Shamanism can offer person-centred therapy a living source for the growth it trusts: the Lower-World Soul, which is both the blueprint and the drive that Rogers called the actualising tendencyActualising tendency. Carl Rogers’s term for the drive in every living thing to grow into the best version of what it is meant to be. In animist terms, this is the drive of the Lower-World Soul. More about this. It adds relationship with the other-than-human world, a Power AnimalPower Animal. The Oversoul of a wild species, met as a single Lower-World being and bonded with in a deep, committed, usually lifelong soul-bond of unconditional love. The practitioner’s first and foremost Guide: Panther, not “my panther”. Read the full answer whose acceptance is unconditional, a way of finding parts of us that have left, and a picture of the culture that teaches us conditions of worthConditions of worth. Carl Rogers’s term for the conditions placed on love and acceptance in childhood, internalised as conditions of self-worth: the wonky stories of the middle-world self that override the Soul’s original instructions. More about this in the first place.
Where does the actualising tendency come from? #
From the Soul, in the shamanic view. All beings have “a template, like a seed within them”, and Rogers called this drive the actualising tendency.1 Shamanism says where the seed and the drive both live. “In the Lower-World, the Soul is what something was born to be. It is its truest nature; the essence of it. It is also both the blueprint for how it could manifest in the middle-world (its seed-potential), and it is the drive to try and become that thing (its actualising tendency).”2
Rogers himself came to see something larger at work. In A Way of Being he describes, alongside the actualising tendency in living things, “a formative tendency in the universe as a whole”.3 In Therapeutic Shamanism, things are as they are “because of the Stories that 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 tells them to be”.4 See What does rewilding Soul mean and how do we discover our gifts and life direction?
What is missing from most therapy? #
Nature. Most psychotherapy is “done indoors, with no connection or awareness of nature.” Worse, “In its placing of humans at the centre of the universe, and seeing everything else as simply metaphors for human problems, psychotherapy is still infected with the human narcissism that is characteristic 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.”5 Even the transpersonal therapies that do reach beyond the human usually leave something out: “What is almost always missing from these therapies, however, is nature: the other Peoples, the Lower-World, and Mother Earth herself”.6
Even person-centred therapy, for all its trust, works with relationships between humans. Shamanism offers relationships with the Animal, Plant and Stone People as well, and these heal in their own right. See How do we reconnect with the other-than-human world and heal cultural Power-loss?
Can acceptance come from beyond the human? #
Yes. Rogers described the therapist who “prizes the client in a total rather than a conditional way”.7 Shamanism offers a relationship in which acceptance is complete. All human relationships are conditional, but “your Power Animal loves you unconditionally.” It “will show more love, acceptance, understanding and compassion to you than you show to yourself”, and “In doing so, it helps you to learn to love and be compassionate to yourself.”8 See How does Power Animal heal and support us?
What about parts of us that have gone? #
Person-centred therapy offers the conditions for a person to reconnect with what they have pushed away. Shamanism adds that some parts are not only pushed away. Sometimes a part is not just repressed, but actually leaves altogether, and shamanism can find the parts that have left altogether, through soul retrievalSoul retrieval. Finding an exiled soul-part and inviting it home. In the modern psyche the fort-holder who sent it away must consent first, and the retrieval itself is a beginning: the real work is integration. Read the full answer. See What is soul retrieval?
Where do conditions of worth come from? #
From families, but also from the whole culture. Every group has rules for belonging, but “the more complex a group’s culture is, the more rules there are, and the more introjectsIntroject. A foreign belief, message or story swallowed whole (often in childhood) and lodged inside as if it were our own; a type of intrusion. More about this are needed, in order to keep people in line. Modern human civilisation is way more complex than hunter-gatherer tribal cultures, and so way more introjects are needed to keep people in line.”9 Shamanism places our personal conditions of worth inside that larger story of domesticationDomestication. The process by which, in domesticating other species, we domesticated ourselves. When dated precisely, Domestication begins with the Neolithic era, before the Fall proper, which begins with the first city-state cultures around 4000 BCE. What rewilding works to undo. More about this and the Fall. See What is the Fall?
Is a healthy person the same as a True Adult? #
Not quite. Psychotherapy “is good at creating healthy souls, but rarely will it help us find our Soul.”10 The qualities psychotherapy describes in people who have done the work closely match descriptions of healthy hunter-gatherer adults. The one major difference is that therapy does not usually reconnect us with the other-than-human world. Shamanism offers that missing step. See What does it mean to become a True Adult?
What did Rogers come to say about presence? #
In his later writing, he described something beyond technique. In A Way of Being he describes times “when I am closest to my inner, intuitive self”, when “simply my presence is releasing and helpful to the other”. He writes: “it seems that my inner spirit has reached out and touched the inner spirit of the other”, and that he had “underestimated the importance of this mystical, spiritual dimension.”11 See What can person-centred therapy offer shamanic work?
