Shamanism Global Summit Melting the Ice in the Heart of Man Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq

Shamanism Global Summit Melting the Ice in the Heart of Man Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq Welcome, everyone, and thank you so much for joining us. I am thrilled to introduce our next speaker, Angaangaq. His name means, the man who looks like his uncle. He's fondly called Uncle. He's the first man from West Greenland to hold his medicine of the shaman since 1821 and his power, love, compassion and desire to heal the world permeates his very being. He teaches that you can melt the ice in your heart and then you'll begin to use your knowledge wisely and look with eyes of faith into the incredible, beautiful future ahead. Angaangaq, it's so good to have you back on the Summit this year. Well, what a joy to be there. I've been waiting for you for quite some time. I'm happy to hear your voice again. Lovely. Thank you. I know you like to do a chant or a song. Would you like to start out with one? I didn t mention that earlier, but if you'd like to, we could do that. How great that would be. You know, I'm just about to be leaving. I am right now talking to you from Munich in Germany. I'm just going to go to Austria for the weekend and then go back home to Greenland where we have elders gathering at the sacred site of my grandmother's land. I will be leading my ancestors there. I thought that I should chant the call for the ancestors. That would be lovely. Just listen to it and invite your ancestors to come and feel that my ancestors are coming to meet your ancestors. What an incredible meeting it will be. [Chanting] I can definitely feel my ancestors here. I think that's a great place to start, Uncle, is maybe we should talk about the importance of honoring the ancestors and why that is. Here in North America, many of us feel like orphans because we don t have a connection with our ancestry. Can you talk about your ancestry and why it's important to remember the ancestors? You know, our beloved grandmother, Aanakasaa, her land where she grew up back in 1890s, what her youngest son and my great-aunt made a sacred site because it is a sacred site. But they formally invited the elders and brought back the sacred fire to that land back in 2009. She raised us to know that none of us on this earth, and that's seven and a half billion of us, can live without the Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq July 25, 2017 p. 1

ancestors. It's so interesting that most of us in this world we've forgotten our relationship and our ceremony to honor our ancestors. She says that all you need to do is to call them. Then your ancestor will become so happy that he immediately will be inviting all his family, all his friends and all his relations and then they would dance for you and we call them the Northern Lights. The dance floor is big in the north. There's no trees, so the sky is really, really big. Now we have by science learn that the Northern Lights move 2,400 kilometers per second, and that's your ancestors' dance floor. They are there travelling into a journey to meet the Great One, whoever that Great One is. Whenever they meet and reach the destination they have, they will be presented to the Great One. But in the journey, they go through many layers and levels of God as you call him. How many layers and levels there are? We don t know, but us as children when the old people want to be alone on their own, they will send the young ones out and say, "Why don t you go and count how many levels and layers of worlds of God is." And we would go lay down on the ground and we will count one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. And then, of course, you can never finish because the Northern Lights are moving so fast. That's how many worlds of God there is but no one has yet finished counting. And thus, the importance becomes even more evident that you cannot live here on this earth without knowing your ancestors. Your responsibility is to get to know your ancestors. Our grandmother says that all you need to do is to remember that portion in your ancestry who then will invite his or her family, then inviting all the friends, then inviting all the relations and you will just answer your part that you by remembering them. That's how we connect to them. It makes me want to dance right now, Uncle. You mentioned your grandmother, and I know that your grandmother was actually your shamanic teacher. Can you share with us a little bit about your own process of becoming a shamanic teacher and really, you're an ambassador for the heart? Can you share that journey with us? Oh, it's been a long, long journey and it is still is a long journey. When I was growing up, when I come in to where my grandmother was, for some reason, I don t really know why, but she would always explain that one of my spiritual names, which means the most beloved man who looks like his uncle. And then she would share that Angaangaq. And then I would look like at myself what it is that I have and what it is that you have. And if you have no snow on your boots and I have snow on my boots, I would take off snow. I didn t want to be different than you are. But she would always explain that Angaangaq was something. The funny thing is that nobody ever, to my recollection, questioned her what it is that she sees what Angaangaq has or anybody was smiling at it. Just merely accepting whatever it is my grandmother saw that I've got. So, I grew up in that environment where I have something, but I was not quite sure what it is that I have until I became a teenager. Then it became to be evident what it is that I Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq July 25, 2017 p. 2

have. Now, I do that after 58 years of training. My families ask me to go to the mountain. But the mountain is really interesting. You and I have many mountains within our self. It is so interesting that I climb my own mountain which is a sacred mountain, not the family's sacred mountain which is simply too far away from where I was. I couldn t reach that. I don t live there anymore. I live in the world now. So, I climbed it and I came down. The intention when you climb a mountain is to reach the top. How do you know that you have reached the top? That's when you loved yourself most, when you trusted yourself most, when you respected yourself most and when you acknowledged yourself most. Those are things, qualities within you in which it made you confident about yourself. That is the highest peak of your mountain. A very intriguing thing happened when I did that, when I came down from the big mountain. There I had to talk to the man who made us. I told him about myself. I always thought that it will be so easy for me to do that. I have given talks all over the world thousands of times, but when it came down to the reality of me talking aloud being alone almost 2,000 meters above the sea level, it's realization that I have lived my life so shallowly, that there was no depth in me. Here I am doing ceremonies and talks all over the world just to realize how shallow a life I have lived. But then I realized that I omitted stories about myself from him, the man who made us, because it was just simply too difficult to tell what it is that I ought to tell. When I realized that, I started crying, a cry I have not done in ages and ages. When I finished my story though. It's really interesting when you have to talk to someone, there's nobody there. You're utterly alone 6,000 feet up on a mountain, 30-some kilometers from the closest building, and you're talking aloud to somebody you don t know. You can't see. You can't hear. You're just talking to somebody. I did that for 25 or 27 hours nonstop. Then everything was done. I got down and I went home. When I came home to the family house, one of my brothers put a necklace on me. I was actually wearing it earlier today. The actual blue whale tailbone, a depiction of the tail of the whale. It's interesting that when my brother put it on me and says, "Angaangaq, you are as strong as a tail of the whale." The blue whale is the biggest animal on earth, 35 meters long, weighing about 35,000 kilos. The tail of the whale is about 10 meters tall and really big. And then my own family decided to give me that medicine to declare that Angaangaq, you are as strong as a tail of the whale. That was pretty scary. But how can anybody be that strong? This amazing thing is that my grandmother teaches us is that if you do not believe in yourself, then it's not going to work. But if you believe in yourself that you are as strong as a tail of the whale, then you will be. Then within a week, one of my brothers wrote me a note. He says, "My brother, you are now on the highest mountain you will ever be. Up there, it will be lonely, Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq July 25, 2017 p. 3

windy, stormy, rainy, snowy and slippery. Should you ever fall, remember you are the one who falls the longest down." And when he said that, it just shook my whole being realizing that it is true. I am on the highest mountain I could ever reach. The beautiful thing though is that within that week, I went to visit my uncle and my great-aunt back home in Greenland. One of my cousins took me literally on my hand and said, "Now, you cover me." I had to tell my uncle and my great-aunt that I had to go and visit my family, and my great-aunt just "Go." I went to the house and there we sat down over a cup of coffee, and my cousin opened the door in his house and took out a claw of the polar bear. He says, "You know, we have decided this medicine is for you. Now, you can climb anywhere on earth without falling." It is so interesting. I now have two medicines of back home. One is the actual tailbone of a blue whale and then a claw of a polar bear. One, he said I am as strong as a tail of the whale. The other one is I can climb anywhere on earth without falling. Now, I have climbed to 69 countries. It's really interesting when we think of the process of getting there. The most amazing note is that when you receive a gift and you open that gift, you take on the responsibility to be a shaman. It's like you enter the eye of a needle on the other side of the shamanic world. You can never return back to where you came from. So, this is who I am. I went through that eye of the needle. Wow, powerful. Powerful medicine. Yes. Why did I do that? Did I do that for the right reasons? Did I do that to be the shaman of the north? No, I didn t. I opened a gift. I knew that it meant. Only then did I take on task of being a shaman. Yes, I accept to be a shaman from my family, but so quickly around the world they seem to be looking at me as being a shaman for them as well. That's scary. A lot of responsibility, eh? Something you said I wanted to have you elaborate on if you would, Uncle, because in North American culture particularly, it appears that many people are caught in a trance of unworthiness. And you were talking about self-love. Many people are even trained to don t be a tall poppy, don t stand out or trained in other ways like you're stupid, you're not pretty enough, you're not good enough and you're not enough. It really keeps people from stepping into their own power, their own soul power, to make a difference on the planet at a time when we need people to step into their power. Can you speak to that? I'm so glad you asked that. I have always been struck about that idea that what my grandmother said that Angaangaq got it. I never wanted to be different from anybody else. I never have. I simply never have liked the idea that I should be different from anybody else. But now that I am 70 years old and I am not the second-last one living in my family after my great-aunt will be 90 in October, Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq July 25, 2017 p. 4

then I am it. That scares the life out of me realizing that I will be the only one left. But luckily, today my great-aunt is still vividly alive and strong. She says that remember what grandmother said. When you respected yourself most, accepted yourself, recognized yourself and acknowledged yourself, but most of all when you loved yourself most, that's when you are really strongest. Not because somebody told you that you are, it's all within you. That does not make you better than anybody else, but you make yourself strong within yourself. That's a difference. In North America, yes, I travel a lot. Yes, there are many, many think I'm nobody. All people back home said you can never love somebody unless you love yourself first. Never fall in love because anything falling will hurt you, but when you become love, then love will never hurt you. All these little things which seem so insignificant in words spoken, when you begin to live it, this really changes you. It sure has changed me. I always thought that I should love everybody else except me. I'm nobody. But when you listen to old people, they say love yourself first. If you love yourself first, then you can become in love. And when you become in love, love will never hurt you. But when you fall in love you will get hurt. That's the highest point I am in, that I'm able to love me as I am. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to accept myself? I have struggled with that whole thing. You know, I tell people, when people ask me, I just say, we are eight siblings. I'm the second oldest. For some reason, I was born with the shortest legs. My torso is extraordinary in size. My head is enormous, and I'm the only one with the crooked cheeks. I never really loved myself. I look so different from everyone else. But at the end, the only way really I could stand up is that to listen to my grandmother who says, "Love yourself first. Only then can you love somebody else." Does it make me self-centered? No. I'm not enjoying loving myself beyond everyone else. I'm loving myself so I can become strong for the ones I love. That's why my mother says that I travel the world to talk about climate change. I travel a lot all over the world. A really funny thing that as a runner for the elders, I quit my job. That's what I wanted to do because my grandmother passed away, my father passed away and my mother was home. I came in from Johannesburg. I wanted to quit being a runner for the elders. I said, "No, I can't do that anymore because nobody ever changes." When I was in South Africa and all these native people and all these government people, the United Nations people, they were trying to come to an agreement and nobody could agree and nobody wanted to change. That's when I told my mom. I said, "I don t want to do that anymore. I don t want to be a runner anymore because nobody ever changes." My mother was sitting on my father's chair because he had passed her. I was sitting across from her and then she said to me, when she stood up from the chair. Of course, when your mother stands up, you'd stand up also. And she took my hands and she said, "You know, son, you're going to have to change your ways." I'm looking at her and when she said Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq July 25, 2017 p. 5

that, I said, "Yes." Then she closed her eyes and when your mother closes her eyes, you close your eyes too. I listened to her, she said, "You're going to have to change your ways. You're going to have to learn to melt the ice in the Heart of Man. Only by melting the ice in the Heart of Man, man will have a chance to change and begin using knowledge wisely." When she finished, and she didn t say anything anymore, I opened my eyes and looked at her. She had eyes closed so I shook her hands and she opened her eyes. Then she looked at me and I said, "How?" Mom had closed her eyes again, so I closed my eyes again. She just said, "You're just going to have to learn to melt the ice in the Heart of Man. Only by melting the ice in the Heart of Man, man will have a chance to change and begin using his knowledge wisely." Then she shook my hands, and I opened my eyes. Then she looked at me with a beautiful smile. And she took her hands away from my hands, then she went to the kitchen. And that's the instructions I have. Does it make any sense? [29:46] Does it make any sense? It makes a great deal of sense to me. I think the whole dropping from the head into the heart to, as you say, melting the ice is so much needed now. One of the things that I remember talking to you a few years ago about was the lesson of stillness. It seems to me that many of us can't get outside of our identity of who we think we are because we're so busy. And so much working on computers and cell phones and running here and there and long to-do list. You had amazing training from your uncle, I think it was and others, in the art of stillness. Can you talk about the importance of taking the time to be still to hear the voices of the ancestors and to hear that calling of becoming love? It's what you're talking about. I am a very fortunate man, extremely fortunate man, a very, very privileged man. I have many people who work with me to learn from me. So, I'm taking them on a vision quest back home. When I leave on Monday after the elders' gathering, the people who work with me, they will go up to the mountains and I will sit them down and then four days and four nights they will be still. No walking around, still, and be with themselves in an incredible tantra where you can see the curvature of the earth, that means you go 450 kilometers you can see with your own eyes. And there you will sit still, not talk, not drink, not eat, just sit, and take some deep breaths like go deep inside yourself to understand who are you. You know, the medicine you hear about the whale which is a quarter of a million years old, it has become a stone now. The old people say that you and I personally, we are within our self, deeper than the deepest of oceans of earth. And we have now learned through National Geographic TV that the deepest ocean of earth is in China Sea, north of Philippines and on the Island before the Mainland. And the second deepest ocean on earth is in East Greenland in which is also about 11 kilometers deep, which means that you and I, we are really deep within our self. But because we are so busy in our life, we never really have that Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq July 25, 2017 p. 6

moment of silence within our self to go deep inside our self to understand who am I. I started wandering around the world where I will sit but if I can learn not to wander in my eyes and close my eyes to this world and open within, then I shall be able to see myself. When I look inside myself, I will realize I'm really deep inside myself down to the depth of my being the reality of me lives. That's what my intention is that I find, so I can find myself and so I can see what I need to see to take the next step in my life. Wherever that step will take me, I will ask the Creator to give me the strength and capacity to accept however and whatever he gifts so I can be strong and know who it is that I am because when I am strong within myself, I can be strong for people in the world. That's vision quest. Great. Does that make any sense to you at all? You make total sense, my friend. It's really great to have you on and I'm so grateful. I was just wondering if you could give some guidance to people who want to live a more shamanic way of life to follow the path of the heart and to more deeply connect to the deep that you say is there, but we aren t aware of it. What things would you recommend for someone who really wants to step into this path and yet doesn t know where to start? The shamanic world is really interesting world. It's the scariest world you will ever enter. It really is, for me at least, has been a life-changing moment when I accepted the gift of my family and that I took on the responsibility for carrying the title. But once you've taken that, then it becomes evident that the shaman's responsibility is to bring back the ceremony because the world in which now we live has lost ceremony. These are really simple ceremonies. You know, I did the Shango ceremony the other day, because we don t have time to celebrate the rising of the sun. It is a simple, powerful, beautiful ceremony. The chant itself was given to me in 1963 by a blind elder from East Greenland. He gave me that chant in a small post office chanting it aloud. He was blind but he could feel the people in there. For me, I had my eyes open, I was stunned when the elder started to chant. He gave that to me. That was the first chant outside my own family chants. And I chanted that the other day to celebrate the rising of the sun because we cannot live without the sun, the giver of life. But then I'm going home now next week and then I will do this moon ceremony with my elders where we will be watching the sun in the north and the full moon in the south. Those two stars in our universe have the strongest impact in our life. We'll be there together. We will watch in the north the sun and in the south, the moon. And the power and the impact of these two stars are so strong, you can feel it inside yourself, outside yourself and around yourself, in that environment where Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq July 25, 2017 p. 7

you can see 900 kilometers with your own bare eyes. There you will experience something you have never seen before. That's the shaman's responsibility to bring back the ceremony and guide these people to a path in which they are searching. They are searching everywhere now and it s really interesting. No matter where you look, people are searching. They don t know what they're searching for, but they are searching. They want to find something which makes sense to them because the world around us is literally falling apart. Our governmental systems are falling apart. Our political system is falling apart. Our religious systems are falling apart. Our financial institutions are falling apart. Who is left behind? You and me. When we don t have a ceremony to celebrate, we really have nothing to celebrate in our life. It's the shaman's responsibility to bring back the ceremony. So, I light within your heart can be lit and that light which is in your heart, it will grow and sooner or later what grows within you, a bud will be born and that bud will begin to open. A flower will unfold itself in your heart. Sooner or later that flower will become a full blossom. And when she does, she will have shades in the midst of it. And because you are not alone in this world, winds of change will come upon all of us and the wind will blow away the seeds. And before you know it, that ceremony you teach for somebody will begin to live in someone else. It is no longer yours but stems from you and then a bud will be born, a flower will open, and it will come to a full blossom. Winds of change will come again and that's the same way it will be born everywhere. That's the responsibility of the shaman, to become the guide for many people, become that light in a darkness of the world in which you live. Brilliant. There's something about ceremony. I mean you talked about people searching for things. It seems to be they are searching for meaning, and it's ceremony that gives us meaning. Exactly, exactly. The ceremony is one which gives us meaning and we have so much to celebrate. When you ever go to North America, people say, "Oh, I'm not worth it. I don t celebrate my birthday." You are the most important person in your world. You are worth celebrating. Your life is worth celebrating, every single day with a ceremony. My grandmother said when the ceremony loses its spirit, it becomes a ritual. And the world as it is is full of rituals. When you ask, what does ritual mean? She says, it's something you and I would do, that's always being done. We don t know exactly why but we do it. That's the way it's being done. And it's so interesting. You meet that everywhere. In those 69 countries I have been to, they do the same. They do something because that's the way it's being done. And you ask them, why is it being done like that? Nobody really knows but we do it because that's the way it's being done. Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq July 25, 2017 p. 8

It's such an important point around ritual and ceremony. I have given the same distinction and many people have different definitions. But it reminds me of an old story where someone was making a ham and they cut the ends off, and they put it in a pan. The daughter said, "Mom, why do you cut the ends off the ham?" She says, "Well, I don t know. Your grandmother always did it." And so they went and asked the grandma, "Why did you always cut the ends off the ham?" "Well, your great-grandmother always did it." She was still alive and they went and said, "Why did you cut the ends off the ham all the time?" And the greatgrandmother scratched her head and says, "I don t know. Oh, I know why, because the pan was too small for the ham." And when you talk about ritual, that's what I think of is that we do these things, and I think for people that are aspiring to follow a shamanic path, it's fine to imitate and do the four directions or the seven directions and follow a tradition, but if it isn t coming from you. You know, I love living on the ocean because I'm right here in nature. I'm able to anytime I do a ritual call on the elements and it never comes out the same, but the feeling -- Anytime you do a ceremony, not a ritual, a ceremony. Yes, exactly, exactly. When it comes spontaneously, it could be similar to the way it was done before and that's what, that bridge that you were talking about gives us meaning and opens our heart. You have to open your heart to do a ceremony. That's great. Well, we're getting close to the end of our time but given what we've been talking about, what would you like to leave our listeners with that could help them to make the kind of changes that can drop them into their heart or melt the ice around the heart, as you say? What suggestions do you have for our listeners? I don t have many suggestions, but the most important thing is that the world around us is really changing so fast that we don t know what's going to come tomorrow. So, today is pretty important. Today is to do something which will make a difference in my life, to do a ceremony which will lift my spirit. When my spirit is lifted, then I have the strength to lift some other person's spirit. And with the help of that someone whose spirit is lifted, together we can lift other people's spirits, and then those other people will help in lifting other people's spirits. The world needs hope, and the only hope lies within you. You should be the light in the darkness of the world. In the darkness of the world, people will look for the light. When they find you, you embrace them. Every embrace makes a difference. I have embraced millions and millions and millions of people physically. I just do that. I had the privilege of spending an hour and a half with Nelson Mandela. I had been the first guest of His Holiness Dalai Lama. I just go and embrace them. I just hold them because I know my grandmother said that I am an energy, so is Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq July 25, 2017 p. 9

Nelson Mandela. He is an energy. So are you. So are every listener. So, if it is so true and I believe it is, then when you embrace, you change that energy. You lift the spirit up. The more you can lift the spirit of other people, the more hope we can create because tomorrow when the sun rises, it could change and with that the hope. And as you know, the big ice of Greenland, my country, is melting really, really, really bad, very fast. And then the waters are rising. There was a big ice which broke off from the main ice back home in Greenland. It created earthquake and tsunami, took away some life from a small village. We don t think much of it because it's so far away. But the ice is melting so fast. And for every big ice which falls apart, tsunamis are created and that's happening in the world now. Boston as beautiful as it is, it will be under water. Vancouver will be under water. Seattle will be under water. New York City. It goes on around the world. We don t think of it. We don t want to think of it, but it's too big. Thus, the need for hope. If you want to work in a shamanic world, become that hope for the world. Aho! Yes. Well, so much more we could talk about and I hope we do that again soon. I also want to wish you a great gathering. I know you're having a gathering there very soon, so really blessings on the elders' gathering that you're doing. And just for all of us at The Shift Network and the thousands of people around the world that are listening to us, I know I speak as a spokesman for all of us to say thank you for the wonderful work that you're doing to help us to melt the ice in our heart and to open to a level of depth that we are all searching for in some ways. So, Angaangaq, Uncle, it's so great to be with you. Thank you. Aho! Aho. 2017 The Shift Network. All rights reserved. Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq July 25, 2017 p. 10