What can shamanism offer logotherapy and the search for meaning?

What does shamanism say is the meaning of life? #

To be what we were meant to be. When Paul Francis asked his main Human Lower-World GuideHuman Lower-World Guide. A face put on the human Oversoul: the Ancestors met through an individual form, genuinely other than us, chosen from pre-Fall hunter-gatherer humanity. Related to as a teacher, never a master. Read the full answer, her answer was, “Ask that rock”. What his Guide was pointing out was that we are literally surrounded by beings who know the meaning of life. The meaning of life is to be what Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this intended you to be. Rocks, trees, and cats know that exactly.¹

Viktor Frankl, the founder of logotherapy, came at the question differently. He wrote that “the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour”, and that “One should not search for an abstract meaning of life”.² Shamanism adds that, whatever form our own meaning takes, we are not alone in looking: the other Peoples, who have never forgotten how to be themselves, can show us. See Who are the Animal, Plant and Stone People?

Why do so many people feel that something is missing? #

Shamanism says it is because of what we have lost, as a culture and as individuals. Frankl called the feeling the “existential vacuum”, and linked it to the loss of the traditions that once told people how to live.³ The symptoms of soul lossSoul-loss. The sending-away of parts of the self in order to survive: through shock or trauma, or (the chief modern cause) exiling our own parts to fit in. With Power-loss, one of the two root causes of shamanic illness. Read the full answer and power lossPower-loss. Disconnection from nature, the web of life and our place in it: like being unplugged from the national grid. One of the two root causes of shamanic illness, healed by reconnection (not by soul retrieval), beginning with the Power Animal bond. Read the full answer are “anxiety, depression, a sense that something is missing or lacking in life, addictions, procrastination, boredom, a feeling of not being good enough, a disconnection from the sacred and the spiritual, loneliness, and so on.” They are “diseases of ‘civilisation’, of the FallThe Fall. The catastrophe at the root of the whole diagnosis: the shift from animist, egalitarian hunter-gatherer life to owning, agricultural Taker culture. In domesticating other species we domesticated ourselves, cutting ourselves off from Mother Earth (Power-loss) and from parts of our own nature (soul-loss). When dated precisely, the Fall begins with the first city-state cultures, around 4000 BCE (Domestication begins earlier, with the Neolithic). A sickness, not our true nature. ‘Fallen culture’ is used interchangeably with Taker culture; the Great Rupture is a looser alternate name. Read the full answer.”⁴

The wound beneath them is “a deep ache in us, a sickness in our soul. It is a hole that we try unsuccessfully to fill with things such as food and drugs, consumer goods, work, television, the internet and so on.” Shamanism offers more than a name for it. “The Lower-World heals this wound”, by reconnecting us with the web of life.⁵ See What is soul loss? and What is Power-loss?

What does shamanism add about who we are meant to be? #

The Soul. Frankl wrote that each person’s task “is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it”.⁶ Therapeutic Shamanism holds that there is something in us that already carries that uniqueness. The Lower-World Soul is “our truest self, our true nature. It is a part of us that is wild and free”, and “both who we truly are deep down, and the blueprint for what we are meant to grow into and become in the world”.⁷ It is found by going to the Lower-World and meeting it. See What does rewilding Soul mean and how do we discover our gifts and life direction?

Is meaning found alone? #

Not in shamanism. Logotherapy, too, recognises how much we need connection: the logotherapist Ann Graber, who has applied Frankl’s approach to pastoral counselling, lists amongst the things all humans have in common “Our yearning to be connected to the source of life” and “Our need for community with other human beings.”⁸ Shamanism offers both, and more. Amongst the PeoplesThe Peoples. The Animal People, Plant People, Standing People (the Trees) and Stone People: our elder kin, of whom the Human People are the youngest and least wise. A family, not a hierarchy. Read the full answer, humans are the youngest: “We are the youngest and least wise of the Peoples”, and “our animist ancestors lived with humility, respect and gratitude”.⁹ Loneliness is not the same as being alone: “Loneliness (as opposed to solitudeSolitude. Chosen aloneness from other humans: a healthy, essential Adult capacity, the opposite of loneliness (which is about the quality of relationship, not the quantity). Relational solitude is time away from the humans in the company of everything else. More about this) is about the quality rather than the quantity of relationships we have.”¹⁰ And our animist ancestors’ cultures, “Through complex initiation rites and ceremonies, and by modelling what it is to be a fully authentic adult human being”, were “designed to help children grow and blossom into what they were meant to be.”¹¹ See What is an Elder?

What does shamanism add about death and meaning? #

A lifelong relationship with it. Frankl saw that facing death and suffering can give life meaning. Shamanism builds this into practice. Shamans often talk about living fully with the awareness that death is always at our shoulders, waiting for us. When one shaman was asked what the point of practising shamanism is, the answer was that it is “to prepare for death”.¹² Living with death in view is not morbid; it sharpens the question of how to live. See How does Therapeutic Shamanism understand death and what happens when we die?