Shamanism and Transforming Mental Illness

In shamanic cultures mental illness is a community illness that is caused when the community’s many shadow projections overwhelm the collective benevolent intent. When we don’t withdraw our projections, we wear down the boundaries of the most sensitive, including children. The sensitives become vulnerable to the intrusion and influence of malevolent energies, wandering dead, and the unacknowledged secrets, betrayals, and transgressions of the community. Traditionally, the shaman diagnoses the community’s imbalance whether with the local land spirits, ancestors, the spirit world in general or the morals and ethics of good relationship with each other. The healing is then communal, requiring everyone’s participation, restoring balance and right relationship, and freeing the individual from the burden of acting out the community’s illness. This week we explore mental illness, old and new causes, and shamanism as the path forward to sanity and well-being even for our “Prozac Nation.”