In everyday speech the three words are used loosely, and often run together as “happiness”. Joy is one of the parts of ourselves people most often send away to fit in, and shamanic work, from 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 to time in 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 in nature, is one way of getting it back.
How do joy, contentment and bliss differ in everyday language? #
Loosely. In ordinary speech people use the three words almost interchangeably, and often fold them all into “happiness”. Therapeutic Shamanism does treat them as different states, each behaving in its own way and each cultivated differently, and that teaching is given to students on the courses. What the books say in public, set out below, is mostly about joy: why we lose it, and how we can find it again.
Do other animals feel joy and contentment? #
Yes. Many animals, especially social ones, developed a complex range of ever-changing emotional states, from terror, fear and grief through hope and trust to “excitement, contentment, love, passion, empathy, joy, ecstasy and awe. Essentially, many animals are highly emotional beings.”1 From an animist point of view this is no surprise, since humans are one of the Animal Peoples, not the only beings with an inner life. See Do animals think and feel?
Why do so many of us lose our joy? #
Often because we sent it away. In hunter-gatherer times the main causes 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 would have been things like bereavement, illness or shock. In modern times the principal cause is usually that we send part of our own soul away, to fit in: “We variously send away our own playfulness, creativity, spontaneity, joy, passion, wildness, sensitivity, vulnerability, confidence, assertiveness, care-freeness, cleverness, sadness, tears, anger, and so on.”2
If all of our soul had left, we would have died, so part of us stays behind and holds the fort, keeping us safe in the ways it learned in childhood, and it may not want the lost part back. This is why modern soul retrieval is more complex than simply returning what was lost.3 See What is soul loss? and What is soul retrieval?
Can shamanic practice bring joy back? #
It can help, in several ways. Soul retrieval works directly on the parts of us we have lost or sent away, joy amongst them. Journeying to the Lower-World is a way of experiencing the wild, undomesticated Human we were meant to be. Finding Your Deep Soul includes a journey whose whole aim is to go to the Lower-World “and experience the joy of being this wild, fully-alive human being”, to be repeated as often as you wish.4 Even practices that sound frightening can turn out to be joyful. Of the shamanic burial practice, once you get past the resistance and surrender to the process, “It is, in fact, a loving and joyous practice.”5
Where does nature come in? #
Time in nature, away from the human world, can be a very direct route. In his early thirties Paul Francis walked alone in a remote part of the Welsh mountains and found he no longer felt safe in the wild; he had become, without realising it, “urbanised, humanised and domesticated.” Looking back, that person feels far away from who he is now: these days, spending a day in nature, away from humanity, is his idea of absolute bliss.6 See What does domestication do to us?
Is the aim to be happy all the time? #
No. “True shamanism is not spiritual bypassing, or emotional numbing, or avoiding being in the world. It means being in and of the world. It means seeing things as they are, and feeling things as they are.”7 That includes grief and anger as well as joy. The fuller teaching on how joy, contentment and bliss each behave, how they relate to grief, and how each can be cultivated is given to students on the courses. See What does animism teach about grief? and What is spiritual bypassing, and how can psychotherapy help prevent it?
