Shamanism can offer Process Work a world beyond the human psyche: helpers and spirits who are beings in their own right, the skill of telling a spirit from a disowned part, the healing that comes from relationship with the other-than-human world, and a longer view of power and rank, reaching back to the fiercely equal hunter-gatherer cultures that came before 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 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.
Are the figures we meet only parts of ourselves? #
Not always, in the shamanic view. Process Work often treats the figures of dreams and inner work as parts of the person. In Riding the Horse Backwards, the Mindells describe a method they learnt from two African healers, who see in their visions the spirit or person holding a client back, and work against that figure with magic. Mindell recasts it: “This figure personifies feelings you have against yourself.”1 In Sitting in the Fire he leaves the question open: “Whatever you call these guides, whether you feel they are within yourself or in the environment”.2
Therapeutic Shamanism does not leave it open. Psychotherapy, in reducing everything to the human, usually assumes that the spirits are not real. Paul Francis’s own experience is different: he knows that his spirit guides are real, alive, independent beings, and that they lead and guide his work.3 Shamanism offers Process Work helpers from beyond the psyche. See Are Power Animals and Guides just archetypes?
How do we tell a spirit from a part? #
With care, because it can go either way. Shamans tend to assume the spirits are real, which was safe enough in hunter-gatherer times. “The problem these days though is that sometimes the ‘spirits’ are not always real.”4 Since the growth of the under-world, many of the “demons” people meet are their own disowned parts. Yet some are not.
Here shamanism can offer something no purely psychological method can. Some of what a person carries may be an intrusionIntrusion. Something lodged in us that should not be there, having entered through the holes soul-loss and Power-loss leave. Four broad types: unhelpful thought-forms, introjects, foreign-body energetic intrusions, and entity possessions. More about this, something that does not belong to them at all. A weakened energy body lets other things, intrusions, get into us and cause harm.5 Mistaking one for the other, in either direction, can do real harm. Shamanism offers the skill of discerning which is which. See What is an intrusion, and what is extraction?
What about the client’s material that the therapist picks up? #
Process Work and shamanism understand this differently. Asked whether a therapist can pick up a client’s process and get ill, Mindell answers: “A shaman would say yes.” His own response is to work on himself, since, as he puts it, “You cannot get what you do not need to work on!”6 There is real wisdom in that. Shamanism adds that not everything a practitioner picks up is their own. Some of it may be an intrusion, which needs removing, not working through.
Does Process Work go beyond the human? #
Yes, in his vision of it. Mindell describes the vision quest as “experiencing the earth as a wise guru who sends you messages through its cities, rivers, stones, stars, and political conflicts.”7 He writes, “The old earth is still yours, full of power, telling you things no human being could”.8 Shamanism takes this into direct, everyday relationship. It treats the Animal, Plant and Stone People, 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 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 as beings to be in relationship with, and it sees disconnection from them as a root cause of illness. “Power-lossPower-loss. Disconnection from nature, the web of life and our place in it: like being unplugged from the national grid. One of the two root causes of shamanic illness, healed by reconnection (not by soul retrieval), beginning with the Power Animal bond. Read the full answer occurs when we separate ourselves from nature and the more-than-human world.”9 Healing then includes reconnecting, not only listening. See What is Power-loss?
Who is leading the work? #
In Therapeutic Shamanism, the spirits. Mindell places his trust in the process itself: “I have as yet to meet a guru or wise, enlightened, educated, shamanic, mediumistic person who is as intelligent as the process”.10 Therapeutic Shamanism shares that trust in something wiser than the practitioner. It places it in relationship with real helping beings, for this is a Spirit-led practice.11 See What is shamanic healing?
What can shamanism add to worldwork on rank and conflict? #
A much longer history. Mindell’s worldwork looks honestly at rank, which he calls “the sum of a person’s privileges”.12 He describes how, in groups, “Tensions develop, power struggles arise, somebody with charisma seizes leadership”.13 Shamanism adds that, for most of human history, people knew this tendency well and kept it in check. “Hunter-gatherers did not just practise and embody genuine equality, they fiercely protected it, too.”14 The permanent hierarchies our cultures now take for granted came with domestication and the Fall. See How does animism understand power and hierarchy?
Shamanism also asks the same of its own practitioners. If modern shamanism is to help us recover from the Fall, “then it cannot do so by continuing to work with people in a power-over way.”15 See What can Process Work offer shamanic work?
