Shamanic goal-setting is choosing where we want our life to head from the deepest parts of ourselves, our Soul and Spirit, rather than from the wants and inherited burdens of 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 ego, and doing so with the help of our GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this and of our future selves. The goals have to be ethical and realistic, and because so many of our choices are made unconsciously, the work goes hand in hand with healing the past.
Why does it matter which part of us sets the goals? #
Because different parts of us want different things. The question to ask of any plan is which part of us is making it: our 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 and ego, or our Soul and Spirit? Guides are much more disposed to help with plans based on our Soul and Spirit than with plans driven by the desires, and the ancestral burdensAncestral burdens. Unresolved grief, shame, anger and trauma passed down the family line: never ours to begin with, but shaping us. Healed through recapitulation and disentanglement, becoming a ‘link-breaker’ so the burden stops here. Read the full answer, of the middle-world ego.
This follows from how the self is meant to work. Our middle-world self is meant to be modelled on our true nature, our 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 Soul, and to be its expression in our earthly life. The more that is so, the better we feel; the further our middle-world self is from our Soul, the worse we feel.1 See What are Soul, Spirit, the middle-world self and the body?
Why do our plans so often come to nothing? #
Often because they are not what is really choosing. So much of the decision-making behind our choices happens at an unconscious level, in our habits, the stories we unconsciously tell ourselves and the scripts we live by: “I don’t deserve…”, “I must always…”, “my role is…”, “it’s my fate”. That is why habits are so notoriously hard to change.2 Unconscious patterns from past hurts and traumas, including the ancestral burdens we carry, keep pulling us towards familiar futures.
So healing the past is part of choosing the future. Resolving old hurts frees us to make more conscious decisions. See Can we change the past?
What makes a goal a healthy one? #
Two things above all. It has to be ethical. Both the Lower-World and 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 are places of impeccable ethics, and true Guides will not help anyone use shamanism to harm or manipulate others.3 And it has to be realistic, because otherwise it is magical thinking, and no true Guides will help with that either. See Can we “manifest” whatever we want?
It also means being honest about what is in our hands. Some things are ours to choose and some are not. Healthy goal-setting means understanding what we can control, stepping into that awareness, embracing our own power and taking responsibility for the choices we make, whilst acknowledging what lies beyond our control. With that comes response-ability, the freedom to choose how we respond to the things we cannot control.
Where do Guides and future selves come in? #
Both can help us choose and keep to our course. Guides help with plans rooted in Soul and Spirit. And whilst there is no single future that anyone can journey to, it is possible, and beneficial, to connect with future versions of ourselves for guidance. See What are future selves, and are there many possible futures? and How are Upper-World Guides different from Lower-World Guides?
How this is done in practice, in journeys and in everyday life, is taught on the courses and not given here.
How does this compare with goal-setting in psychology? #
There is some common ground. The psychologist Gabriele Oettingen found in her research that simply fantasising about a wished-for future tends to sap the energy to pursue it. Her alternative, which she calls mental contrasting, pairs the wish with an honest look at the inner obstacle in the way, and she built it into a four-step method, WOOP: Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan. In her findings it helps people commit to wishes that are attainable and let go of those that are not.4
Her concern with feasibility meets the shamanic insistence on realistic goals from another direction. What the shamanic approach adds is attention to which part of us is doing the wishing, the ethics of what we wish for, and the help of Guides and future selves. See What is a calling?
