An ending that is not faced and resolved leaves unfinished business behind it, and things become stuck, so that nothing healthy can grow in its place. Healthy endings matter for our own health and for the health of the groups we belong to, and they apply to every kind of ending, not only to deaths. Shamanic practices such as disentanglementDisentanglement. The ceremonial practice that unbinds unhealthy energetic ties to a person, role, object or story: a fourfold exchange in which each party gives back and takes back what they hold of the other. Not ‘cord-cutting’: done well it usually deepens the relationship, because what is unbound is the unhealthy aspect, not the love. More about this, recapitulationRecapitulation. The practice of gathering ourselves back from earlier events, ‘dying to the past’, so that unresolved history no longer runs us. More about this and the transformation practicesTransformation practices. The family of journey-practices in which the self is deliberately taken apart, reduced to something formless, and reformed: burials, burnings, dismemberments, sky burials, dissolvings, cocoonings, poisonings, shapeshifting. A mini death-and-rebirth: cleansing, loosening of identity, and preparation for the greatest transformation of all. Read the full answer are, among other things, training in how to end things well.
Why do healthy endings matter? #
Because what is not properly ended does not go away. “When endings are not fully acknowledged and resolved, they leave unfinished business and lingering entanglementsEntanglement. An unhealthy energetic tie hooking us into another person, a role, an object or a family story; released by disentanglement. More about this. Things become stuck and stagnant, and there can be no healthy new life.”1 An old relationship, role or loss that has never been finished carries on taking up our time and energy long after it is over.
This matters for more than the individual. “For our own health, but also for the health of the groups we belong to, we need to know when, and how, to let go.”1 Resolved and honoured endings are one of the marks of a healthy family or group.
What counts as an ending? #
Far more than deaths. Endings are part of every life: “the ending of relationships, the endings of the various stages of life, the ending of old roles and ways of being.”2 We can need to end our ties with people, workplaces, organisations, houses, towns, family heirlooms, photographs and much else, and each of these endings asks for the same care.3
What makes an ending healthy? #
An ending is healthy when it is fully faced, not skipped or smoothed over. “Endings need to be fully faced, acknowledged, processed and resolved.”4 That means feeling what the ending brings, including grief, and giving it the time it needs. Grieving cannot be rushed or circumvented without negative consequences, and the same goes for anything that grows out of an ending, such as forgiveness, which “cannot be healthily rushed or bypassed.”5 See What does animism teach about grief?
And in the end it means actually letting go.
Does a healthy ending mean giving up our attachments? #
No. Our attachments, or entanglements, are not a problem in themselves. Some sky religionsSky-religion. The vertical, hierarchical reordering of the sacred that the Fall installed, governed by the spell ‘up is good, down is bad’: transcend the body, escape matter, purify upward. The conditioning Therapeutic Shamanism works to undo. More about this see spirituality as renouncing attachments, but from a shamanic point of view entanglements “are an intrinsic part of being human and of living a fully engaged, involved, emotionally-alive, and embodied life. They are about the people, places, and things that we love.”6 What needs ending is the entanglement that no longer helps us, or that we have outgrown.
Nor does a healthy ending always mean the end of a relationship. Disentanglement “does not have to mean the end of a relationship, but the ending of unhealthy aspects of it, or of a phase of it that you have outgrown.” In this way it gives the chance to make a fresh start, or enter a new phase of the relationship.7 See What is disentanglement?
What happens when endings are left unfinished? #
We carry them. In the language of the elements, “wallowing in the past and not letting things go, holding on to things, unfinished and unresolved grief” are water issues.8 Unfinished business also shapes families, since people and losses that are never acknowledged cast an unconscious shadow over a family until they are faced.9
It can even shape what happens after death. One of the reasons the dead fail to move on is “Unfinished business of some kind, from the time when they were alive”, such as resentments, grudges or a wish for revenge. Another is a living loved one who will not let them go.10 See Who are the unquiet dead, and are ghosts real?
How can shamanic work help us end things well? #
Several of its core practices are practices of ending. Disentanglement is “the process of letting go of attachments that are no longer helpful or healthy, or which we have outgrown”, and it is central to Therapeutic Shamanism.11 Done regularly, it is part of what shamanism calls the recapitulation techniques: “Shamans say that, ‘The past has to die’ or that we have to ‘die to the past’”, meaning that we free ourselves from unhealthy attachments to the past.12 See What is recapitulation?
The psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, famous for her work on the grieving process, was once asked for her most important piece of advice for life, and replied, “Lighten your load”. Disentanglement does just that, “and it feels great.”12
Why is letting go so hard? #
Because part of us does not want to. The transformation practices show it. In a burial journeyBurial journey. A transformation practice of the Earth element: being buried in the Lower-World for grounding, and for the death-and-rebirth all the transformation practices share. More about this, where we let the earth take us apart and remake us, there are usually parts of us that resist. “You may notice that parts of you want to resist the whole notion of letting go and dying, and are desperate to cling on to ‘life’ and the familiar.”13 The practice is to keep letting go, again and again, until the sense of separation has gone and we are fully returned to the Earth. See What are transformation practices and shapeshifting?
How are endings connected with death? #
The smaller endings of a life and the last one are closely linked. The transformation practices are a preparation “for the greatest shape-shift and transformation that awaits us all, our own physical death”, because someone who has spent their life loosening their attachment to their middle-worldMiddle-world. Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. “If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world.” Read the full answer form is ready to let it go when the time comes.14 See Why do shamans say shamanism is preparation for death, and how does how we live shape how we die?
