Preliminary remark:
This column was selected by a survey. There were still topics such as “beauty ops”, “the music crisis according to Karl Marx” and “a cultural history of the dragon”. In a descending order, I will be happy to pour these remaining topics (after consultation with my editorial team) for you in the form of other columns.
Something is no longer true. The belief in almost everything has dried up, decaying like a biscuit that someone has forgotten on a shelf years later, and when trying to get it down only a few crumbly crumbs gets his hands on.
Or as my mother tends to say about the ubiquitous fear of the future: “Where should you think about now?”
The poor, little dog baby in us
For all difficulties that we encounter in life, mankind has come up with a flood of things. It is currently pretty trendy to deal with “regulation of the nervous system”. A variable model can be summarized underneath. On the whole, this assumes that our persistent fear of life, the world and death sits like a trembling dog baby in a kind of nerve braid somewhere on our neck. There it drools the whole floor full. And always barks loudly and annoyingly directly into our ears when the danger approaches, a dark thought or a non -made tax return.
This poor, small dog baby, according to the theory, which is widespread over social media calm and regulate. If we bring a lot of patience, of course. Then we can supposedly prove to this inner tremor with the conscious of negative feelings that we are “safe”. And then it might get a little less nervous over time.
Just be like Danger Dan!
Alternatively, of course, there is always the possibility to choose the rules of any success system, to learn it, to follow and then simply to be successful. Make yourself completely dependent on the outside and then to be stronger than this outside. Only a few succeed, so it falls out as a social media-compatible guide. Because it always has to remain suitable for the masses. “Just be Elon Musk or at least Danger Dan” is more for the special children in the schoolyard. Probably even for just one special child who will be published once in 20 years.
After I have found their teeth that I lack the breath for the very big ambitions and for regulating my nerves, I thought one day, man, you have this column and therefore a sociological mission!
And because then I thought that no come, now let’s crack, nobody wants to hear something about internet therapy, I (especially for you!) Shaman booked.
The shaman I found is called Björn. He lives in Cologne and has a friendly website with all important information.
First contact with the shaman
People can write an email directly about this. What I did too. I wondered what a shaman has to hear so that he says: “Yes, that sounds like a problem for me, come over.” I remembered a film with Cecile de France (which I, uh, very like), in which she realized at some point that she sees things that others cannot see. And how she then becomes a shaman. And that the whole thing is always about “ancestors”.
So I wrote something like: “Dear Björn, I haven’t felt good for some time. It is like something is not entirely belonging to me. Can you help me? ”
Björn then replied that he could determine that.
We made an appointment and I found it all very exciting.
On Wednesday evening a week ago. I got on the train to Cologne. On the way I thought all the time about how I have to do the conversation properly so that the shaman also has something to work. Is often like that. When I drive to the doctor, I want to put on how I put everything in the short time so that a certain efficiency is guaranteed. I decided to concentrate on two of my ancestors. After all, you have to hang out something like that.
Soul cleaner without bathroom cleaner
So I rang at an apartment door somewhere in Cologne city center at 6 p.m. Björn let me in. I entered a small apartment. Björn, the shaman, was already in a gaming armchair and was waiting for me in front of two large computer screens. In addition to the corner sofa, there were two fabric tulips, which I identified as a flashlight from a photo studio, which sent me the first hollow feeling of the evening through my stomach.
We briefly welcomed each other and I asked to go to the toilet. Something in me needed a moment for me alone. When people are in a foreign environment, every little thing is immediately noticeable. In this case it was the dirt. Really: This apartment was the grubby ex-boyfriend’s apartment that man was committed to school before some kind of criterion or standard held away from it a year later (and probably also because people were still a little grubby at the time). And I actually hoped not to have to be in such an apartment again. There was no soap in the bathroom, the towel had never been washed, and instead of toilet paper there was a kitchen roll on the washing machine. The PVC floor was stained, and I sat on the okay-ascended big couch, while Björn looked at me with a boring look and asked me to tell.
So I told.
In the meantime, Björn looked at me with a look that didn’t fit his rounded car mechanic face at all. His eyes were two brown, glowing tunnels and I felt watched into my spleen.
How to become shaman
Björn got up and got a box with ten eggs out of his small kitchen. Then he painted colorful crosses with water color on the top of the eggs and murmured: “You definitely do the banana …” and a little later it started.
“We go over into the bedroom,” said Björn. And for the first time that day, a “picture” stroke line winced in front of my inside: “Singer of Cologne’s swindlers slit” or something in the way. I realized in one fell swoop that I was alone in the apartment of a stranger who painted eggs in front of my eyes, spoke of bananas and have studio flash in the living room knows what for God.
But now I’ve been there and I had caught a strange trust in this man. I can’t say exactly how trust forms. But maybe it was because of the more taciturn art with which he nodded my stories. Perhaps the fact that he said, so shaman, that could be every village. It would only depend on whether you have “the signs”.
I asked what signs. And then Björn told me that he had received a mantra from a yoga teacher and reacted very physically to this mantra. Then his yoga teacher made him known to the man from whom the mantra came. This man, it turned out, was a Nepalese shaman from Kathmandu. And with him Björn went into apprenticeship for two years. He had to pass all kinds of tests- when everyone was passed, he became a kind of “telephone line between this and the other world”. And that is already everything.
The misunderstanding with the talent
At that moment I thought very differently about the word “talent”. It is true what Fran Lebowitz says: Talent is a democratic thing, because it is absolutely scattered across the entire humanity. You incorrectly associated other things like perhaps intelligence, character strength or excellence. But first of all, talent is just one thing: a gift, or let’s say, an often tender, expandable stand line towards any matter. And yes, she can actually hit every fool.
Why do we actually think that brilliant musicians would be something other than just that: ingenious musician? Talent does not make anyone a better person. Björn, the shaman, even looked myself, how should I say, almost a little disturbed that he has to heal people or free from evil spirits. There are not a lot of shamans in Cologne, so he always has to go. “And I often have real hardships here,” he said with a look at the wall above his computer, where a picture of the Hindu goddess Kali hung. You can do it googleit’s cool. “You don’t have to believe it yourself,” said Björn, just before it started. “You just shouldn’t be complete, otherwise it will be difficult.” Ok, I thought, this is a state with which I was estimated to run through life all the time anyway and followed him into the bedroom.
The thing with the banana
I do not want to and cannot describe the ritual itself in every detail, I feel sorry. It would be too small and at the end not particularly interesting for outsiders. But so much should be said: there was a lot of murmuring in Nepalese (?), And Björn sounded like a whole cow herd because he was hung with a thick -spotted chain, to which sheer bells were attached. Sweating and abruptly, summarized, coated, pousted and cleaned me.
In the end he gave me the Banana in question.
“Now get all the bad energy out of your body with the banana, where it has accumulated. And then take this knife here and go through it.”
It may not have been bad that I only found out later that we took the banana “instead of the goat” (if only for legal reasons).
When the tip of the fruit flew to the dirty floor in Björn’s bedroom, he looked at me sweating and said appreciatively: “It was good, that was very good.”
The eggs in which Björn caught up with their bad planet slag, he wore dressed in front of the house with a raincoat and sunglasses. “There was your heavy heavy,” he said when he opened the apartment door again. “It was really difficult, the basket.”
The ritual lasted almost an hour.
Two mantras for the way
After that, I kindly rejected the instant coffee, which he offered to me, back in the living room, with the lightning lights.
“I have a column in the Rolling Stone,” I said far -sighted. “Do you think I can write about this?”
“Sure, you can write everything. Positive, negative. As you want. That has no influence,” said Björn. And I think that was the moment when my confidence in shamanism was strengthened as such, as if you screwed a lid on a yoghurt glass.
“The effect will probably only be shown in the next two to three weeks,” Björn said to me at the end. “I give you two more mantra, for refreshment. But basically you are fit! You are pragmatic. And on the whole, fit with the grandma. But the rest should also get better soon.”
From now on I count the days. My visit to Björn was a week today. If it really works, he only takes one donation. Earning with such rituals money goes against the shaman apprenticeship. Well, if that is not proof enough that the shit is good for something?
I would be really happy if this thing works and my inner dog baby mutated into a large, strong Rottweiler in the next two weeks. And that the whole experience with Björn is exactly the way it felt. Namely, as if someone had just got the toilet rinsing back on.
For free.