The practice of imagination, on an everyday basis, involves clearing unhelpful images that block or misdirect our energies, and choosing to focus on positive, mobilizing imagery that gives us courage and confidence.

The particular province of the shaman is the province of soul, that which feeds our embodied life, or fails to feed it. From a shamanic point of view, the relationship with animal allies, or animals that show themselves in animal forms, is a vital part of living. We're fully embodied, with full access to our natural soul energy.

Strings of coincidence can strengthen us in the determination to follow our deepest intuitions even when they run counter to conventional wisdom and logic and cannot be subjected to rational explanation.

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.

It is difficult to wrap your mind around this intellectually and until you've had the experience, it can be difficult to understand. I tell people to give it a shot; you have nothing to lose.

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.

In the hidden order of reality, there is no distinction between mind and matter. The split between inner and outer - subjective and objective - that we experience in ordinary life is unknown in the deeper reality.