Does the resonance of storms
affect the human mind?
Photo by phatman; License CC 2.0

Being Heyoka is kind of special. We're the only type of shaman that has a special ceremony for breaking the contact with our spirit guides. The spirits who guide us are the spirits of storms, and they aren't really compatible with human beings. If you get chosen by the Wakanyan, the Old Holy Ones who guide us, you'll probably go crazy. You won't have any truly useful talents except fighting and maybe a couple of other things I shouldn't mention. Storms will go around you, and that's kind of cool, and every now and then you might get a mission, a dream that you have to live out in your waking life. Most people who become heyoka opt out, take the ceremony and break the connection. Then they try for a better guiding spirit, something less hazardous and more useful.

By the time I learned all of that I was several years into actually being heyoka, child of the lightning, and I was doing ok with it. I decided I'd just keep going, and at least for me personally it has worked out all right. Neat stuff happens, and if you don't pay close attention you get hammered by it. I truly understand the crazy part, if you didn't have access to the knowledge of the rest of the ancient world you'd drive yourself nuts trying to figure this out on your own. Being an electronics dude also helps, because a lot of what happens does have an electromagnetic basis, and that's why I'm so interested in things like the Stephen Gibbs Hyperdimensional Resonator. Haven't had much luck with it lately, but I'm not quite finished with the concept. There's something familiar about it to me, and that's the point of this post.

Follow up:

If you want to listen to something I feel on a fairly regular basis, there's a good shareware program called Brainwave Generator which is available as a free download with most options enabled for a month, at no charge. One of the files available for playback is called Shumann Resonance. That's one of the several beat frequencies created when lightning strikes the earth. Thunder isn't the only thing generated. A very low frequency harmonic starts up at around 8 Hz. That's too slow to hear, but you can feel it. Most people don't. I do. I would expect that every heyoka who ever lived felt it, a fast drumming that comes from the center of the body and seems to take you over. Doesn't happen all the time, but happens sometimes, usually very late at night or in the very early hours of morning. If you go about your ordinary activities you can shake it off, but if you're lying there in bed it can resonate inside you, become a incredibly powerful thing, sometimes enough that the furniture in the room with you starts to rattle around in tune with it. Things happen that most people would consider hallucination. I had a hard time accepting them as hallucination, for reasons I need to be careful about discussing in public. Being Heyoka should probably be a private exercise, legally speaking, or you'll wind up on forced medication.

Last time I felt this was a couple of days ago, not as powerful as it sometimes is, but strong enough. Lots of storms around, this has been a turbulent spring and that's lasted on into summer now. I get a kick out of showing Alice the TV radar scan and how the storms break apart and go around us. We get the rain but not the havoc. Traditionally speaking I'm not supposed to be killed by lightning now, and the place where I live won't be destroyed by storms -- thunderstorms or tornadoes, I assume. This hasn't been fully tested but by the end of my lifetime there might be an interesting backlog of data to discover, should anyone be interested.

The vibration that happens naturally isn't under my control. It just happens, and I choose to go with it or not. Sometimes I can't because ordinary life intervenes. Usually I can. What happens is in that realm which might legally get me put away, so I try to be discreet about discussing it and I'm sure I usually fail. But I do find it fascinating, and I'm always looking for ways to better understand it.

Brainwave Generator is a program which creates a sound pulse, a beat harmonic exactly like the system used by the Monroe Institute's out of body stimulation tapes. While it isn't strong enough to rattle the furniture, it's pretty darned accurate. One of the selections in the shareware version is called Shumann Resonance, that vibration set up when lightning strikes the earth and sort of rings it like a bell. Very familiar to me. The frequency might be just a little too slow, but it's nearly right on.

This is one of the better brainwave simulators I've found, and it does cost $40 if you want the full featured package and permanent use of it. The shareware version has some options, like storing waveforms in a sound file, disabled. Otherwise you could record a file and the heck with buying the program. Eh, fair enough. Considerable support is available and there's a huge following in a Yahoo Group dedicated to exploration of the software's effects. But, you are tinkering with the basics of the human mind if you use Brainware Generator. Some people are very susceptible, and if you have a history of epilepsy you should definitely stay away from it. I find it pleasant, for the most part. The sand shoveling bit is just irritating, but the higher meditation routines are very nice. It is still not quite what I'm looking for, but it's closer than most and well worth a listen.