“Keeney’s story rings with integrity and attests to the power
and forces that are urgently needed to prevent further destruction
of the earth’s ecology and the soul of mankind.”

STANLEY KRIPPNER, PhD,
professor of psychology and author

Science has recently shown evidence that everyone is genetically linked to Africa, the original birthplace of human beings (see Spencer Wells, The Journey of Man: A Genetic Odyssey, Princeton University Press). There our ancestral culture gave rise to spirited expression, communion with the divine, and healing encounter. Ancient rock art shows that the first people knew how to “work the spirit.” They fostered a freedom to become extraordinarily excited and emotionally aroused, making their bodies tremble and shake. These masters of ecstatic experience knew how to awaken experiences of the mysterium tremenum.

As writing, agriculture, and technology evolved, we assumed that religion and healing also advanced. After centuries and centuries of people systematically destroying Earth and one another, we may ask whether this was an erroneous assumption. In the beginning, “medicine” essentially meant “spirit” and “shaking medicine” indicated its moving presence within a person. Without shaking medicine, people became stuck, disoriented, dis-eased, and existentially lost.

The ability to use all of our innate abilities, particularly those that connected to the greater complexities of life, has diminished as we have built philosophies, religions, psychotherapies, cities, gadgets, and bombs. We have lost our most vital link to the cosmos, our ability to be in direct communication with nature and the great mysteries of the divine. Yet the ecstatic shakers of the oldest living culture have not lost these connections. It is time for us to bring back the missing link so that we may find the guidance and inspiration that can transform us into being authentic agents of creative expression, peace, and love.