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.

When bad things happen, part of us might go away. It's a survival technique. You can't stand to be around when there's so much grief or pain in your life so part of you goes away. Shamans call this soul loss.

We need to consider ancestral cleansing. If we're willing to clear our energy fields of the ancestral energies we don't want, then we are ready to do something really interesting and beautiful which is to claim a connection with the wisdom of the kinds of ancestors we do want to be in contact with. But we can't do this until we've cleaned out the lower stuff that is hindering us.

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.

This relates to the concept of time and our ability as dreamers to reach across time to a past or future self and do some good. This is very important as it relates to soul loss and soul recovery.

Our ancestors are looking for us even if we're not looking for them. And by our ancestors I mean our bloodlines and the ancestors of the place where we live and our spiritual kin who go beyond our biological families. We could be walking around carrying an entire ancestral history of the wrong kind for us.

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.