Using Shamanism to Understand We Aren’t One – We Are Everything with Jonathan Jay Dubois on The Healers Café with Manon Bolliger

call at first. Um, because I had trauma, I was sexually abused, and I went and got a massage license, or I almost got a massage license. And as part of that, there were, there was a practicum requirement. And a couple of men did inappropriate things while I was doing my practicum work, and I just thought, I don’t want that. I don’t want anything to do with that. So, I walked in the other direction. And I was a carpenter for a while. And one day, I took inventory of my life, looked at what I was interested in, and I had been reading, I had always had this sustained interest in ancient cultures. And I’ve been reading a lot about ancient cultures and ancient wisdom and ancient symbolism. And so, I decided that I would become an archaeologist. And I went back to college, I had dropped out of college, I went back to college, got my bachelor’s degree, went straight into a Ph. D. program. And here in California, and I…you know, 10 years later had a PhD and then. So, while I was in graduate school, I really got away from the spiritual portion of my life really got in, you know, deeply intellectual that I went into the closet spiritually, basically, it’s not very welcoming in the academy. But then when I got out, my life was…actually midstream, my life started to fall apart. And, you know, my marriage was breaking up. And it was, you know, I had a lot of difficulties, I had some addiction problems. And I realized that I needed to get back to my spiritual practice, which is what I did, and then I started to heal the trauma. And as I started to heal it through therapy, and through shamanism, through alternative modalities and reflexology, I just basically…whoever I felt like I felt called, I felt like could help me, I went to. And so as…pretty shortly after I started really getting into the trauma and healing it. I, you know, my guides started to really get vocal, like, you know, you’re supposed to be a healer, and you know, here it is, 20 years later, and you know, what’s happening? So, I started the practice and here we are, I’ve been practicing now actively for about five years, and I love it. And, at this point, I’ve really developed my gifts. And I’m realizing that the nothing went to waste, right? The whole, the whole intellectual journey into the ancient world is now you know, folded hand in glove with the spiritual journey. And I just had a workshop last weekend in the channeling workshop, where I rewove my story into an appreciation, this appreciation for the ancient world that I’ve always had, that it’s in my spirituality as well as my intellectual life. And rather than keeping them separate, which is what I had been doing, the healing, the current healing is coming from, from synthesizing them from reuniting.

Manon Bolliger  05:43

I think that’s typical, a very straightforward journey.

Jonathan Jay Dubois  05:48

Yes. Right.

Manon Bolliger  05:50

It’s actually quite funny. And I would say, often, it’s a retrospective view, right? And you kind of go, Well, I’ve always been who I am drawn to what I’m drawn to right. And some things you do have a, you know, a little bit of a compensation for this, like, I mean, just make it your interview, just to make it short so you understand. I went into law school, and I actually did my…was actually doing my master’s in law. And then I realized that empowerment came through, you know, medicine, as in taking charge of your own health is my understanding of what medicine. Of course, I found it quite like that. But the two have come together brilliantly in the work that’s necessary right now, you know, so it’s interesting, how it’s, you know. When my kids asked me, Well, how did you know what you wanted to be when I grew up? I said, I haven’t grown up yet, and the path is not over. Right? It’s like, it’s versions of yourself becoming larger and more, you know, more impregnated with meaning, you know, in that sense, right? So, you’re talking about relationship? Shall we go down that avenue a little bit?

Jonathan Jay Dubois  07:11

I’d love to, I’d love to.

Manon Bolliger  07:13

Go for it. What can you tell us?

Jonathan Jay Dubois  07:17

Well, you know, so here’s another area where I study it as a professor, and I teach it to my students. And I also…it’s also in the healing room. And it’s also in my relationship, right? Or in my relationships, I should say, it’s not as though I only I only have one relationship, we all have relationships with multiple people. But I was thinking of my romantic relationship. So well, one of the things I’m really interested in, in the ancient world is how people relate to each other differently than we relate to each other today. And what I find is that many, you know, my deep, if I go deep into my ancestry, and I also work…we have an initiative called Ancestral Voices, where we work with Native American elder, this work is about connecting with people who identify themselves as a constellation of relationships, rather than an individual. And those relationships are with persons that aren’t exclusively human. And so this is why, you know, ancient people, Native Americans, you know, these things, this is why they had such a sustainable relationship with their environment and with each other, is because they didn’t think of themselves as, you know, the pool ball on the pool table, knocking against other, you know, discrete entities. They didn’t think of themselves as individuals. They thought of themselves as this stream of relationships, and therefore, relationships become important relationships with people of the same gender relationship with people of a different gender relationship with people of the same group and different group. And all of these relationships need to be treated with respect and with, you know, with the proper care. Whereas we think of ourselves as individuals in the west and tend to, you know, we think about, you know, we bring what we want and who we are, but this sort of way of thinking is more about how I interrelate with others. And so, you know, one of the things that I learned as an anthropologist is that all of these social practices exist on a spectrum. So, you know, romantic relationships, how I identify as a gender being, how I identify as a member of society. We tend to think very black and white in the West, but people, relational people think of themselves in terms of their interactions and their relationships. So, it brings a whole different mindset to the table. It’s, …I’m still learning how to think this way, because we don’t, we don’t we aren’t grown up. We don’t grow up this way. Right. And, and our egos like to step in.

Manon Bolliger  10:30

Hmm. Can you give, like an example of what you’re meaning?

Jonathan Jay Dubois  10:35

Yeah. So, for example, the Cree people of Northeastern North America, they have this belief that other animals are also people. And each person each kind of person brings their own needs and wants and character, and medicine, right. And so, when I, for example, when I want to have a look out when I want to take a 30-yard view, when I when I want to view from above, right? I consult with the Hawks, because they have a view from above, right? Literally, in a shamanic sense, in a physical sense, but also in a spiritual sense, right. And so, my relationship with Hawk as a shaman is extremely important, because it gives me this view from above that I don’t have as a regular human. And this is a very, this is very closely related to indigenous ways of thinking, where A we can get outside of ourselves, right, we can, we can see from through a different perspective, we can connect with non-human persons, I guess you call them and offer them something in return as well. So rather than thinking of myself as Jay Dubois, PhD, you know, Shaman, shamanic healer, the executive director of nonprofits, I am one person in relation in this conversation, and then I will take this conversation, and it will become part of who I am. And then I will take it to the next conversation and build upon this, right. And so, every, every person’s input is part of who I am. I just, I feel like I went…feel like I went through from indigenous views of knowledge to mine, but it’s very, it’s very related. In other words, this relational view is rather than thinking of ourselves in our identities, and our egos, and what we do, we think of ourselves from the perspective of the we. And also, and also in motion. The other thing about an identity and an ego is that it’s solid and static. Right? I am blank, right? Whereas this view is more in process, right? This is who I am in this conversation with you right now. And I grow from this conversation and take it to the next conversation. And we each we build from there. Right? As people, right?

Manon Bolliger  11:32

I mean, it has a different foundation in that you are in conversation.

Jonathan Jay Dubois  12:29

Yes.

Manon Bolliger  12:30

You know, to start with, right. So it’s like, you know, you were explaining this I was sort of seeing it’s like, when I you know, when I started my practice, you know, with people I would always ask in the room, not out loud, but because my patient was laying here, you know, for the guidance that I needed and, and different entities beings, you know, came to me to guide right and I have a big relationship with the dolphins. So, it’s quite interesting, you know, it’s like it’s a conversation that I thought was so natural that I brought into my practice that I naturally hear sounds in the body and stuck places, which makes perfect sense if I’ve incorporated part of dolphin hood into my being.

Jonathan Jay Dubois  14:56

Yes, yeah. Yes.

Manon Bolliger  14:58

And I didn’t know that other people couldn’t because, you know, now I teach the method methodology I use called Bowen therapy. But I didn’t know that other people can’t hear. So, I would say, just like that, that sound, you know, and it’s like, they can’t hear that sound. You know, it’s interesting, though, you know, it’s like a, it’s not I don’t want to use the word groupthink. It has terrible connotations these days. But it’s this idea of, yeah, you are moving through time, with different conversations. And different people bring up other aspects of us.

Jonathan Jay Dubois  15:41

Right. In physical reality, my being does not end with my skin, right? Like, just as the simplest example, when I touch this screen right here, the molecules from my finger go into that screen, and the molecules from that screen go into my finger. So really, what seems solid to us is not. But then you take this into the relational perspective, and like your example, you don’t end with you, you bleed into dolphin hood, right? You have this, this sort of dolphin way of understanding and I have this Hawk way of looking at things and, you know, snake as well is one of my one close animals and snakes weave together. Snakes, snakes, take snakes take information, whole snakes, snakes take their prey whole, right, they eat it, and then they digest it over a long period of time. And this is very much how I am with information and with wisdom, right, taking a lot of information. And I don’t really at first, I’m like, Okay, I don’t really know what to make of this. And then a few days later, a week later, I start to oh, oh, right, this comes to something new, new things start to emerge. So rather than just being this guy, who ends at you know, the tips of my fingers and my toes, I have some essence of snake, I have some essence of Hawk. And I have some essence of my partner Winnie, because I spend so much time with her. And I have some essence of my friend Howie because I spend a lot of time with him and we interact and have a lot of idea exchange, et cetera. Yes, and so this, you know, it’s very interesting what you say about your healing practice, because this is very shamanic, this, you know, hearing where the blockage is. I have medical intuition, which means that I feel it in my body. So, where the blockages in your body I can feel in my body when I’m when…when you’re on my table. Right. So again, this is because I don’t end with me. Yeah, yeah.

Manon Bolliger  18:00

Yeah, I want to I actually want to cover your…the work, the work you do with men. But let’s take a little hiccup just I want to go on to one more second. I’ve had a resistance that maybe you could talk me out of it. You know, say I have friends who will say, you know that when they went to Peru, and they’ve done this they’ve done plant medicine, they’ve, you know, and they’re healers by, you know, by every measure. But they’ll say, you know, I’m a shaman. And it’s funny because I feel like well, what I do is very similar. There’s not much difference that I can see. But I have this honor thing, that I cannot call myself a shaman because it doesn’t belong to me. It’s like we’ve co-opted a word.

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Manon Bolliger  20:12

I wonder if you could speak out of that because it is the best word to describe it, but like, I feel resistant to using it.

Jonathan Jay Dubois  20:23

I’m really glad you asked this question. I dread this question by the way.

Manon Bolliger  20:27

Good.

Jonathan Jay Dubois  20:28

 Because you know, yeah, exactly. Because as an anthropologist, right, this is precisely the argument that the Academy has, right I…by identifying myself as a shaman, I have co-opted a term from the English language from people that I’ve never met and I don’t know very well, right. Which is a fair, which is a fair argument. Right? And I…but here’s the thing, right? What are we this is the term for what I do. This is the term for this is the term we have in our language so that you understand what I’m talking about when I say I’m a shamanic healer. You understand that I’m working with spirits, you understand that I’m not a surgeon. I’m not an acupuncturist. I work with, you know, the energy in a person and mostly what it means to be a shamanic healer is that the spirits work through me. That I get out of the way and the guidance as exactly as you put it, work through me. That’s what it means. Right? And, and here’s the thing, there have been cultures around the world who do this, since the beginning of time, as far as we can tell, right. Including Western cultures, including, you know, the ancient Celts, the ancient Germanic peoples, etc., right. My ancestors were Celts. So, it’s a fair argument to say that it’s not our word. But what words would you have me use right? Am I a medicine, man? Okay, well, then that’s been co-opted. Am I spirit healer? Yeah. Okay. But that doesn’t really. You know, it’s just, it’s sort of I work with the language we have. And here’s the other reality, right? I do yoga. I practice Tai Chi. These practices do not come from my culture.

Manon Bolliger  22:31

Right, right

Jonathan Jay Dubois  22:31

Right. But I do not practice of shamanism that I co-opted or stole from any particular culture. I practice as the spirits guide me and have guided me. And when I talk to my ancestors, they have lighter skin than if a Tungus goes person talks to their ancestors. But I use it by the way, I don’t. Not that I’ve never done plant medicine, or I don’t, or I have any problem with it. But I don’t access altered states of consciousness through plant medicine. I do it through a repetitive drumbeat. So, this is a practice that’s really ancient. And it’s a word. It’s a word that best describes what I do for the people that I’m talking to. And so, and, yeah, and again, I didn’t I learned a kind of shamanic healing that is called core shamanism that was started by Michael Horner, in the 1970s, who started the foundation for shamanic studies. And what he discovered is that is this fact that there are different cultures all around the world that practice this form of spirituality. And there are some core beliefs that they share. And he taught those core beliefs. And he taught us to or he actually my teachers are direct students of his. He taught us to consult our guides so that we are in integrity, right. So, you know, my guides don’t have a big problem with me, calling myself a shamanic healer. And I have you know, a close friend who’s a Native American elder, who also doesn’t have any problem with me calling myself a shamanic healer. So, I mean, when a Tungus person comes to me and says, You stole my word, I want to talk to you, then I will sit and talk to them about it. But there’s a lot of you know, like, there’s a lot of talk of cultural appropriation out of one side of our mouth and then cultural appropriation on the other side, and by the way, it doesn’t go one way, right? Bollywood would not exist without Hollywood. Right? I mean, there’s McDonald’s in Hong Kong, right, you know, that, like we it’s a cultural, it’s a cultural interchange. And I know that it was dominated by colonialism. Nobody knows better than I mean, you know, I teach the colonialism we’re talking about right. So, I understand the colonialism aspect of it.

Manon Bolliger  22:32

But also, while you were speaking, I’m thinking, you know, we’re a lot of the history, we’ve been told. There’s a lot we’ve not been told. How long till we’re gonna find out? Probably in the next year or so. And I think in that sense, it’s like, if the point is communicating, right, so that we can connect with another person, and they can identify more or less what you do. Right, and they’re fine with it, then maybe that is the whole point, you know, the same reasons I’m not a doctor anymore? Because despite what I did, you know, it belongs to a set of conventions that currently exist in a paradigm that I also no longer want to identify with. Right? It goes both ways it moves, you know, their message, yes. But as a person, you move closer, at least, that’s how I feel closer to what was always truer, rather than the egoic labels of many things. So, in that sense, you know, shamanic, it’s a communication tool, maybe that’s the closest to see it, you know?

Jonathan Jay Dubois  26:16

Yeah, I like that. I like that. It’s sort of like, I could explain to you that I do these sequence of movements that are lined my body, and then it puts me in a really good place for meditation. Or I can tell you that I do yoga, and then we like we’ve had we have accomplished words, right? Yeah. And so that’s the way that’s the way I look at it. And I think that aligns with what you’re saying.

Manon Bolliger  26:40

Yeah, definitely. Okay, let’s talk about this men’s group and what you’re doing there.

Jonathan Jay Dubois  26:44

I’d love to. So, about three years ago, I went to a retreat called sacred man, sacred woman by Sophia Sundar. And at that retreat, for the first couple of days, they separated the men and the women. And the men work together, and the women work together. And we did some really vulnerable work, we literally got naked and talked about what we were embarrassed about ourselves with each other. And I learned a lot from that retreat, and coming out of it, I found that I trusted these men, and that I didn’t trust men, generally, and that there’s some love that I was craving that I didn’t even know until I got to that retreat. In other words, this masculine love this supportive, masculine love, where we uplift each other and work together toward a common end. And where we can get vulnerable with each other, where we can process our emotions together as men in ways that men understand and that women don’t. And of course, there’s the inverse as well, naturally. So, I got to the end of this retreat, and I came home, and I said, Oh, I need this, I gotta have this, where is this? Right? Well, it didn’t exist. So, I started a group, a group called the Sacred Brotherhood, and we started meeting once a month, and the format is that we get together and we share about what’s coming up in our lives, we get really vulnerable with each other. And then we draw them together, and then we do a shamanic journey together. And this really brings us close. And it’s a support system, that I really need. It’s a support system, that saves my relationship, for example, because traditionally, men traditionally in the West, men don’t…emotion aren’t very emotionally literate, and they don’t process their emotions well. So, they turn to the women, that women in their lives, to process their emotions or help process their emotions. And it puts a lot of strain on our relationships. So, what I’ve discovered is that with this kind of purpose and meaning and mutual support from other men, we tend to be less aggravated, violent. You know, and we have a resource that we didn’t have, that doesn’t exist otherwise. So, I’m really, I’ve become really passionate about this men’s work. And I really feel strongly that this is something that needs to go beyond this small circle of men that we have here in North Hollywood, to the American society. With all of the violence that we have with all of the history of colonialism and oppression would be really well served by men coming together supporting each other, and in a way that then we can support all society, right? We can support. Yeah.

Manon Bolliger  29:53

Yeah, there isn’t enough of that. I mean, I have quite a few male friends who, in their own provinces and whatever are actually doing a form of that, because it’s so necessary. And I, even though I have a wonderful relationship, and you know, my partner will process and maybe because of what I do, it’s, it works fine. But it’s not the same as really being able to do this with, you know, a group of men and then men have been so like destroyed in our society and you know, it’s really…it must be difficult to be a man, you know with…

Jonathan Jay Dubois  30:42

It’s difficult to be a conscious man. It’s actually it’s actually the world is made for men for toxic men for men, you know, for men that don’t have any feelings or don’t feel their feelings. But then of course when you look at them in reality, they’re pretty miserable. Yeah. So, you know, I spent all these years in the in the in the unit in the classroom saying, you know, this is what’s wrong with our society this is what’s wrong with the way we do business. This is what’s wrong with the way we do gender, right? And then this voice started to appear a few years ago. Oh, yeah. What are you going to do about it? And so that’s where I’m shifting my focus now. How I can…how we can bring change, real, real substance change. And I feel very strongly that men supporting men alleviates violence, it alleviates family stress family fracture, right? Because when you have men who can safely process their emotions with other men, then they don’t come home, frustrated and angry and expecting something from their kids or their wife that they have no business expecting. You know, and it’s really, but even more importantly, or just as importantly, as this, it, you know, we live in a patriarchal society. And this is a really subversive way to change that. We have the power. By example. You know, right, for the sons, and for like, you know, there are men who own businesses, there are men who are part of this, right, there are men who are surgeons who are part of this. And then they go out in the world, and they spread this among their groups and so on. And then we change what it means to be a man from the inside out. That’s, you know, that’s the idea that the model of what I’m talking about.

Manon Bolliger  32:47

I could just see the sequel, what is a man?

Jonathan Jay Dubois  32:50

Yeah, yeah. Well, we talk a lot about what is the man. Right? Yeah. Because it’s, I mean, it’s important. It’s the polarity is important, right? What, what is a man and what is a woman? And it’s also important that we have some flexibility, like, if you want, you know, if you have a female body, and you want to show up as a man, then you’re welcome as masculine. Right, then you’re welcome. But let’s be clear about the kind of masculinity that we want to promote and the kind of femininity that we want to promote. And, you know, I’m very influenced by this sort of tantric. You know, you also Chinese medicine, yin and yang.

Manon Bolliger  33:26

Right, exactly the balance that we have both. I mean, it’s just last night, it’s like, it’s just one chromosome. Right? That’s a minute difference, right? But it is what it is, you know, and if you include all the DNA that we so called, call junk DNA, because we don’t understand it.

Jonathan Jay Dubois  33:49

There’s no such thing as junk.

Manon Bolliger  33:51

Exactly. You know, so I think it’s, yeah, and to play with the energies that we have at hand.

Jonathan Jay Dubois  33:59

Exactly, exactly. We’ve, by subverting traditional society, we got away from traditional gender roles, which is freeing in some ways, but it has most of us lost and unmoored. Because we crave things that we don’t understand why, why because we’re, you know, where we’re gravitating towards the masculine pole, we’re gravitating towards the feminine pole. And, you know, when we gravitate towards the masculine pole, we want to you know, we want to be more conscious, we want to be more aware. And when we gravitate towards the feminine pole, we want to be more creative and flowing and mysterious, right? And that’s all natural and in fact, when someone who’s at one pole comes together with someone who’s at another pole, that can really create some beautiful energy and momentum to move forward, as long as we’re doing it consciously. But we’re so ingrained with this unconsciousness with you know our egos and like, look what you did to meet me. And you know, all of this.

Manon Bolliger  35:06

And this 3d world. We’re at a time with just the last few words you want to share, whether it’s something you’ve written or something, whatever, whatever you want, or how people can get ahold of you.

Jonathan Jay Dubois  35:26

Yeah so, I have a website, it’s www.spiritualdigger.com. So, if you would like to come work with me, that is the place you go, and you go to spirit, spiritualdigger.com and then click on the Services page. And then I’m also the executive director of a nonprofit called Compassionate Transformation Community, excuse me. And our website is lovect.net. So www.lovect.net and love for anybody and everybody to come check out what we’re doing. As part of that initiative. We didn’t really get to talk about that, but and then the Sacred Brotherhood men’s circle meets every second Friday of the month. And that website is agnestreehouse.org sorry.com, AG N E. S, then treehouse.com. The Brotherhood and we’ve also got new brotherhood circles coming up here at heart center LA, but I don’t have the information, or I would give it to you.

Manon Bolliger  36:37

Okay, well, maybe if you send it, we can put it underneath you know, so we have that.

Jonathan Jay Dubois  36:41

Great. Yeah, that’ll be starting up the beginning of the year. So.

Manon Bolliger  36:45

Okay. Well, thank you very much for spending this time.

Jonathan Jay Dubois  36:48

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.

Ending

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