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Shaman's Secret: The Lost Resurrection Teachings of the Ancient Maya

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This book breaks down the complicated system of Maya spirituality into a very understandable and readable format. Archeological evidence of the belief system is covered, along with a wonderful analysis based on comparisons with other beleif systems and Jungian depth psychology. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in spirituality, psychology, and/or the Maya culture.

Excellent and insighful. This book provides information I have not found elsewhere about the ancient Maya civilization. The author provides many interesting insights into Mayan religion. Highly recommended.

It's Hard to Be the Only One Who Knows
In a dream, as I gaze at my reflection in a mirror I am twice amazed. First, I see that I have no head. I am holding my severed head about chest high in my hands. Second, I am amazed that even without a head I can see quite well. I stare even more intently into the mirror, marveling and attempting to understand this mystery.
I had this dream many years ago and have been spellbound by it ever since. I once read a book on Buddhism that suggested that the experience of enlightenment might be simulated by imaging seeing the world while having no head. The head restricts consciousness to within an enclosed identity. By replacing the restrictive head with the entire world, consciousness is liberated and de-localized. The exercise symbolizes opening the shell of the ego boundary to allow one to become one with all of life.
I encountered further understanding of my dream at the ball court of the Mayan ruin of Chichen Itza. On the wall of the stadium is the carved image of a decapitated ball player. Out of his neck portal gushes the world tree, which branches and flowers as seven kundalini serpents, pouring life out into the world. The image suggests that if we surrender ourselves to the game of life, sacrificing our own personal identity to the play itself, we can be channels of profound creativity.
These ponderous thoughts were but dim intuitions until I read the book The shaman's secret: The lost resurrection teachings of the ancient Maya (Bantam Books). The author, Douglas Gillette, a theologian, had written an earlier book, King, warrior, magician lover, exploring the archetypal symbols of the spiritual masculine. He now brings his well developed gifts of symbolic interpretation to the Mayan world. Much progress has been made in deciphering the Mayan hieroglyphs. Drawing upon both Jungian techniques and comparative religion, Gillette is able to reveal the meanings of these intriguing carvings and paintings in a manner not possible before. The result is a stunning revelation of a worldview of "terrible beauty."
We are prone to dismiss or reject the Maya as teachers because of their blood sacrifices. We learn in this book, however, that there are many exact correlations between the Mayan world and the worldview we associate with Edgar Cayce's esoteric vision of a mystical Christianity. We are also reminded of the extensive bloodletting symbolism and magical blood practices in the Christian myth. The Mayan world, however, includes a more candid embrace of the darker aspects--suffering, cruelty, and death--in a brave, and, according to Gillette, successful attempt to use these demons to liberate consciousness.
"In ancient Maya belief, we are all called upon by the gods to become one with them and live forever. In the simplest and the most dramatic happenings of our lives the Lords of the Otherworld are giving us opportunities to create resurrection events for ourselves. But, according to the Maya, we must engage our own hidden depths in order to succeed. Those hidden depths embrace a universe filled with terrible beauty and divine power, and one that is vitally, miraculously, and ecstatically alive."
The goal is to become a companion to the creator god. To be such a companion to the divine requires the heart-challenging task of being both transparent to the transpersonal and yet an individual who provides the knowledgeable and conscious reflection that companionship requires.
In my dream I remove my head and allow my mind to become transparent to the transpersonal. Yet still I have my personal awareness--I can see what is happening. Thus the event has me for a witness. In the Mayan world, this witnessing is an important aspect of their responsibility to to the Creator.
The Mayans believed that there were four worlds before them. Each was destroyed by Creator because the people could not say the prayers correctly. Only when the people correctly acknowledge in their awareness the presence of Creator does that Creator God fully exist in a conscious state of being. The Mayans realized that God is dependent upon the people for its conscious existence. The Creator God created the people for companionship to give God this special dimension of being.
It is hard to be the only one who knows. Sharing an experience with a companion relieves a burden of loneliness. A companion who reflects our experience back to us births our experience outward into the world. It makes us seem more real to ourselves. We can relax and grant greater reality to the world itself. We want to return the favor.
According to the Mayans, the Creator God created the world through a process of self-sacrifice (symbolized by self decapitation). To become companions to God, we are asked to similarly perform this self-sacrifice in order to bring God into conscious existence in this God created world. Gillette describes in detail how this service to God was the Mayan's "resurrection machine," giving their souls immortal bodies that defeat the illusion of death. Our creative self-sacrifice bestows an immortality upon us, and resurrects us as co-creators of the world. [...]

The explanation of the value and sacredness the Mayans placed on beauty and art is very interesting and inspiring. I think modern cultures do not have this sense.

These Fine Art books would go well with it:

1) Art of the Maya Scribe by Michael Coe

2) Painting the Maya Universe: Royal Ceramics of the Classic Period (Duke University Museum of Art) [Paperback]
..."With photographs by Justin Kerr, the foremost photographer of pre-Columbian art, it includes over 90 unique full-color ROLLOUT photographs, each showing the entire surface of an object in a single frame."...

3) Lords of the Underworld : Masterpieces of Classical Mayan Ceramics [Hardcover]
Michael Coe (Author), Justin Kerr (Author)

20 fold outs ( ROLLOUTS) of two pages in color, together with a one page black white photo of the vase 'in the round', and detailed analysis of each.

# Hardcover: 142 pages
# Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr (March 1978)
# Language: English
# ISBN-10: 0691039178
# ISBN-13: 978-0691039176

Lots of details on myth, but I still don't get the spirituality at all. If the author had been more on explaining this, and less on convincing the reader that human sacrifice isn't so bad and that Christianity is evil ...