The ecstatic edges of good decision-making: making choices that bring us joy

The Ansuz rune has two diagonal branches flicking out and down from its vertical trunk. Perhaps they are Huggin and Munnin, Odin’s ravens. Perhaps they are a reminder that this rune combines within it both the principles of chaotic ecstasy and formative order. It is the mouth of the estuary where fresh water mingles with salt creating rich, fertile environments where humans thrive.

This cycle it spoke to me insistently of our modern tendency to push the chaotic and the ecstatic to the edges. Whispering – look at this, notice this. It brought to my attention an anecdote in Gabor Maté’s, The Realm of Hungry Ghosts, where he reports on the practices of the Incans, who never made an important decision unless both the everyday and the ecstatic selves agreed. In this instance, a group of elders would need to agree on a decision both while sober and while drunk on strong wine. Before I continue I want to make this point clear – it wasn’t about ignoring the sober part, it was about agreement.

When did we stop doing that? When did the leaders of our nations stop needing the jester/ fool/ trickster at their side to offer well timed disagreements and alternative view points? When did we determine that oracles, astrologies* and spirit quests had no place in the political arena? When did the Merlins, the Gandalfs, the Loki’s the Anglo-Saxon leoðrun, the ‘wise woman skilled in the matters of the tribe’ stop being trusted?  When did we decide that methods designed to help us access unconscious, intuitive and spiritual wisdom were unnecessary for leadership? When did these essential parts of our humanity get banned from the table?

We expect our leaders to demonstrate vision and intuition – but if one of them was to admit to using an age-old method for gaining vision or connecting with intuition they might well be deemed irresponsible right? 

Our culture has a very confining definition of acceptable wisdom-seeking practices. ‘Thinking it through’ and ‘talking it through’ seem the main contenders. We might be open to a bit of mindfulness and perhaps even some Lego free-play at a staff away day. The practices used by our ancestors though: portents, oracles, dreams, trance-journeys, divination, ecstatic dance, drumming ceremonies, cacao, alcohol, mushrooms. These all seem just a little but too ‘out there’. Which, if you have ever tried any of the above, I’m betting you agree is a shame. 

Perhaps we are suspicious because we believe the locus of decision-making moves from the human being responsible for that decision to a supernatural force that is either malevolent (the religious paradigm) or make-believe (the scientific paradigm)?  But hold on, if we stick with the Incan model we can’t go wrong because the sober part of us still needs to agree. So at worst the conscious, rational mind is getting an opinion it might not agree with and, at best, it’s getting an opinion from the most fulfilled, creative, joyful, soulful part of its bigger, juicier, more expanded self. Hmmmmm……    

My counsel from Ansuz this cycle:

• one mode of consciousness does not ensure a wise decision – especially when that mode is anxious, prone to catastrophising and a bit moody
• my runes, my body-knowing, my dreams and my shamanic journeys have invariably offered far more actionable, creative and empowering ways forward than ‘thinking it through’ every has

Pondering this more I wonder whether we can ever make decisions that result in joy if we refuse to be in a state of joy when we make them?

Am I on my own in this? Where do you find your wisdom?

*An interesting side-note here, I thought we were looking at 16th/ 17th century for the last court astrologers but apparently the Reagan’s had a very influential astrologer in the 1980s. I leave for another time a discussion on whether astrology is a form of ecstatic wisdom finding – I left it in because I was intrigued by this recent example of wisdom seeking outside accepted cultural conventions.