Shamanism and NeoShamanism

I am reading over at Gods Mouths, a blog for the god bothered and their allies. Raven Kaldera had written a piece called "Shamanism and NeoShamanism: the Practical Divide", and I came cross the following segment in the essay:...“So, is it always just you doing the journeying and telling them what you see? Don’t you ever teach them how to do it themselves?”I remembered a journey where I slogged up a frozen mountain in north Jotunheim to see a snowy goddess about being more capable at bloodwalking, and how she stuck something inside me to do the job, something for which I will be paying emotionally for years to come. Teach them to do it themselves? The idea seemed as far away as asking a surgeon, “Why don’t you teach your patients with brain tumors to do operations on themselves or each other?” …or, more chillingly appropriate, “Instead of performing competition-quality piano music for an audience at Carnegie Hall, why aren’t you teaching other people to play that well themselves, so they can do it in their own living rooms?”I read it and flashed back to attending the "Introduction to Shamanism" weekend, where I was told we had to do a shamanic journey before lunch. The looks of horror (and a handful of grateful understanding that they were not alone) at the Shamanism 101 panel at Arisia when I said I had no choice about not having a home (I say, sitting in the cave that I spend time in, call my home, have feel like my home... and yet I know better in the long run and She and I have talked about it) or what I get to do and having my body and mind reprogrammed, or...There is consensual shamanism. Shamanic practices. And you know what, I have and do teach some of them. I do teach basic piano lessons because I know its part of how I pay the price for my baby grand.But then I look at Raven, at Wintersong, at others I know... and know I have been blessed by a choice (it was a choice, but between a lesser of two evils as it were, two extremes) to not be shoved all the way down the rabbit hole. I hold keys, run the long miles on both sides, open the doors, walk through them here and here. I dance off both ends of the cliff, line in hand, hounds at my side. I swim deep and come back with dark mirrors and pearls of wisdom. I go between.I have to keep teaching, keep speaking in the tongues of how to, you can, change your life, live life fully, breathe in authenticity. I wake up. Or else they can't read the messages waiting for them.But I'm not playing Carnegie Hall, and I know it. But I can stand in the wings. Backstage pass baby. Even if it costs a lot. Its the Job, and its mine.