People can glum onto all sorts of things. And some might use this in that way instead of taking personal responsibility for their lives. But if you discover the addiction is not all your own, you can ask, "Do I want to drink or smoke on behalf of Uncle Fred? Or do I realize I need to get rid of Uncle Fred and live my own life."

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.

I'm not just talking about analyzing symbols from a dream but bringing the dream into life. I'm talking about seeing the world around you as a waking dream where the symbols and synchronicities will speak to you if you pay attention. That's why I call it active dreaming because it's about getting active with all our dreams can be.

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.

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.

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.

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.