Australian Aboriginees say that the big stories - the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life - are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting prey in the bush.

Choices are our choices so I am not taking away anyone's personal choice, but we run into difficulty when we're having choices made for us rather than making our own.

On a visceral level, most of us know what soul loss means. This is the shaman's diagnosis of the root cause of many of our complaints: our lack of energy, our fatigue, our depression, why our immune systems are blown, why we lack enthusiasm and courage for life.

Soul recovery, I think, is much richer and more helpful. Instead of having a shaman retrieve our soul for us, we help each other to become the shamans and healers of our own soul.

One should share their dreams with others right away in the morning. One can use my Lightning Dreamwork process. First, the person shares the dream without being interrupted. Then each person shares their thoughts about the dream by saying, "If it were my dream," not presuming to tell the person what the dream means in an objective way. Lastly, the dreamer is helped to make an action plan for embodying the energy and guidance from the dream.

I have never met anyone who is addicted to alcohol who isn't drinking for a lot of dead spirits!

There are chemical and other explanations for addictions, but speaking from my own observations (and I am a shamanic type), there is always some sort of disembodied spirit causing some of the addiction, riding your energy field, trying to impose their needs and addictions onto you.