In Therapeutic Shamanism, ethics grow from within a healthy person rather than from rules, and values are part of how that happens: ethics are linked to the Upper-WorldUpper-World. The realm of Father Sky and of Spirit: spacious, rarefied and clear, layered in tiers, offering not escape but perspective. Not better than the Lower-World: we ascend rooted, and bring the gifts back down. Read the full answer part of us, and values to the healthy stories animist cultures lived by. Spirituality here is not about leaving the world behind but about rising rooted: balancing the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer and the Upper-World, Soul and Spirit, and bringing what we receive back into everyday life, in service.
How do values help us live an ethical animist life? #
By guiding us from within. Ethics grow naturally in a healthy person. People in person-centred counselling “became more ethical and moral, not from an externally-imposed set of rules, but because being ethical and moral was innate to them.”1 Ethics are linked to the Upper-World part of us, and a culture’s values to the stories it lives by. See What are shamanic ethics and how are they different from rules or morality?
Where do our values come from? #
Spirit and our stories. The Upper-World part of us “brings us ethics, spiritual perspective, and a healthy detachment.”2 Spirit “embodies abstract, universal principles like compassion, empathy, and tolerance”, whilst “your Soul is your unique self, your true individuality.” And a culture’s values live in its stories: hunter-gatherer shamanism told “stories based on kinship, non-hierarchical thinking, empathy and right-relationship. Everything that has gone wrong with society can be traced back to abandoning those stories and values.”3
How do values guide our choices? #
By helping us answer the real question. The question underneath them is a practical one. When we ask about the meaning of life, “what we are really asking is, “How shall I live my life?””4 And “fighting for the things you love is best done from an Adult place.”5 The list of the qualities of a True AdultTrue Adult. Not someone with a job and a mortgage, but a person shocked out of childish separateness who has taken up their place, interdependently, in both the human tribe and the more-than-human web. Adults decide; Elders advise. Read the full answer ends with one who “Lives ethically, honourably, and with integrity.”6 See What does it mean to become a True Adult?
How does Therapeutic Shamanism understand spirituality? #
As something that takes us beyond the ego, in two directions. “Spirituality is something that takes us beyond the mundane and the ordinary, beyond surface reality and the everyday, beyond the realm of the ego.” That is as true of the Lower-World as of the Upper-World: “The Lower-World is a spiritual place.”7 Shamanism has two spiritual realms, not one, and works with both. See Why does Therapeutic Shamanism begin with the Lower-World?
What is the purpose of spirituality in Therapeutic Shamanism? #
To change us so that we can serve. Spiritual practice is not an end in itself: “Part of the purpose of spiritual practice can be to learn not to serve the ego but to re-form it, so that it can serve and express this greater reality in the everyday world.”8 The same goes for Soul and Spirit together, which shamanism teaches us to cultivate in equal measure: “Our body and middle-world selfMiddle-world self. The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. Read the full answer can then become the means by which we express our Soul and Spirit and be of service in the world.”9
What does “rising rooted” mean? #
Growing upwards without losing our roots. Sky-orientated spirituality, focused only on Spirit, can become top-heavy, disembodied and ungrounded; instead, “shamanism shows us that we need to rise, but rise rooted.”10 As the Plant People teach, we need to ascend rooted, drawing our nourishment equally from Father Sun and 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.11 Animism is a balanced practice: like a healthy tree, it has strong roots and strong branches.
What is “souluality”? #
A word from the teaching for students, where it is discussed in full. The idea behind it is public: “Our modern-day fallen culture tends to split Soul and Spirit, elevating Spirit as pure and eternal while seeing Soul as heavy, flawed, or primitive. By contrast, animism holds them as two movements of one life.” We have lost a great deal in cutting off from Soul and elevating Spirit above it.12 See What are Soul, Spirit, the middle-world self and the body?
What role does the middle-world play in grounded spirituality? #
A necessary one. “The ego is not “bad”, it just needs to be of service and not in charge. From a shamanic perspective, it is the tool through which both our Soul and Spirit can express themselves and be of service to the world.”13 The 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 part of us is “our interface with day-to-day reality”.14 A grounded spirituality is lived here, in the body and in everyday life. See What is the middle-world?
Is the aim to transcend the world? #
No. The point is to live fully here, not to rise above the world and leave it behind. “Trying to ignore and transcend the middle-world ego simply contributes to 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 and to the mess that we are in.”15 “We rise not to leave the world behind, but to return to it refreshed, with clearer eyes.”
How does Therapeutic Shamanism differ from sky-based spirituality? #
It does not rank up above down. “Contrary to what 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 say, the Upper-World is not ‘better’ than the Lower-World. To overemphasise or inflate the Upper-World just leads to a top-heavy, imbalanced and ungrounded spirituality.”16 Shamanism “is entirely free of the idea that up is good and down is bad.” See What is spiritual bypassing and how can psychotherapy help prevent it? and What is the Upper-World?
