Not the facts of it; what happened, happened. What can change is the stories and messages we took from past events, and so the hold the past has on us now. In Therapeutic Shamanism something more is possible as well: journeying back to support a younger self does not alter the past, but it creates alternative, healthier timelines, which lightens the burden of the past and makes healthier futures more likely.
Can the facts of the past be changed? #
No. The past cannot be changed, and healing it does not mean pretending otherwise. What can be reshaped is the stories and messages we took from past events. Resolving those resolves past trauma and frees us to make more conscious decisions in the future.
That is what shamans mean when they say that “the past has to die”, or that we have to die to the past. Part of becoming a shaman is freeing oneself from unhealthy attachments to the past,1 and the stories have to go, or at least we need to be able to step away from them when journeying; they can be useful clothing to put back on for ordinary, day-to-day life.2 See What is recapitulation?
Why does the past keep shaping the present? #
Because so many of our choices are made unconsciously. Shamanism is essentially a multiverse model: the future is not set, there are an infinite number of possible futures, and every decision we make decides which one we step into. Some things are outside our control altogether, and others are collective human choices. Many of the personal ones are made by our habits, the stories we unconsciously tell ourselves and the scripts we live by: the voices in our heads saying things like “I don’t deserve…”, “I must always…”, “people won’t like me if I…”, “it’s my fate”. Because so much of this is unconscious, habits are notoriously hard to change.3
Many shamanic traditions picture the past as a tendril or tentacle that enters the lower back and reaches out of the belly, tasting all the possible futures. Being a creature of habit, it hooks onto one that feels familiar and drags us forward into it. Until we get to grips with it, that is why we keep recreating the past.
What can be done about it? #
The past is resolved, not rewritten, through what are known as the 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 techniques: practices that help us resolve the past and gather ourselves back from it, so that we can choose the future more consciously. They include 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, fort-holderFort-holder. A protective part of the self that stayed behind to ‘man the fort’ when we were wounded: the inner critic, perfectionist, pusher, pleaser: the loyal soldier still fighting a war that ended long ago. Usually the part that sent an orphan away, so no deep healing holds without its consent; befriended, never extracted. Read the full answer care, 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, going to conversion points, shapeshifting, 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, extraction and de-possession, hollowing out, cultivating the Aware SelfAware Self. The Witness: not a part of the self but a capacity for awareness, cultivated by hollowing-out, that can watch the flow of thoughts without being caught in them. More about this, certain breathing techniques, severing the spiral tendril, and singing our parts back home.
They are not magical cures. Like developing a meditation practice, they take work, repetition and dedication, and the more they are practised, the deeper journeying and understanding can go.4 The practices themselves are taught on the courses and in the books, not here. See What is soul retrieval? and What is disentanglement?
What happens when we journey back to a younger self? #
Shamanically, more can be done than reshaping stories. A shamanic journey back to the past to support a younger self is not about altering the past. It creates different timelines in which healthier versions of ourselves exist: timelines in which we had a different childhood, or responded to what happened in healthier ways.
Those healthier timelines do not replace the one we are living in. What they do is lighten the burden of the past, so that we can make more conscious choices in the present and are more likely to end up in healthier futures. This is how healing the past and choosing the future belong together. See What are future selves, and are there many possible futures?
Can the past of our families and ancestors be healed too? #
Some of it. Burdens pass down the generations, from fort-holder strategies that were never resolved, to a family’s history, to the collective trauma of a whole culture. Indigenous cultures used to consider the seven generations before them and the seven after, and saw resolving their own trauma as a personal responsibility, so that it would not be passed down. See How do we recognise and work with ancestral burdens?
Are shamanic journeys literally true? #
No. Shamanic journeys are mythosMythos. Metaphorical, symbolic, felt truth: the truth of art, poetry and shamanic journeys. Shamanic reality is mythologically true, not literally true, which is why journeys are interpreted, never taken at face value. More about this, not logosLogos. Literal, factual, analytical truth: the truth of facts you can check. One of the two modes of truth, alongside mythos. More about this, meaning metaphorically true rather than literally true.5 Their truth is the truth of images, stories and meanings, and they need to be understood that way. See How do I unpack and interpret a shamanic journey? and What are child, orphan, fort-holder and protector parts?
