Articles by José Stevens

José Luis Stevens, PhD is the President and Co-Founder (with wife Lena) of Power Path Seminars, an international school and consulting firm dedicated to the study and application of shamanism and indigenous wisdom to business and everyday life. José completed a ten-year apprenticeship with a Huichol (Wixarika) Maracame (Huichol shaman) in the Sierras of Central Mexico. In addition, he is studying with Shipibo shamans in the Peruvian Amazon and with Paqos (shamans) in the Andes in Peru. In 1983 he completed his doctoral dissertation at the California Institute of Integral Studies focusing on the interface between shamanism and western psychological counseling. Since then, he has studied cross-cultural shamanism around the world to distill the core elements of shamanic healing and practice. He is the author of twenty books and numerous articles including Encounters With Power; Awaken The Inner Shaman; The Power Path; Secrets of Shamanism; Transforming Your Dragons; and Praying With Power.

A New Jose Stevens Article

Losing Faith in Spirit – What Does it Mean?

Recently, I have had many people tell me that they are struggling to keep their faith in Spirit during these challenging and changing times. Some of these are long term followers of spiritual traditions and people who have strong practices. They are wondering why, even if they pray or meditate every day, their lives are so difficult and why many of the life experiences they pray for just never seem to come about. It appears timely to address this challenge at this juncture since it seems to be an epidemic. What makes the doubt so important is that without a spiritual path at this time, you are most likely toast.
Read More: Losing Faith in Spirit – What Does it Mean?
A New Jose Stevens Article

Discovering the Power of Perception

In this article we are going to revisit the topic of perception and how important changing our way of looking at the world and ourselves is in order to cope with new realities…. Some of the things I am going to say now reflect my own bias based on what I believe the long-term prospects of life on this planet will most probably be. Despite what appears to be much evidence to the contrary I believe that, come what may, the human race has already decided to have a future on this planet and that we will find ways to thrive and transform ourselves as a result of and because of a radical elevation in consciousness that is already beginning to occur.
Read More: Discovering the Power of Perception
A New Jose Stevens Article

Pleasure, Shame and Guilt

Warning: You may find this article somewhat disturbing because it may contain information that directly contradicts what you perhaps always believed to be true. Try to read it from a neutral place.
Read More: Pleasure, Shame and Guilt
A New Jose Stevens Article

The Explosion of Interest in Medicine Plants: What we need to know

Most of you are probably acquainted with the great interest in a variety of medicine plants or entheogens being researched for treatment with veterans and others suffering from PTSD and a variety of other disorders like obsessive compulsive disorder, depression, anxiety, and various addictions. When interest in some of these plants and chemical compounds like MDMA and LSD in the nineteen sixties and seventies arose showing much promise as healing compounds, great fear among conservative government officials and other traditionalists rendered most of these them illegal and they were made schedule one drugs, a felony if someone had possession or consumed them. Researchers were no longer allowed to study them and they were off limits in every way for quite a few years.
Read More: The Explosion of Interest in Medicine Plants: What we need to know
A New Jose Stevens Article

5 Year Cycle

Many of you have shown interest in the Trends talk reference to a special five-year cycle of change that begins in 2023 or, in other words, this year. Not being an astrologer, I cannot speak in those terms about the next five years so I will use my own way of describing the cycle which can best be characterized as change, change, and more change. As we pointed out in the Trends talk, 2023 is a year dedicated to cleaning up all the of the emotional and energetic detritus that has been brought to the surface by the big challenges we have faced in recent times…
Read More: 5 Year Cycle
A New Jose Stevens Article

Rewilding: Discovering Our True Wildness

“Be someone who transitions well. Accept it. Integrate it. Look for the opportunity in it. It is not other than you, rather it is also you.” ~ From last month’s article. Recently I was returning from a two-week vacation in Thailand with my wife Lena. While the trip itself was worth it the return trip was grueling….
Read More: Rewilding: Discovering Our True Wildness
A New Jose Stevens Article

Managing Turbulent Transitions

As many of you know this is a time of turbulent transitions, including those that are personal, societal, global, climatic, experiential, internal, external, physical, spiritual, emotional, and mental. In other words, just about every way possible. Some of us don’t handle transitions well, finding them frightening, exhausting, trying, and challenging. Some of us find them exciting, energizing, interesting, or even fascinating.
Read More: Managing Turbulent Transitions
A New Jose Stevens Article

Can we live without CRISIS?

Since one of the main themes of these times is crisis I thought it would be useful to dive into the topic just to crack it open a bit for greater understanding. Perhaps we need not run from every crisis but can find ways to experience it without resistance. The simple definition of a crisis is a time of intense difficulty, trouble or danger. When crisis occurs, people think of many words to describe it: Catastrophe, a dire situation, disaster, emergency, cataclysm, calamity, huge mess, extreme hardship or adversity, chaos, anarchy, jam, crunch, difficulty, and so on. All these descriptions add some flavor to the overall definition of crisis.
Read More: Can we live without CRISIS?
A New Jose Stevens Article

The Mystic Path and the Shamanic Path: Are they the same?

Believe it or not there is much controversy in academic circles about the differences and similarities of the mystic path and the shamanic path. While there is no right answer, here we will look at these similarities and differences. We do not know how old each of them are, but evidence suggests that the shamanic path is older because of its relationship to human survival. Shamans have been around for anywhere from forty to seventy-five thousand years and of course with each new discovery the time frame gets earlier. Shamans have always specialized in the gathering, storing, and execution of power in order to better heal the sick, discover the location of herds for hunting, predict and alter weather patterns, talk to plants to discover their properties and medicines, and communicate with allies to improve the tribes’ chances of survival.
Read More: The Mystic Path and the Shamanic Path: Are they the same?
A New Jose Stevens Article

Key Aspects of Transformation

In this brief article we are going to examine some of the most fundamental aspects of beingness and how almost nobody understands how these aspects are the keys to happiness. This brief article could be a book or it could be a short article like this one. To begin I am going to make some rather outrageous proposals that I will not attempt to prove here. All I will say is that much wiser people than myself have made these proposals throughout history knowing that they almost completely failed in their mission to educate the human race on these matters.
Read More: Key Aspects of Transformation