Shamanism: the encounter with the Spirits

There are moments in life when we feel the need to go a little deeper, to look beneath the surface of our ordinary existence and understand what is actually moving inside us. We can spend years learning about ourselves, trying to change our habits, understand our emotions, or become more conscious of the way we live. And still, there are forces within us that seem to have a life of their own. They rise unexpectedly, take hold of our attention, change the way we perceive reality, and sometimes lead us to act in ways we would never have consciously chosen.

Shamanism has a fascinating way of approaching these forces. It speaks of spirits.

Shamanism is the work with the spirits. And spirits, understood through the lens of our own psyche, can be seen as the different forces that inhabit our inner world: emotions, sensations, thoughts, beliefs, and impulses that influence the way we experience life.

So what does shamanism actually mean when we demystify it? What does it mean to work with the spirits? It means learning to work with ourselves, with the different aspects of our being, especially those that operate beyond the reach of our ordinary awareness. It means healing what has been wounded, understanding what has been hidden, and gradually freeing ourselves from the forces that keep us from living fully.

The work leads us towards an existence filled with vitality, love, openness, creativity, passion, and wisdom. An existence in which our energy is available to us, rather than constantly consumed by the invisible obstacles we carry within ourselves.

Today, I experienced a very powerful shamanic ritual. And the timing was particularly significant. We are moving through an astrologically intense period, with several planets retrograde, a Full Moon, and the Sun and Venus passing through the Via Combusta, the Burning Way. In traditional astrology, this portion of the zodiac carries a particular intensity, associated with the fall of the luminaries and the exaltation and the power house of the two traditional malefics. I will leave the deeper astrological explanations for another time, but the symbolism itself is worth mentioning.

It was a day that invites us to look into the darker territories of existence.

Yesterday, I wrote about the beauty of darkness from the perspective of yin, the receptive, hidden side of life. There is a profound beauty in allowing ourselves to enter the quiet, the unknown, the parts of existence that do not reveal themselves immediately. Darkness has its own wisdom. It holds the things that need time to develop, the things that cannot be forced into visibility before their moment arrives.

But darkness holds other things, too.

It holds what remains unseen. What we have forgotten. What we refuse to acknowledge. What we have never learned to recognize. And among these things are the forces that can take control of our lives without us even realizing they are there.

Think about it. If you see something approaching, you have a chance to prepare. You can observe it, understand its movements, and decide how to respond. Awareness gives you room to act.

The forces that move unseen are different. They influence your perception before you recognize their presence. By the time you notice them, they may already have changed the way you think, feel, and respond to the world.

In shamanic language, these are the spirits of the underworld.

And I want to make something clear about this way of formulating things. We do not need to imagine terrifying entities lurking in some distant, supernatural realm, the kind of creatures we might associate with a Halloween party. The concept of 'spirits' can be understood through the most ordinary experiences of human life.

The spirit of anger.

The spirit of rumination, that restless movement of the mind that keeps returning to the same thought long after the moment has passed.

The spirit of shame, whispering that we are somehow inadequate, that we must do more or become someone else before we deserve to feel at ease in our own existence.

The spirit of fear. The spirit of jealousy. The spirit of resentment.

They are familiar. We encounter them in ourselves and in the people around us every day. Their familiarity is precisely what makes them so easy to overlook.

The work of the shaman in the underworld is the work of bringing consciousness into the places where consciousness has not yet reached. It is the work of seeing these forces, understanding how they operate, and learning how to stand in their presence without being unconsciously governed by them.

And as the shaman becomes familiar with the nature of a spirit, this understanding can become a form of service to others. The same fundamental patterns of human experience appear in different lives, wearing different faces and telling different stories. By understanding how a particular force moves through our own being, we gain a deeper capacity to recognize it in another person.

Take anger, for example.

Anger carries an enormous amount of energy. An energy that can awaken us from passivity, give us the strength to act, and push us towards something that needs to change. There is a raw, vital force within it, the impulse to move, to protect, to take a stand, to make something happen. But anger also carries a poison.

The poison's effect is in the way it alters perception. Our field of understanding contracts. We stop seeing the whole picture and become absorbed in the part of reality that confirms our grievance. We become convinced that we are right and the other person is wrong. Our interpretation hardens into certainty, and the situation, or the human being standing in front of us becomes an obstacle, an opponent, or an enemy.

The energy itself is immense, but it comes poisoned. And so the action that emerges from this state can become destructive. Any action that emerges is surely serving the spirit of anger.

And what does the spirit seek to accomplish? If we look at its movement, we can see that an unconscious reaction often serves to preserve and reinforce the very state from which it arose. Anger generates actions that produce more anger.

The spirit feeds itself.

Imagine a man walking down the street who sees another man wearing the shirt of a rival football team. Something changes inside him almost instantly. His body becomes activated. His heartbeat accelerates, his attention fixes on the symbol in front of him, and his perception begins to narrow. In reality, in front of him, there is another human being who shares his love for football. But, under the influence of the poison, he sees an enemy. The energy rises. The body prepares for action. Words come out that would never have emerged from a more spacious state of awareness. He insults the other man, and eventually, he punches him.

The anger has now found an outward expression.

The other man, taken by surprise, feels his own body flood with energy. His attention narrows. The urge to strike back becomes powerful, and he responds with violence of his own.

The first man’s anger has awakened anger in the second. The second man’s reaction reinforces the first man’s hostility. The force has moved between them, preserving itself through their actions and growing stronger with every exchange.

This is a simple example, almost stupid, but it to reveal how the mechanism operates. In reality, spirits travel between us in much subtler ways. Through the tone of a voice. Through an accusation disguised as a question. Through the coldness with which we withdraw our affection. Through a comment that touches an old wound in someone who has no idea why it hurts so much.

One person’s inner state can awaken the same state in another, and before either person understands what is happening, they are both participating in a pattern that reinforces itself.

And, there is another mechanic at play: they can invite one another in.

Anger can call upon pride. Pride can awaken the need to prove ourselves. That need can draw us into competition, and competition can feed resentment. One state opens the door to another, until we find ourselves caught in an entire network of forces working together. 

It might sound weird saying that we are working with spirits, but I particularly love this perspective of the shamans. Calling them spirits that we work with. I prefer this way of seeing and formulating our relationship with the forces that move through us. And I do so because of a very important reason:

One of the greatest mistakes we make as humans is identifying ourselves with the spirits.

We feel an emotion so intensely that it seems to occupy our entire being. It speaks through our thoughts, colours our memories, shapes our perception, and urges us towards action. Its presence becomes so convincing that we mistake it for the truth of who we are.

We say, I am angry.

And the words seem perfectly natural. We feel the anger in our body. We hear it in our thoughts. We experience its force so intimately that separating ourselves from it can seem almost impossible.

But anger is an experience moving through us. It can inhabit our attention and influence our behaviour, but it does not define the deepest truth of our identity.

There is a subtle shift that takes place when we begin to see it this way.

Instead of saying, I am angry, we can recognize that the spirit of anger has entered our experience. We can become curious about its presence. We can observe what it does to our body, what it makes us believe, what it urges us to do, and what it is trying to preserve.

This change in perspective creates a little space between the one who experiences and the experience itself.

And that space is precious.

It is where consciousness begins to recover its freedom. It is where we can feel something intensely without surrendering our entire being to it. It is where we begin to discover that we have a relationship with our inner forces, and that this relationship can change.

We do not have to hate these spirits or wage war against every difficult emotion that arises. We have to learn their nature. We have to recognize their signatures, understand their movements, and discover what happens when we remain conscious in their presence.

The more intimately we know them, the less power they have to take us by surprise.

And this brings me back to today’s ritual.

My shamanic journey was long, and it began in the underworld.

I entered the darkness, the territory that, in shamanic symbolism, holds the spirits that remain beyond ordinary awareness. The experience felt especially powerful in the context of these days, with their astrological symbolism of intensity and hidden things coming to the surface.

It is easy to look at such a period and think of it as something negative. We tend to associate darkness with danger, and anything that intensifies our difficult emotions with something we should avoid.

But there is another way to understand what happens.

An intense period can bring greater visibility to what has been operating beneath the surface. The forces that were once subtle become harder to ignore. Old patterns emerge with greater intensity, and things we thought we had already understood return to ask for a deeper encounter.

Of course, intensity alone does not guarantee insight. We still need the lantern of consciousness in our hands. We need the willingness to look honestly at what appears before us, without immediately becoming absorbed in it.

But when we enter the darkness with awareness, these encounters can become some of the most precious moments of realization. We begin to see what has been moving through us, perhaps for years, without our fully recognizing its influence.

And something else becomes clear through this work.

Seeing a spirit does not make it disappear.

We cannot simply erase these forces from our inner architecture. They belong to the complexity of being human, and each carries its own nature, its own energy, its own potential for expression. The work is to change our relationship with them, to become so familiar with their movements that we can meet them consciously.

After many, many journeys into the underworld, the encounters start to feel like a rendezvous with old friends.

Friends you met long ago. Friends whose habits you know by heart. You recognize their voices before they have finished speaking. You know the tricks they use to capture your attention, the stories they tell to convince you that their perspective is the only one that matters. They can still approach with force, but they can no longer surprise you in the same way.

You know them.

You know what happens when anger arrives. You recognize the tightening of your perception, the rush of energy, the sudden conviction that you must act immediately. You can feel its power without allowing it to dictate your next move.

And in time, you begin to see how these old friends carry gifts.

Anger, for example, still has its poison in the bag. You know it is there. You recognize the way it distorts your perception, and you have learned to meet that distortion with awareness. You no longer have to drink the poison simply because you have encountered it.

And if you don't drink the poison? Or if your body is already immune to the poison? What comes from this spirit?

Beneath the impulse to react lies an enormous shot of energy. The same force that once pushed you into unconscious action can become available for conscious use. You can direct it towards something that matters, towards an action that serves life rather than perpetuating the conflict.

The energy that once possessed you becomes energy you can work with.

And this is true liberation. Not trying to get rid of the parts of ourselves that cause us pain. Not imagining freedom as a state in which these forces no longer appear, in which we have somehow become 'immune to being human'.

But to become so conscious of these forces that we can encounter them without losing ourselves.

The old spirit friend arrives, and we recognize it.

We know its language. We know its appetite. We know where it wants to take us.

And we are free to choose what happens next.

This is how the underworld becomes familiar territory. What once felt threatening becomes an opportunity to deepen our understanding. What once took us over becomes something we can meet with presence. And what once consumed our energy can begin to reveal the gift hidden within it.

After the darkness, the sunrise.

Beyond the underworld, other worlds await, each carrying its own lessons and gifts. 

The journey continues, and with it comes new possibility.