart, the easier it is for me to chant, wherever you are. So, here we go.
[Chanting]
Rick: Thank you.
John: I’m just doing a prayer to the Great Spirit of Tikva and the ancestors, and I’m asking them to please help open the road. I’m giving the names of my ancestors and my lineage, and I’m asking the Great Ones to come and be with me and help me to help the people remember the old ways of our collective humanity, and in particular to remember Ubuntu Bubuntu, which means the depth of humanity.
What that means is: I cut my arm, red blood flows; I cut your arm, red blood flows. We are all part of this human family, and part of my mission is to help people remember this.
We are all part of this human family.
👁️ Dreams and the Sangoma calling
Rick: Good. Well, I’m glad you made that last point, because in your bio we said that you’re from Nelson Mandela’s tribe, and there’s an obvious difference between you and Nelson Mandela, although your blood would be the same color. So, how is it that a white man with Irish ancestry ended up following the path you followed?
John: Yeah, I’m sure a lot of people ask that question, but it all starts with dreams. It all started with my mother’s dreams and feelings about Africa. My mother was brought up in Dublin, Ireland, and in the 1950s and 1960s she had this calling to go to Africa. It came with this great love of the wilderness.
One day she was walking along the sea, along a very well-known pier in Dublin, and she had a vision of all these African elephants coming to her. That compelled and inspired her to leave Ireland and to leave the work she had in London and go to Africa. She went to Zambia and then to Zimbabwe, Rhodesia at the time, and that’s where she met my father.
Then she encouraged my father to go into the African bushveld. As she said to me years later, she wanted to go into the African bushveld and see wild animals, wild elephants, while they were still roaming free and wild.
Anyway, my story is a long story, and if people are interested, I encourage them to read the book. But I’ll just shorten it slightly and say that—
Rick: We have about two hours here, so we’re going to talk about your story, and I’m going to ask you questions.
John: Okay, sure. When I was born, I was born in Cape Town below Table Mountain, and I was born with this white clay around my eyes, which is one of the markings of a Xhosa Sangoma.
Rick: It wasn’t really clay. That was some white pigmentation or lacquer pigmentation, right?
John: We call it clay. We call it just the white birth skin. That’s what it is. So, I was born with that, and then when I came out of the womb, my mother said I looked like a little Aboriginal person. Of course, that was the early 1970s in apartheid South Africa, and the white consultant doctor was really shocked. The nurses ululated, and my father laughed.
Rick: What does ululating mean?
John: U-u-u-u-u.
Rick: Right, which is a sign of celebration?
John: Just celebration. I mean, every birth is sacred, so it might not have meant anything special. There’s the baby and there’s the white skin, and there you go.
Anyway, it was many years before my mother forgot the fact that I had this white birth skin around my eyes. It was only many years later, when she met my Xhosa teacher who came into our property, into our home. She arrived with beautiful white clay around her eyes and these beads around her, and then my mother remembered my birth.
She sat down with my teacher and described my birth, and my teacher said, “Yes, that’s the way all Xhosa Sangomas are born. We have this strong calling. That’s the way we are born.”
Rick: So, anyway, did you have a past-life memory of having had this kind of life before, perhaps as a Black man?
John: I can’t really recall as such, not clearly. Maybe there was some of that. But anyway, I had these dreams from the age of about 16, and that’s what started everything for me.
I was obviously going through puberty, and in this dream I was in the jungles of South America. I was walking very, very clearly, with a lot of mindfulness, through the jungle, and I was in search of gold. I remember that I found this gold in the jungle. As I woke up from the dream, having found the gold, there was this woman’s voice that said to me very, very clearly, “John, in order for you to find your calling and connect with your destiny, you have to come close to death.”
Then I woke up from the dream with this sense. I wasn’t afraid, but I was very aware that I had to make a decision, because a lot of white boys or white men were conscripted and drafted into the South African Army, since it was still apartheid. My brother was going to be drafted soon, and a number of people I knew had been drafted.
I had a choice about what area of the armed forces to go into. After that particular dream, it was very clear for me to sign up for the medical corps, because I wanted to train to become an operational medic, go to the front lines, do some good, and have that experience.
My sense was that I was going to experience death, but I had a sense of jubilation around that—a sense that that’s what I needed to do. So, when it was my time to go into the South African Army—
Rick: You wanted to be able to help people rather than kill them, right?
John: That’s right, yeah. My choice was to do some good and learn some healing arts. Fortunately, I had a chance to choose what area of the armed forces to go into, so I chose the medical corps.
A couple of years later, the South African war with Angola ended in December 1989. I was still drafted to go into the Army, and so I went in January 1990, just after a major offensive in Angola.
I started my military service at one military hospital in Pretoria, and that was the start of my journey working with African soldiers, most of whom were special forces. These African soldiers started teaching me these old ways, and I had a number of experiences, which I’ve written about.
One of the most powerful experiences for me was working with these special-forces soldiers. One story in particular that I can share with the listeners was how I went into the ward every day and used to ask if they had any good dreams.
Every day I’d walk into the ward, open the curtains, and ask the soldiers if they had any good dreams. They’d still be quiet. After the third day, I opened the curtains and said, “Good morning, guys. Did you have any good dreams?” Again, I was answered by this sense of quietness.
At the back of the ward there was a sergeant, and he said, “Come over here, medic. I want to speak to you.” So, I went to the side of his bed and said, “Yes, Sergeant, sir. How can I help you, Sergeant?”
He was this big Zulu sergeant, a very powerful man and a great leader. He said to me, “In my culture, dreams are very sacred. When I dream, my ancestors come to me and show me who’s going to live and who’s going to die in my platoon. I tell the men, ‘The ancestors are calling you. This could be your time.’ They laugh at me, but they still die. So, in my culture, dreams are very sacred. Don’t ask me again if I’ve had any good dreams.”
I said to him, “Thank you, Sergeant. Yes, thank you, sir.”
He was actually apprenticing to become a Zulu Sangoma. He was an initiate at the time, going through his time of calling, his time of thwasa, his time of illness. I went through this process, and I was very happy when he shared that with me, because I’d already had my calling dreams to become a Sangoma.
When he said this to me, I had a sense that something was being stirred and shown to me in a very profound way. At that stage I was only 18 years old, and that experience with Sergeant Ndlovu actually propelled me to go to the matron of the hospital and ask if I could go into a more intense helping situation.
I asked to go into the intensive-care unit so that I could be more on the front lines in terms of helping people who were dying. The matron was quite shocked, because she said it was the first time she had ever experienced a conscripted soldier who wanted to do more work, not less.
I explained to her that I wanted to study psychology and use my time in the Army and the military for good use. I didn’t want to waste my time. She said, “Okay, the intensive-care unit is full at the moment, but the neurology ward needs medics.”
I said, “Fine.” So, literally the next week, she got me into the neurology ward, and that’s where everything started taking on a whole different shape, because I was working with very, very sick soldiers. A few of them actually died, and one in particular had a very profound effect on my life.
Within the first few days of going into that ward, I helped put another sergeant major into a body bag, and that was quite traumatic for me. I never knew how I was going to deal with something like that.
Rick: You were just 18 years old, too.
John: I was just 18 years old, and no one really helps you deal with that kind of thing. You just deal with it, you know. Each medic is assigned different patients to look after during the course of their shift. I was assigned about three different patients, and one patient I was assigned was in a coma, or semi-coma. He was only 22 years old, so only a couple of years older than me, and he had been in this horrific car accident where he had probably broken many bones in his body. He was in a state of semi-coma, as I say, and every day his mother would come to me and ask me if he was going to live or die.
It was quite a thing at 18. Every day his mom would ask me how her son was doing and whether he was going to live or die, and it was quite a heavy thing. But anyway, what happened with him was that I nursed him for six weeks until it was decided by the nursing staff, the doctors, and the family that it was best to turn off the machines keeping him alive.
So that’s what they did, and then I was asked to do the final observations. A lot of the medics in the ward, some of the more senior medics, found this particular case very, very traumatic, and it was very difficult for them, so they asked me if I could do the observations.
I literally felt his pulse underneath my fingers and near his neck. I watched him die, and it was quite traumatic because I mindfully watched him die. That was my job: to be with him. As I left his ward because my shift was over, I looked at him suffering and looked at the family, and I prayed. I prayed like I had never prayed before.
I had a Catholic, Christian background then, and I prayed to Mary, I prayed to Joseph, I prayed to all the angels and to God. I said, “This suffering here is wrong. The way he has suffered is wrong. I call on the Great Spirit, God, and all the angels to help me find a way of healing where I can connect to the soul of the person. If anyone is ever sick again in the future, I can connect with the soul of the client, of the patient, and speak to the family and give a message. Because here I don’t know what to do. We have all the best medicine in the world, but yet this man is dying, and there’s no peace for anyone.”
I said this in such a strong way, such a strong prayer from the heart. As a soldier, I prayed, and then I left the room and went home. The next day I came back, and his room was empty. That was it; he was gone. I just carried on with my life.
About two weeks later, a friend of mine introduced me to Zen Buddhism, and all these mysterious things happened. I was called in to train in Zen Buddhism with a friend, and that’s how my journey started.
Buddhism and the Reality of Suffering
I like Buddhism because Buddhism was showing me how to deal with suffering. It says life is suffering. That’s the first thing I learned when I went to meet this Buddhist nun. She said, “Life is suffering.” I was like, “Right, you’ve got me. I’m right there.”
So anyway, I think I’ll fast-forward for the listeners, because you asked me the question of how this white boy becomes a sangoma.
Rick: Don’t skip anything important, but keep going.
John: This is an important part. The Zen training was important. Anyway, I’ll explain to the listeners. I started Zen practice and meditation, and the question was, “What am I? Why do I live every day? Why do I eat every day?” These were the questions I was asking while I was meditating.
Then I went on my first Zen retreat, which was about four days long, in a very old kind of forest in South Africa. I went there and meditated like a soldier. I just gave it everything. Then I went home again because I was just about to start my shift in the hospital.
Just before I returned home, I had a dream that night. In the dream, I was in another world. It was one of the most powerful dreams I’ve ever had, and I saw this man who was draped in all these animal skins. He had beautiful black skin and piercing eyes, and he was just staring at me. I could smell the herbs around him, and I could see the animal skins.
I started to speak to him with my mind. I started telling him about the army and my experience, all the suffering and apartheid. I said to him, “Please teach me. Teach me about nature. Teach me how to deal with suffering. Teach me everything to do with nature and how to help people with suffering.”
He was quiet. Then I remembered looking to my left and seeing another man next to me. We were both lying on the ground naked, like in the old ways, with our stomachs on the ground. There was a man on my left who was a Black guy, and I was this white guy, but we were the same age. There was a sense of brotherly love between us.
We were both lying at the feet of this man. I called him a witch doctor because I didn’t know what else to call him, but he was a medicine man, a very powerful medicine man.
I asked the medicine man, the witch doctor, three times, “Teach me about nature. Teach me about suffering. Show me how I can heal people using the art of nature, the beauty of nature.”
He kept quiet. He didn’t respond to me. After the third time I asked him, he started to speak. He said, “In order for me to teach you, you’re going to become very, very sick, and you’re going to come close to death yourself.” He said, “This is the way of my people. In order for me to teach you, you’re going to come close to death, and then you will start learning these old ways.”
So I said to him, “Teach me. I’ve already come close to death. I’ve had to put my favorite dog down because she was sick, and I’ve experienced so much suffering around me. I’m in the apartheid-era South African army, and I’m only 18 years old.” I said, “If you don’t teach me, my life is over, because I’ve seen enough suffering, and I’m only 18.”
He nodded his head, and the next thing he showed me was a vision of the future, five years into the future. He showed me our friends, who were struggling with what they were going through, and he showed me all the suffering and the dynamics. Five years later, it came to pass.
When I woke up from the dream, I had boils all over my legs. The night before, when I went to bed, there was nothing—not even a scratch. When I saw the boils on my legs, I smiled and I was happy because I knew that the witch doctor of my dreams had accepted me as his apprentice.
I went to the hospital because that’s where I was working. Obviously, I went to the clinic, and I was diagnosed with tick-bite fever. From then on, I got one illness after the next. It was like my immune system was compromised. I got all these different illnesses for over seven years.
But something mysterious happened during the time I was getting all these illnesses. I also became very intuitive and very psychic, and I had incredible dreams where spirits or ancestors or angels—whatever you want to call them—from the Xhosa and Zulu nations came to me. African ancestors came to me and started teaching me things, as well as Zen Buddhist monks who came to me in my dreams.
At that stage, it was still apartheid, and I wasn’t able to go and find a Xhosa teacher to work with.
Rick: Before you go on, let me ask you about dreams a little bit, okay? Because that was an amazing dream that you had. As you told the story, it’s easy to almost forget that you’re talking about a dream and think that it was a real-life situation, that you were actually engaging with this guy.
I know you place tremendous importance on dreams as a representative of your lineage or tradition. So what is it about dreams? Some people are interested in lucid dreaming; there’s a whole field that studies that. Some people would say that dreams are just hallucinatory things that result from brain activity while the body is resting and sleeping.
Most traditional cultures place tremendous importance on dreams, and I would tend to agree with the traditional cultures over the modern materialistic perspective. So why is it? What do you think are the mechanics of what’s actually going on in a dream like the one you had?
Does that shaman you interacted with actually exist on some level, and is he able to get through to you because you’re in a more open, receptive state during sleep and dreaming? Or is it still a fabrication of your own unconscious, or of the collective consciousness, or what? What do you think is really going on there?
John: I think there are all different kinds of dreams. When I’m teaching people, I talk about the levels of dreams. I think when we are working with clients and patients at sangomas, our job is to help people connect with their soul.
When you’re connecting with your soul, it’s a particular kind of dream. Those dreams are the ones that open up to you. You could say past-life experiences or lucid dreaming, but these are all words. I’m a mystic. I work in a mystical way, which means I’ll go beyond language and beyond concepts. It’s about connecting with the soul of life.
So how do you know you’re connecting with the soul of something? You feel everything is alive. When I talk about the leopard going through the African bush, its whole body, its whole spine, is shining. It’s alive, like a lightning conductor.
These dreams, these soulful dreams, are very important for every human being. We will even say amongst the Xhosa and the Zulu that if you don’t remember your dreams, then you’ve got an illness and you need to see a sangoma.
What they are talking about are dreams with a capital D. They’re talking about soulful dreams that are impacting what we call your ummoya, your soul, the soul inside of you. In the Xhosa and Zulu system, and in other traditional African systems, we see the soul of a person as growing as you’re getting older. It grows; it’s continually growing. However, it needs to be watered, and one of the ways your soul is watered is through observing your dreams and taking action on your dreams.
In that situation, I was awake in the dream. Was it a dream or not? In the traditional sense, we would say it wasn’t really a dream. It was me meeting a spirit, meeting an ancestor, meeting a guide. It wasn’t really a dream; I was entering the other world. We call that other world the world of the river people, Imlan Djani, because it was so powerful.
But I don’t want to confuse listeners. I just want to explain that when you’re getting certain kinds of soulful, conscious dreams, it opens up many different doorways. The reason why I do this work is because the Western world is dealing with a great sense of forgetfulness—forgetting the power of the human spirit and the human soul. What we need to do is connect with our dreams more.
Everyone gets these dreams to a certain extent. I was primed to receive them—call it my karma, call it whatever you want—but through a lot of suffering, people pray. When people are really suffering, they pray. They don’t think about material objects; they don’t think about new shoes or new cars. When people are really suffering, they pray.
Everyone gets these dreams to a certain extent. I was primed to receive them—call it my karma, call it whatever you want—but through a lot of suffering, people pray. When people are really suffering, they pray. They don’t think about material objects; they don’t think about new shoes or new cars. When people are really suffering, they pray.
So this is a common experience. I wouldn’t say my experience was common, but I’ve spoken to a lot of sangomas who have received a calling through a lot of hardship and a lot of suffering.
Rick: I heard you say in your book—well, one thing before I say that is, in my own life, the most profound experiences I’ve ever had have happened during sleep. I wouldn’t have called them dreams; they were just so powerful that it was like a real blowout mystical experience that happened to happen while I was in the sleep state. But it’s very different from ordinary dreams.
My sense was that in sleep there’s an innocence and surrender which you don’t really have usually in the waking state, which makes you amenable to, or open to, that kind of experience. Would you concur with that?
John: Yes. What I want to say to people is that I had a client today, actually, and I mentioned dreams. She said, “Dreams? When during the day?” And I said, “That’s a daydream; that’s your imagination.” She was a young client, and she was very funny. I said to her, “Honey, we’re looking at dreams at night, capital D, when you’re sleeping.”
Why is that important? Because your ego is not being engaged, your personality is not engaged, and you’re in a state they call tabula rasa, which means a blank slate. So you don’t have “I,” “my,” and “me.” You don’t have your wants engaged in the same ways. There are different levels of dreams, and certain kinds of desires can come through in your dream state, of course, but by and large, when you’re sleeping and there’s no gender and you’re just sleeping, those are the dreams to watch because they’re showing the deep longings of your soul. They’re showing things that you might not be aware of when you’re in your waking state.
Rick: Regarding the topic of dreams, a question just came in from a fellow named Raymond Schumann in Olympia, Washington. He’s saying the benchmark for North European shamanism is the flight of the spirit, an out-of-body experience. Is that part of your tradition?
John: Yes, sure.
Rick: Okay. Want to elaborate?
John: I don’t want to get caught up in words. I think the whole idea here is to go beyond words, because that’s the mystical approach. “Flight of spirits”—that sounds nice. It sounds nice, but in the African tradition, our focus is the dreams. If you want to call that a flight of spirit, then you can say that, yes, but it’s about how you can engage your spirit in the dream state and what kind of information is given to you. How do the ancestors come and give you knowledge and information? So, yeah, I could agree with the listener there that that’s the correct word, but in Africa we just talk about it in a different way.
Rick: Okay. And you know what they mean by out-of-body. I mean, some people have these dreams where they seem to go someplace and travel. They see other lands or whatever, and then they come back to their body. So I guess that’s what he was asking about.
John: Yeah, I think he’s right. That’s right. The same for us in South Africa. Yes, correct.
🩺 Illness, apprenticeship, and service
Rick: Okay, good. Now, we were beginning to talk about “twaza,” if that’s the correct pronunciation, or this sort of purificatory, cathartic suffering that you went through. That seems to be almost a universal thing in many cultures around the world, many traditional cultures.
It’s a metamorphosis, and I think there are degrees of severity. Perhaps it depends upon how deeply entrenched and impure a person is, or something, and how severe it’s going to have to be. But I guess, would you say that some degree of this sort of thing is going to be necessary for anybody who really wants to make a profound transformation?
John: Yes. We have a saying in the course: when I was going through the twaza, they said, “The depth of your twaza illness is the depth of your job as a healer.” So, if you have a really tough time, then it’s a sign—they say it’s a sign—that the ancestors have a big job for you.
Unless you’re born, as you would say, in quite an evolved way already, and you just have to have a small illness to remind you of certain things. But generally—I’m generalizing now—according to the elders who trained me, they say that if you have a very strong twaza, where you got very sick and close to death, then it’s a sign the ancestors have a very big job for you, and you’re going to have a lot of healing work to do in the future.
Rick: Yeah, I have seen, actually, that some people seem to have a pretty easy ride, and then they’re flying high, whereas most, I would say, really have to go through years of intense stuff. Sometimes it takes the form of incredible kundalini experiences, where they’re lying on the bathroom floor at three in the morning with their body burning up, contorting in various ways, and going through various sicknesses and so on. It can be quite dramatic. But I do know people who’ve gone through that kind of thing and have come out the other side.
John: Yeah, it can be quite dramatic. You’re right, that’s for sure.
Rick: All right, so pick up the story. I want to be asking you questions, but I don’t want to interrupt your train of thought.
John: Yeah, well, maybe I’d shorten it, actually, because there’s a lot of energy in it, and I just think if the listeners really want all the details, they can read the book. That’s why I’ve written the book.
Being Called as a Sangoma Beyond Skin Color
The question is, a lot of listeners are like, “What’s this white guy doing as a sangoma?” So let me just explain that it’s not about the color of your skin; it’s about how you’re called by the ancestors.
In my particular case, I had this very profound calling where I was being called by African teachers and guides to become a sangoma, but I never went looking for it as such, in an overt way. So, I remember I was learning in the townships of South Africa. I was there working as a student, helping with AIDS relief and education, and my professor got us to go and work with an herbalist. He was asking the herbalist all these questions to understand African healing.
After that experience, I asked one of my friends, who was an interpreter in the psychology department, if he could take me to a sangoma that he would go to, or a member of his family.
Rick: This is after your sojourn to South Korea?
John: Yes, that’s right, yes.
Rick: So, you spent like three months in a South Korean Zen monastery, sleeping three hours a night and meditating your brains out.
John: Yeah, that’s right.
Rick: And they wanted you to become a monk there, and you said, “I think I better go back to South Africa.”
John: Yeah, and vote for Mandela. My sense when they asked me to become a monk in Singapore—in the Korean system I was training in—and Zen Master Daesun Sim invited me to become a monk, it was such an honor. But when he pushed me to that point of becoming a monk, I realized that my destiny was to become an African monk, an African priest, because of all the dreams that were pointing in the direction of Africa.
So, I went back to South Africa and I voted for Mandela. Then I went back to university to finish my degree in psychology, and that’s what took me back to the townships in South Africa, working with the local people.
My friend organized for me to go and have a meeting with a Sangoma that his son was being treated by. He said she was a very good Sangoma and that she was helping his son deal with a skin condition. His son was only three years old at the time, and he said that she spoke the truth and was very good.
So, we organized to go the next day. The night before I went to see her, she had a dream. She said that the Great Spirit came to her and told her that she needed to prepare herself to train someone to become a senior Sangoma like her. This person was going to come from another culture, not the same culture as her, and she needed to prepare herself for this.
The next day, when I walked through her gate, she was sweeping the yard. She looked up and saw me, and she realized I was the person she had to train. I was there with my girlfriend at the time and my friend, who was my interpreter.
When she sat down, she spoke about the last seven years of my life in quite a lot of detail, in terms of what had happened to me. Then she spoke about my future and said that I was destined to become a senior Sangoma, that I had a very strong gift, and that my gift would manifest in certain ways in the future. She was right about that.
Then she also asked me if I’d like to become her apprentice. This is the crux of the story for all those listeners looking at this white umlungu: What is this white guy doing? Listen to this, and listen very carefully, because I’ve got a lot of prejudice from people. I feel that, as human beings, we need to practice the art of listening and the art of kindness. So, please listen to this very carefully.
She asked me if I would like to become her apprentice, and I didn’t say yes straight away. She asked me a few times if I’d like to join her and become her Sangoma apprentice in the Xhosa nation. I said to her, “What does it mean to become a Sangoma and to become your apprentice?”
She said, “To become a Sangoma means that you’re going to stop being so sick,” because I had still been sick up until that point. She said, “And you’re going to be able to heal people in all different ways. The ancestors are going to move through you, and you’re going to be able to heal people in multiple ways.”
I thought that sounded pretty good, because all I’d been brought up with was this idea of witch doctors from apartheid South Africa, which I already knew was nonsense. So, I said to her, “Okay, Mom. I’ll accept the calling. I’ll accept your offer to become your apprentice.”
Then I said, “Oh, one more thing.”
She said, “Okay, what’s that?”
I said, “I will become your apprentice if you can agree to train me as if I’m a Xhosa man. Don’t make any shortcuts because I’ve got white skin and I don’t speak Xhosa.”
She said, “Of course. That’s the only way to do it.”
So, I said, “Okay, I accept. I’ll become your apprentice.”
She said, “Great. Well, then, come tomorrow and I’ll give you your first white beads. You’re a signed apprentice, and we are walking this road together.”
I said, “Great.” The next day—we went to sleep that night, and then in the morning—we saw that a neatly folded goat skin had been left outside the meditation center where I was running and practicing. It was a neatly folded white goat skin. We had all these dogs in the area—township dogs, stray dogs—and not one of the dogs touched this white goat skin.
So, we took the goat skin, wrapped it up, and went over the hill to my teacher. I said to her, “Did you leave this goat skin outside my home, where I was praying?”
She said, “No.”
I explained the situation to her, and she said, “The ancestors have done this. Siavoma,” she said. “The ancestors have accepted to train you.”
She was quiet, and then she said, “You’re going to be trained in the old ways of the Xhosa people.”
Then her husband came into the room. He was an elder in the Xhosa nation, and she explained the situation to him. He said, “Welcome. This home will always be your home. You are now going to be like one of our sons in this family. You are very welcome.”
Three weeks later, my teacher had a dream that her ancestors, Xhosa ancestors, came to her and said, “You must call him Uthingo Lendaba.”
Uthingo Lendaba means “the messenger,” “the bridge,” the one who joins someone over long distances.
Then we had a ceremony together, and a lot of Sangomas came from the community. It was actually a small group of people, but it was a very powerful group. We did lots of drumming and singing.
When they asked what my name was, my teacher said, “Uthingo Lendaba.” Everyone was quiet, and they said, “That’s a very powerful name. It’s very auspicious.” They said, “The ancestors have got a big job for you.”
At that stage, I was just 25 or 26 years old. I had traveled to South Korea and had only visited Ireland once or twice as a child. I hadn’t done much traveling. Since then, I’ve traveled all over the world, and each time I’ve traveled, I’ve spoken to my elders about where I’m going. I come back and speak to them, too.
Before writing this book, I discussed it with my elders, and they gave me permission to share some of these basic teachings and how people can connect with their ancestors and their dreams.
I said to them, “There’s a crisis in the Western world. People don’t know their ancestors, and they don’t remember their dreams.” Among the traditional Xhosa people and among the elders, it is seen as a serious illness if people do not know their ancestors and do not remember their dreams. It’s considered a very serious illness.
So, I said to them, “This is what I’m coming across, and I’d like to use some very simple techniques of prayer to teach people how to remember their humanity.”
All my elders said, “We give you our blessing. Siavoma. We agree.”
I’d like to say all this so people can be aware that the red blood of our humanity is what binds us. This is very important.
It’s not about the color of your skin; it’s about how you’re called by the ancestors.
Rick: Good. I want to ask you about ancestors, but before I do that, I just want to ask: You were in a South Korean monastery and did a lot of Zen Buddhist practice. Your South Korean Zen master said that he got enlightened at the age of 22 or something, so you’re well familiar with the notion of enlightenment and what it is. Is there an equivalent in the Sangoma tradition and the Xhosa tradition to enlightenment, or is it just a completely different track of spiritual growth?
John: I wouldn’t say it’s a completely different track, but I’d say it is different. It’s very Zen, and it’s a good question because I have thought a lot about this.
What I could say is that in the Sangoma tradition, it’s about how you can help your community and your clients. It’s about service. What I learned from my Sangoma community was about the action of, you could say, sangha, the community. It’s all about how much you can give to your community and how much you can help.
What’s also very important, and what’s very stressed in the tradition, is that we say Torbeka, which means humility in the face of the ancestors and the spirit world—incredible humility and the action of service.
Then, if you are deemed worthy by the Great Ones or the ancestors, we say you will be given certain gifts. Your gifts will get stronger as you get older in your career as a Sangoma, because you have shown the action of—we say—Torbeka, of humility and grace.
When that happens, you will have a dream. As you have different dreams, even once you finish your training, you go to the elders and describe your dream and what you’re seeing in terms of what the ancestors or the spirit world is offering you.
That’s how people know—I won’t say the level of a Zen master—but that’s how people know your development, your spiritual development. Then we’ll have a ceremony, and the whole community will be brought in.
The interesting thing in the Sangoma world is that it’s not about how powerful the Sangoma is. It’s about the action of helping the community, helping and bringing the teachings, bringing the message of prayer, and helping the community. Helping the community is the most important thing.
Rick: Jesus said you should know them by their fruits. In Christianity, and also in Eastern traditions, there’s a lot of emphasis, in some of them at least, on seva, on service, both for its intrinsic value to the world and also because it’s considered to be a powerful spiritual practice. It sort of attenuates the ego and gets you out of the “me, me, me” mentality into a more selfless state, which is characteristic of enlightenment, really.
You’ve transcended the individual ego and entered into a more universal awareness, and seva can be a conducive tool to that.
John: Yeah, good point. It’s about letting go of your story, because the story is powerful. You can write a book, as I’ve done, or you can have a dream journal, or you can paint and draw. It’s important to be aware of your personal story, but not to be attached to it, because once you get attached to it, it makes it difficult to grow.
Whether the attachment and the story have to do with being a victim or being someone who’s famous or powerful, whatever the story is, we have to be available to let go of that so we can connect with something a lot more mysterious and mystical.
Rick: Yeah, it’s like an actor who forgets that he’s an actor and gets identified with his part or something. If Dustin Hoffman really thought he was Rain Man, it would kind of put the kibosh on his career.
John: That’s a good way to put it. That’s why we always say with the elders, sure, it’s great to look at a Sangoma who has black skin and looks the part, but don’t get attached to that.
They didn’t have any problem with me having white skin, because my elders said that I was sent to them by the Great Spirit. Even though we had this terrible system of apartheid, I wasn’t responsible. They said, “You’re not responsible for apartheid. The ancestors sent you to us, and we have to train you. That’s it.”
When I’ve traveled the world and told my elders that some people have an issue with the color of my skin, they say, “Why? We all have red blood. What’s their problem?”
Rick: Well, you make a good point, using Desmond Tutu as an example. Desmond Tutu is an Anglican archbishop, and he’s a black man.
John: And he’s Xhosa.
Rick: And it’s a white religious tradition, predominantly, but here is a black man who’s a representative of it. So, why shouldn’t it work the other way around?
John: Yeah, yeah. Here we go. Welcome, we say. Welcome, welcome, welcome humanity, with all our flaws. Welcome.
Rick: Yeah, so another thing that I find common between your tradition, as I understand it, and other ancient traditions or traditional cultures, as I understand them, is this emphasis on honoring the ancestors. In the Vedic tradition, they call them the pitris, and there are all sorts of ceremonies they do to honor the ancestors. I’m sure in Native American traditions they do it, and in South American traditions. So perhaps you could explain the rationale for that, and I have a few questions as you go along.
John: Yeah. Well, first I need to explain the whole area of ancestors and what it means, because a lot of people seem to misunderstand that, especially in the African context. The word Iznanya means “the silent hidden ones,” and it’s often a word—it’s a Zulu and Xhosa word—that is used to denote ancestors in traditional African spirituality.
But the silent hidden ones start off—we always start off—with connecting with our blood ancestors. We say that your mother and father and your grandparents, your lineage, are very important. So, when you’re starting a spiritual practice, whether you’re becoming a Buddhist or Christian, whatever it is, in the traditional African way, you would go and speak to your ancestors, because they’re already on the other side, the other side of the river.
Your first lineage is your mom and dad. So you see, everyone has two different lineages. The first thing to do when you’re starting a spiritual practice, or you want to go deeper with your dreams or whatever it is, is to honor and praise your ancestors—your mother’s people and your father’s people.
Now, you are not worshipping them; you are just giving thanks for the gift of life. Also, you are not honoring and worshipping their behavior or the stories. Some people say to me in Europe that it’s very difficult for them to work with their ancestors because of all the abuse that has happened in families and all the bad actions that have been committed by their ancestors.
So I say, “Well, it’s not our job to judge our ancestors and to get involved with the story. Our job is to honor and praise the consciousness that’s been passed to us.” Every human being has what we call Buddha nature. Everyone has the shining, the Kanya, that consciousness, that shining element.
So, when we are honoring and praising our ancestors, we are literally honoring and praising the gift of life, not the behavior, the story, or what’s happened. We don’t honor that, and bad behavior is never condoned. We honor and praise ancestors for giving us the gift of life. That’s it.
Rick: Let me ask you a question about that. Obviously, we can bring up horrific examples of abuse—women or young girls being molested by their fathers and all that kind of stuff. In honoring and praising the ancestors, is there sort of an intent—is the underlying, fundamental intention to actually free yourself, as well as to direct any sort of attention toward them?
Because it would seem that if one had been abused, for instance, and one could actually bring oneself to honor the abuser, wouldn’t that somehow be liberating? Is that part of the psychology of it?
John: Yes, but I think we need to be very careful here. Again, I need to stress this many times: it’s not honoring and praising behavior; you’re honoring the consciousness, the actual shining consciousness that’s been passed on to you.
Rick: Is forgiveness part of it? Obviously, a lot of spiritual traditions talk about learning to forgive even terrible things. Is that part of the mechanics of it?
John: I suppose that could come at some point, but it’s almost like you have to separate the abuser from their consciousness. If someone is enlightened, they’re not going to do a bad action; they’re going to do something that is full of compassion.
So, the essence of every human being has the Ubuntu. The humanity of every human being is the shining, this, let’s say, enlightened being, but the actions can be different. So there’s an old saying that you can hate the abuse but not the abuser. You hate the action but not the person perpetrating it.
Rick: Yeah, you know that Indian saying, namaste. I think it means something like, “The God within me honors the God within you,” so you’re connecting at the deepest level and overlooking the superficial things which might be flawed.
John: Yes. So this is a very, very important aspect of the practice: to honor and praise your ancestors because they’ve given you this consciousness, this human life. Then, as you’re doing that and you let your ego go in the prayers, you go to sleep and you dream.
Sometimes, when people do these very powerful ancestral prayers, they might dream about animals, or they might dream about other nations. For example, I might dream about the Xhosa people, or they might dream about the Tibetans or the Korean people.
What actually happens is that once you start connecting to that human consciousness, the whole of the human family comes to you, and you may be trained by people from different lineages and different families. So that’s still connected to what I call the Iznanya.
Everyone would have their mother’s lineage and their father’s lineage, but they might also have an adopted lineage that comes to them once they’ve honored the gift of life inside of them.
Rick: You’re saying that honoring the ancestors, if it’s done properly, actually is a catalyst for connecting to your dreams and possibly to various other streams or lineages of knowledge?
John: That’s right, yeah—the wisdom keepers of humanity. As you let go of your story and you show grace and humility, often we pray on our knees and we just offer ourselves over and say, “Thank you for this gift of life. Uvulun lele—open the road for us.” Then we let go with that, and the dreams come.
Our job is to honor and praise the gift of life, not the behavior, the story, or what’s happened.
Plants, trance, and divination
Rick: Okay, good. I think that point is clear. Incidentally, as we go along, those who are listening, if you want to submit a question, go to the Upcoming Interviews page on www.batgap.com. There’s a form at the bottom of that page through which you can submit a question. Okay, so where next?
John: Where next? Where do you want to go next?
Rick: Well, obviously, you haven’t finished the story of your apprenticeship, which went on for 10 years or something, right?
John: Yeah.
Rick: And what sort of things did you have to do during that period as an apprentice?
John: So, the apprenticeship period would involve working with plants—cleansing. In South Africa, we work with plant medicine to cleanse your body and wash your body. We drink herbs, we’d wash with herbs, and also use herbs to cleanse our living space.
But we don’t work with hallucinogenics, because a lot of people get very excited when I mention plant medicine. They go, “Oh, yeah, you work with plant medicine? What kind of stuff have you got in Africa?” And they get all excited. You can see it in their eyes; they get really excited. And I’ve said, “Look, we don’t work with hallucinogenics.”
Rick: It’s just really not part of the culture at all? There’s not some little branch of it that is into that? It’s just completely different?
John: You will have some hallucinogenics, but it’s a secret. We won’t talk about that because it’s so powerful; it can kill people.
Rick: So it’s used very sparingly?
John: Yeah, it’s not used a lot—very sparingly, yeah. But the main practice is the practice I’ve written about, which is working with certain kinds of plants to help cleanse the body and protect the body, so that you are more available to dream, to go into those deeper dream states.
So, that’s the plant side of it. A lot of the practice in the early years was going to the forest, collecting the plants, and bringing them back to the homestead. Then we would chop the plants, prepare the plants, put them in the sun, and wrap them in newspaper.
We were preparing the plants in such a way that clients could come, and then we’d sell them to the people and help them understand how to use the plants to cleanse themselves, to wash themselves, and to drink them.
As we do this, the consciousness of the forest goes into the people and into the community. So that’s why I say we have to be careful with the language. Even in the Xhosa language, some things we don’t even talk about, because it’s about experiencing the spirit of the plant, experiencing the spirit—we say—of the world of the ancestors, which means the dream time.
Rick: Yeah, there’s something equivalent in the Ayurvedic tradition. I knew one great man—I met one named Balraj Maharshi—and the plants would speak to him. He could walk through the forest, and the spirit of the plant would speak to his spirit and tell him what it was useful for. So he had that kind of an affinity with the plant kingdom.
The idea of taking the plant in the proper way is that it’s not just that you’re getting some kind of chemicals that happen to be in the leaf. There’s something in terms of the subtle essence or the spirit of the plant that is helping you in some way.
John: That’s true, and some of these things happen to us. When we’re going to look for a particular, especially sacred, plant to help with our ceremonies, it’s a big deal. We go into the forest at a certain time.
I remember the early days—very mysterious things happened as we were walking along the path in the forest. We were looking for this particular kind of bulb, which is very difficult to find. We call it Isilau. It’s kind of a generic name for this particular kind of plant, and it looks like grass, so it’s very hard to find.
I remember going into the forest with one particular Sangoma, an older lady who was very—she had very shiny eyes, and she could just see where the plants were. As we were going along, the birds were making a particular kind of bird sound. All of us stopped—it was just about two or three of us—and we were quiet.
Then the Sangoma elder said to me, “Pray, John.” So we prayed, and she said, “We’re struggling to find the plant. Pray again.” So we prayed, and then we just followed the sounds of the birds. We kept moving through the forest, and I felt a sense of electricity in my body, like a leopard or like a wild animal—except this was a human creature with this divine mission of finding this plant.
Everything changed around me. It was like entering another world, except it wasn’t a dream; this was real. This happened a number of times. We found the plant where we had to. It wasn’t like going into nature with a hacksaw and just taking everything down. It was this very subtle, mindful action of walking through the forest with a prayer, with an intent, and then looking for the sacred plant. That’s how we found them.
Sometimes it would take a long time—many hours looking for one plant. This was the action we would take: this quiet, methodical, conscious, prayerful walk through the forest.
Rick: Was there something about the birdsong where the birds were actually helping you find them?
John: Yes, that’s what I was thinking about. It’s almost like the whole of nature was conspiring to help us, but we had to show enough humility and enough openness of heart in order to find the sacred plant.
As we did that, we could watch the plants and watch the birds. The birds were always great in terms of showing us the way.
Rick: Nice, I love this stuff. Did you ever read the books by Laurens van der Post?
John: Yes, I read a lot of his books, actually.
Rick: Me too, back in the ’70s. If anyone has never heard of him, you might want to check him out. There are particularly two books, A Story Like the Wind and A Far-Off Place. I just love those books. I read them a couple of times back in about ’77 or ’78. He’s a South African writer. He also happened to be Prince Charles’ godfather, and he was a military man and a good friend of Carl Jung. So, in a sense, he was a very active man as a military man and a very deep man as a friend of Carl Jung. He kind of blends those two qualities of adventure and spiritual depth in his books, and the books I just mentioned are all about a story that happened in Southern Africa. Anyway, I’m diverting, but I just want to tell people about those books because they’re so great.
John: He worked a lot with the Bushman people, the Khoisan, who are reputed to be one of the oldest indigenous tribes or peoples in the world. He worked for them in Botswana, and connected to them are the Xhosa. That’s where the clicks come from.
Rick: Right, he talks about that in his book. There’s a guy named Zabo, which probably has a click in it, and Nguyen Tara was Zabo’s partner. Anyway, I won’t get into it, but check those books out. It’s Laurens, L-A-U-R-E-N-S, van der Post. Okay, so after that little diversion, I just want to put in a plug for those books because I love them so much.
The Three Areas of Sangoma Training
So, I could say in terms of training, Rick, that to become a Sangoma, you have to be trained in three areas. There’s plant medicine, the dancing and the cleansing, and then divination.
John: So, I could say in terms of training, Rick, that to become a Sangoma, you have to be trained in three areas. There’s plant medicine, the dancing and the cleansing, and then divination.
The dancing is knowing the trance rhythms, knowing how to go in and out of trance, which is all through dancing. Then there’s the vumisa, as we call it, or the divination, where you read the soul of someone and then give them plants or prayer to help them connect with their soul, with their dreams, and with their ancestors.
Each of those areas—the plant medicine, the trance dancing, and the divination—is a huge area in itself. So, each person, in order to finish the training to become a Sangoma, needs to have gone through each of those stages. Then, as the years go by, you might find a Sangoma who is a specialist in one of those areas or in all three areas. But each of them is almost like doing a master’s degree in each thing. It’s quite a large area.
Rick: Yeah, it’s interesting. Here, too, we’re talking about something in your culture that is universal. There are so many ancient cultures in which herbs of various kinds, various kinds of dancing and drumming, and divination are all key components.
John: That’s right.
Rick: And it’s good to understand and respect those things, I think. As you say, each one of them could be a lifetime study in itself because there could be so much to learn.
John: That’s right. Yes, and I think a key thing, which I’ve noticed going overseas, is music—music to help connect to the spirit world.
When I first went over to Ireland, I was called to go to my mother’s home in Ireland, and the people who befriended me and to whom I became very close were musicians. It makes sense because the word Sangoma means “people of the song.” So, my first friends were wonderful musicians who had really open hearts, and a lot of them were quite profound dreamers as well. So, the streets of Dublin, in various forms, with the buskers and the musicians, really opened up to me.
Rick: Nice. In terms of the divination part, people are probably more familiar with the efficacy of herbs and certain types of traditional dancing to alter one’s consciousness. But in terms of divination, what does that involve? How do you do it?
John: To divine means to see the soul. I could say there are two different forms. The way I was trained in the Process system was what we call vumisa. Vumisa means ancestral agreement. So, we don’t use bones in the traditional Process way. It’s a system of praying in a very—you could say, like an incantation.
The Sangoma would start praying, call in the ancestors, and then get visions of what’s happening to the client in front of them. Often, and I write about this, my experience of it was like this wind coming through me. When I described it to my teachers, they said, “When you’re doing the divination, you want to feel that sense of this wind. It’s the divining wind.” We call it Umoya, the spirit.
That’s part of the gift: to pray to the ancestors, then to let go and just start going into trance and seeing what’s happening with someone. So, that’s the Xhosa way. Then the Zulu way, or the Swazi way, and the Shangaan way, is throwing the bones.
The bones are called bones, but it’s not just bones. There are a number of natural objects encompassing plant material, bones, shells—lots of shells—sticks, and all kinds of natural objects in this bag. You blow into the bag and make a prayer, and as you throw the objects onto a divining mat, they create a pattern. The job of the diviner is to read the pattern of the person’s life.
That’s what I do. I use both methods. I use the vumisa, and I throw the bones. I find throwing the bones a very creative but very beautiful process because you speak to the pattern of the bones and the shells in front of you, and then it matches what’s happening in someone’s life.
So, it’s not quite like a tarot card reading, and it’s not quite like a fortune reading, either. It’s not fortune-telling. It’s more like looking into a mirror and seeing what’s happening to the person right here and now.
The journey of becoming a diviner is quite a long journey because you have to let go of your own thoughts, opinions, and story and just sink into the client’s world. You see what’s happening on the divining mat with all the bones, shells, and things like that. I find that very magical.
Often, this process of immersing yourself in the world of the other means you also get immersed in dream time or have profound dreams, because often the ancestors show me how I can cleanse myself or how I can work with herbs in a particular way so that I’m clearer and able to help the client in front of me.
Rick: Okay, could you tell us one or two stories or examples of one of the more dramatic or profound divination sessions you did with somebody, where you threw the bones or whatever and were spot-on in terms of tuning into them?
John: Well, it’s a very sacred space, so I can’t go into too many details.
Rick: We wouldn’t want to name names, obviously.
John: But even talking about that space is very sacred in the African way, so I have to be very careful. I can just give a very loose experience.
Rick: Sure.
John: The loose experience was when I was in South Africa and doing my training. I remember there was a whole line of family members because often in South Africa, an individual doesn’t just go for divination. You always go with your family because it’s a collective process. It’s not about the individual; it’s about us as a community.
So, the question when you’re going with a family is, “Who’s sick in the family, and what can we do to help?”
I was in the training phase, and I remember it was a very hot summer’s day. There were these people dressed immaculately in the divining room, and my teacher gave me a chance to give them a divination.
I went into the room. They had taken off their shoes, and there were about seven of them, all lined up with their backs against the divining wall. It was a mud wall, and there was a beautiful sense of coolness inside. As I said, outside there was a heat that was almost unbearable.
The whole family was completely quiet. It was like church. It was so different from a Western experience, being overseas. The whole group of people were very quiet, and then my teacher encouraged me to do the prayers, meditate, close my eyes, and see what I could see.
I did that, and I felt this divining wind going through me. I saw the issue in the family, and I saw the sense of sadness that some of the people had forgotten to honor their ancestors and were starting to forget the old ways.
Then I saw it located—the pain was located in one of the family members, the young woman. I saw some of the problems that she was engaged with and struggling with. More than anything, I felt that I could share what I was feeling. I felt the incredible emotion of the people.
I think that’s what was very powerful for me: to feel the emotion of the people, to feel their pain. I felt this pain in my body, the emotion of the family. Then I started speaking about that emotion. I started speaking about what I was feeling in my body.
After a while, the people said, “Siyavuma,” which means, “We agree.” They said, “Thamkhulu,” which is the term of respect for a Sangoma. Then I started describing to them what I felt they needed to do in terms of reconnecting with their ancestors and dealing with this pain in the family that they were experiencing.
I went a little bit more deeply into that, and then I felt this wind inside of me, just moving in and out. The whole family said, “Siyavuma,” meaning, “We agree.” There was a sense of quiet, but there was also a sense of peace because I had spoken and said things that were unsaid in the family.
When they left the room, I heard them all chatting and speaking in a very joyful way as they walked up the street. Then they waited in the front room while we prepared the herbs for them, to help cleanse them and move them closer toward their spirits and their ancestors.
So, my job in that situation as a diviner was to speak and give words to the unsaid emotions—to what was happening in the family that they couldn’t put a voice to or express. I had to speak about those emotions, and I felt this—like I said—this divining wind coming into me.
Rick: Do you often feel that if somebody has a physical problem in their heart or their pancreas or whatever, you feel pain in your own body, and that helps you know they have that problem? Or not so much?
John: In the beginning, it would be like that. Now, mostly, it would be visions. Mostly, I would see it and feel it in a particular kind of way.
Rick: I see.
John: I’m kind of happy with that because it would be overwhelming for me to get to know people through physical sensations, especially with all the traveling and all the different cultures. It’s easier for me just to get the vision.
Rick: Less painful.
John: Yeah, that’s less painful.
Rick: A couple of questions came in. This is from Flory in New York, and it reverts back to something we discussed earlier. How do you determine that the people in your dreams—lucid dreams—who come to you have good intentions and are good spirits? Is there any way to maintain safety in dreams? What if it’s a bad entity that’s coming?
John: I think that’s where daily practice is important. In daily practice, I can’t emphasize enough that when we are honoring and praising our ancestors, we are honoring and praising the shining light, the consciousness, the absolute shining quality of our ancestors. That is what we’re calling forth.
Then you have a practice during the day of prayer and meditation, whatever it is, but you’re focusing on the light, you’re focusing on the candle. That’s very important. So then, when you get a darker entity coming into your dreams, with us, the way we’re trained is to actually tell that entity to go away. We say in Xhosa, “Hamamohe mdaka, ham bani,” which means, “Go away negativity, go away dark spirit, go.”
And then the way we protect ourselves from those dark entities or those forces would be by working with plant medicine. We have to work with plant medicine not just because the plants smell nice, but because the plants help protect our spirits and help protect our bodies when we’re going into these deeper spaces of dreaming.
A lot of my work overseas is actually helping to educate Westerners about plant medicine, or protection medicines, that they can use to get to deeper states of dreaming, so they can let go of their ego.
Rick: They say that certain types of things one might do, such as alcohol abuse or drug abuse, or various other things, kind of open you up to the lower astral realms and you can become victimized by malefic entities. Whereas other things you might do, such as meditation or things that have a healthier effect, build up a kind of armor against such things. Spontaneously, they’re just not going to be able to come near you. Do you have something equivalent to that in your tradition?
John: Yes. I recommend that people develop some kind of spiritual practice. I don’t like to say what it is, but it should be a spiritual practice that goes beyond good and bad, such as meditation. In meditation, you’re not focusing on good and bad; you’re going beyond good and bad. You go into the place of the light.
If people are struggling in their life with addiction or with nightmares, wearing protection medicine at night, whether it’s essential oils, sage, crystals, or something else, is very important. But what’s also very important is to build your consciousness and build your soul energy, and the way to do that is through spiritual practice.
What I teach is a practice I call the heartbeat meditation. I get that from South Africa because in South Africa we have the drum. In the traditional culture, we don’t mention meditation and things like that because there’s no word for it. But what we do is sing, chant, and dance, and we listen to the drum.
Overseas, what I teach people is how to listen to the drum inside their own chests, which is their heartbeat. When I say to people, “Listen to your heart,” I don’t mean it in a metaphorical or poetic kind of way. I mean literally put your hand on your heart and feel it beating. Let go into that, and call in the divining wind of, you could say, God or the Great Spirit or the purity of your consciousness.
Call it in as you’re breathing into your heart. Feel that rhythm, let go into it, and breathe in this prana, this oxygen, this love. Breathe it into you.
If you’re struggling with darkness at night or in your space, get yourself a candle. Get a white candle and put it next to you when you’re meditating. Just stare at that candle and call for love, call for protection, call for the Great Spirit, call for anything that is creating a sense of peace.
One of the last things I can share about this is that in our culture, when I was trained to deal with darkness and dreams, one of the things my teacher said to me was, “If you’ve got no herbs around you and you’re stuck at home, and you’re stuck in the dream and you don’t know what to do, you must pray.”
She taught me about prayer. She said, “You must pray to God, you must pray to the Great Spirit, you must pray to your protectors, you must pray to your ancestors. You must pray like a soldier, and then you must also tell that dark energy to go away.”
Part of the Sangoma training is to work with your volition, to work with your will. When I’m working with clients, I also say that they must make a decision. They must make a decision to change the pattern of their life through calling in the light, and also by saying that certain patterns that are perhaps abusive or not healthy for them, they must say no to that. They must make a decision.
If they are struggling to make a decision, they should follow a practice that makes them feel good and gives them strength.
Rick: You probably know there’s an opioid epidemic in the United States, and people die of overdoses every 20 minutes or something like that. I forget how frequently, but all the time people are dying from opioids, and it’s destroying communities and families and so on. Have you ever dealt with anybody who has a strong addiction like that and been able to help them?
John: I’ve dealt with a mother who had children—she’s since passed away, sadly—but she had a few children who were heroin addicts. So I helped her, yes. In the process of helping her, I had dreams about the entity of, you could say, heroin, and I helped her deal with this. I helped her see the beauty in ceremony, even simple ceremonies like baptism or going to church.
It was quite a powerful journey we went on together, and I really felt a lot of empathy for someone who was dealing with addiction or dealing with a family member who was an addict. I think, from talking to her and counseling her, and just befriending her because we became good friends, that the most important thing is choice.
Even though people are struggling with addiction, they need to make a choice to say no and then move from there.
Rick: How about PTSD? Have you ever dealt with PTSD sufferers?
John: Yes. Post-traumatic stress would be something that I would have dealt with myself, but I definitely would have dealt with it a lot among soldiers from South Africa, and also among people dealing with a lot of poverty.
People dealing with poverty across South Africa, in the townships—we call them the townships, the ghetto areas, the informal settlement areas—are dealing with various forms of PTSD brought on by poverty, social violence, and all kinds of things that happen with poverty. So I’ve worked a lot in that area because of my time in the townships in South Africa.
Rick: You mentioned that there’s not a formal meditation practice in the Sangoma tradition, but you of course had a Zen background. Did your Zen practice kind of fall by the wayside when you got heavily into Sangoma training, or have you actually retained that along with your Sangoma training?
John: Yes, I’ve retained it. Fortunately, I have to say I’ve been meditating all these years. But I want to just say that I don’t want to make a distinction between the two, although they are different.
When I left South Korea and then started becoming a Sangoma, I saw the beautiful similarity between the Sangomas I was training with and the monks I had just returned from. I called my community “African dancing monks” because they sing. That’s the practice: singing. But it’s not just singing; it’s chanting. They have ngomas, which are chants, and they are powerful chants.
The practice of connecting with the other world, in terms of meditation practice for Sangomas, is chanting, singing, and drumming. Oh my God, they are world leaders when it comes to singing and chanting. I have touched levels of divinity and grace that I don’t think I’ve seen or experienced anywhere else in the world—what I’ve experienced in South Africa, in the rural areas, with some of the poorest people in the world.
They’re chanting and singing, and you feel like the heavens are opening. That’s their practice. The way they connect to the divine, the way they deal with poverty, and the way they help the community deal with poverty is through singing, chanting, drumming, and dancing, bringing forth the exuberance of the human spirit, even though they are dealing with horrific circumstances in their lives.
When I saw this, I felt such joy, and I also felt so grateful to be amongst these Sangomas who were showing me a way to deal with very, very difficult human conditions.
When they sang and drummed, they completely let go of their own stories and became so spiritual because they let go into these chants. Then they connected to Isiqhika, the Great Spirit, and their ancestors, and that’s how we got these dreams.
So the question—a good question—would be: Zen monk in South Korea, African dancing monk in South Africa: are they the same or different? That’s what Zen Master Su Bong would say: “Are they the same or different?”
I would say, “Sir, they look different, but they’re the same, because the practice in their heart is one of service.”
They look different, but they’re the same, because the practice in their heart is one of service.
Rick: Interesting. Here’s a question very much along the lines of what you’re just saying. This is from Anna in Boston. She says, “It seems like from the Xhosa perspective, a Sangoma who sat alone on a hill to meditate would be seen as spiritually immature and even quite selfish, whereas in the yogic or Buddhist tradition, that same person may be seen as particularly evolved. How have you reconciled these two seemingly opposite teachings?”
John: They’re opposite, but I wouldn’t completely agree with that, because a lot of Sangomas are loners. A lot of Sangomas are loners because they are dreamers, because they live outside the box, and because of their experiences from the dreams. So they are mystics.
The top Sangomas, the ones who have gone through the training and have had to listen very carefully to their dreams, often have to go on journeys on their own. That would mean—not necessarily; there’s no word for meditation—but they could be sitting under a tree and praying and connecting with their ancestors.
I have heard of very, very powerful prophets, Sangomas from the olden days, and probably also existing now in South Africa, living in caves and practicing. There’s just no word for meditation, so I don’t want to get caught up with language here.
I think you will find Sangomas on their own, but of course I’m generalizing now, because the practice is mostly carried out in a collective way to help the community.
Rick: Yeah, I’m sure that people have different roles to play, and some of them are more in the world and some more out of it, according to their nature.
John: That’s right. That’s a good point, Rick.
Rick: Yeah, which is true also of other traditions. In Christianity, some are Cistercians or cloistered and don’t have anything to do with the world. Others are social activists and are completely engaged in fighting various social injustices. It’s just according to your nature.
John: It’s a calling. We always say in the Xhosa way that “Ulandela Mapupa”: you listen to the dream. “Ulandela” is “Nyanya Zabo”: you follow your ancestors and the gift that’s been given to you, and the way they are leading you.
You don’t stand in front of your dreams or in front of your ancestors; you stand behind them. This means you tell them where you’re going and what you’re going to do, and then you wait for their blessing and you wait for the doors to open for you.
So it’s very much a practice of grace and working with the community. Drumming also helps with that practice of grace. But sometimes, if you have to walk alone and go into the forest and listen to the birds and the wind, it’s the same practice.
Rick: There’s another question from Flory in New York. She asked an earlier question. She’s wondering if divination is like clairvoyance.
John: Yes, very much so.
🎵 Ubuntu, shadow, and the art of kindness
Rick: All right. So, what are some important points that I haven’t asked you yet or that we haven’t talked about? I’m sure there are some major doors we want to open to explore what you do, what you know, and your whole tradition. Are there some important pieces we’ve left out that I haven’t thought to ask you about?
John: Are there? I’m not sure. I have to think.
Rick: I like these interviews to be really comprehensive, as much as possible, so that a person really gets a taste of what you have to offer. Obviously, people can read your book if they’re interested, but it’s nice to have a full taste of what the person has to offer.
John: Well, a big part of my calling has been about helping to bridge the divide between the Western world and indigenous Africa. I left South Africa thinking that South Africa was the only place that had this vicious form of apartheid, which had been institutionalized in one of the worst forms of social engineering in the world.
Apartheid, Separation, and Ubuntu
Then I left and went to England, and I traveled around. Sadly, I found aspects of apartheid all over the world. Then I realized that part of my journey was to experience this incredible illness or curse called apartheid, which means separation; to feel it in every bone of my body, in the civil war of South Africa, in post-war South Africa, and in the townships; and then to teach people how to unite and come together in the spirit of Ubuntu, which means humanity.
Then I left and went to England, and I traveled around. Sadly, I found aspects of apartheid all over the world. Then I realized that part of my journey was to experience this incredible illness or curse called apartheid, which means separation; to feel it in every bone of my body, in the civil war of South Africa, in post-war South Africa, and in the townships; and then to teach people how to unite and come together in the spirit of Ubuntu, which means humanity.
So, when people have an issue with me being a white Sangoma, I go, “Wonderful, wonderful. You’ve got an issue, because we have to face the prejudice inside ourselves.” If you don’t face it and suddenly you make an unkind comment about me, then that’s actually racism. If you’re making a comment that comes from something inside of you, based on prejudice or fear, and then you take action by writing on social media or opening your mouth, then you’re stepping into the terrain of racism, or something a little bit more serious.
What I’m calling on every human being to do is to start practicing the ancient art of kindness. That’s Ubuntu; that’s humanity. It doesn’t matter what color your skin is, and it doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor. If you’re a human being, let’s start practicing the ancient art of Ubuntu, which means kindness, and listening to what’s happening inside our hearts, because this is the way we’re going to heal one another, and we’re going to heal the next generation.
I’m showing people how to connect with their ancestors so that they can increase their sense of dignity in their bodies, so that they can have a sense of who they are and where they’re going in their future, and also so they can start to remember their dreams. With that process, they can really face the prejudice inside themselves and the shadow, because when we are practicing as Sangomas and learning this ancient art, we also have to befriend the shadow inside ourselves.
What does it mean to befriend a shadow? It means to just look at it. Just look at it—not engaging with it, not acting upon it, but just looking at that shadow inside yourself.
If you’re feeling, “Oh, I’ve got jealousy inside,” ah, wonderful. Welcome to the human race. If you look inside yourself and you have issues because, “I’ve got white skin and I’m an African Sangoma,” I’ll go, “Wonderful. Welcome to the human race. Welcome.”
Our job as human beings is to transform into the lotus flower. If you look at nature, we need to look very carefully at nature. The lotus flower is feeding on the mud; that’s how it transforms itself. It doesn’t throw the mud onto another plant and say, “I’m not going to suck this mud up. There’s no way I’m going to do that. I’m going to fling this mud onto the other plant.”
If the lotus flower does that, it’s not going to open. It’s going to stay with the bud closed, and it’s going to stay in this very cramped situation. What it does is accept the mud beneath it as fertilizer for its transformation. It starts to suck this mud up, it feels it in its heart, and then at some point it opens.
Nowadays, we are suffering from a crisis in the human race, and the crisis has to do with discrimination, racism, and all kinds of ugly evils. The answer is very simple: feel the prejudice inside yourself, but don’t spread the poison. Feel it inside yourself, breathe in and out, and practice kindness. That’s how we can transform ourselves and one another.
Feel the prejudice inside yourself, but don’t spread the poison.
Rick: Beautiful. I came across some things in the last couple of days that very much relate to what you’re saying and that I’ve found meaningful. One is from the Dalai Lama. He said, “If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” I really like that.
I also relate to what you’re saying. I read an interesting article today by my good friend Michael Rodriguez about the wisdom of heartbreak. The reason I enjoyed it is that it relates to what you were saying about people wanting to get out of the mud and not face the shadow.
There’s a lot of that in nondual circles and certain spiritual circles, where people just want to accentuate the positive and keep their attention on the positive, and so on. It sometimes seems to result in an imbalanced development, in which people do attain fairly high levels of consciousness or high levels of experience, but there are all these lurking shadows that haven’t been dealt with. They come up to bite them on the ass later on and cause all kinds of problems in various sanghas and spiritual communities.
I think Michael’s point in his article, which I put on my Facebook page and also on the Batgap community webpage, is that we have to allow our heart to break open and to be heartbroken. We’re going to feel things much more acutely and viscerally than we would if the heart were closed.
But a continual refinement, and just going into greater and greater tenderness, actually makes us vulnerable. At the same time, it’s a sort of invulnerability, because you’ve really opened your heart to include everything, so it’s no longer threatened by anything that it doesn’t include.
John: Yeah, you speak such truth there, Rick. Thanks very much. I see this a lot in the groups that I move around with. People want a good experience when they come and do my retreats or my workshops. They want a good experience, and I have to actually say to them that wanting a good experience and wanting sweetness all the time is what we call addiction.
Nowadays, in the world, we have to watch that very carefully, because bitter medicine is sometimes the strongest medicine to grow the soul. There are sayings in Africa that I can use. One of the sayings we have is that the wood that takes a long time to burn is the best wood to work with. Bitter medicine is sometimes the strongest medicine to help grow the soul.
Nowadays, in the world, we have to watch that very carefully, because bitter medicine is sometimes the strongest medicine to grow the soul. There are sayings in Africa that I can use. One of the sayings we have is that the wood that takes a long time to burn is the best wood to work with. Bitter medicine is sometimes the strongest medicine to help grow the soul.
So, what does it mean? It means that sometimes, when people come and do a ceremony or a workshop, they are activated in certain ways. The first activation they may experience is emotion, and the emotion may be a heavy emotion. It may be guilt, shame, anger, or all kinds of uncomfortable emotions that are bringing them to their edge.
I always say to them, “Wonderful, wonderful.” If they’re feeling a lot of positive emotion, if they’re feeling excited and all the rest, I go, “Wonderful.” I say, “If you’re not feeling anything, then come and speak to me.” No one has ever done that. People have gotten angry; they’ve walked away. But people have never come to me and said they’re not feeling anything, because the job of the Sangoma is to be a lightning rod and to stimulate the spine and the consciousness of the people.
So, it’s a very physical job, and it’s also a very mystical and transformative job in many ways. But what people have to be careful about is that they don’t react to the emotions they receive. If someone wants to go and have a really good experience and suddenly they feel all this anger and resentment, but it’s coming from nowhere, suddenly they’re looking for a place to put it and blaming other people in the circle. I’m saying that’s completely incorrect.
You need to feel these emotions coming up. It’s like you’re looking at a fire. Do you focus on the smoke, or do you look at the flame? People are like, “Well, I look at the smoke a little bit, but I love the flames.” I go, “Yeah, that’s it.”
When we’re doing this practice, we look at the smoke in terms of the emotions coming off our bodies, but we keep focusing on the fire that’s coming inside of us—the fire that’s igniting our bones, that’s igniting our spirit. That’s where your attention is.
It’s quite interesting for me because, in South Africa, when we are doing traditional ceremonies in the Xhosa tradition, sometimes you will look at your friends, colleagues, and community members, and you can see in their faces that they have this beautiful word. The word is “Ukumbile, ukumbile.” I say, “Wena? Uchongeko ukumbile ngok?” which means grumpy. Someone would look really grumpy.
Afterward, you speak and say, “Wena? Ukumbile, umsebens? Were you grumpy at the ceremony?” They’ll just laugh and say, “Aye, umsebens wikrik, umsebens izinyanya.” They’ll say, “It’s just a ceremony to do with the ancestors, and it’s normal for us to feel all kinds of things. It’s just normal.”
They don’t give it a second thought, and they won’t even go there, but they’ll know that when we’re doing ancestral work that connects with our spirit, it’s normal for us to feel all kinds of emotions. It’s part of being human.
During that time, there is a warning among the elders that we don’t lash out with the emotions. We don’t shout at someone, create an argument, or get angry. We just watch those emotions and breathe in and out. But we don’t engage with those emotions, because that’s how you can create disorder in the community.
Rick: Do you feel that, as a Sangoma, you’re acting as a sort of washing machine, where things pass through you and are purified, and you’re having a purificatory effect on the person you’re dealing with, or even on the collective consciousness in general?
John: I hope so. I hope I’m doing some good, but I wouldn’t be glamorous about the job I do. I do enjoy it, but I do feel a lot from people, and I think my job is more like being a spiritual plumber. I deal with the shit in society.
It’s so funny, because my mom always wanted me to become a plumber. She said, “Oh, these plumbers, they always do great work, and they always have a great living.” She said, “If you ever want to be a plumber or electrician, I’ll support you in the trades,” because my Irish family came from a trades background.
In a way, I am a tradesman. I’m a spiritual tradesman, a spiritual plumber, because my job is to open up the channels inside of people. However, it’s a very humble and very simple job, because I’m not in control of the process. It’s up to the clients. I can’t do anything that they don’t allow or facilitate.
It’s also more like being a coach, like a spiritual plumbing coach, where I suggest certain things, and then they can listen to me or not. I’m sure I can do some deep healing, but at the end of the day, the client is the one who accepts that and allows themselves to be healed.
Rick: Yeah, because you can only do so much. The reason I asked that question is that I’ve spoken with some people who say that they open up and, once they have processed a lot of their individual stuff, they find themselves beginning to process collective stuff. They may wake up at three in the morning and feel acutely something that’s happening in some part of the world, and they feel like they’re somehow helping to bring harmony to it, or some kind of resolution, or diffusing some tension—something that’s not even their own.
John: I think that’s true, and I also think that when we start working on ourselves in a profound way, where we are consciously transforming the mud beneath us and inside of us, when we are consciously dealing with our own shadow issues of guilt, jealousy, anger, prejudice, racism, or whatever those shadow issues are, we are actually doing it for the whole human race, and we’re also doing it for our ancestors.
You don’t have to be a guru, and you don’t have to be a famous person. You could just be a simple person living in the ghettos, or living in New York, or living somewhere, and you’re feeling grief and anger, but you deal with it in a dignified way. You’re feeling resentment or prejudice, but you give yourself a chance to just feel it, deal with it, and try to transform it. You are doing incredible work for all of us.
Rick: Sure. I think we’re all fundamentally interconnected, and whatever we experience within ourselves radiates an influence. You can’t—“No man is an island,” John Donne, and everyone’s part of the main, or however that is. “Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Yeah, we’re all interconnected, and we’re all exerting an influence constantly. If you look at the state of the world, we’re just looking at the sum total of all the individual influences that are being radiated, and obviously there’s some room for improvement.
John: Yeah, I’m hopeful, because I think the people I meet—when people are coming with a shining, hopeful way to do good and to really work on themselves, and not to be afraid of their shadow, but to look at it and to be… it’s a call to become a warrior.
To become a warrior means a spiritual warrior. What I talk about as a leopard warrior means to really look inside yourself and not be afraid of the pain, the shadow, and the difficulty, and to really look at that. As you do that, you start to shine.
Just in the last six months, I’ve met some incredible people on my travels in Ireland and now through the U.S.—just simple, ordinary people who are showing up for events with a smile, not being afraid to be vulnerable, and not being afraid to look deep inside themselves for whatever they’re seeing. That’s what gives me hope. That’s what really gives me hope.
Rick: Yeah, I agree. I’m also optimistic. I haven’t traveled much in recent years, but I lived three months in Iran and nine months in the Philippines, and a couple of years in Europe, and here and there and wherever you go, you find these gems of people.
It’s not evident on the six o’clock news. It seems like the world is going to hell in a handbasket, but there seems to be a counterbalancing upwelling of people waking up, and I’m very optimistic that it will meet the challenge of the chaos in the world and lead us into a much brighter future.
John: Yeah, thanks, Rick. I’d like to speak a little bit about chaos. Chaos is the transformative engine that turns this planet.
When you look at a man and woman and they make a baby together, we can talk about the birds and the bees, and man and woman, these two different energies. There’s this chaos that comes with a man and a woman, male and female, and yet the fruit of this chaos is a beautiful child.
It’s the same thing when we are doing a ceremony in South Africa. We have a saying that the more chaotic the energy before the ceremony is, the stronger and more impactful the ceremony is going to be. So we don’t see it in a negative way. All we say is, “You’re feeling all this energy.” We say, “Omoya, omoya pezulu.” You feel all this energy before the ceremony; do not react, just feel it, because this chaos energy is what’s going to transform us. It’s also a sign that it’s going to be a very good ceremony.
I’m looking at this as a larger, worldwide phenomenon—all this chaos and all these natural disasters—and I see it as the whole planet starting to be transformed. People’s consciousness is being transformed in a very radical way.
It’s almost like the analogy of the washing machine that you mentioned earlier. When we are spinning—if the whole world is spinning—there’s a sense of heat, a sense of energy, and a sense of opportunity, because something is being transformed.
I’d like to speak about the spine. The human spine is this lightning rod of potential, and the ancient yogis would talk about the energy up and down the spine as the kundalini energy, the energy of transformation. Amongst the Xhosa and Zulu, we talk about the umbilini energy.
Sangoma Transformation and Kundalini Energy
Spot the difference: umbilini, kundalini. They’re both similar words, and they both speak about this energy up and down the spine. As a sangoma is being transformed by this energy—whether it’s dancing, singing, plant medicine, or prayer—we start to experience all this heat in our bodies, and all of this emotion, whether that’s positive or negative. Our bodies start to change.
As I was going through this ten-year apprenticeship, my body changed. I started off being very underweight and very skinny. By the time I finished my training, I had filled out, and my feet even grew at an age when that is not unusual in the sangoma context and culture.
We transform ourselves as this energy in the spine gets activated. The heat comes off us, and our bodies start to grow. This is what happens on a small scale with individuals in our culture, but also in the yoga culture they speak about this.
If you look at the international, global culture, it’s a similar thing. It’s as if the world is a lightning rod of energy, and it’s spinning, and the energy is increasing, and this heat is increasing, and all this emotion is coming off it. Well, it’s the same as the transformation of someone becoming a sangoma or a yogi.
What we have to watch in those situations is that we do not react with those emotions, that we feel the energy in our bones, that we stay mindful, and that we remember ubuntu bobuntu—to be kind. Someone may look different from you, but if they are a human being, they have the same energy inside them as you. They are part of your family, and you need to show them respect.
Even though you may be angry with them, do not hurt them with your tongue or with your actions, because this chaos energy is testing us. It’s testing us, and it’s also allowing us to evolve and reach a higher level.
If we are free to react with this energy in a negative way, we are missing the opportunity to transform and evolve—not just for ourselves, but for our whole family and our community.
Chaos is the transformative engine that turns this planet.
Rick: That’s great, very well put. This whole thing of chaos preceding a breakthrough of some kind or an opening—there are all kinds of other examples you can think of. When Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in a jet, there was all this shaking as he was approaching the speed of sound, and then when he broke through, it was smooth.
In physics they have something called a phase transition, and there are a number of things that are defined by that term. Even the boiling of water is a phase transition. When it reaches the boiling point, there’s all this turbulence as it’s about to boil, and then it becomes steam and the turbulence is gone.
It also works with lasers and all kinds of things, but I think that, just to give some examples of what you just said, there’s a lot of craziness in the world, but it could actually be a harbinger of better times on the horizon.
John: Yes, I fully agree. I have to say that if we think about all the craziness, going back to the human body, if someone has a fever, there’s a lot of heat and a lot of discomfort, and when that fever breaks, there’s a beautiful sense of harmony.
Rick: Interesting.
John: So it’s almost as if, at the moment, the world is in a state of fever. What happens with a fever? Things heat up in order for the virus to be destroyed. So it’s a purifying fever. The Chinese talk about a purifying fever, and I think this is what’s happening in the world.
There’s this fever happening, with the tempo and the heat, and the chaos is being lifted up. I see this as a way to burn off any impurities and for us to evolve and become more loving human beings.
Rick: Yeah, Saint Francis of Assisi—if you ever saw the movie Brother Sun, Sister Moon—was very sick. He came back from the Crusades or something, and he was very sick with a really high fever and almost died. When he came out of it, he was Saint Francis. Well, it took a while to blossom into that totally, but he had undergone this huge transformation, and the fever had burned something up.
John: Yeah, it’s funny, it’s interesting you say this, Rick, because it’s bringing things to me in terms of my training and apprenticeship. Before I met my teacher, I was often sick with fevers or a stomach condition. Then, when I found my teacher and started my tradition, training, and apprenticeship, I started to understand the meaning of the fever and all the stomach upsets I was getting.
It was all to do with the stimulation of the umbilini, this lightning conductor in my spine. Then I started to welcome it. I have to say, I hardly ever have fevers or stomach problems now, and I almost look on it in a nostalgic way.
Rick: Yeah, just to dwell on the point a little longer, it’s interesting. There are a lot of spiritual teachers who go through some serious health issues, sometimes very painful, and so on. I’ve had people ask me, “Why is that? Why do you think that’s happening? What is it about?”
I just feel like maybe their twaza period isn’t finished. They’re already serving as spiritual teachers, but there’s just this sort of—if you’re going to serve in such a capacity, it’s like nature says, “Okay, you want to do this? Then we’re going to put you through the wringer. We’re going to make you really fit as a servant. We’re not going to sell it short and have you be half-baked. You’ve got to go through this process entirely, so hang on for dear life, because we’re not finished with you.”
John: Yeah, I think you put it very well, Rick, and I see another two aspects to that, so I could just add to that. Firstly, I see this fever that I experienced often during my training and before I met my teacher. I saw it as a cleansing process to cleanse me, but I also saw this fever in another way. It also taught me empathy, because when I was very sick—and I was for many years—I certainly didn’t think that I was the king of the jungle or anything like that. I felt very humble, and in that state of humility I was able to really connect with people in a different kind of way.
I could really see people who were suffering like me, and my eyes were opened to poverty. Sometimes the poorest people were the ones who could see my illness and who showed me so much compassion that it just opened my heart.
I remember one particular story. I was going to the shops in Johannesburg one day, and it was still apartheid. My illness, my Twazah illness, was in full flight. I remember walking past a bunch of ladies. They were African women, sitting under a tree, and it was a very hot summer’s day, as it is sometimes in South Africa. I was just walking past them, and I knew that I had the Sangoma calling. I knew I had the Twazah, but I hadn’t met my teacher yet. I knew I had the Twazah because it was shown to me in my dreams.
As I walked past all these ladies, who were in full conversation—there must have been about ten of them—the skinny white kid walked past, and they all stopped talking and looked at me. It was the weirdest thing. All these women were sitting on the grass, having a wonderful conversation, and as I walked past, they all stopped and stared at me. They put their lunch down and just looked at me. They didn’t say a word.
I looked at them, and there was so much compassion that they were showing me, beyond language. They just showed this compassion, and we looked at each other. I was a skinny white kid during apartheid, there with these Black African women having a break under this tree, and they showed me so much compassion. They really saw me, and we just looked at each other.
So, I think, going back to the chaos and going back to the fever, the fever cleanses us, and it also teaches us empathy and helps open our hearts to compassion.
Rick: It’s interesting that a lot of Western medicines attempt to palliate or suppress symptoms rather than really rooting the thing out. It’s like trying to push a beach ball down under the ocean water or something; it just keeps wanting to pop up.
John: It’s interesting you say that, actually, Rick, because when I’m seeing clients, it’s almost like a pressure-cooker feeling when I go into my divination space. My sensitivity is to see, just like you said there, where something is being suppressed. What are they pushing down? Where is the energy being blocked? Going back to being a spiritual plumber, where is the energy being blocked?
Following one’s calling
Rick: Here’s a question that came in from Daniel in Palmeira, Portugal. Daniel’s up late. He said, “I live in Portugal. As in most of the Western world, the ancient, deeper spiritual connection to plants has been severed. What would you recommend for someone who strongly feels the call to work with plant medicine and healing songs but has no direct tradition to build upon?”
John: Okay, good question. I think the first thing, Daniel, is to find one plant that you have a relationship with. It might be a plant that you have dreamt about or that you just love because of the way it looks or smells.
For example, let’s say rosemary. I love rosemary as a plant, and each time I go walking down the road, even here in Portland, I will just grab a bit of rosemary and smell it.
The first thing to do is to develop a relationship with the plant. The way you can do it is to go to the plant, introduce yourself, and speak as I’m speaking. You might give an offering of some rice, some hair of your own hair, or some tobacco. You just ask the plant if you can take some of it to be used for a wash or a cleanse, or perhaps to have that plant in your house.
When you pray to the plant, you’re not praying to the physical structure; you’re praying to the spirit of the plant. When we actually pray in a very deep way to a living object or a living creature, we’re actually praying to the greater, let’s say, Buddha nature, because everything is interconnected. Everything is part of this matrix of aliveness.
When you’re praying to a plant, you are calling for the spirit of that plant to connect with your spirit. It’s a bit like, in the Indian tradition, when two people say, “Namaste: the God in me sees and honors the God in you.” When we’re working with a plant, we are using that in a similar way. You’re speaking to the plant and giving an offering of love from your heart, and then you’re saying, “I’d like to connect more with you and your brothers and sisters, the other plants. Please show me. Please guide me.” If it’s coming from a really heartfelt place of mindfulness and true listening, something will happen.
Rick: Yeah, a few ideas came to mind as you were saying that. One is that there are some different traditions around the world where you actually could study to become an expert in plant medicine or the healing properties of plants. One would be Ayurveda, and there are programs where you can study to be an Ayurvedic Vajra.
Findhorn, up in Scotland, is a community based upon people who had a deep, subtle connection with the plant world and the devas or nature spirits that govern that world. In your tradition, is it possible to actually go to South Africa and study to become a Sangoma, as you did? Is there any kind of channel for that?
John: Well, people have to be called. You are called through the spirit world.
Rick: Yeah, what if someone feels called? Could they fly to South Africa, find somebody, and actually get into it?
John: I don’t know. I don’t offer that yet myself, and I’m very careful about that for a number of reasons.
Rick: Is your teacher still alive?
John: She’s still alive, yeah, and I have trained some people. I’ve learned that cross-cultural, let’s say, pollination is very powerful, but it’s also something we need to be very careful of.
I had a calling, or I have a calling, and it was so strong I couldn’t lead a normal life. So, I always say to people, only become a Sangoma or come to South Africa looking for a teacher if you don’t feel you can lead a normal life, if it’s that strong. It’s not something to be played with. It’s a very, very serious culture, and it’s very hard and very beautiful. You have to take it almost like a life-and-death situation: “I become a Sangoma, or I get so sick I can’t have a normal life.” I chose to become a Sangoma.
I think becoming a Sangoma is becoming a traditional shaman. To become a traditional shaman all around the world means you have to be called, and you have to face almost life and death. It’s very, very serious.
However, if you want to become a shamanic practitioner or understand the healing arts, there are many places around the world where you can learn to become a shamanic practitioner, but that’s not the same as being a shaman.
Rick: Yeah.
John: I don’t advocate people wanting to become a shaman, because if you do, you don’t understand what it’s all about. If you want to become a Sangoma, I don’t know if I’m the person to speak to, because it’s not a glamorous thing. It’s very, very painful, and you only decide to accept the calling if you don’t have another choice, because it’s that hard.
Rick: Yeah, I was just going to say that. So, it’s almost like you can’t volunteer. It’s almost like you have to be chosen.
John: And you’re invited. You have to be invited first by the spirits and then by the elders.
I’m trained in an old way, and being a white guy, I also have to be very, very careful, because people have been abused and misused. I’m very, very careful about that kind of energy. However, if someone has a calling like I did, it doesn’t matter what color your skin is; it depends on how strong and how serious your calling is.
If people wanted to understand African traditions and how we operate, there are many different places in South Africa where they can come, and they can Google and explore that. However, it’s not the same as becoming a Sangoma, and I feel the calling is very, very important.
What is calling you? What is calling you? That’s the most important thing I say to people. Don’t look at me and think what I’m doing is glamorous. I’m asking you, what is calling you? What is calling your spirit? That’s the most important thing.
Rick: Well, it’s a big deal to fly to South Africa and find someone you can train with, but hey, you’re in Portland, Oregon, and you’re accessible. Not that you’re going to turn people into Sangomas, but how can people avail themselves of what you have to offer, both directly, as you’re here in the U.S. at the moment and as you travel around the world, and remotely through Skype and whatnot?
John: Yes, I think the easiest thing is just to access my website, which is johnlockley.com. Then you can email me and look at the events I’ve got. At the moment, I’m here in Portland, and then I’m going to Denver, Colorado, for a retreat. Then I’m going to L.A., where I’ll be hosted by Insight Meditation Center in L.A. Afterwards, I’m going to Boulder for my book launch on the first of November, and then I’m going to Santa Fe, New Mexico. All my events will be on my website. You can come and join me, see my events, and speak to me.
I just need to make one point about whether people are interested in becoming a Sangoma or not. That is not the question. The question is, how are you being called? That’s the most important question.
So, if I’m called to train someone to become a Sangoma and it’s clear, then I’m open to that. But at the moment, the most important question for me to help people with is, how are you being called? It’s very important that people connect with their calling, and each calling is just as equal and just as honorable as the next.
If someone is called to become a plumber or an electrician, to become a family man, a mother or a father, a priest, or a teacher, these are just as powerful as someone becoming a Sangoma or a traditional shaman. I don’t want the listeners to think that shamans or Sangomas are better or more glamorous than anyone else. I want people to see: How are you being called? That’s my question.
Rick: Yeah, in the Vedic tradition, that calling would perhaps be defined as dharma. There’s a verse in the Bhagavad Gita which says, “Because one can perform it, one’s own dharma, though lesser in merit, is better than the dharma of another. Better is death than one’s own dharma. The dharma of another brings danger.”
John: Oh, that’s powerful, Rick. Geez, what a poet.
Rick: I didn’t write it; it’s the Gita.
John: You put it in such a good way. So, the question always is, what is the person’s calling in front of me, and how can I help them fulfill that calling? But I can’t do it for them, and I don’t necessarily want them to follow me. I want them to follow their spirits and follow their dreams.
The world is in crisis, and what we need is happy people. The way people become happy is by living authentic lives, and the way people lead authentic lives is by listening to their hearts, listening to their dreams, and listening to their spirits. My job is to help you with that, to show you how you can do this in an indigenous way, and I welcome you to join me on that journey.
The question is, how are you being called?
Rick: Great, that’s a good note to end on. So, thanks, John. It’s been a lot of fun.
John: Yeah, thanks, Rick. It’s great.
Rick: So let me just make a few wrap-up points. I’ve been speaking with John Lockley. His website is johnlockley.com, L-O-C-K-L-E-Y. I’ll be linking to that from his page on batgap.com, and if you go there, in addition to his page, you’ll find hundreds of other interviews and menus under the Past Interviews menu.
There are different ways to find and access them, so explore around. You can sign up for email notifications of new interviews, and you can sign up for an audio podcast. There’s even a geographic locator where, if you typed in Portland and John had registered with it, you’d see that he was going to be doing something in Portland. Then you’d see it radiating outward in terms of numbers of miles; maybe you’d see something in Ashland or whatever.
In any case, go there and check it out. I’m heading off for the Science and Nonduality Conference in a couple of days, and I’ll be doing a bunch of interviews out there, then back here a week after that. So stay tuned; there’s always going to be more. Thanks, John.
John: Thanks, Rick.
Rick: Bet you’re not nervous anymore, are you?
John: No. I show people my audio. I’ve got the audio in the book.
Rick: Oh yeah, and they’re both available on Sounds True. I’ve already created a page that I’ll be putting up in a couple of days, which we’ll link to on soundstrue.com. If you go to soundstrue.com and search for John Lockley, you’ll find them there also.
John: Oh, thanks, Rick. I appreciate that. Thank you.
Rick: Thank you. Talk to you later. Take care, and have a good time in the United States.
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