Arnold Mindell - The Shamans Body PDF

1°' ..
***
A- .O^
THE SHAMAN'S BODY
THE
SHAMAN'S BODY
AAA
A New Shamanism
for Transforming
Health, Relationships, and

Community
ARNOLD MINDELL
HarperSanFrancisco
A Division o/H&rperColYmsPublishers
THE SHAMAN'S BODY: A New Shamanism for Transforming Health,
Relationships, and Community. Copyright © 1993 by Arnold Mindell.
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book
may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission
except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
For information address HarperCollins Publishers, 10 East 53rd Street, New
York, NY
10022.
first HarperCollins paperback edition published in 1993
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mindell, Arnold.
The shaman's body a new shamanism
: for transforming health, relationships,
and community / [Arnold Mindell].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-06-250655-2 (pbk.)
1. Spiritual healing. 2. Shamanism I. Title
BL65.M4M56 1993
291.1 '4—dc20 92-56408
CIP
06 07 08 RRD(H) 20 19 18
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments vii
Description of Contents xi
part one: DEVELOPING A DOUBLE

1. The Shaman's Body 3
2. Shamanism and Processwork 19
3. The Path of Knowledge 31
4. First Lessons 41
The Hunter
5. 57
6. The Warrior 73
7. The Ally 91
8. The Ally's Secret 109
9. The Double 123
10. The Path of Heart 137
part two: DREAMING IN THE CITY

1 1 Death or Sorcery 1 53
12. Dreaming Together 165
13. Phantoms and Real People 181
H.TheDeathwalk 195
15. Dreamtime and Cultural Change 211
Notes 221
Bibliography 225
Index 229
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
was shocked to hear that my old friend Professor Ben

I
Thompson, from Antioch College, had died. I was even more

surprised to learn that he had read chapter 14 of this work,
"The Deathwalk," onto tape and then had it played back at
his funeral. Ben'sundying interest in this work gave me the
necessary support I needed to dig it out of my files and pub-
lish it.
Thus, Ben Thompson inspired this new version of my

work. By reading it at his own funeral, he reminded me that
body sensations connected him to the dreamingbody, that es-
sential part of ourselves that we experience as eternal.
I wish I had known when Ben was alive what I know
now, after completing this book. The deathwalk, the struggle
to be yourself against inner forces and outer rules, determines
in part the length of personal life. The deathwalk is a contest
with self-doubt and society over dropping into dreamtime. It
is the precursor to a culture in which we create and dream to-
gether.
I felt honored by Ben many times as he encouraged
some of his best students to study with me in Zurich, where I

was working in the early 1970s as a training analyst at the
Jung Institute. Best of all, he introduced me to Amy, my wife.
Amy called Ben's wife that evening. She told us he had read
"The Deathwalk" at his funeral.
But Ben and Amy were not the only people who helped
me with this manuscript. I am also thankful to Julie Diamond,
Jan Dworkin, Satya Gutenberg, Leslie Heizer, Robert King,
Dawn Menken, Pearl and Carl Mindell, Elke Mueller, Cat
Saunders, Max Schupbach, and Jytte Vikkelsoe. Thanks are
especially due to Julie Diamond for some great conversations
and for her editing. Leslie Heizer helped me with many of the
details. Robert King drew many awesome sketches of the
nagual, and Cat Saunders saved me from at least some of my
worst errors.
Carlos Castaneda and don Juan, in Journey to Ixtlan,
helped me connect the dreamingbody to psychotherapy. Joan
Halifax enlightened me through her writings about core fem-
inine elements of shamanism. I am especially thankful to
Quest Publishers and to Jean Houston for her encouragement
and idea of using the term you instead of we while addressing
the reader. In this way, she indirectly asked me to identify
with the shaman and teacher within myself. And, finally, my
friend Michael Toms from New Dimensions Radio and se-
nior editor at HarperSanFrancisco encouraged me to tell my
own story about the occult practices mentioned in the last
chapter of this book, which envisions a renewed culture based
upon ancient shamanic ideas.
viii ARNOLD MINDELL

I my deep indebtedness to those abori-
lovingly express
ginal healers and shamans and their communities in Africa,
Australia, Canada, Japan, the United States, and India who
renewed my interest in dreamtime by modeling lifestyles that
are meaningful and awesome because of it. Their names are
changed only in accordance with their wishes or to protect
their privacy.
THE SHAMAN'S BODY

DESCRIPTION OF CONTENTS
At the core of everyday problems lies the dreaming-

body, your most awesome experience, usually sensed only
near death or in occult and shamanistic rituals. This new, ex-
citing,and mythic side of life gives you greater control over
your physical health and more insight into the nature of the
world. The Shaman's Body encourages you to live the dream-
ingbody with others and to transform everyday reality into
that special world where experience and answers to life's
deepest questions appear.
This book is based upon personal experiences I have had
with indigenous African, Native American, Australian abori-
ginal, and Indian Hindu healers and spiritual teachers from
xi
around the world and also upon my own seasoned practice of
psychotherapy, conflict resolution, and shamanism. Exercises
and methods are based upon a combination of modern psy-
chology and ancient shamanistic practice.
Part I. Developing a Double. The first part of this book
is devoted to practical methods for contacting your dream-
ingbody, becoming whole, and working with body and dream

problems in order to develop a sense of self that is indepen-
dent of society, time, and space.
1. The Shaman's Body. Why is it that you can sometimes
find a quiet center in the midst of chaos and at other times seem
almost to drown in the stream of everyday troubles as life pulls
you about? The answer from psychology is that you fall into
unsolved problems that must be worked out. In shamanism,
the answer is different.Native healers say that a spirit influ-
ences your state of mind. The usefulness and thus the future of
both psychology and shamanism depend upon the coming to-
gether of these two disciplines. I present innerwork exercises
that update the most ancient human method of solving prob-
lems — is, trance, the shaman's body experience.
that
2. Shamanism and Processwork. We speak of dreams,
body experiences, and symptoms. But to really fathom these,
we need from which they come, into the
to get into the stream
dreamingbody that creates them. To do this, I discuss various
aspects of attention and differentiate our normal, everyday at-
tention from a "second attention," which concentrates on irra-
tional, unusual feelings and fantasies. By using the second
attention, you can drop your normal self and sense the dream-
ingbody. In this way, certain problems get resolved in an irra-
tional manner. The development of the second attention leads
to a new kind of personal growth and, at the same time, follows
ancient indigenous traditions. Here you find exercises around
dream- and bodywork that lead to the dreamingbody.
3. The Path of Knowledge. Many rich paths lead to heal-
ing and creating a meaningful life. But a central aspect to all of
ARNOLD MINDELL
these is respect for irrational, powerful, and unknown forces
that we cannot control. I share my experiences of working
with these irrational forces from around the world. Exercises
make these experiences realizable in the moment.
4. First Lessons. Ancient and general shamanistic teach-
ings, like those of theYaqui sorcerer don Juan, speak of gain-
ing wisdom from is, through listening to
synchronicities, that
the environment. By taking unusual outer events seriously
and even believing in your own lies, you come close to your
personal myths. Otherwise, death itself must upset your no-
tion of who you are and force you at gunpoint, so to speak, to
give up and follow natural events. I tell stories from my prac-
tice, illustrating how death can be an adviser, and give exer-
cises for practicing the lessons.

5. The Hunter. In all ancient native traditions, the solu-
tion to personal problems is closely connected to"power"
and to following messages of the spirit in animals and plants
and in your dreams and body. Without contact with this
power, everyday life is not what it could be. But to find the
power, you must become a hunter and learn certain minimal
disciplines, some of which appear in the exercises at the end
of this chapter.
6. The Warrior. Leaving everyday reality finally is not
up which
to us but appears to be connected to a greater factor,
I have been calling the spirit. The move from our normal
identity to the shaman's experience of the dreambody, the sta-
tic picture that comes from bodily sensations or dream im-
ages, depends upon this spirit. But our capacity to go a step

deeper awaits the development of the "second attention."
Stories and exercises help to move this development forward
in everyday life.
7. The The world of nonordinary reality inevitably

Ally.
involves confronting the most complex, the darkest, and the
most terrifying thing we have tried to avoid throughout our
lives, the inexplicable spirit "ally." But the very name of this
THE SHAMAN'S BODY

spirit figure indicates that it contains potentially valuable se-
crets. I focus on ally stories and how the demon appears in
body problems, in depression, andour most special abili-
in
ties and worst troubles. Exercises help you to connect your
problems with your allies.

8. The Ally's Secret. Ancient traditions and modern psy-
chology advise that you either succumb to the ally or meet

and wrestle with the spirit that threatens to possess you and
ruin your body and relationships. In this chapter, I consider
the meaning and nature of this confrontation and look at the
connection of this being, your spirit, to your personal prob-
lems and culture. Methods and exercises help you to work
with the ally and find its secret.
9. The Double. By meeting the ally and finding the
mythic story behind your life, personal problems abate as

you grow older. In this legendary time of maturity, you are
simply who you are. Yet others may see you, from the out-
side, as if you had developed a double, a being independent of
time and space, with parapsychological characteristics. This
double is, for the one who experiences it, only a passing
thought. The development that began with everyday prob-
lems and that led to your becoming a hunter and a warrior
culminates in your becoming whole and congruent in every
moment. Through stories from C. G. Jung and my own life, I
try to make the double understandable, for it is the most mys-
terious aspect of all psychological and spiritual teachings. Ex-
ercises lead to experiments with the double in yourself and in
your friends.
10. The Path of Heart. Parapsychological and occult
tricks are not the heart of shamanism and are insufficient to
make life worthwhile. In the light of near-death experiences,
the only thing meaningful is whether life has had a certain, al-
most indefinable "heart" in it. The path of heart is something
only the wisest part of you understands, something only el-
ders still living in native settings seem to understand. To find
this path today, you need a certain disciplined attention that
xiv ARNOLD MINDELL

comes from the warrior's training. Methods for finding this
path appear in the exercises, but the problem of how the indi-
vidual path connects to the world is left open.
Part II. Dreaming in the City. If we change, the world
around us must change as well. Otherwise, our development is
crushed, or we suffer from the sense of inflation or isolation.
11. Death or Sorcery. The reality of dreambody experi-
ences, of your dreams and body problems, birth, and death,
implies that both the concepts of psychotherapy and the prac-
tice of indigenous shamanistic methods must change. I sug-
gest a few such changes and imply new attitudes toward death
and dying. I also provide exercises for you to use.
12.Dreaming Together. The town you live in is finally

not a past you must avoid, but the source of a global spirit. I
tell and the
stories of experiences in Africa, Australia, India,
United with healers and wise people who have modeled
States
incredible powers and love, the reality of living with the un-
known. An African witch doctor couple were the greatest
healers Amy and I have ever heard of. A mad priest from an
Indian temple lived his dreamingbody and showed us the god
Shiva. Australian aboriginal healers gave us a peak and very
profound experience. In spite of its difficulties, this world is
the most incredible one a human being could ever dream up.
Exercises help you explore dreaming in the city.
13. Phantoms and Real People. Healers are ordinary and
sometimes troubled people, too, as some of my stories about
gurus and teachers show. All have had vast powers, but some
could not live them fully in everyday life and find the path of
heart. Yet all these mentors must be honored for the courage
they have had to live the dreamingbody and transform life
into magic. Exercises at the end of this chapter give a hint
about how to honor your elders and their implicit life task by
investigating their lineage.
The Deathwalk. Everyday life leads to deeper expe-
14.
riences than we would ever dream. But returning after these
experiences to ordinary life is not always easy, for this mythic
THE SHAMAN'S BODY

return means nothing less than living the dreamingbody and
the ancient,wondrous world of the shaman in the here and
now, where such experiences often seem forbidden. What
happens to you, the groups, and the world around you when
you begin this return is simultaneously your personal death-
walk and global evolution. If you repress your true self, you
are threatened from within. If you live your self uncon-
sciously and are possessed by it, you encounter troubles from
without. In this chapter, I discuss the warrior's way of fruitful
conflictwith the inner and outer worlds. Such training may
be necessary for you to survive the deathwalk and the en-
counter with the spirit. Success or failure in this mythic pro-
ject may determine not only the length of personal life, but
also the sustainability of future culture. Exercises help you
with the deathwalk.
15. Dreamtime and Cultural Change. What will happen
to cultures in the future? Dreamtime will bring changes in our
environment, community, and group life. Access to the
dreamingbody creates a new feeling of enlightenment, in
which connection to ourselves and to nature is coupled with
influence in the evolution of history.
xvi ARNOLD MINDELL

CHAPTER 1
THE SHAMAN'S
BODY
Indigenous healers have taught me that the quality

of life depends upon body sensations that are
linked to dreams and the environment, to what I
call the shaman's body. According to medicine

people living in native settings around the world,
and to mystical traditions, the shaman's dreaming-
body, when accessed, is a source of health, personal
growth, good relationships, and a sense of commu-
nity.
The shaman's body (or dreamingbody) is a

name for unusual experiences and altered states
of consciousness that try to reach your everyday
awareness through signals such as body symptoms
and movement impulses, dreams, and messages from the
environment.
The methods I present in this work for gaining access to
the dreamingbody come from personal experiences I have had
with Native American teachers in the United States and Can-
ada, witch doctors in Kenya, Zen masters from Japan, healers
from and aboriginal healers from the Northern Territory,
India,
Australia. In every instance, I have studied the effects of these
shamanic experiences, developed related methods, which I dis-
cuss in this book, and tested those methods over the past
twenty-five years in my therapeutic practice, extreme-state and
chronic-body-symptom clinics, and international conferences.
According to warrior shamans, health problems, prob-
lems with relationships, and community difficulties are all as-
pects of your dreamingbody, peak life experiences that appear
otherwise only near death, when you're on drugs, or in mysti-
cal rituals. Access to the dreambody is a key to your physical
health and insight into the nature of the world. This book tries
to make dreambody less mysterious and more readily ac-
the
cessible so that you can use it to transform mundane reality
into that special place where life feels deep and meaningful. It
is based not only upon experiences with indigenous healers,
but also upon my own background as a physicist, my earlier

practice as a Jungian analyst, and my present work in process-
oriented psychology and conflict resolution. The exercises
and methods book combine modern psychology and
in the
ancient shamanistic practice and have been tested by thou-
sands of people.
Yet this book is neither an academic study of shamanism
nor a scientific proposal for a new psychotherapy. It is meant
to be personal, and it recommends practical methods for gain-
ing access to your own dreamingbody and ways to work on
body problems and dreams. Finally, it explores the effects such
innerwork or shamanism can have on the world.
Shamanism is meaningful for me because it illuminates
not only personal experience, but also a cultural path toward a
future, more sustainable world than our present one.
4 ARNOLD MINDELL
The Origins of Power
Elements of peak and shamanic experiences, such as pro-

longed trance states, spiritual awakenings, sudden healings,
meetings with ghosts, and other paranormal events, are often
foreshadowed by various types of inner experiences, or "call-
ings," such as serious illness, near-death experiences, periods
of near insanity, or "big" dreams of wise spirit figures. Mircea
Eliade, in his seminal book, Shamanism, presents these call-
ings as one aspect of shamanism worldwide. Without them,
1
the path to shamanism remains incomplete.

In the indigenous traditions in which I have taken part,
shamans still teach about the importance of such callings.
Some readers will remember Carlos Castaneda's don Juan fig-
ure, who says that the spirit determines how you identify
yourself, whether you remain an average person, and whether
and when you become a seer or a warrior, capable of sensing
and following the signals and powers of the earth. 2
The daughter of my Australian aboriginal healer told me
that she prepares for and yet does not seek to learn witchcraft
or to transform herself. She must wait as her ancestors did for
her mentor, her father, until she reaches the age when such
teaching is "allowed." She said she could not specify what age
this would be, but she mentioned that her father was seventy-
eight. He told me that he, too, had not sought to become a
healer, but had waited until his parents taught him in their ad-
vanced old age, just before death. I shall talk further about the
calling to become a shaman in a later chapter.
I have seen in my practice how many shamanic abilities
appear when you stop doubting the reality of the spirit. In
this moment, something in you transforms, and you develop
a deep attention, a steady focus on irrational events. This
basic shamanic tool is attention to the dreaming process.
When your inner life calls and you stop doubting, a personal
transformation begins. But all of this is not up to your will.
You can work at transforming your personal life to make it
more meaningful, but success with your attention is like a
THE SHAMAN'S BODY 5

blessing that cannot be produced at will. Inner or outer teach-
ers spur you on, but it is finally up to the spirit to move
may
—
your assemblage point the way you identify, assemble, and
conduct yourself, and your sense of reality.
Waiting for this special move is both sobering and chal-
lenging. Perhaps everyone has shamanic or intuitive abilities,
yet few are able to use this capacity at will. Shamanic ability,
like other talents, is not entirely at your disposal. You cannot
simply determine when you are going to have important and
healing experiences, though you can prepare for them through
various practices, some of which I discuss in the following
chapters.
The community in which one lives also plays a role in
the shaman's calling. Of my many meetings with shamans,

witch doctors, and healers, my most memorable healing expe-
rience was some years ago in Kenya. Other indigenous peo-
ples have seemed more dissociated through contact with
European or Western culture. In Africa, however, it became
clear to me that the shaman or witch doctor cannot be studied
independently of her or his relationship to the group, the tribe.
Our African shamans said that their power to heal is
intimately connected to the needs and powers of the people

and the environment in which they live. As a sign of honoring
these powers, our African shaman healers not only worshiped
the bush around them, but gave every child who crossed their
path a penny, because, they explained, the children were the
origins of their shamanic abilities. They said that when the chil-
dren were happiest, shamanic medicine was most powerful.
Thus the power of the shaman's body is not only the
shaman's, but is connected to the environment, the children,
and the needs of everyone. This seems important to me at this
point in time, at the beginning of a new century, because as
shamanism reborn and our interest in early indigenous cul-
is
tures waxes as they wane, some modern students of shamanism

think that they can develop shamanic ability simply through
effort, interest, and study. But power belongs to the people
ARNOLD MINDELL
and the world around us. As an Australian healer told me, we
dream as individuals only because we are all dreaming together.
None of the indigenous shamans I have met identifies
himself as such the whole day long. The word shaman, bor-
rowed from Siberian culture, refers to one who works only
part-time as a spiritual guide and healer. The shaman heals
without identifying himself only as a healer, similar to a mas-
ter in martial arts who fights without emotionally involving
himself in a battle.
The shaman is independent of organized religion. The
indigenous shaman always takes some form of psychic jour-
ney to the world of what is missing in everyday
spirits to find
life, Shamans are as individual
traveling in her dreamingbody.
as other people and, in my experience, do not seem to follow
particular personality types. Some shamans focus mainly
upon healing, while others are warrior shamans seeking the
key to power and liberation.
There are medicine and warrior shamans, then. But all of
us use our psychic powers at times to heal others or to find
self-knowledge. Parapsychological and alternative medical
powers appear regularly as part of the development of the
shaman but are, in warrior traditions, considered secondary in
importance to the overall development of the fluid, or flexible,
seer, whose goal is to live on a spiritual path.
People with a calling to be a shaman must frequently

apprentice themselves to a teacher. The gradually developing
apprentice is in many ways similar to a person involved in
psychotherapy. While many seek help from therapists, others
often seem to be looking for spiritual or shamanic teachers.
Thus, in a way, most psychotherapists who work with events
that are far —
from ordinary consciousness deep body experi-
ences, trance —
are seen in the dreams of their clients as prac-
ticing a form of shamanism.
Many therapy portray themselves as the typi-
clients in
cally stubborn,blocked shaman's apprentice. You may feel
that your "assemblage point," or identity, is often stuck in
THE SHAMAN'S BODY

ordinary reality. You wonder why, if personal transformation
isup to the spirit, this spirit usually waits until the end of life
to open you up. Why is it so difficult to live the warrior's
meaningful and wakeful life, sensing body impulses and fol-
lowing them, staying in touch with your dreamingbody?
Perhaps the spirit not only enlightens you, but also ad-
dicts you What other explanation can you
to ordinary reality.
give as to why you are more often focused upon everyday re-
ality, doubting, repressing, and feeling embarrassed by your
apprehension of the unknown? Why do you behave like every-

one else when you are in a group, unable or unwilling to
admit your access to dreams, the dreaming world, or the
dreamingbody?
After all, being an ordinary person — is no fun. You take
everything so seriously and personally. You always search for
something meaningful to guide yourself with, hoping for en-
lightening dreams or experiences. As an ordinary person you
suffer, are afraid of and expect the worst, and are oblivious to
the power of the unknown. You are always defending your
identity and your personal history. As a phantom, you con-
stantly worry about how others judge you or what the future
will bring. You neglect the impact of inexplicable forces, liv-
ing life as if it were all up to you.
Shamanic Trainings
The Native American Yaqui way of knowledge and don

Juan's concepts of the warrior and the double are eternal
ideas that appear —
everywhere not only in indigenous tradi-
tions, but in the dreams of people of all races, religions, and
ages. Shamanism is an archetypal form of behavior that ap-
pears inyou when you are faced with unsolvable problems.
You may never have the chance to meet a shaman living in an
indigenous tribe, but you can certainly have dreams and
body impulses that recall witchcraft that is thousands of
years old. Unusual dreams and the sense of the uncanny call
you to remember the sorcerer, magician, and wise person in
yourself.
8 ARNOLD MINDELL
You have probably had dreams or messages telling you
to connect to your renew your earliest spiritual his-
roots, to
tory, to journey to other worlds as men and women through-
out history have done. Such dreams inspired Shamans to leave
ordinary reality while remaining present for their communi-
ties. Many people today still feel impelled to experience drugs
in order to find these altered states of consciousness. Others,
suffering from chronic symptoms, return to shamanism as
they discover the limits of Western medicine in reducing their
suffering.
There are many types of shamanic training; some hap-
pen spontaneously within yourself when wise inner dream
figures and body experiences guide you. Others are connected
to spiritual or psychological teachers, traditions, and schools.
In all, however, it is common to experience ordinary reality
and its conventions, rules, and rituals as dangerous oppo-
nents. Consensus reality and social rules seem to repress signs
from the unconscious. The reality most people follow seems
to forbid you from investigating your hallucinations, aches
and pains, and accidents.
The first worthy opponents whom you must overcome,
therefore, often appear as those closest to you. The view-
points of consensus reality, friends, and family —who may
love you but be jealous of you —seem to be the greatest dan-
gers to your progress. Patriarchal, conventional family sys-
tems and groups have a formidable power, like witchcraft,
from which the shaman's apprentice must save herself. The
warrior-to-be feels accused of disobeying cardinal social rules
and of flirting with forbidden gods, with the spirit of nature.
Your warrior teachers may support these gods and open
you to experiences of altered and dreamlike states of con-
sciousness, which conflict with the ways of everyday life and
friendships. Yet again and again, in spite of your teachers,
you forget dreamtime; it seems to succumb to everyone else's
reality. Sensing your dreams and managing the resulting so-
cial tensions requires the ability of a warrior on the path of
heart.
THE SHAMAN'S BODY 9

Perhaps that is why, in spite of their heartfulness,
shamans such as don Juan often appear as brutal, one-sided
instructors, pushing but never quite succeeding in upsetting
the stability of stubborn intellectual doings. In fact, the teach-
ings of many authentic shamans are like don Juan's teachings;
they occasionally feel like the hurtful slaps of scornful, in-
sulted instructors, rather than the lessons of wise and de-

tached masters.
Even when you consider that Native American teach-
ings were developed in part to help individuals survive the im-
minent dangers of nomadic life, undue emphasis seems to be
placed upon the development of power and warriorship. Is
the battle the crucial thing, or is awareness? Without aware-
ness, the best teacher is just another ordinary person pos-
sessed by a spirit and insisting that his way is the only way.
Yet you cannot get around the warriorship phase, because at a
certain moment, you begin to experience everyday events as a
matter of life and death in which your opponents are both
inner and outer.
You develop access to shamanic experience and the
dreamingbody with the guidance from inner life, which shows
your struggle to be a battle that only a warrior can survive.
Outer instructors are helpful, for they give you the sense of
companionship and community while turning you on to
yourself. It may be that death is your wisest adviser. Some
teachings, especially those from the Tibetan Bon religion and
the Buddhist Tibetan Book of the Dead, point to the experi-
ence of death and the cessation of identity as the crucial in-
3
structor in life.
Yet your ego does not die easily, and so you listen to
subtle feelings and sensations only when they threaten to kill
you. Mostly you tend to govern rather than to follow nature.
You rely on doctors and therapists, counselors, priests, witch
doctors, organizational developers, and even politicians, as if
you wanted advocates against your own nature.

The shamanic path is different, for it is based upon sens-
ing unpredictable events in yourself and the earth. The dream-
10 ARNOLD MINDELL
time spirit of the earth grounds, inspires, and teaches; it is an
unfathomable being by itself. It is birdlike, a fish in the water,
a racing cougar, the bear, the poisonous snake, the cloud
above an alpine peak, the sun at dawn, a half moon. It is the
sound of cars, the roar of a distant plane. It is what the aborig-
inal people of Australia, the oldest known human group on
earth, call "Dreaming." These people, our earliest family, say
that the events of this earth, our geology, and synchronicities
4
are created by the earth's "dreamings."
Indigenous tribal life may be fading out around the world
as the next millennium begins. But the story of the shaman and
the witch doctor is that of dreaming of an eternal vision that
lives on in everyone and cannot be destroyed. You can kill an
indigenous people, but no one has power over dreamtime.

Shamanism itself is immortal. Perhaps that is why I heard one
aborigine say that you can kill the kangaroo, but that is not se-
rious, because kangaroo dreaming is indestructible.
Shamanism and Personal Growth

From the aboriginal viewpoint, modern psychothera-
peutic techniques themselves are created or dreamed up by
Modern methods are helpful, even wonderful
the earth spirit.
for many of us, much of the time. But today they need re-
newal, magic, and reconnection to ancient practices. They are
too internal and do not deal with the transformation of com-
munities and with the spirit of the environment. The develop-
ment of therapy seems to have reached an impasse.
Our modern techniques often lack a sense of magic and
do not address global issues such as racism, homophobia,
women's rights, and poverty. Sigmund Freud, Carl (C. G.)
Jung, Alfred Adler, Abraham (Abe) Maslow, Carl Rogers,
Virginia Satir, Frederick (Fritz) Perls, and hundreds of others
have brought us much. But therapy needs new blood to
strengthen it so that it will work with political problems,
abuse, revolution, and poverty, instead of focusing mainly
upon people of the upper- and middle-income classes who
have enough time, safety, and quiet for innerwork.
THE SHAMAN'S BODY II

Let'slook critically for a moment at where we are with
therapy and spiritual traditions. Consider, for .example, the
development of my Jungian-based psychology, one I call
process-oriented psychology, which provides tools for un-
folding secrets encoded in dreams, body signals, and trance
states. It is optimistic, and its tools and concepts allow me to
work with people in comatose states in the same way as I
would work with large organizations. Until this present

study, however, I missed developmental concepts and practi-
cal tips about living with the natural environment and every-
day life.
Taoism and the / Ching give me a sense of following

processes through the use of divination. But Taoism is a mys-
tery school and needs updating and practical methods to work
with change in everyday life. Many speak of it today but can-
not practice it. Buddhism's strength is in its potential open-
ness; it is deep and heartfelt in its compassion for every aspect
of human nature. But many misuse it to look down upon
greed and violence instead of using it to discover how to deal
with these feelings. Gestalt psychology is crucial to me for
having brought out a dynamic view of the unconscious in the
here and now, yet it needs updating in order to work with re-
lationship, meditation, and groups. Jung is my spiritual men-
tor, yet Jungian psychology could use more body and more
understanding of group Moreover, the analytical tradi-
life.
tions do not work directly with the person in an altered state

of consciousness, the central vehicle of shamanism. Transper-
sonal psychology emphasizes Eastern rituals and gives us
hope and eternity through both Western and Eastern princi-
ples, and it needs more clinical reality. Finally, I love humanis-
tic psychology, but where has its passion gone?
Masters in all of these schools and traditions have gone

beyond their own methods and have had immense effects on
the world. Yet many of these traditions and schools leave
you impotent in dealing with large-group conflicts, racism,
homophobia, and other aspects of ethnic, religious, and racial
diversity.
12 ARNOLD MINDELL
This may be why Western psychotherapy has had only a
small impact upon Africa, India, and Japan. Those at the grow-
ing edge of modern therapies realize that traditions from Asia,
Africa, and India have the spiritual values, art, feeling, and
movement that are missing in the West. Yet we all need more
than the East or the West, and more than reverence for the past.
Even native indigenous shamanism of the healing type
can be boring. The standard healer does all the work and re-
quires little or nothing from the client. I, for one, shall never
miss one aspect of indigenous life: the rigid roles in which
everyone was placed. Men could do this, women had to do
that, and only people from certain families could be shamans.
Modern people want to be their own healers. The leadership
and consciousness concentrated in the chief and the shaman
must be shared in greater measure by all people in the future.
There must be democracy at all levels.
Yet to go forward, it is helpful to look back. Therapy did
not begin with Freud.
Modern sciences, allopathic medicine, and psychother-
apy are only a couple of hundred years old, yet they are based
upon alchemy and a shamanistic ancestry as old as the human
race. Concepts like the "dreaming earth" are found among
Australian aborigines, African shamans, Native American
tribes, and all indigenous cultures going back as many as fifty
thousand years.
Everything you do that is fun is based on shamanism.
Dancing at discos until you go into a trance, screaming your-
self into a frenzy at a ball game or music festival, running until
you are in an altered state of consciousness: All are shamanic.

And what about fundamentalism and the passion for god?
Don't forget that the oldest churches in modern Europe were
built upon ancient power sites. We tend not only to build over
our past and injure native people, but also to deny our own
magic and belief in the unknown and to act like rationalists, as
if we had created the world.
Western psychotherapy, without reference to ancient

world history, tends to be a mostly white, middle-class dream
THE SHAMAN'S BODY 13

with as much air as earth. It is a useful dream, but it misses the
eccentric nature of the shaman, love for community, and a
culture in which self-knowledge is based on powerful altered
states of consciousness.
As serious doubts about our present world culture arise,
we find ourselves looking critically at our sciences, medicine,

and None of these was created with the idea of sus-
culture.
tainability,with the sense that whatever we do ruins or makes
possible life for the future. New steps need to be made to re-
flect the uncanny world of the shamans and their sense of liv-
ing inharmony with nature; yet these steps also must satisfy
our needs for science, group life, trouble, and spirituality.
The Path of This Book

Until now, my identity as a psychotherapist has made
me hesitate at the point of the spirit world and living the
dreamingbody for fear of being misunderstood. However,
my outer and inner lives can no longer tolerate such one-
sidedness. After having observed how colonial Western poli-
tics have decimated millions of aboriginal people in
literally
Africa, Australia, North America, and India, and after having

realized how the native peoples of Japan, China, Hawaii, and
Alaska have been oppressed and murdered, silence is no
longer an option for me. The political reality of aboriginal
peoples today amounts to lack of These peoples
civil rights.
are not allowed their religious beliefs.

Nations that claim to be
democratic, including the United States, occupy and destroy
what remains of aboriginal power spots, implying that aborig-
inal religious groups that worship the earth are not as impor-
tant as religious groups that require concrete buildings in
which to worship. 5
In a way, this book is a test for me, a kind of deathwalk.
Like the figure who faces a jury of outer and inner forces, a
story I I must congruently explain the
will tell in chapter 14,
necessity for living on the border between theoretical physics,
—
shamanism, and psychology or be shot down by inner-spirit
critics for hesitating, or by the world of psychotherapy for
14 ARNOLD MINDELL
becoming an irrational mystic. I must drop my personal his-
tory and reputation to write this book.
Shamanistic teachings are life-and-death matters these
days. I think of the many native teachers I have known who
have had their lives threatened for speaking about ancient
ways to nonnative peoples. The aboriginal daughter of our
Australian healers explained the dangers involved. While
painting the back of a two-hundred-year-old turtle shell near
her shanty, she said that her father had told her that the expe-
riences we had with him could be written about but not dis-
cussed with others. She meant that the power of ancient
dream- and bodywork must not be reduced through analysis,
but it wants to be known to all. It is as if dreamtime were call-
ing us today to remind us of the presence of the past; yet this
dreamtime is an experience that may never be fully compre-
hensible in our everyday languages.
You must wait for life to provoke and even to force you,
sooner or later, to experience the dreamingbody. The dream-
ingbody lies hidden beneath our everyday problems, relation-
ships, family and group struggles, problems of children and
adults, crises of love, midlife depressions, retirement, and near-
death experiences. And everyone will, of course, one day die.
Whether fate is called acute or chronic illness, academic
or business failure, sexual hang-up, insanity, suicide, or secret
love affair, dreamingbody hovers in
the pattern for living the
the background as the antidote to pain. Our biggest problems
seem to be meant to interrupt life and awaken us to our total
capacity, warriorship, and death, to end our earlier personality
and find the path of heart.
Processwork and Dreamtime
While waiting for book to mature over the past

this
thirty years, while slowlygrowing into aspects of eldership, I
have improved my practice of what I have been calling psy-
chotherapy. I have studied physical illness and near-death
situations, addictions, extreme states, street people, group
and international problems, children, Alzheimer's victims

—
even shamans. Everything I have done seems to circle around
dreamtime.
Native American concepts and concepts of Australian
aborigines have had a powerful influence on my work, as can
be seen in the names of my books Dreambody: The Body's
Role in Revealing the Self; Working with the Dreaming Body;
River's Way: The Process Science of the Dreambody; The
Dreambody in Relationships; The Year I: Global Process Work
with Planetary Tensions; and Inner Dreambody work: Work-
ing on Yourself Alone. My original name for what is now
called process-oriented psychology was dreambodywork,
emphasizing the connection between the world of dreams and
the experiences of the body.
As I wrote this book, I was constantly plagued by new
questions and sought the answers to perennial problems.
What does living the dreambody imply, not only for yourself
when you have powerful peak experiences through therapeu-
tic and shamanistic methods, but for everyone, for the future
of on earth? In what ways does the dreambody experience
life
go on after death? Finally, am I sufficiently developed to write

this book? Am
I clear about myself or old enough to be criti-
cal of therapy and shamanism?
EXERCISES
1. Recall a time when you were working with yourself.
Perhaps you were meditating or doing dreamwork or body-

work, engaging in spiritual ritual or some innerwork proce-
dure, and suddenly you found that you were having a good
"trip," that is, you were journeying in other dimensions, into
altered states of consciousness. Such a trip is a central element
of shamanism, and such journeys may be callings to be a
shaman. If you have not had such an experience, this book
may make such experiences more available to you.
Other experiences that may be callings to learn more

2.
about shamanism are chronic illness, feelings of insanity, pro-

longed dreamy states, or the appearance of wise dream teachers
16 ARNOLD MINDELL
in dreams or waking states. Recall any such experiences now.
Remember the unusual moods they may have produced in you.
3. Experiment with "assembling," that is, identifying

yourself in different ways. For a moment, see yourself as a
person who
always follows the dreaming process. Don't
worry about how to define this process; simply let your imag-
ination lead you here. Follow these earlier "callings" in your
imagination as if they were a process trying to dream you into
a certain state and not simply a symptom of your being trou-
bled. What state have these early "dreamings" been aiming at?
4. Now see yourself on a good "trip," or imagine an

inner wise figure who can support special states or experi-
ences. Take a moment and connect to these imaginations, fig-
ures, methods, and trips.
Notice if your inner experience or teacher has some

5.
type of message for you. Experiment with sensing this mes-

sage and taking it seriously.
Imagine living this message in your life, relationships,

6.
and work. Imagine any changes you must make in your

everyday life.

CHAPTER 2
SHAMANISM
AND
PROCESSWORK
and helpers use many methods and

Healers
names for healing and for experiences of
well-being: the Tao, God, the Way, the
here and now, chance, fate, Kismet, Kro-
nos, the unconscious, synchronicity, individuation,
enlightenment, and so on. Process-oriented psy-
chology, or processwork, refers to such ultimate
experiences as living the dreamingbody. Shamans
refer to the dreamingbody in terms of a sense of
power.
The dreamingbody answers the perennial
question, How do you live in a way that feels bal-
anced yet exciting, peaceful yet fun, satisfying yet
terrifying? If you try to control or manipulate your
19
energy, you end up feeling ill or dead. If you follow your
body's sensations, you feel more completely here, as if you are
really livingand creating life. Following sensations such as
aches, pains,and dizziness means living your dreamingbody.
Modern ideas about dreams and dreaming go back to an-
cient mythology. Celestial ascents and descents to the under-
world involving the dreamingbody are basic to shamanism
and may be our oldest and most widespread human spiritual
experience.
Like shamanic teachings, dreambody concepts are
all
comprehended best through direct body experience. Without

self-evident body experience, the teachings sound like attrac-
tive mysteries that our thinking misinterprets as tales about
other realities, metaphors about drug trips, or unreal projec-
tions of the unconscious.
To get to the experience of the dreamingbody, I work
first with dreams and body experiences. In following chap-
ters, I try to illuminate some of the alterations in worldviews
that may be necessary to maintain awareness of the dreaming-
body.
Dream and Body Snapshots

you think about what happened to you last night
If
while you were sleeping, you may remember body feelings,

dreams, or both. As you recall dreams, you take them out of
the sleeping and dreaming context in which they occurred and
inadvertently change them. Most modern dreamwork proce-
dures deal with dreams outside of their original context.
Out of context, dreams are fragmented stories, pictures
that you can no longer quite remember from ongoing experi-
ences. They are like momentary and incomplete snapshots of
a river, so to speak. Shamanic experiences, however, come
mainly from the streaming river itself. The term "process" in
"processwork" refers to the shamanistic act of journeying di-
rectly with the river. Processwork for a given individual can
also be ordinary therapy, since it deals with dreams as snap-
shots of another reality.
20 ARNOLD MINDELL
Seen from the viewpoint of the river, dream reports from
the night are pictures of deep processes that have occurred. Re-
membered dreams are unconscious aspects of yourself frozen
into time. They are like a photo album of an awesome trip.
Body sensations can be similar to dreams. If you talk
about them, they, too, become snapshots of the stream of ex-
periences. If you say that you are tired or have a sore throat,
for example, you are reporting on momentary body or pro-
prioceptive feelings. Although these feelings may begin as fa-
tigue or a sore throat, if you get closer to and into them — if
you consciously immerse yourself and climb into them —they

soon flow on and evolve as a dreaming process.
The Dreamingbody
The stream of experiences known as dreamingbody not

only occurs at night but seems to be always happening to you.
One of the shaman's main tasks is to gain access to the dream-
ing process during the day. The dreams that you recall are in-
teresting, but they are no substitute for access to the dreaming
process itself. Likewise, medical, anatomical, and physiologi-
cal descriptions ofyour body are not substitutes for your ex-
perience of the dreamingbody.
Most of the time, you focus on only those body sensa-
tions that go along with your daily program. You repress
everything else. You stay close to home and avoid the un-
canny, natural environment, fearing it as if it were a wilderness
area. You think the body is ill when it becomes troublesome,
and you fail to realize that it is trying to dream, to communi-
cate messages and create movements beyond your expectations.
For example, one of my clients dreamed that he had
died. In this dream, he came out of his body but was amazed
to still be awake. Instead of working on this dream, we fol-
lowed his momentary body experience, which he described as
a sense of being tired. When he focused on this experience, the
fatigue transformed into relaxation and a sense of letting go.
He then felt and followed spontaneous shaking move-
ments, which began in his knees, and suddenly we were in the
THE SHAM AN'S BODY 21

midst of something that he could no longer explain. He felt
that these spontaneous movements were propelling him to

walk about in a strange, jittery, gawky manner. Suddenly he
stopped and said with surprise that he felt that dead spirits
were moving him.
Now he was living his dreamingbody. His body was
moving as if he were being dreamed. His death or spirit had
freed itself from his old body and his personal identity. He
was moving as if he were dead. But something new was ani-
mating him, entering his body in order to direct it the way it
wanted to go. He was not dead at all, but more fully alive then
ever before.
Though dream and body experience belongs to a
this
particular individual,it shows an important connection. If
you take body snapshots, momentary body experiences or

signals, and use them as invitations to the unknown if you —
let them evolve and unfold —
they mirror recent dreams and
become the dreamingbody.
This is an empirical experience that anyone can test:
Dreams are snapshots of body experiences that are trying to
happen, and body experiences mirror dreams. I call this sym-
metrical connection between snapshots of dreams and the
body the "dreambody."
Together with other processworkers, I have been able to
test the dreambody connection around the world with many
thousands of people of all ages and in all conditions. We have
found that the dreamingbody experience is found in every-
one: people in Nairobi, African warriors on the desert, the
Japanese, Australian aborigines, Indians, Europeans, people
from the Americas, Russians, and so on.
While my discovery of the dreambody has developed
from the connection between dreams and the body, the con-
cept has evolved, and I have focused upon the dreaming
process in many branches of experience, with couples, groups,
and individuals in many states of consciousness. The concept
is also useful for people who are ill or in near-death situations.
22 ARNOLD MINDELL
Dreambodywork, or process-oriented psychology ap-
is a matter of sensing your body sensations
plied to the body,
and allowing them to direct the way in which you live. Fol-
lowing the dreamingbody is a most important task. It is the
channel for what some call the "dream maker" and what
others refer to as the "spirit," or the unconscious. Native Aus-
tralians call it "dreamtime." Shamans refer to it as "becoming
a warrior on the path of heart."
Paying Attention and Focusing
The training thatyou need to live the dreamingbody can

be found in shamanic lessons, which I shall describe in the fol-
lowing chapters. Before I begin that, however, I will describe
exactly where I think such lessons fit into the general topic of
awareness and attention.
Everyone knows the idea of paying attention; we all tell
each other to pay attention. Without loving attention as a
child, you can die. As a child, you are trained to pay attention
to your parents and teachers and to the everyday doings of the
world. Meditators train themselves to pay attention to the
flux of inner experiences, images, and body sensations. Teach-
ers and therapists are trained to pay attention to students and
clients. Lovers pay attention to one another. Yet we often feel
that we have not gotten enough attention.

Shamans must pay attention to unusual events in them-
selves, their clients, and the environment. Since a shaman must
be able to lead a normal everyday life, she also develops atten-
tion to everyday reality, a focus that don Juan calls the "first
attention." But the shaman must develop the attention for un-
—
usual processes namely, the "second attention," which per-
ceives the dreaming process.
I use don Juan's terms in a special manner. When you
focus on someone with your first attention, you perceive the

meaning of what they are saying. With the second attention,
however, you notice aspects of their living dreaming, which I
shall describe in the next section.

As the receiver of attention, you may know what it is
like to be listened to or understood through someone's first

attention. But it can be even more fulfilling to be seen by
someone giving you the second attention.
The many kinds of shamans and apprentices seem to di-
vide up mostly into medicine and warrior, or spiritual, sha-
mans and seekers. Medicine shamans develop their second
attention for healing and helping others; most use their abili-
ties for their clients without requiring the same awareness
from the clients. This is perhaps why shamanism is so widely

applicable; like modern medicine, it does not always require
special consciousness from the recipient.
Warrior shamans develop their skills for self-knowledge,
while medicine shamans focus mainly on therapeutic effects.
In contrast to shamanism in general, the processworker shares
responsibility for perceiving special states of consciousness
with clients and tries to encourage them to develop their own
second attention whenever possible.
In processwork, "following the process" depends on the
client's state of awareness as much as it does on the therapist's
awareness. Both need to develop their second attention. I will

not describe processwork further, since have done so else-
I
where in my writings, and since I want to update processwork

by reference to shamanism. Nor will I analyze or explain
shamanism or try to prove why or whether it works. I am more
interested in what it teaches us about working with ourselves
and our present world situation.
My experiences with near-death situations show me that
most people drop their first attention, fall into the second one,
and enter the dreamingbody near the end of life. Near death,
we all experience our dreams as body experiences and seem to
move with subtle, unpredictable inner and outer events. Death,
the inevitable outcome for each individual, gives us perspec-
tive on our everyday lives.
Thus, the first attention is the awareness needed to ac-
complish goals, to do your daily work, to appear the way you
want to appear. The second attention focuses upon things you
24 ARNOLD MINDELL
normally neglect, upon external and internal, subjective, irra-
tional experiences. The second attention is the key to the
world of dreaming, the unconscious and dreamlike move-
ments, the accidents and slips of the tongue that happen all
day long.
In order to lead a normal life, you you must kill,
feel that
repress, or heal some of these signals and symptoms if they are

disturbing, especially if you interpret them as diseases to be
overcome. In special states of consciousness while dream- —
ing, in a coma, in creative dance, in ecstasy, during sports or
—
loving you slip into the second attention, however, and begin
to live the dreamingbody. During psychoticlike episodes
that is, in extreme states of consciousness, such as hallucina-
tions or multiple personalities —
the dreaming process may
overwhelm you.
Your job as warrior is to follow, feel, and process these
sensations and to wander along paths similar to those of your
nighttime dreams. The dreamingbody experience makes you
feel whole and creative. When you are in the dreamingbody,
you are neither awake nor dreaming, neither in nor out of your
body.
From the outside, your dreamingbody experience may
seem unusual to others; it makes you do unpredictable things,
and others think you may be on drugs or having a peak expe-
rience.From the inside, however, you experience familiar yet
incomprehensible sensations and motions. When you let
you feel connected to something essential; you
these unfold,
become your whole self, independent of space, time, and the
world.
Double Signals
When you use your first attention, you focus on your

"primary process," your normal and rarely develop
identity,
the second attention necessary to focus upon "secondary
processes," the dreamlike events that transpire, such as acci-
dents, slips of the tongue, and synchronicities. Hence, these
secondary processes continuously happen to you without

your involvement. Yet people around you notice them. You
emit them as double signals. They are what make you amaz-
ing, impossible, incomprehensible, powerful, and troubled.
Double signals are unintended messages, your living un-
conscious, the dreamingbody as it is experienced in relation-
ships. Some of these signals are seen and heard, for instance, in
the unconscious manner in which you walk and in the tone
you use in speaking. But you can also communicate with
others in a manner outside the laws of physics. That is why
people can sense your double signals and dreaming process at
a distance and why shamans can heal clients who live far away.
You need to understand at least the concepts of primary
and secondary processes and the first and second attentions in
order to deal with the unusual and altered states of conscious-
ness that shamans and sorcerers experience. Today, most ther-
apists realize that important experiences and transformations
do not happen fully without access to these states. You need
the ideas of primary and secondary processes to help you gain
access to dreamtime.
The and the unconscious
ideas of the ego, the conscious,
with people who remain in normal states
are useful for dealing
of consciousness. But we need different concepts for dealing
with those in comatose states, having psychotic episodes, or in
other extreme states of consciousness such as those a shaman
may experience.
I remember, for example, a student who got stuck on a
drug experience years ago in Switzerland and was brought to

me in the midst of a frightening delirium. He stumbled
around my room, screaming that the walls of my office were
moving. When he touched them, he said, they bent. He cried
because he had hurt them by touching them so roughly. The
longer this went on, themore terrified he became.
This experience would have been sufficiently meaning-
But he wanted me to help him because of the
ful left to itself.
terror he experienced. He was on the verge of having a "bad
trip." For me to work with him in such a state, the concepts of
ego, conscious, and unconscious were not useful. Instead, I
26 ARNOLD MINDELL
thought of the wall as a secondary process with which he did
not identify and asked him to believe in the wall, to feel and
look at it.
"Focus your attention upon it!" I yelled. "Look at it!" I

had no idea what would happen when he used his second at-
tention. Immediately, the moving wall turned into a wave on
which he saw himself riding. I encouraged him to show me
the wave in movement, to move as he saw the wave moving.
He stood and made magnificent wavelike dance movements,
surfing his visionary ocean as the waves crashed onto the beach.
Suddenly he stopped, looked at me soberly, and said,
"Amy, I am just too rigid in my studies!" His delirium abated
as he became excited about new directions in his studies. He
needed more flexibility in his life. In this experience, the stu-
dent had identified himself to begin with as a sensitive person
in touch with the pain of matter. While some therapies tradi-
tionally focus on strengthening the ego —
in this case, the
—
young man's personal history as a student processwork, like
Gestalt and Eastern traditions, focuses upon awareness. The
basic idea is that identity is a momentary process, and the way
you identify yourself in the moment is as a "primary process"
that changes all the time.
The focus in processwork and shamanism is not upon
developing the ego further but rather upon developing aware-
ness of change. Again, being aware means paying attention,
developing the first attention to focus on momentary reality
and the second to perceive altered states of consciousness. The
goal of the warrior is to develop the second attention, for this
leads to living the dreamingbody and finding the path of heart.
Developmental Ideas
Psychology helps you with your problems; it goes to the

door of the other world, waits for something to come
through, and uses that something. But what happens when
you solve some of your problems and become interested in
what lies beyond, when you are tempted to go through that
door and continue into the unknown?

Even though you will always have personal problems,
your own aging process provokes questions about the nature
of other worlds. Many people are content to stay on this side
of the door until the last minute. But the question about other
worlds will become more intense in the future. As the natural
environment suffers continued abuse and the wilderness be-
comes more limited, you shall have to make more out of less,
and to do this you will need the second attention.
Shamanic ideas inform us about the development you
undergo as you encounter the dreaming world. Mircea Eliade
has discussed typical stages of becoming a shaman, stages such
as the quest for magical power, initiatory illness and dreams,
methods for searching for the soul, and secret rituals. Many
apprentices called upon to move into the unknown go through
developmental stages and discover themselves becoming
hunters, sorcerers, seers, warriors, people on the path of heart,
and so on.
The hunter is a person who understands reality and no-
tices when unusual events are about to happen. The individu-
ation process later creates the warrior, a step you experience at
certain times of heightened awareness and near the end of life.
As a warrior, you use your second attention, flexibly step out

of time, and leave the cycle of problems behind. You get off
the wheel of life and death and become your whole self by
flowing with experiences. Final steps are beyond technique
and deal with learning to follow the path of heart. Among Na-
tive Americans, this is sometimes called the "red path"; it is
the feeling basis to our personal growth, the heartfelt sense of
being or not being on the right track. Western ideas about in-
dividuation seem dry without this sense of the heart and the
specialness of the quest.
Shamans such as don Juan, who live either in indigenous
conditions or in the midst of a warrior group, teach about dif-
ferent stages in personal development through living in na-
ture. Their teaching submerges us in a dimension of life that
has become foreign to many people today. This dimension is
28 ARNOLD MINDELL
the dreaming earth, the power of the natural environment our
species is close to ruining.
Not only are we in danger of losing our rainforests and
ruining our natural environment, we have forgotten our sec-
ond attention, which senses the magic of the world around us.
We are not only killing the environment, we are suffering si-
multaneously from self-abuse, by negating our own incredi-

ble potential. Those who develop a second attention and a
dreamingbody feel more secure, freer from life and death, and
able to preserve the magic of both personal life and the envi-
ronment.
EXERCISES
1Think of a dream that you have had recently. Note the
was most memorable in the dream. In which part
feeling that
of the dream was this feeling?
2. Now put the dream aside, so to speak, and note what

sort of body experience you are feeling in the moment.
3. You may be having two experiences, one common to
you and one unknown. Try to isolate the less common body
experience, the one that is unknown, undesirable, or difficult.
Take time to perceive it.
4. Using your second attention, focus upon this lesser

known body experience. Let this experience evolve. Get into
it; feel it first. Then experiment with expressing this feeling
with your hand. Let your hand move a little. Exaggerate your
motion until you find out where it is going.
5. If the resulting experience reminds you in some way of

a part of your dream, you may now understand your dream
better. This movement experience mirrors the feeling in the
dream and is a momentary experience of your dreamingbody.

6. Swing back and forth between paying attention to
your normal body experience and your normal identity and

paying attention to this new experience found in your dream-
ingbody. Practice going in and out of your dreamingbody.
30 ARNOLD MINDELL
CHAPTER 3
THE PATH
OF
KNOWLEDGE
There are many paths to the top of the

mountain. Once you are there, all may look
the same. When you are at the bottom,
however, the differences between teachers
and spiritual paths are crucial, because some apply
and some do not apply to your changing moods and
lifestyles. The shaman's path, for example, becomes
important when you seek encouragement for enter-

ing altered states of consciousness. Jung's path is
crucial you must understand dreams and symbols

if
of the path. Processwork is useful if you must work

with or live altered states in everyday reality. The
transpersonal path is necessary to validate spiritual
31
experience. The Zen path happens when living in the moment
is the way to detachment.
Personal change and transformation go by many names,
each one stressing a different characteristic of psychospiritual
growth. For example, in parts of the subcontinent of India,
the irrational and loving interactions between a guru and a
disciple guide the development of a subtle dreamingbody. In
Taoism, developing a dreamingbody depends upon adjusting
to the cyclical flow of Yin and Yang, becoming like a cloud
that rains and pays no attention to the boundaries between
two cities.
The various Buddhist processes of personal growth are

connected to increasing awareness, to discovering or creating
a fair observer, i.e., a detached point of view. Enlightenment
happens spontaneously and cannot be obtained through will
power alone. In Zen, enlightenment appears as a special atti-
tude toward life. One of our Japanese Zen masters, Keido
Fukushima of the Tofukuji Monastery in Kyoto, teaches that
"every day is a fine day," meaning that even the most impossi-
ble fate is somehow acceptable with the right attitude.
In Cabalistic Judaism, personal development is likened
to a magical tree that takes root, reaches for the sky, and de-
velops all the branches of our powers. In alchemy, people are
seen as unrefined mixtures of opposites. Growing means cook-
ing and transforming, with a vessel for conflict that trans-
forms and transmutes our natures.
Enlightenment and development in Western psycho-
therapy are equally as wide-ranging. In the following synop-
sis, I offer only brief generalizations of complex systems of
therapy. In parts of the world where European languages are

spoken, Freudian psychoanalysts focus upon the awareness of
repressed feelings. Issues of sex, death, and self-esteem are
linked to childhood experience. Adler demonstrated how per-
sonal growth leads through the drive for power and connected
inner life to social roles. Gestalt therapy reminds us of the pres-
ence of the here and now. Body therapists identify personal
growth in terms of physical sensations, such as relaxation or
32 ARNOLD MINDELL
well-being. Maslow and transpersonal psychology connect
personal growth with detachment from strong experience,
compassion for others, and self- actualization.
According to Jung, you are concerned in the first half of
life with adapting to society. In the second half, you live out
universal and spiritual roles. Individuation involves making

the unconscious conscious. This process happens continu-
ously, sometimes with awareness of growth, other times with-
out it. By observing dream series over long periods of time,
Jung hypothesized that personality slowly oscillates around
the self, the complete person. Jung called the lifelong process
of psychological maturation and attainment of self-knowledge
"individuation." It is the central, guiding drive in life, the re-
sultboth of growing older and wiser and of biological, psy-
chological, and environmental evolution.
Despite its overwhelming importance, we know little
about the process of personal growth. We know about its
symbols, such as the circle, spiral, and mandala, but not much
about its effects upon our relationships, our body, or our en-
vironment. How does the body change in response to increas-
ing wisdom? What determines the length of life? Why is a
person's life sometimes violently terminated at an early age?
We don't know how personal growth connects to world evo-
lution, and we are only beginning to learn how to work with
extreme mental and physical illnesses.
We study projection, and we all search for someone to
show us the way and parent our growth. Yet we care too little
about apprenticeship, the necessary and loving relationship
between the learner and the learning facilitator.
Many psychotherapies and spiritual traditions could
profit from the shamanistic viewpoint about development. In-
dividuation, detachment, and self- actualization are important
concepts referring mainly to behavior in ordinary reality. If
what happens at the very end of life is any measure of your
final goal, you need to consider the dreamingbody and altered
states of consciousness in connection with personal develop-
ment. The shaman works at lucid dreaming, stalking visions,

following body sensations, and worshiping nature, promoting
not only personal growth but environmental awareness and a
sense of community. As in Tibetan and Egyptian traditions,
the shaman works on the afterlife experience, so to speak —on
events that happen after you gain freedom from your identity,
your personal history.
Most paths attempt to transform our personal identity.
A good therapist will look like a Jungian, Freudian, dancer,
storyteller, shaman, analyst, teacher, or idiot, depending upon
the situation. In a process-oriented view of personal growth,
the individual not only changes her behavior but expands her
attention.Maturation means paying attention both to events
that support your identity and to the disavowed aspects of
life —
to which you do not usually pay attention —
that disturb.
With innerwork, good luck, and study, this growth
process means an increased ability to use both your attention
and your awareness as they gradually detach from your self.
From a detached viewpoint, you are, for moments, at least,
connected neither to your old identity nor to new things that
arise within you. The moment you identify yourself as being
aware of the flow of life and also as being a part of the flow,
you have a peak and meaningful experience. Many people de-
scribe this state in terms of nothingness —that is, you know
that you any one moment any one of your different
are at
parts and yet none at all.
This bare outline of the process of personal growth ac-
cords in many respects with spiritual traditions that do not
stress the psychology of the ego or of consciousness. The
manner in which this growth proceeds depends entirely upon
the individual. Thus you may describe your work in terms of
the discovery of the unconscious or in terms of the taming of
the serpent, the Kundalini. Change comes sometimes from an
unsolvable problem or koan, sometimes from a group interac-
tion, sometimes from a body experience. Processwork does
not focus on who you are or might become but on what you
notice. As in Buddhist traditions, you meet one of its goals the
34 ARNOLD MINDELL
moment you identify yourself as the facilitator of events, in
contrast to being one of the events themselves.
Inexplicable Forces
The process view has much in common with Castaneda's

Eagle's Gift. Don Juan tells the warriors' myth in which the
eagle has granted every human being the chance for eternity,
and every living thing has the chance to "avoid the summons
to die" by perpetuating the "flame of awareness." In this
beautiful and moving tale about the struggle for liberation,
developing means disciplining awareness, differentiating at-
tention, and becoming a person of knowledge. But what moti-
vates you to take this path?
Eliade points out that the shaman's path is a forced one;
people are driven to through illness, hereditary predisposi-
it
1
tion, dreams, magic, and bodily dismemberment. All sorts of
awesome activities are part of the shaman's path. They terrify
him and vivify his way. Seeing spirits, hearing secret lan-
guages, and experiencing indescribable events —including tak-
ing the road of the dead —
fill his life. It is not surprising to
hear in the modern don Juan story of shamanic teaching that

this path to awareness is complex, a "forced" battle in which
the unknown spurs you. 2
Because you are always trying to repress or avoid some-
it is not surprising that the sha-
thing, or to fight something,
manic path is called the warrior's way. Either you are the
unknowing victim of some other person or force, or you are
attempting a heroic feat, preparing to meet inexplicable forces
and more powerful than you are.
that are forever greater
While some choose to vacation rather than to meet these
forces, the proverbial teacher explains that these inexplicable
forces come to you whether you are ready for them or not.
You must encounter them, succumb to them by becoming
dissociated, or make them your allies.
The shaman's path is a lifelong struggle with the un-
known. It is full of tension, because you are constantly

confronted with new just beyond
aspects of reality that lie
your ever-increasing ability to deal with and integrate them.

Pressing and problematic dreams, insufferable body prob-
lems, severe relationship crises, addictions, untenable moods,
and aspects of fate provoke you to awaken and fight for your
life. Life seems to attack you as an opponent, perhaps because
you disavow it. You see the disagreeable or unknown as an as-

pect of reality that does not belong to you.
You think, "I am this and not that. I will never be like
that." You think everything dreamlike comes from another
reality. As you open up to new aspects of life, the unknown
becomes more familiar and appears to be what is trying to

happen in the moment. But with each insight, new and appar-
ently incomprehensible situations arise, spurring you on or
hindering you. You always try to determine instead of to fol-
low fate.
The shamanic teacher understands these conflicting as-

pects of fate not as opponents that must be overcome but as
potential and possibly the most powerful allies. Inexplicable
forces are just that. Whether they are monsters or divinities,
body problems, or world or relationship troubles, they chal-
lenge you to expand your identity and to accept them as the
magic carpet to renewal. One aspect of the powers that drive
you may be named; the other is indescribable, according to
chapter 1 of the Tao Te Ching.
Australian aborigines speak of power similarly. In one
story, a man says, "My father said'My boy, Look. Your
. . .
Dreaming is there. It is a big thing; you must never let it go

[pass by]. . . .Something is there; we do not know what;
something like engine, like power, plenty of power; it does
. . .
"
hard work: it 'pushes.' 3
Native teachers try to awaken you to the power of the
unknown, to this "something," this enginelike power and
the fact that it works. Yet its exact nature is difficult to ex-
plain. In all traditions, the central means of working with
opposing forces is through respect for the inexplicable nature
of power.
36 ARNOLD MINDELL
Whereas many psychological and spiritual systems pro-
pose explaining and avoiding blocks, shamans claim that they
contain "power" that only partly belongs to you. Thus, you
learn as an apprentice that the world is full of frightening
events; you experience yourself as an impotent being, cor-
nered by massive and inexplicable powers. Instead of fighting
these forces or trying to explain them, the shaman gives up
trying to change what he cannot grasp and reorients himself
by adapting to their direction.
The average person, whom don Juan calls a "phantom/'
attempts to hold these forces at bay and refuses to sense his
own impotence. The average person, your own naive uncon-
sciousness, leads you to believe that medicine will heal your
body, that psychology will make you more reasonable, and
that being nice will help you in your relationship problems.
Prayer should reduce the impact of fate, and technology will
tame the universe. Whatever happens, you cling to the belief
that you will either be saved from the unknown or discover
new solutions to your problems. You believe that you are the
center of a world that belongs to you.
Only your momentary terror and insecurity betray your
impotence. The wiser part of you, your sorcerer, realizes that
life is ultimately something beyond your mind and changing
body. Noone theory can completely explain anything, and

the origins of even your simplest impulses seem to be con-
nected with the universe itself. In light of this, the apprentice
tries to befriend the unknown.
The shaman's apprentice takes this viewpoint and at-
tempts to transform the onslaught of fate into an ally, as an ex-
perience of her own depths and energies, which empower her
and also bring her greater mystery. During one of their early
talks in Journey to Ixtlan, don Juan warns Castaneda that sor-
cery will not help him live a better life. In fact, becoming a
warrior blocks you, making each step more complicated and
dangerous than the last.
This warning describes the awesome nature of the path of
knowledge. Anything leading to this path, whether psychology,

shamanism, or meditation practice, should not advertise itself as
the way to peace and harmony, for the path may also lead to the
opposite. Heightened awareness invites greater discovery and
opens you up to forces that press you to live, express, and accept
their natures as yourself. This, in turn, brings you into conflict
again and again with your own identity and your community.
Relaxation, peace, healing, and bliss are interludes in the
encounter with your totality. We need a new term that encom-
passes the entire process of discovery and adventure, the terri-
fying and awesome nature of our world. While everyone is
looking for healing and love, the shaman's apprentice also

looks for trouble and oneness with nature.
A man encountered during a conference in Japan had
I
studied a smattering of Western psychology and was plagued

by dreams. He literally begged me to help him with what he
called his "shadow." He said the shadow had approached him
in more than two hundred dreams, terrifying him and de-
manding unknown things. When I asked him to show me his
shadow, he instantly fell into a swoon, but before I could
catch him, he suddenly leapt through the air like a martial
artistand began to strike. Everyone watching, including my-
self,was spellbound.
While we wrestled, I spoke to him and recommended
that he feel even more deeply into who he was and with whom
he was struggling. He responded by snorting and acting like a
demon. "I want your eyes, your heart, and your mind," he
screamed as his shadow, while we flew and rolled on the
ground. He screeched like a disembodied spirit, in languages
that were utterly foreign to me. When the furious battle broke
for a moment, I encouraged the spirit to show itself more.
Suddenly the man sobbed and told me that his suffering
had begun years ago when he had tried to correct his appear-
ance by having surgery on his slightly crossed eyes. What he
did not realize at the time was that an unknown and inexplica-
ble force was behind his appearance, the thing he called his
shadow, the demon he was personifying. When the force could
38 ARNOLD MINDELL
no longer manifest itself physically through his eyes, it be-
came furious.
The man suddenly realized that behind his disability had
been an inexplicable force, a potential spirit power, an ally. He
said that knowing the ally would connect him to the natural
history of Japan, to Shintoism, to the freedom of Zen, to his
own totality. This man was standing smack between his
demon and the world of ordinary people.
So you see, opening up to knowledge makes the sorcerer
more vulnerable than an average person. On the one hand,
people around her fear, hate, and become jealous of her
moves; on the other, the inexplicable powers that surround
her become even more dangerous if she ignores them.
This man had been caught between his self-hatred and
the power of the ally, his appearance and his powers. If he got
too close to the ally, he would upset the world; if he remained
too far away from his demon, it would kill him by making
him so violent. His had been using his crossed eyes to ex-
ally
press itself and therefore had become furious after the opera-
tion. This man had a truly inexplicable and powerful ancient
appearance. His "shadow" was a dreamingbody that had first
appeared in his eye problem.
At one time or another, we all live between two impossi-
ble worlds: the world of everyday reality and the world of in-
explicable nature. Personal growth, therefore, is a process that
can only be survived by a warrior, someone who battles and
mediates between the ruling social powers of the world and
the forces of the unknown.
But all of this is too quickly said, too far ahead of
you must understand that taking the path of self-
time. First
knowledge means facing problems like cramps, depressions,
deaths, and the misunderstandings and anger of those around
you, as if all of these were your own potential power. Without
stating their intentions directly, shamans teach you to prepare
to survive the onslaughts of life by following and apprehend-
ing what at first appear to be unacceptable experiences.

EXERCISES
1. Consider your personal path of development. Find
the elements this path shares with shamanism, such as an ini-
tial vision or "calling/' the first and second attentions, altered
states of consciousness, lucid dreaming, and so on.
2. What do you call inexplicable forces on your path?

Do they appear as illnesses, dreams, jealous friends, ambition?
Name these forces.
3. Identify inexplicable or apparently insurmountable

forces that are pulling at you now.
4. Use your imagination and consider the possibility that

powers of your
these inexplicable forces are potentially useful
own. Imagine owning instead of disavowing them.
5. Imagine where and how you might use these forces.
6. Note how you are now living between the fear of

these forces and the fear of the misunderstanding that people
around you might have if you lived these forces more directly.
40 ARNOLD MINDELL
CHAPTER 4
FIRST
LESSONS
Your first
that nature
shamanic lesson will probably be
is a wonderful ally that teaches
you how to live. Just listen to her. It is no

surprise that on one of their first walks to-
gether, don Juan says enigmatically to Castaneda
that the environment is living, that plants are alive
and can feel everything. At that very moment, a
strong wind blows through the desert chaparral
around them. Don Juan tells Castaneda that the
breeze agrees with him.
Shamans treat the environment as if it were
filled with knowing spirits that agree and disagree
with your path. Our healers in Africa and Australia

referred to the environment as the guide that would
41
give us the timing for the next steps. On both continents, my
wife, Amy, and I have had to wait hours or even days for the
"right time." These people explain that experiences and ideas
must be at one with the environment; they belong to the
world around us.
A Taoist would say that the power of shamanism comes
from the Tao. A physicist might explain that a nonlocal con-
nection links different points in the world's field. Jung would
have called this connection between the wind and the ideas of
don Juan a synchronicity, that is, a coupling between two
seemingly unlikely events felt by the person experiencing
them to be meaningful. Shamanism reminds you that the envi-
ronment has its own intelligence and is a part of you.
Native spirituality is based upon the sense that plants are
alive and feel. They are our brothers and sisters. An Aus-
tralian aborigine speaks in the following story about the
earth's consciousness and about how one must not even play
with it. He speaks of his father. "When I was 16 years old my
father taught me
some of the songs that talk about the
to sing
land. . . . One
went fishing with Dad. As I was walking
day, I
along behind him I was dragging my spear on the beach which

was leaving a long line behind me. He told me to stop doing
that. He continued telling me that if I made a mark, or dig,
with no reason at all, I've been hurting the bones of the tradi-
We must only dig and make marks
tional people of that land.
on the ground when we perform or gather food." 1
According to aboriginal thinking, Dreamings, or ances-
have created the earth's geology; these entities are
tral entities,
alive and dreaming up events right now. I take a phenomeno-

logical approach to experiences in which we sense the envi-
ronment as dreaming, as having a mind of its own. I call the
sense, or communication channel for environmental experi-
ence, the "world channel."
Each of us has many different channels for perceiving
and expressing information. You have visual and auditory
senses through which you see and hear. You sense yourself
42 ARNOLD MINDELL
through through movement, and through other peo-
feeling,
ple. You world channel through which you com-
also have a
municate with the world in ways that cannot always be
reduced to the physics of seeing and hearing. Until modern
times, the Hopi Indians thought that we communicated with
plants through the tops of our heads. For them, the world
channel sensory apparatus was there. I consider this channel
to be as important as our sensory channels.
During another walk, don Juan states that there is noth-
ing to learn about plants because no intellectual formula can
be used to understand them. At that moment, the roar of a
low-flying jet startles Castaneda. Don Juan is thrilled and uses
the excitement of the moment to exclaim once again that the
world agrees with him.
To our native mind, our shamanic heart, the "world"
means everything on earth: leaves, breezes, airplanes. Every-
thing in your world is part of your process. In your natural
mind, there are no mysterious connections or synchronicities.
There is no wilderness. Everything is part of you. Neither is
the world statistical. The indigenous paradigm does not split
psyche from matter, inner from outer. Like the Yogi who dis-
covers that he is, in fact, the Atman, or the whole world, the
native person lives as if the world were her partner and herself.
European scientists and philosophers as early as the six-
teenth century assumed that the world was separate from us;
it was something outside. Alchemists, forerunners of modern
science, believed that the different elements of our personali-

ties must be "cooked" before they combined to create the
unus mundus, or mystical "one world." In their model of trans-

formation, discussed by Jung in his Psychology and Alchemy,
the different elements of the world are separated. The labor of
transforming these elements is called the opus magnus, or
great work.
The alchemical recipe for incorporating the environment
into your psychology went something as follows: First you
unify your mental and intellectual parts to create the unio

mentaliSy a sort of mental harmony, by working out conflicts
in your head. Then you join these mental solutions with the
body, creating what they called the caelum, literally "sky" or
"heaven." I think the alchemists were intuiting something like
bodywork here: You must feel and express in movement what
you think. After mental states combined with the body, in the
final phase of the great work, the caelum connected with the
environment. This created the unus mundus, in which every-
thing coexists as one field, one world.
The unus mundus was a psycho-spiritual unified field
concept, which is probably why Jung stated in his Mysterium
Conjuntionis that alchemists' work would connect physics
and psychology, and why it would become so important in
the future of therapy. seems to me, in looking back today on
It
alchemical tradition and the scientific or post-Cartesian Euro-

pean philosophy that followed, today's problems in physics,
having to do with the separation of psyche from soma, mind
from matter, body from environment, came from forgetting
the alchemist's unus mundus.
Native thinking started from an entirely different para-
digm, in which nature and mind were one. For nomadic
people everywhere who live closely connected to the environ-
ment, being congruent with the world is not merely a theory
or a philosophy, but a matter of life and death. If you are not
at one with the environment, you could sleep in the wrong
place and become the prey of animals.
Indigenous peoples suffer from the insensitivity of mod-
ern, industrialized nations that destroy power spots to make
superhighways, burn rainforests to make houses, and put state
parks and recreation areas on ancient burial grounds. This de-
structive style of relating to the world is manifest not only in
airand water pollution, but in how you repress your own na-
ture by failing to develop the second attention that experi-
ences the earth as mysterious and alive.
For me, indigenous thinking is the basis of group process.
The group expresses itself through individuals and the envi-
ronment, and vice versa. In a way, there is no individual or
44 ARNOLD MINDELL
group work; everything you do is processing the events of
nature. To reincorporate or discover the environment's spirit
in everyday life is to view people and their surroundings as
one being. If, for example, I ask one member of a couple, fam-
ily, or group a question, it can be a perceptual prejudice to ex-
pect an answer from the individual addressed. The answer

may come from any part of the environment; someone else
may speak up, or the environment may announce itself in
other ways. Of course, there are times when each person must
speak for himself, but you should be careful not to become
one-sidedly attached to the paradigm that the individual is lo-
cated only in your own body. You must consider the possibil-
ity that each of us is a channel for the world, just as the world
is a channel for each of us.
There are times when you are alone in nature and feel
united with the environment. You feel the world around you
as if it were a body part or a partner, sending you messages of
agreements and disagreements, pleasure and stress. This sense
is crucial if you need to fish or hunt to eat. But the way that
native people relate to the environment is more than a matter

of survival. It is the basis of their spiritual traditions and an
integral part of their psychology. Sensing this voice of the
natural environment can be an important method of self-
protection and a path to knowledge.

remember giving a workshop with native North
I
American shamans, friends of mine from the Canadian Pacific

Northwest. I often begin my seminars by meeting people, but
as our seminar commenced near a river in central Oregon,
these people did a fire ritual for the spirits in the environment.
As these spirits were unable to arrive the first day, on the sec-
ond evening they offered plates of food and glasses of beer to
the spirits and communed with them. After the fire had
burned down, they explained that the spirits must have been a
Native American and a white person who had died recently.
Their information matched the details of a description of two
people we heard about later who had recently died in that
area. The shamans said that the reason some of the seminar

participants had slept restlessly the first night was that the fire
ritual for the spirits in the environment had not been done.
Sure enough, after the burning, the spirits let everyone rest
better than they had the first night.
Personal History
When the world speaks to you, it is impossible to tell

whether the world is doing things to you or you are doing
things to it. You may perceive yourself as causing some events
and being the recipient of others, but you never know for sure
whether you send messages and get responses or whether the
world sends you messages to which you respond.
This inherent message symmetry or invariance means
that you cannot assume that you are the center of the universe,
initiating or creating things. You are an aspect of the world.
This radical shift in identity from being the center to being a
participant is the goal of mystical and spiritual traditions.
Sensing yourself as a part of the entire world would cre-
ate an identity crisis if you let yourself experience the envi-
ronment. However, synchronicities, though momentarily
shocking, are not enough to shake apprentices like you and
me out of our person-centered world. We may need another
lesson.
Buddhist teachings, shamanistic rituals, and simply the
process of aging imply that your personal identity will soon
disappear. Personal history is your identity, the role you have
in a given community and world. You are the man, woman,
mother, father, wife, husband, partner, student, mechanic,
teacher; the Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Mohammedan, Bud-
dhist; the African,American, European, Australian, Japanese,
Indian; and so on. You are all of these things and more. You
identify with your past and present pursuits, your gifts and
your problems.
You must erase your personal history; otherwise, you are
at mercy of what others think. Your identity limits you by
the
forcing you into a social role or mold needed by your com-
munity. In this sense, other people's thoughts of you have
46 ARNOLD MINDELL
power over you. If you
are a Native American and begin to
study your brothers and sisters might be sus-
at the university,
picious of your new endeavor. If you are a homemaker and
begin to study, your household may resent you. If you are a
minister and talk about God as the environment, you may run
into trouble with the modern church. If you are a woman and
decide not to marry, your family may reject you. If you are
gay or lesbian, the world may disown you. Your world pro-
jects its gifts and problems upon your identity and in this way
takes away your personal freedom to be who you are. Never-
theless, you detach from your personal history, consciously
or unconsciously, in many ways. Altered states of conscious-
ness, such as fury and ecstasy, may disturb your identity.
When you fall in love with a forbidden person, you find your-
self in conflict with who you were. Your personal history is
shaken when you study forbidden subjects, are near death, or

become ill; when a partner dies or leaves; or when your chil-
dren grow up.
Either you detach yourself from your personal history
or you begin to fear that death or injury will remove it for
you. Life consists of continually facing the terror and pleasure
of becoming a new individual without history. I know from
my study of childhood dreams that removing personal his-
tory is the crucial lesson that everyone seems destined to learn
from birth. Your earliest memories or dreams often involve a
dramatic conflict and threat to your identified self; demons,
witches, and monsters chase you.

If powerful allies appear as antagonists in your earliest
dreams, your myth is to confront an ally,whether you agree
to this encounter or not. As you live,you confront your
mythical attackers in many forms until you change the way in
which you define yourself. During certain periods of your
life, the attack seems to abate, yet it returns again to provoke
you remove personal history.
to
It is as if you live and die many times. It seems some-
times as if you have just one central lesson to learn: to con-

tinuously drop all sorts of rigid identities. The Taoists and

Buddhists put it briefly: Everything is impermanent. Instead
of realizing this, however,you find yourself looking forward
to some ideal time when you shall achieve freedom from the
battle between yourself and your dreams, believing that if you
could overcome your problems you would be free. You find
yourself attracted to stories in which the hero's life hangs
upon the outcome of a dramatic battle between himself and a
challenger from the beyond.
You make decisions to try to change in one direction or
to adopt a program that changes you, substituting one iden-
tity for another or blending the two. You even try to give up
your old self and identify with something new and useful. But
your life may still be a mess, as you are troubled by chronic
ailments and relationship conflicts.
Finally the point arrives when the more you change, the
more you sense the complexity of it all. Changing identities,
even becoming free from a previous inhibition, is not enough.
The process of creating and dropping personal history leads
to the discovery that you are neither this nor that, but the
awareness of it all.
Shamanic dismemberment or initiation rituals mirror

2
this peak experience. In these, the apprentice or seeker meets
incredible forces —
vicious demons —
and undergoes unthink-
able torture while her body is torn apart and dismembered in
visions. The symbolism of having the limbs and intestines
taken out and later replaced reflects the experiences many
people go through over a period of ten or even twenty years.
Chronic illness, feelings of being torn asunder by opposing
forces, and near-death experiences frequently have the goal of
"cleansing" you from your own self and refilling you with
nothingness or with pure nature. During such difficult times,
you are forced to undo yourself, to go to pieces, to free your-
self from the tendency to think of yourself at any given time
as one type of person with one type of task. Either you be-
come fluid, or nature erases you in its own way.
This reminds me of one of my clients who was sitting in
meditation, working on an inner dialogue. Visions and body
48 ARNOLD MINDELL
sensations arose as part of her mental flux. Suddenly, out of
nowhere, a voice came to her and said that she would lose the
baby she was then carrying. The voice sent her into a great
shock, compounded by the fact that she had waited until her
late thirties to become pregnant and was now in her eighth
month.
Tearfully, she told me that having a baby had become her
greatest wish. The baby would fulfill and finally satisfy the
expectations of her relatives. What could I say? "Find out
who stands behind that voice," I suggested.
She turned inside and told me that the voice belonged to
God. "He said I should either give up my identity as a mother
and become a student or he would kill me," she reported. She
decided immediately to take up her new studies. A few weeks
later, her baby was born as healthy as could be, but because of
an unusual accident in the hospital the child was killed before

it was three days old. My client was as prepared as she could
be for this tragedy. She dropped her personal history as a

mother as fluidly as she could and lived on according to the
new direction of her fate. God may have erased her baby, but
she had erased herself first.
Uprooting personal history usually involves a great deal

of pain. Years of unbearable suffering generally precede the
transformation presaged by death. You spend a lot of time
struggling against fate. Fate always seems so precarious, al-
ways threatening you with symptoms and difficulties beyond
your ability to solve.
One of the most remarkable things about the African
healers whom Amy and I visited was that they were detached
from their own personal history. Even though we are white,
they blessed us as Africans after taking us through a ritual of
exchanging our clothes for the cloth of the equatorial bush.
We found that it was just this respect for their tradition and
detachment from it that was so healing.
Don Juan, too, unlike many Native American seers today,
was detached from his own history, even from his own com-
munity. We know from Castaneda's later books that don Juan

almost died several times. He was even buried once, prema-
turely. As he grew older, he consciously removed his personal
history,broke with his past, and opened his heart to the world
around him. He grew beyond the one-sidedness of iden-
tifying solely as a Native American who hated European-
American invaders. He loved his heritage but culled its
essence and grew beyond it by letting go of his hatred for his
enemies. He realized that his parents had died tragically be-
cause they could not let go of their desire for revenge against
their Mexican persecutors. He said that they lived and died
like American Indians, without realizing above all that life is
too short to have just one identity.
Death as an Adviser
There are times when you want to die, and all of us will
die one day. Separating from an old identity, system, or rela-
tionship is like dying. I realize only after one of these separa-
tions that I have died. Since I am so stubborn, it takes a lot to
kill me, and I die painfully and unconsciously. Afterward I re-
flect and realize what has happened, like the spirit of a dead
man who leaves his body and only then awakens to what has
happened to him.
There are easier methods. If you give them a chance, fan-
tasies of death will erase your personal history: the way in
which you work, the expectations you have of yourself, and
your predictable and worn-out patterns of relating to others.
According to a Buddhist ritual, you must meditate on your
death every day. Many teachers agree that death is the only
wise adviser you have.
Were it not for fear of death, you might never have the
courage to change and jump over the obstacles created by his-
tory. When you use death as an adviser, however, you remem-
ber that you can no longer put off detaching from yourself
and your apparent significance or insignificance.
Think of a client of mine who recently died. When she
had come to see me for the first time, she was dying of cancer,
and her tumors were beginning to inhibit her breathing. She
50 ARNOLD MINDELL
wanted to see me because she was terrified of death. I asked
her if there were something she would like to do with her
still
life and urged her to follow her most important wish. She said
immediately that she wanted to fulfill a lifelong dream and

travel to Finland in the summer.
"Go ahead," I said. "Take a trip to Finland."
"Oh no," she answered, "I couldn't do that. My hus-
band hasn't any free time just now. He has to work."
That conversation took place in May. Instead of taking
time off from work and going to Finland, her husband took
time off in July, just when his vacation time came up, to bury
and mourn his wife. Death meant little to that woman. Every-
thing else took precedence: her husband's job, her children,
her household. She spent her life postponing the things that
meant the most to her so that she could maintain her personal
history as a housewife. She could have used her death as a wise
ally if she had been prepared to experience her disease as a
force asking her to free herself from her personal identity. In-
stead, it simply erased her.
Such near-death situations can make death, form in the
of terrifying diseases or body your wise
experiences, appear as
dreamingbody adviser, the best and most trustworthy one
you have. From this viewpoint, fearing death or even getting
ill is a fortunate experience because it signifies detachment
from your identity.
Every time you worst or are preparing to defend
fear the
yourself against inner or outer forces, experiment first with
imagining your own demise. Feel what it might be like to die.

Even go through the act of dying. Imagine how you will die,
what you will look like, what you will experience. It is impor-
tant not only to think that you are going to die, but to imagine
what will happen next.
Go through the details of the death fantasy, whether it is
of falling off a cliff, dying of cancer, or being struck by an auto-

mobile. These fantasies are trying to get you unstuck. Bury
yourself. Die before you die. Write your own epitaph: Here
lies poor, little old me. He did some things well but could not

make the turn and allow the new me to happen. He died at
that point so that now I can live on, free. Now I am not myself
anymore but have been replaced by taking part in and wit-
nessing whatever is happening.
Taking Responsibility
Responsibility an important word in psychology, for

is
it connects you to everything you experience. The following
story about don Juan sounds like it came straight from mod-
ern therapy. During their first meeting, Castaneda lied to don
Juan, bragging about his knowledge of plants in order to im-
press the old Indian with his intelligence. Don Juan
immedi-
ately recognized the lie. What bothered him, though, was not
the lie itself but Castaneda's attitude toward it. Castaneda had
not taken his own story seriously. He had not taken responsi-
bility for it; he did not believe his own lie.
Taking responsibility means accepting everything you

say, feel, hear, write, see, and communicate as part of you. Ac-
cepting your accidents and your lies is an act of compassion.
Taking responsibility means that if you are sick, you must un-
derstand that the body is bringing up a dream you have not

yet known. If you have relationship difficulties, accidents, or
world problems, things are happening to you with which you
are not in agreement. Taking responsibility means focusing
awareness not only upon the events you identify with but also
upon the events you want to disavow.
Taking responsibility requires appreciating what hap-
pens to you as potentially valuable. Such an attitude belongs
to shamans, therapists, and Taoists. It also appears in Zen. The
Zen master in Kyoto said, "Every day is a fine day," meaning
that whatever happens is just perfect: Use it, pick it up, and
find its meaning.
But taking responsibility requires more than having the
right attitude. You need to pick up your secondary process. I
remember bragging to Amy some time ago about my relation-
ship to a well-known I said, "Oh, yes, I worked
political figure.
with so-and-so and his whole family years ago." I knew that
52 ARNOLD MINDELL
the therapeutic ethic required confidentiality. I was not sup-
posed to talk about my clients to anyone, not even my wife.
Not only had I broken a professional code, but I had done it
in a boastful tone: "See me. Notice how important I am," I
had said.
caught myself, however, and decided to use my second
I
attention. I was disgusted by myself. I could hardly believe

that I would brag. After all, I already had as much public sup-
port as I needed. Why had I done such a stupid thing? Why
had I needed to be seen? Instead of answering these questions,
I tried to take responsibility for my act as if it had come from
a part of me
was trying to be heard.
that
dove into the experience, consciously bragged,
Finally, I
and discovered that I wanted to be taken even more seriously

than I had been. At that point in time, I was afraid to bring my
ideas forward in public about controversial issues; I was a po-
liticalwimp. I preferred to identify myself as a psychologist
and was shy about being a social activist. The discovery of my
inner, disavowed need to be heard was the beginning of much
of my public work and of my writing the book The Leader as
Martial Artist.
you catch yourself bragging unconsciously, brag con-
If
sciously. If you are like some people who say that they do not
lie, then I want to advise that you try to make up a lie. Practice
lying about yourself. If you take responsibility for doing that,

your lie can be unfolded as being part of your task, even a part
of your personal myth.
All other concepts of shamanism may be found within
the idea of taking responsibility. As you take responsibility
for the world around us, you find synchronicity or agree-
ments. You find the erasure of personal history, because brag-
ging and lying are not part of your normal identity. Your lies
are the stories not of your personal identity, but of someone

you are not yet identifying with. Taking responsibility in-
cludes using death as an adviser. In a world where life is so
short, you cannot afford to neglect anything you do. Each act
is one of potential significance.

EXERCISES
1. Be aware of the environment. Imagine that the natural
world around you is alive and can speak to you. Listen, smell,
feel, and look at the signals that the environment emits. Hold
such perceptions with your second attention and follow them.

What is the environment saying to you? Don't be afraid of
projecting.
Experiment with telling a lie. Tell a lie to yourself, in

2.
your imagination. Try lying even if you are shy or embar-

rassed about doing so. Tell the lie as if you were a great story-
teller. This may be difficult, because mythmaking is a deep
process, but try until a real lie turns into a story with a begin-
ning and an end.
Take a few minutes to do this.
Telling a lie can be embarrassing, because you expose
your deepest dreams and fantasies of becoming a ruler or a
magician, of having more sexual prowess and beauty than
others, of having more money, more friends, or more power.
But remember, you are not just telling a lie. You are creating a
myth. Consider your lie to be true. How are you already liv-
ing this myth? Take a few minutes to experiment. Act like the
person in your lie. Consider changing your personal identity
if necessary in order to live closer to your myth. How have
your dreams already discussed this change?
3. Drop your personal history and use death as an ad-

viser. To begin, describe yourself: Who
you normally?
are
What have you been doing? From what kind of family do you
come? Describe your gender, race, religion, profession, and
nationality. How do you see your body? Is it weak or strong,
ugly or beautiful? Are you successful, or not?
Go into a fantasy you have had about your death. De-
scribe how you imagine death coming to you.
Experiment with letting this fantasy of death take over.
Let go of your ordinary identity you described in the begin-
54 ARNOLD MINDELL
ning of this exercise. Imagine why death might want this iden-
tity to die. What part of you is meant to die, so to speak?
Imagine and enjoy, if possible, the detachment that
comes from death.
Imagine and experience living the freedom of your death
in life, in the moment, at work, in relationships, and in the
world.

CHAPTER 5
THE HUNTER
There no single shamanic calling that is

is
enough. The spirit must be consulted and

agree at every stage of a shamanic appren-
ticeship. In Africa our healers had to go
into trance just to ask if they could continue with
our healing ceremony. In Australia we had to wait
for the right "time."
Before I begin professional training with
someone, I wait for a convincing dream of my own
or from my client. Sometimes I consult the /
Ching. Without such oracles or dreams, there is no
certainty that our training will be of use to the
client or that she has chosen the right profession.
57
Before Castaneda was ready to progress in his appren-
ticeship, don Juan had to determine whether Carlos had the
agreement of the earth to continue on the Yaqui Way of
Knowledge. So don Juan proposed an entrance test into the
training. Castaneda had to use his body to find a "place of
power" in the desert chaparral.
The Spot
Compared to state licensing tests and the graduate exams

of our institutes and universities, shamanic testing strikes us
as being absurd. It requires good omens. You cannot prepare
for it intellectually. Today's licensing procedures to practice
medicine and psychology are based upon the belief that a
practitioner must be able to regurgitate accepted knowledge
under stress. But shamanic testing is based upon another real-
ity. This testing procedure requires that you be able to follow
your body instincts to survive on this earth. It requires con-

nection to nature. If you pick the wrong place to camp for the
night, it could be your last sleep.
The spot you find must be your friend, a place where
you feel well and rested. Remember that the shaman, by defi-
nition, differs from his tribal family in his ability to heal
himself. Since illness or disease is a signal from your dream-
ingbody for you to recognize its existence, the shaman can be
redefined as someone who has more ability than others to fol-
low the sensations of his dreamingbody. If you follow your
body's sensations and dreams, you are automatically on the
right spot; you feel physically alive, simultaneously stimu-
lated and peaceful.
Thus, it makes sense for a shaman to choose her appren-
tices based on their ability to heal themselves by finding the
right spot. Many
shamanic apprentices suffer terrible fates:
They are severely overweight, crazy, deformed, or half-mad.
Some behave like ordinary people. But all seem to find the
right teacher and attain the healing they need.
Shamanic initiations tend to make it seem that the spir-
its' power alone must rescue the apprentices from the hands
58 ARNOLD MINDELL
of death. But this opinion does not give the apprentices enough
credit, for if they are apprentices, they are almost by defini-
tion able to follow the powers of the dreamingbody within
themselves. At another point in time, when the apprentice be-
comes a healer or teacher himself, he helps others not only by
his powers, but by his ability to help them find their own
dreamingbodies. This may be why many healers say it is not
the healer who heals, but the ability of the spirit and the
client's or apprentice's own ability to find "the right spot" of
healing or knowledge.
Early on in my studies, I experimented with the problem
of finding the right spot and went off with other learners on a
meditation retreat. We decided to work together in a small
garden next to the house in which we were staying. We posed
ourselves the task of finding our own "spots," our places of
well-being in the garden. But the first spot I wanted to sit
down on had already been taken by someone else.
had walked around for some time, my

Finally, after I
body took me most unlikely place, a steep incline at the

to a
edge of the garden. There I lay on my back, upside down, my
head facing downhill, my feet in the air. I was surprised that
my body felt so good in such an awkward position.
I discovered that finding the right spot depends not only
on body sense, but also upon what is happening in the world

around you at a given moment. Any spot you choose is con-
nected to the entire field of the natural environment, people,
and spirits. The spot you are required to find represents the
role you are asked to play in the field at a given moment, and
the role you play is the one that is best for everyone and
everything around you moment. The moment I lay on
at that
my back with my head downhill, I was not needed in other
spots. My job at that moment, so to speak, was to be upside

down and backward.
Finding the right spot on earth is a matter of world chan-
nel awareness. The shaman identifies her spot as one of healing
and self-protection. As long as you live in this field, you are al-
ways being tested, without realizing it. You must constantly

ask yourself, Where am I living? Can I find my spot in this
field? Is my present spot the right spot? Is it a proper picture
of who I am and what is trying to happen to me?
When you move about in the everyday world, are you
aware of the power of certain places? Be careful about where
you sit at work, where you sit when you eat. Can you sense
which spirits are good for you and which are bad? Is that
dirty street corner, the beach by the sea, or a hilly spot in a
long-forgotten garden the right spot? It is finally your ability
to follow your dreamingbody that gives you a sense of secu-
rity and well-being.
In searching for a spot, remember that the place your
body chooses is not always the place your mind wants. Your
true spot is an aspect of fate. It is you are meant
the bioregion
to be living in. It is a fate that has opened up to you because
the universe needs you to play this role for its own momen-
tary wholeness.
The Tools of the Hunter
The spirit determines when and how training can con-

tinue. Don Juan interprets Castaneda's falling asleep on a rest-
ful spot as a sign of success. His apprenticeship may continue,
but Castaneda's involvement now takes on serious dimen-
sions. He can no longer just dabble in his apprenticeship. His
apparently academic interest in psychotropic plants trans-
forms into a fascination with don Juan's way of knowledge.
Dabbling in shamanism, psychology, or meditation
often hides a fascination with altered states of consciousness
that come to you as if they wanted you to go more deeply into
them. It may even seem to you as if your interest were a mat-
ter of life and death. You might say that the process has cho-
sen you in spite of yourself. At first, shamanism tempts you
through the media of your interests and studies; then it chal-
lenges you through a teacher; and suddenly it threatens to be-
come a life-and-death issue or a lifelong project.
You
find yourself in the midst of a fascinating and un-
conquerable area where you are no longer in control. You
60 ARNOLD MINDELL
seem to be navigating in psychic territory, and your past in-
terests and background are unable to help you meet the
terrifying spirits at the perimeter of consciousness. Illness, re-
lationship problems, addictions, or social conflict rob you of
your freedom. You seem to need new tools to live through
these experiences. Regardless of where the initiation into
human mysteries takes place, it always feels like more than
you can Even though you are right here with every-
handle.
one and everything else, it is as if you were walking upon an-
other planet, and you are afraid even to trust your own body.
You have only your meager psychic tools and courage to help.
Shamans who refer to their work as hunting are hunting
power. Many South American healers refer to their work of
searching for healing and psychotropic plants as hunting.
Hunters will always hunt, probably because of the basic need
I believe we
have to be whole and to alter our
all states of con-
sciousness through one method or another.
Hunting for mind-altering substances and changes in
consciousness is in your nature; it is a sort of talent. A talent, a
professional ability, or a gift operates independently of intent,
once it is learned. Your talents even imprison you by happen-
ing compulsively. A true calling is like an addiction that must
be nourished. A great musician, for example, not only is tal-
ented but is possessed by her musical demon. If you deny a

talent's existence, it will suck the energy it requires, and you
may feel depressed without knowing why. In my opinion, it is
the unconscious interest and talent in hunting power that has
addicted many indigenous people to drugs like alcohol.
A related talent connected to an interest in shamanism is
the art of living. It appears autonomously at first, in your

mystical, therapeutic, and shamanic interests, your spiritual
aspirations, and your fascination with altered states of con-
sciousness. makes you think that everything you learn
It
about the dreaming world is more than a teaching: It is a way

of life. This is why even students of psychology, the most ra-
tional aspect of shamanism, may make spiritual sects out of
what they are learning. The many hundreds of such people we

have met in different countries seem to want more than heal-
ing and insight. They are searching for a way of life. They
need to live ecstatically, and nothing short of this makes them
happy.
The hunt for power and ecstasy behaves like an autono-
mous and creative drive, appearing in dreams, spirits in the
night, personal problems, or the fear of death, propelling you
to live fully and to find meaning in everything. Therapy, heal-
ing, and teaching are only some, perhaps even limiting, con-
texts for this talent. Becoming a hunter and a warrior, a
shaman, is a wider context. Doing so means nothing less than
learning to live life by improvising from one moment to the
next. Teachers of shamanism, psychology, meditation, and the
future of personal transformation must address this context.
As a hunter, you must study the rational details of en-
ergy, of "psychic prey." You are doing more than just learning
about the signals of the unknown. You are developing the
ability to notice and to follow signs that give greater access to
life, to the energy that makes every moment exciting and awe-
some. You are waiting to gain the courage to drop your ordi-
nary way of living.
The Hunter and the Hunted
First lessons of shamanism, psychology, meditation, or

even social work sound like behavioral or moral prescrip-
tions: "Do this, then that." Don Juan explains the steps in the
hunter's training, beginning with the relationship to nature. In
his review of what happened when he killed a snake, don Juan
explains that he had to apologize to the animal for cutting off
its life so abruptly. He did this realizing that his life, too,
would one day be cut off in a similar fashion; thus, the prey
and its hunter were one.
The insight that you are not only the killer, but one who
someday will also be wiped out, gives you compassion for
everything. You are the persecutor and the victim and, even
more, the observer and the facilitator of your process. You are
62 ARNOLD MINDELL
the one who has dreams and who is the dreammaker, who suf-
fers from symptoms and the creative power behind your
symptoms. Best of all, you are, or could be, the facilitator be-
tween both the symptoms and the power.
In other words, as a hunter, you know that you are si-
multaneously various parts of the world and the facilitator of
those parts. You are the doer and the one done to, the seer and
the seen. You are the one struggling under the pain of life, the
one who creates the pain, and the one who must facilitate be-
tween the two. You are the student and also the teacher of
perennial philosophies. Each time you learn something or
have an enriching experience, you honor the universe from
which this came by thanking it. You are the student and the
universe.
Everything is connected, and nothing happens without
warning, though you may experience it as such. Don Juan
says that a hunter is "tight"; he or she knows that everything
is connected and therefore leaves little to chance.
1
As a hunter,
you not only experience life but take responsibility for help-
ing to create it by being "tight" and noticing the normal as
well as the accidental.
The ordinary hunter's prey includes the plants and ani-
mals of the earth: nourishing herbs, snakes, deer —the living
beings that give you life. But for a shaman's apprentice, prey is
not only the flesh of living plants and animals. It is the sense
of mystery that gives you a special presence and love for life.
As a hunter, you know that certain signals are your prey;
they are special signs of nature. These are things like percep-
tual irregularities, such as flickering thoughts and visual or au-
ditory hallucinations. The shaman may call her prey the spirits
or ghosts or spooks that inspire, heal, and destroy — familiars
that guide her and drive her prey on
crazy. Just as therapists
different forms of consciousness, energy, and process, the war-
rior hunts power objects and situations that are unusual.
In some Eastern traditions, the prey might be called the
Chi, or Ki, energy. In other parts of the world, particularly

Haiti, voodoo. Some therapists hunt dreams or dream fig-
it is
ures; the body-oriented processworker would call her prey

the dreamingbody. Meditation procedures call prey the feel-
ings and thoughts that pass through us. Psychological schools
focus upon moods, dreams, and complexes. All these are
processes, double signals, and the living unconscious. I call all
prey the Tao. Some refer to this as good or bad luck.
Whatever name the mystery goes by, it is the source of
power, of healing, of liveliness, and of fun. What do you call
the signs of this mysterious something that revives and cares
for you? What do you call your guides? What are their rou-
tines? How tight, or perceptive, are you at finding these signs?
Ifyour hunting ability is keen and sharp, your prey is seconds
away from your awareness in any situation, at any time of day
or night.
Since sensing prey is an unusual or accidental process,
we might secondary process, an unexpected, incom-

call it a
plete message that appears through one or more of your sen-

sory channels of awareness. Sometimes you experience the
prey in a vague sensation and unusual feeling, intuition, or
thought. You feel but cannot explain it. The routines of your
prey are inexplicable, confusing, or chaotic signals received in
various channels of communication: seeing, hearing, sensing,
feeling, moving, and interacting with people and outer events.
Practice seeing hallucinations. Hear voices that are not
there. Feel body experiences that you cannot explain, and no-
tice weird movements in yourself. Watch for paranoid fan-
tasies about others. Catch and follow them. Some doctors will
warn you that you are listening to absurdities and that you
should not dabble in nonrealities. But if you have the calling
of a shaman, you must listen to and catch the prey before it
takes your energy.
Experience yourself at your worst and your best, as
others do, in your imagination, and try to love or hate your-
self as others do. Don't just take your fantasies as signs of high
or low self-esteem. Experience the power behind them, be-
64 ARNOLD MINDELL
hind love and recriminations, and use this power construc-
Notice spontaneous events that are in agreement or dis-
tively.
agreement with you, and catch them, eat them. The

unpredictable visual, auditory, proprioceptive, kinesthetic, re-
lationship, and world channel events are your nourishment.
Don't New Age or mainstream talk about your
just listen to
perceptions. Experience them for yourself. Catch them and
ride them like waves on a sea.
Some of the routines of your prey are not chaotic but
predictable. For example, the content of your fantasies can be
predicted from your dreams. The shamanic hunter masters
awareness by using his second attention to notice inner feel-
ings and fantasies and unusual outer signals from the envi-
ronment. He feels things and senses the unknown parts of
himself, even before they force themselves upon him. He fol-
lows and supports the irrational and uncanny, that which be-
longs to the nagual, i.e., the unconscious. He knows that his
power lies and tracing his double signals, his own
in catching
incongruities, dreams, fantasies, and symptoms.
In relationships, he notices his own double signals: the
inexplicable sound of his voice, the movements of his hands
all of those signals that do not go along with what he is saying.
And he notices incongruities in those around him. This is the

prey he is hunting and the power he needs to carry him closer
to his potential.
As a hunter in the world, you sense the atmosphere, the
ambience around your family, tribe, community, business, or
group. You listen to what others
but you also sense the
say,
unspoken, emotional background, the excitement, love, jeal-
ousy, and ambition that can transport the group out of its own
ordinary reality.
Being tight and knowing the routines of the prey means

tracking your own behavior. In time and with training, you
become aware of your own power to dance, sing, speak, feel,
and communicate with the world. Consider the story of a
young man I worked with in the Colorado mountains. He

was meditating on the direction his life should take, hunting
the future.
As we worked, he noticed something moving about out-
side the window. When he glanced outside, he thought, for a
split second, that he saw a little green man pointing in a spe-
cific direction.Being a tight hunter, the young man did not let
this fantasy escape but fixed it in his vision. We got up to-
gether and followed the direction in which the green man had
pointed, to a small, nearby cliff. In his fantasy, the young man
heard the voice of the green man shriek, "Jump!" Feeling
threatened, he sat down at the edge of the cliff with me and
listened closely to the voice. "Who are you?" he asked.
He got no answer, so he kept his attention on the mem-
ory of the voice, trying to recall its tone, tempo, and nature.
After a few moments, the voice returned, louder than before.
"Jump!" it insisted. "Jump, or I'll push you!" Suddenly the
young man noticed that his process had switched from hear-
ing to visualizing. He now saw himself flying over the cliff
and landing. But where did he land? In the general ward of a
hospital in a Swiss city, not as a patient but as a doctor.
This was the answer to his question. He knew what he
had to do next, and he did it. A year later, he entered the uni-
versity to begin his training as a doctor. Today he works in a
Swiss hospital. He told me at the time of his vision quest that
he had been blocked from entering the medical profession be-
cause his father had been a doctor and he had wanted to be
different.
The man had to hunt before he could become a doctor;
he needed shamanic discipline more than he needed knowl-
edge. In fact, previous knowledge may be a hindrance to
learning to track the energy and process of nature. The hunter
has an exacting attitude toward his process.
What is the difference between a madman and a hunter?
Actually, there is little difference, which is probably why
earlier researchers in shamanism thought that the shamans
were psychotic or epileptic. The difference between a shaman
and an ordinary person swamped by experiences is that
66 ARNOLD MINDELL
the shaman's tightness allows her to lead an ordinary life.
She knows that now she is "hunting," and now she is just
shopping.
And she can differentiate herself from her prey. As a
hunter, you know you are the witness and do not become en-
tangled in your visions. You can be in and out of them at the
same time, whereas someone in an "ordinary" state of con-
sciousness is either possessed by such experiences or divorced
from them. I want to stress that the way of the hunter is the
way of a person who willfully chooses when to hunt and
when to temporarily set powers aside. You know when to
identify with and when to disidentify with your prey so that
you its victim, not overwhelmed by experience.
are not
But you need a special feeling to catch unusual events.
You need a sense of freedom. You may finally catch your
amazing prey not because of your knowledge of yourself or
the environment, but because of who you are. You can only
catch yourself or what you will become. In the end, you en-
counter and learn from incredible events because you yourself
are slowly becoming incredible.
Personal History
In other words, either you are a hunter, or you become

the prey. Since animals and plants have specific routines, you
must be careful not to become predictable yourself. Personal
history may be your own greatest danger. Personal history
makes you a routine individual, the prey or victim of life. If
you are not careful, even learning to hunt can make you pre-
dictable and heavy with all that you have learned. You might
think, "Now I am
shaman, a psychologist, a meditator, a
a
spiritual person, or someone who is going to help others or
the world," but these labels are only the identity and may be-
come overly predictable and rigid.
I too lose my freedom. When I was beginning this book,
I kept thinking, "Now I am writing a book!" In such mo-
ments, my inadvertent self-importance created more serious-

ness than I needed. It was as if I were overeating. Suddenly I

felt heavy, like a duck I was
sitting in front of a hunter's gun.
the prey I was wanted to be.
stalking, not the hunter I
I can now laugh about this heavy state of affairs, but
being in it was no fun. The danger of becoming like the states

you are studying was called in analytic circles in the beginning
of the twentieth century "falling into the unconscious," be-
coming depressed, inflated, or crazy. Prey for these analytic
versions of ancient shamans was an image from the so-called
unconscious: the gods and goddesses, the devil, the fool, and
so on. My teachers implied that one had to lead a tight life,
become knowledgeable, and fear the unknown, lest you

study,
become inundated or identified with it, becoming a Christ or
a devil.
But the danger for the early students of the unconscious
may have been in the very paradigm that they used: the belief
that you could use the unknown or the unconscious as if it
were an infinite resource that did not need anything in return.

Psychology certainly has shamanistic roots, but it has some-
how forgotten the ritual of honoring its resource. Psychology,
without respect for the unknown, looks just like modern
technology, which takes from the environment without giving
back to it. It may be dangerous to delve into the unconscious
for one's personal edification, to use dreams as if they were
one's own.
Without an ancient and indigenous respect for the envi-
ronment and its power, you identify with it and think you
must be wise instead of following its wisdom. Hence, the
greatest danger for helpers of all ilk is becoming possessed by
the unknown and acting wise or powerful. There are too
many therapists and shamans who act as if they are better than
others.
This self-inflation is similar to the way
which you use
in
the natural environment, picking out what you need instead
of respecting it as the source of life. Without your respect for
its awesome
nature, without thanks, the environment seems
to rebel and threaten you. Everyone touching any aspect of
shamanism faces the danger of self-importance: Nature rebels
68 ARNOLD MINDELL
by terrifying you and by gobbling up your humanness, leav-
ing you as nothing more than an inflated blimp, fearing your
death.
As you are wary and retain the possibility
a tight hunter,
of not being like the prey you are after. Zen refers to this fluid
and free state of mind as beginner's mind. The beginner is
humble, open, and aware of what is happening, experiencing
life without preconceived judgments. A beginner's mind is
not the same as an empty mind, though. Keido Fukushima of

Kyoto, a Zen master, understands this state of mind as being
the creative mind: free, fluid, and unpredictable. The warrior
is not full of routines, nor is he empty, except perhaps of his
own personal history. He is free in the sense of being open to
whatever is happening.
You know that you from routines and the im-
are free
portance of your personal identity and history when you
laugh. Laughter can be a mixture of humor, craziness, and
wisdom. In any case, when you are able to laugh, not only are
you looking for life, but you are living it. With this sense of
freedom, you can track certain processes that have no rou-
tines. They are the magic that makes life worth living. Unex-
pected events are the shaman's key to life, the mystical,
incredible animals that break their own routines and that may
even stop in the midst of their flight from an indigenous per-
son so he can shoot them. 2
Indigenous peoples say that you must apologize for
killing plants and animals and also be open to whether the
universe will "give" you this prey or not. Not everything is
up What you discover is what you are given. To find
to you.
the most magical element in life and the impulse for creativity,
you need to be in a special, magical mood, the mood in which
you are thankful for whatever happens, even if this is nothing.
In other words, the way you hunt is by being the very object
of your hunting.
The opposite of the spirit is often your self-identity.
By recommending that you develop a strong ego or by con-
tinually focusing upon the same problems, using the same

methods, Western therapies may inadvertently solidify that
very sense of personal history that could finally hinder you
from finding the shaman's keys. If you always focus on the
same same methods, life begins to be pre-
issues, using the
dictable: You can guess your future lifestyle, the type of de-
mons that will chase you, and the nature of the unknown that
will pester you.
Regardless of how strong your routines, however, you
will never be able to predict exactly when events will happen.
You can guess what will happen, but not when. The ancient
Chinese book of divination and wisdom, the / Ching says y
that the spirit is mysterious, more than its manifestation in

terms of the ten thousand things we see in the world. Accord-
ing to the Tao Te Ching, there are two Taos, one that can be
seen and spoken about and one that can only be experienced.
The crucial energy of life that you are after can be experienced
in terms of the feeling you have surrounding events; it is the
dynamic of a moment, not its description; the "when," not
only the "what."
For example, if you had known that young man who be-
came a doctor, you could have guessed that he would go into

medicine. But who would have known exactly when that in-
formation would get to him? No one could have predicted
that his vision quest would have such dramatic energy, that he
would have to jump off the cliff and go over all his edges to
become himself.
The timing and intensity of messages is beyond the
study of routines, channels, and symptoms. The spirit behind
change seems to come from nowhere and, at first inspection,
seems to be nothing. Yet the greatest discovery a hunter may
be able to make may be timing itself.
EXERCISES
1. Find the spot. Take a few minutes and focus on feeling
your body. Scan your body with your feelings. What is hap-
pening, and where? Imagine a spot that your body needs right
now to make itself feel well and healthy. If you feel well,
70 ARNOLD MINDELL
imagine a spot that would make you feel even better. Place
yourself on that spot, in reality or in your imagination, and
feelany changes that may happen. In what part of your body
do they occur? Have you had any symptoms there? Does this
"wellness spot" remind you of any of your dreams?
Now that you have found a good spot, ask yourself
what attracted you to the areas of discomfort you were previ-
ously in.
2. If you are in the mood to practice hunting, experiment
with the following. Describe and then drop your personal his-
tory —the way in which you identify yourself —for a moment,
and experiment with the sense of freedom. Meditate and close
your eyes, counting your breaths from one to ten each time
you exhale.
Remain as — —
aware as possible hunt! and notice what, if
anything, disturbs your attention while you are counting
breaths. Catch that thing. Focus on it. This is your prey.
Keep your focus on the experience, and study it in great
detail. Track it, so to speak. Be exact in your observation. What
does it do? How does it look, sound, feel, move, or relate?

Allow the disturbing experience to unfold in all of your
sensory channels. Try to feel it. See it by making pictures out
of it. Hear it by listening to the sounds or words it might
make. Move as it would move, while still feeling, seeing, and
hearing it, until you know its nature and its message. This is
good hunting.
Try to use this message now.

CHAPTER 6
THE WARRIOR
The dreamingbody can be a prison. It pos-

sessesyou if you don't use it consciously.
Like the Yogi driven mad by the goddess
Shakti, who has aroused the Kundalini in
the body, the individual touched by the hunting
spirit is propelled relentlessly upon the path of self-
knowledge. Behind even a mild interest in shaman-
ism can be the seeker of ecstasy.
You can never train enough in the shamanic
work of hunting for lost energies and souls. Be-
coming any kind of facilitator for human growth,
for that matter, is a task without end. Only your
own dreams can measure your success at this work.
Perhaps that is why shamanistic traditions around
73
the world prescribe that success in apprenticeship be judged
only by dreams, illnesses, ecstatic experiences, and master
shamans. 1
You cannotlearn the skills you need through effort
alone, and each situation you meet within yourself seems
more impossible than the last. That is why the perennial
philosophies have recommended that the best choice for the
seeker of wisdom is humility. Like the holy mountain in Japan,
Mount Fujiyama, which is flat and humble at the top rather
than peaked and proud, the student is to rise above everyday
life while being open to messages from above. At any height
or degree of accomplishment, you are always a beginner.
Training
The skills of psychotherapy can be learned quickly, yet it
takes many years of practical work before you believe in

yourself. During training, you continually doubt your abili-
ties at your chosen profession. One reason for this is that,
though you want to be sufficiently prepared to deal with fate,

you never can be. The job is just too complex and full of inex-
plicable forces. It is an inflation to think that you can manage
the spirit. At best, you can learn to follow it.
So your doubts can be useful; they force you to learn
about things you do not know about. It takes weeks to learn
skills but much longer to acquire those special attitudes that
shamans passed down through personal instruction to their
apprentices. What makes the shaman's apprentice in any kind
of soul work most insecure is the sense of insufficient contact
with the spirit. Only continuous contact with the unknown
gives you the right feeling for the work; you are a student of
change, not the changer.
As the number of people interested in personal and or-
ganizational growth increases, psychotherapy and its associ-
ated professions will become mainstream. As a result, the
number of public regulations and requirements for facilita-
tors, healers, therapists, and doctors is growing. The public
tries to ensure the quality of its mental health and community
74 ARNOLD MINDELL
workers by creating regulations based upon purely rational
considerations.
To function in helpful or healing capacities, you need to
have experience in areas of human concern, matters of life and
death, psychosis, extreme states, medicine, and politics. But
your personal development is crucial as well. And it is just this
development that public regulations cannot govern. Perhaps
the most important aspect of personal development for help-
ing or serving others is a sense of humility, the sense that
whatever happens is finally not up to you alone.
I think there should be a concept such as mastery in the
helping professions. Zen offers an interesting analogy. Monks
must complete their first training, which lasts ten years, in the
monastery. Their next ten-year training, which has no rules to
it, begins when they leave the monastery and enter the world.
This informal training has no set ending; rather, at the end of
the second ten-year period, the master sits with the monk and
somehow knows whether or not the monk has become a mas-
ter by the way in which she drinks tea, which is symbolic of
how she lives Zen.
The public is only aware of its need for training and
competence, not for mastery. It notices if a helper is more or
less in order. It creates ethical codes based upon the right to
live and an interest in maintaining sanity. These codes sup-
port the conventions of society and break down in unknown,
mysterious areas. You need
to go beyond our present defi-
nitions of health, and sanity and include your personal
life,
development as a requirement for helping other people.

Otherwise you only serve society in its present form and not
the spirit of the future. You need the sense of the spirit upon
which everything rests. And you need the old concept of a
mastery that can be attained only through innerwork, con-
gruence, and luck.
In lieu of such mastery concepts, the doubts, fears, and
insecurities of people who are growing into the helping
professions become their personal tests and the regulations
that inner development imposes. Your occasional sense of

inferiority is not just a personal problem, but an essential as-
pect of personal growth. At every stage of development, you
doubt and test yourself, not only because of the increasing
complexity of the challenges, but because you need the sense
of doubt to remain open to change and the spirit. Study is
never enough. You must develop attitudes and skills that
change as the overall consciousness of the world transforms.
Test by Power
Finally, you arrive at the surprising conclusion that your

personal development is not up to you alone, but depends
upon what is happening in our world. Thus, when don Juan
doubts that Castaneda should be an apprentice, he conducts a

test in which the spirit is the examiner. In this case, the spirit
examiner is what don Juan calls Mescalito. Castaneda must
encounter this deity by taking the mind-altering drug mesca-
line. Don Juan is trying to discover if the spirit, or what he
calls power, will allow Castaneda to continue his apprentice-
ship. Is the spirit in favor of Castaneda pursuing the ways of

the warrior?
Fate has it that Castaneda develops a strong magical
bond to adog he meets while in the drug-induced state. Don
Juan accepts this numinous interaction during the drug trip as
a sign that the apprenticeship must continue, despite his reser-
vations concerning his apprentice's apparent superficiality.
But now Castaneda must learn more than hunting. He must
learn the ways of the warrior.
Power tests not only the student but also the teacher. A
sensitive teacher understands that he grows with his clients or
students. Fate binds us all, transforming what is defined as a
healing process into a teacher- apprentice relationship, even if
neither teacher nor apprentice is prepared. The client's projec-

tions onto the teacher need to be understood not only as parts
of the learner's inner life to be integrated but also as hints
about how must grow.
the teacher
I remember how one of my training analysts understood
my dreams. When he appeared as a god in my dreams, he
76 ARNOLD MINDELL
always interpreted his image as a part of me. But he also spoke
personally about his hopes of becoming more than he was, for
he always had doubts about himself. Naturally, thought he I
was God. But then, when I told him that I had seen him in my
dreams in a negative light, he would describe himself as that
negative person and encourage me to react to him as such,
leaving it to me to find out if and how I was negative to my-
self. His modesty was a model I am still trying to emulate.
The Warriors
Nature herself up special dream or druglike tests as

sets
trainings to determine which learner-teacher pairs are meant
to go all the way together. Some pairs are meant to become the
types of facilitators who immaculate hunters. In these
are
and the learner develop powerful
cases, the learning facilitator
hunting awareness and skills. These hunters prepare systems
that identify and explain experiences, dreams, and world prob-
lems. They seek out, identify, support, or shoot down aspects
of unconsciousness for others.
Hunters do not seem meant to leave their framework of
given methods and routines in order to consciously identify
with experiences. Don Juan differentiates hunters from war-
riors and says that the decision as to who becomes a hunter
and who becomes a warrior is not up to us. Only an impor-
tant omen can foretell it.
The hunter and integrates inner

searches, annihilates,
and outer events while staying in normal reality, but the war-
rior is different. She connects directly and experientially with
these conflicts and events. The warrior, as you shall soon see,
lives the dreamingbody.
Phases of Development
Centuries of working with altered states of consciousness

have allowed shamanic teachers to describe stages of develop-
ment in awareness training. Don Juan mentions various phases
of relating to the world besides as hunter or warrior. These are
as the so-called average man, the sorcerer, and the seer.

The average person never leaves the domain of consen-
sus reality but dwells within the walls of the ordinary world;
he never touches the perimeter of the unconscious, secondary
awareness, or the unknown. The sorcerer leaves the ordinary
world of consciousness and derives strength from the powers
she finds at the outer perimeter. She lets herself be possessed
by secondary processes, the experiences beyond this perim-
eter. But like the average person, the sorcerer is possessed by
her reality.
People with a calling to become facilitators, analysts,

therapists, or teachers become hunters. Some hunters become
sorcerers. They love dwelling in the unconscious and resist
viewing their findings in the light of consensus reality. They
love hypnosis, secret medicines, and magical interventions
and avoid direct confrontations in order to transform ordi-
nary consciousness. They satisfy our occasional need for an
immediate solution to suffering.
The hunters and sorcerers I know always seem to be
fighting with one another. Hunters feel that sorcerers do not
take consciousness seriously enough, but rather regress to ar-
chaic history. Hunters love everyday reality and stay there.
Sorcerers see hunters as insufficiently mystical and irrational.
They insist that hunters should have more relationship to
power, rather than only supporting everyday reality.
The seer, on the other hand, is all and none of these
types. He is the fluid individual who can act like an average
person, analyze like a hunter, dive in like a warrior, dwell in
the other world like a sorcerer, and laugh at all the other types,
because he knows that they are all just ways of being, that
none any better than the rest.
is
Who becomes which type is not a personal choice. You

need all of these abilities. Furthermore, you are all of these
types at one time or another. The relationship you have to a
momentary process is a matter of personal style and fate.
Anyone and everyone is an average person and also a bit of a
seer, a hunter, and a warrior. But who identifies as a shaman
depends upon dreams and heritage.
78 ARNOLD MINDELL
According to creation myths and shamanic stories, every
living thing has the chance for immortality. 2 Who picks up on
this chance to transcend the everyday consciousness of the or-
dinary person and when or how deeply you succeed at this
depends upon special conditions. Thus, hunter, sorcerer, war-
rior,or seer are not fixed states of being to which you must as-
sociate yourself forever. Rather each is a stage on the road to
freedom and the perpetuation of awareness.
Of course, you may tend to behave more like one state
than another. If you identify with your intelligence, you will
learn to become a great hunter and stay there. But if you are
unusual in some way, you may manage, over a long period of
time and through tremendous suffering, to become a warrior
or a seer.
Dreaming
Dreaming is a route to power for a warrior. The differ-
ence between a hunter and a warrior is that the warrior seeks
and touched by power, while the hunter knows little about
is
3
it. catches sight of the unknown and eats it while
The hunter
remaining in ordinary reality, the known world. Like many
psychotherapists today, the hunter tries to explain the power
of processes. Today we speak of the unconscious, childhood
experiences, biological conditions, dream figures, complexes,
neuroses, resistances, archetypes, and abuse issues.
The hunter explains while the warrior dives in. The war-
rior experiences power. She allows power to explain itself by
moving her to dance, cry, meditate, and yell.
"Power" is a Native American term for the vitalizing
and electrifying experience of secondary processes. For sha-
mans, the central avenue to power is dreaming, which is much
more than remembering images during sleep. It is even more
than lucid dreaming, in which you remain conscious while
asleep. Dreaming is something like Jung's active imagination,
where the dreamer encounters dream experiences on paper,
through dance, or in her head, in the form of inner dialogues
or visualizations.

The shaman's dreaming, however, involves the sense of
energy and does not revolve simply around insight or the im-
provement of everyday life. Through noticing, identifying,
differentiating, confronting, and following unusual secondary
processes as they appear at any moment, shamans have always
derived a vitality and renewed sense of themselves. That is
why shamans and healers today give you the impression that
they are connected to something infinite and ungraspable.
This reminds me of an uncanny meeting I had with an
unusual man in the high mountains of eastern Oregon. The
man had entered the run-down cafe where Amy and I were
having breakfast one morning on a road off the beaten track.
Unlike other people, he looked down at the floor and walked
slowly and surely, as if in a partial trance. I was immediately
attracted to his centeredness and, after saying hello, asked him
who he was. He responded by asking what I was doing. I told
him I was just finishing this book on shamanism and asked if
he knew what that was all about. "Oh yes," he replied, "I am a
Native American Indian and lead sweat lodges myself in the
mountains."
What a pleasure, but what a shock I had. In any case, it
seems that studying dreaming connects you to it just as train-
ing in dreaming leads to power and traditionally occurs
mainly in the wilderness. The core of the shaman's learning is
the experience of secondary processes. Remember that pri-
mary processes are experiences that are closer to your aware-
ness, events and images with which you identify or which you
intend to create. Secondary processes are further from aware-
ness and are more surprising. They can be awesome, terri-
fying, or confusing. They may be auditory hallucinations,
sudden visions, or nighttime apparitions. They can be head-
aches, pains, or unpredictable movements. Relationship prob-
lems that you cannot solve and unremitting world problems
are all secondary.
Metaphorically speaking, all of these processes happen
during the night, that is, during the darkness of the day. It
feels as if they are hurled at you or at least as if they have been
80 ARNOLD MINDELL
invited without your consent. According to shamans, such
events must be handled with the tools of dreaming, which
means going consciously into these experiences and getting to
know them from within. After you have learned to hunt and
think about yourself, you study your behavior and dreams
and begin to comprehend others. The next step is to leave the
banks of the river from which you have been observing and
get into the stream.
It is easy to describe dreaming but difficult to con-
sciously step into the stream and cocreate life with it. Before
you can abandon yourself to the unknown, you need an im-
mense amount of inner control and security. You may also
need a model of someone else who manages to do it. That is
why shamans have always learned from helpful spirits or old
master shamans. Without the help of such figures, you tend to
remain for long periods of time with the primary processes, as
if at the port on the mainland from which you sail.
It takes so much energy to master the doings of this
world that you may repress secondary dimensions of your ex-

perience. Therefore, you must "set up" these secondary di-
mensions. For this reason, don Juan teaches his apprentice to
begin dreaming by setting up dreams. He warns against sim-
ply falling into dreaming and advises approaching dreaming
consciously and willfully. Unlike the ordinary person, who is
periodically swamped by moods, illnesses, and relationship
problems, the warrior willfully establishes a knowledge of
dreamlike events. He deliberately decides when and how to
approach them, in a disciplined manner.
The shaman warns that opening up to power and learn-
ing to dream are dangerous tasks that could lead to death. If
you are unfamiliar with dream and body processes, you are
likely to find this a bit exaggerated. How can learning the
warrior's art be a matter of life and death? Why were analysts
who followed Jung always afraid that people would go crazy
if they went into the "unconscious" too early?
The answer to both of these questions is that allowing

yourself to become unconsciously submerged causes you to

"flip," to change personalities, and, hence, to die metaphori-
cally. This happens every time you get into a bad mood. When
you enter the unknown without preparation, you become pos-
sessed by moods, spirits, emotions, complexes, and symptoms.
From morning you worry about something hap-
until night,
pening or not happening and about your health and welfare.
A reader once wrote to me about these problems after he
had tried to follow suggestions in my book Working with the
Dreaminghody. He had followed the instructions and tried to
get behind the creative energy of his headaches. He was like a
hunter making the first attempts at being a warrior. He first
felt the pain in his head and noticed that it was like something
striking out at him. He picked up the energy, became the
striking figure himself, and hit a pillow. His headache im-
proved, but before he knew what had happened, he had un-
consciously identified with his father, who had violently
abused him as a child.
Then, instead of simply becoming more assertive, this
man became abusive to everyone around him. In this way, he
drowned in his process; he metaphorically died. He became
intoxicated by this new altered state of consciousness. The
state had been repressed until then and could only appear in a
symptom. But as he worked on himself alone, he lost access to
his ordinary personality and became possessed by an inner
figure. He abandoned himself to secondary processes, but not
in a controlled way. Such minor deaths are errors that are part
of the shaman's path.
On the other hand, if you do nothing but notice sec-
ondary processes and avoid them, they tend to amplify them-
selves and become destructive. Left to themselves, certain
secondary processes, such as aches and pains, become body
problems and finally annihilate your primary identity by
making you sick. Secondary processes that are ignored turn
chaotic and chronic; they confuse your communication to
others and destroy your health and well-being.
In this way, your hunter's trim and orderly life is at
stake while you hunt for power. The primary process of the
82 ARNOLD MINDELL
hunter —
that is, your respect, reserve, and exacting nature
must not disappear when you contact experiences in altered
states of consciousness. You must stay sober even while you
are in these altered states of consciousness.
When you are a warrior, dreaming is the essence of real-
ity, because you can learn to act deliberately during such times
by selecting secondary processes that lead to power. You can
touch these events and use them, whereas in an ordinary dream
you do not act consciously, but are swept along with events.
Learning to dream is not haphazard but active and delib-
erate. You consciously intervene with spontaneous experi-
ences, combining altered states of consciousness with wakeful
interventions and, above all, noticing which are primary and
close to consciousness and which are secondary and far away.
The warrior senses something unknown to her and consciously
decides to use her second attention to explore it. She feels her
way into processes, selecting events and experiences accord-
ing to the energy in them. The events that are strangest and
furthest from awareness, the most unearthly secondary pro-
cesses, are the ones with the most power.
Perhaps you can follow me best by actually trying this
while reading. Set up dreaming in the sense of finding some-
thing that is happening right now at the periphery of your
awareness. Choose those events that are most unusual. Focus
on them. Then amplify, strengthen, and support their signals
in an effort to unfold their secrets. If they are body problems,
enter into feeling them. If they are sudden fantasies, remain
with visions. If they are unusual movements or sounds, go
with them.
Remain acutely aware of what is If you find
happening.
yourself backing off from experiences, you may have reached
an edge, and your personal history may be holding you up.
—
Notice this edge that is, your hesitations and resistances to
—
what is happening and consciously decide whether to
progress or to turn back. In ordinary dreaming and imagina-
tions, impasses or edges usually go unnoticed. You avoid them
by changing subjects, waking up, or becoming distracted.

Power, the mind-altering, energizing, and enlightening
experience of your secondary process, is not entirely explain-
able in terms of your individual personality or the specific
content of a message. You always experience life in terms of
your personal self, yet the energy and timing behind processes
are uncontrollable. Energy comes to you when it will, as if
you were its channel. You can only power consciously
join
and try to use its energy to stay on the path, the river of
dreaming. The nature of this power remains a mystery whose
final explanation may never come.
Shamans dreaming
give apprentices special tasks during
in order for the apprentices to remain lucid. Don Juan gives
Castaneda the task of looking at his hands in his dreams as the
first step in learning how to dream. There is nothing special
about looking at your hands, but looking at anything in a

dream is a way of remembering your ordinary self while in the
midst of unconsciousness. To find your hands in your dreams
is to remain wakeful in the midst of dreaming and everyday
slumber, your normal waking states of unconsciousness.
If you notice that you are in the midst of a secondary
process, you can "wake up," you can apply your sec-
that is,
ond attention and complete it. Otherwise, you simply dream

and get enmeshed within that dream. Then you are in a bad
mood. Consciously dreaming means remembering your
whole self, no matter what state you are in: remembering your
good-heartedness even when you are enraged, remembering
the meaning of life even when you are depressed, remember-
ing cold soberness even when you are drunk. Dreaming or
working with secondary processes is best when you are in
these two separate states of mind at the same time. You dream
but are also aware of your ordinary self.
My brother, Carl, told me

an amusing story that illus-
trates this point. One of his meditation teachers was doing an
apprenticeship in India and found himself in the deepest and
most magnificent of trances at the ashram. Just then, his guru
walked by and abruptly interrupted his Nirvana to ask him to
show the ashram to an American tourist who had just arrived.
84 ARNOLD MINDELL
The guru was not impressed by the teacher's absorption in
Nirvana.
The message in the guru's action was that you should
not forget yourself in an altered state of consciousness. If you
do, the tools you have learned will not be available to you.
You should have your ecstatic experiences and also disidentify
from them. The first step in working on yourself alone is to
realize that you are the observer as well as the participant.
Choose when to identify with and when to disidentify with
the trip. You must remember your whole self even when you
are dreaming.
There are many methods for distinguishing yourself
from the processes you are working with in order to resist
possession. One is to bring your ordinary, everyday problems
and issues with you into your inner experiences. If you re-
member your ordinary self while in the midst of an altered
state, not only do you avoid floating away, but you can enable
the transformation of your everyday personality to take place.

This is watching your hands while dreaming.
Metaskills
Regardless of the method you use, the feelings you have

about unusual experiences seem to determine the success of
your experiences. Not only are the skills and techniques im-
portant, but the feelings with which you use the techniques
what Amy calls metaskills — are also crucial.
The most useful and special metaskill is a form of heart-
fulness: compassion for yourself and loving interest in the
things you experience. I have no idea how to learn or teach
this feeling, though I know that it is more important than any

of the other paraphernalia or skills.
This detached heartfulness is powerful in your dealing

with the most seductive of all trance states: ordinary reality.
How wonderful but how difficult it is to remember that you
are an infinite being interested in life and death during every-
day times, especially during difficult moments or concerning
relationship issues.

In such special moments when you remember your
whole you can go deep into the mundaneness of ordinary
self,
reality and enjoy its mystery. Waking up entails remembering

your whole self in the midst of trance states and problems and
making sense out of them. It does not mean being without
problems.
Everyone undergoes the cycle of discovering, being fa-
tigued, sleeping, and reawakening. The warrior, however, tries
to break this cycle by remembering his entire self at all times.
When he is in the world of daily activity, he is at the same time
on a mountaintop, just as when he is asleep, he is awake. The
skill is an ability to pick up on secondary processes, but the
metaskill is compassion for yourself and the experience.

In dreaming, it is crucial to notice what is happening and
also to sustain the view of your experience. In the martial arts,
fighting is a skill, but love for the universe that organizes that
encounter is a metaskill. The metaskill in the martial en-
counter allows everyone to win. Likewise, processwork has
skills in it, as Amy has shown; the compassion or ruthlessness
with which the work is done is the metaskill that defines the
work.
Thus the skill of dreaming is the second attention, but
compassion for yourself and your experience are the meta-
skills. You notice and work with power. Metaskills have no
pointers to them. The method of sustaining a secondary pro-

cess once it comes up depends upon awareness and amplifica-
tion, but your final ability at this depends upon your love for
the unpredictable. To work with the unknown, some combi-
nation of respect, ruthlessness, courage, and cuddling is neces-
sary. These metaskills may be different from your attitudes in
ordinary meditation procedures.
One of the important feelings or beliefs behind sustain-
ing an unusual process is the sense that once that process
comes up, it will carry you into the adventure of becoming
whole. If you have questions, the process will be its own an-
swer. If you are troubled by something, it will solve itself
without your plans. Jung said that a dream is its own best
86 ARNOLD MINDELL
interpretation. Similarly,Wilhelm Reich's theory was that the
body will correct itself. Pantanjali, one of the earliest Yoga
teachers and writers, said, "Yoga teaches Yoga." Once you
begin with your second attention, the processes that you ex-
perience become your instructors.
When you slip and do something that seems foolish,
then, instead of hating yourself for the error, try honoring the
unknown in your own nature that made the "mistake"; love
the mistake and encourage it to unfold further. If a friend says
one thing but does another, befriend the "other," but don't
forget the friend.The metaskills of dreaming will inhibit you
from criticizing your own and other's unconsciousness and
encourage you instead to enter deeper into it. Rather than ne-
glecting body symptoms and accidents, welcome them. If you
climb aboard such energies, life is richer for all. Create symp-
toms, don't just experience them. When dreams befuddle you,
hold to the dreaming process.
The shaman in you understands power as a love for the
unusual, a love that brings everything to life. Love for the ab-
surd is a transformative metaskill that turns anything and any-
body into gold. Worship not the object, but the spirit that
animates it; not the content, but the creative element in the
background.
Anything you see, hear, feel, or relate to is real, whether
or not it can be repeated. If you suddenly fantasize something,
then its pattern is there; it is trying to happen. It is your life
energy — your greatest, perhaps your only, possession.

Thus, that animal in the throes of death is real, because
this was our apprentice himself and his own routines that
were dying. This is real. The lesson of the little stick is the fol-
lowing: If you want to be a hunter, then you must have the
skills to notice when something unusual is happening. You
must study that thing. But if you want to be a warrior, you

must have second attention; not only must you catch sight of
power or feel it, you must honor and befriend its energy.
Without such an attitude, every time something un-
controllable happens, you think you made it up yourself and

unwittingly kill life-giving power by not noticing and discov-
ering the mysterious. This attitude provokes and disturbs na-
ture, which then reacts. I remember a man who suffered from
"severe hallucinations," as they were called. At that time in
Switzerland, drugs for inhibiting hallucinations were not used
as much they are today, and seeing a client in the midst of a
as
schizophrenic episode was not all that unusual. In any case,
my client was now lost in overwhelming visions, swamped by
unpredictable and terrifying monsters.
At one point in our work, he cried out, "I am the mon-
ster from the mountains," and lifted my chair, with me in it,
from the floor. I got scared, froze, and fell into the dreaming
world. I insisted that he disidentify with what was happen-
ing — basically for my own benefit. I yelled back, "I am Amy,
therapist from Zurich, ready to eat lunch!" Naturally, the
monster was not the least bit impressed and began to lift a sec-
ond chair.
My first attempt to stop the act had been a failure, but
luckily I remembered my whole self and thought that this
must be the moment to sustain the image of the monster and
befriend it. So I took a chance and yelled, "Hey there! I'm
glad you've arrived. I'll bet you have come to help my client
with his everyday life. Nice to have you with me today. You
sure are powerful!" The monster paused for a moment and
seemed to listen.
It screamed back, "Your client is a wimp, a weakling
who is afraid of his own mother!" whereupon my client broke

down and cried.
The man, now in a more or less normal state of con-
sciousness, seemed to forget his hallucinations and begged me
to help him defend himself against his mother, who had evi-
dently sexually abused him when he was a child.
"Remember the powerful monster," I pleaded to the
man in his normal state. "Do you really believe in that mon-
ster?" my client asked. "Yes," I said, "and if you intend to re-
main sane, I recommend that you believe in the monster as
88 ARNOLD MINDELL
well. Otherwise, it will getangry at all of us." The man replied
that believing in that stuff had a powerful consequence. "Now
I'll have to learn to defend myself!"
EXERCISES
1. Write a brief personal history. How do you identify
yourself right now? In what tasks are you involved? Are you
a man or a woman? With what race, religion, or group do you
identify, if any? Are you single or in the midst of a family?
2. Ask if you to experiment with being

nature will allow
a warrior for a few minutes. you are uncertain, throw a
If
coin, ask the / Ching, or imagine asking a wise inner dream

figure if you can at least be a hunter.
3. Now your path is open, and you must go further. Use

your first attention, and hunt for power. Notice what is hap-
pening, and check for something unpredictable in or around
yourself. Don't take long to do this.
4. Go ahead and catch that unpredictable thing. Now use

your second Hold this unusual experience or event.
attention.
Focus upon with your seeing, hearing, feeling, and mov-
it
ing —
as if it required the greatest respect and honor. Hold
your attention on this, carefully giving it time to live and re-
veal itself. Love it.
5. If you are unable to hold your second attention on the
unusual thing, the reason may be that you are attached to

your personal history. Go back and study what you wrote
about yourself in the first part of this exercise. Ask yourself if
this history is essential to you in the moment or if you can af-
ford to drop it for a short time. Drop your history as a war-
rior would and allow yourself to observe and experience the
unpredictable thing once again. Begin by just dropping this
history for a moment.

6. Follow the event or experience and pretend you are
the force, energy, or power behind it. Notice how your body
and mind change.
Don't forget your "hands," your everyday conscious-

7.
ness. yourself how and if this force could be used to

Ask
transform everyday reality and your personal history.
8. Now travel in the stream of events and let your

dreaming carry you.
90 ARNOLD MINDELL
CHAPTER 7
THE ALLY
As you develop
awareness.
edges going by
in your ability to
dream, typical barriers appear, inhibiting
These barriers are classical
many names. According to
hunt and
don Juan, they may be called clarity, fear, power, or

old age. To attain any degree of self-knowledge and
fluidity, you must confront these barriers.
When you start complaining about how
weird everything is you may be meeting
getting,
the barrier called clarity. The need for clarity and
understanding blocks your perception and makes
you ignore aspects of life that seem irrational,
illogical, or strange. Clarity tells you that what is
happening is too strange to be real or that it is just
91
plain crazy. Clarity, however, is only an edge, a barrier to be
overcome.
I met clarity for the first time in Mombasa, Kenya, on
when I was sitting on the floor with
the eastern Indian Ocean,
Amy bush hut of our Girami healers. Our healers, a
in the
shaman couple, went into trances and performed herbal and
surgical healings. I can still remember vividly the strange
dances and trances this couple did, especially the woman, who
screamed and rolled around on the earthen floor.The combi-
nation of their exotic language, the strange herbal potions we
had to drink, the surgical healings they performed for the
other villagers present, and the woman's telepathic ability to
visualize my "enemies" back home was so utterly foreign to
me that clarity came forth to block my experiences for a few
minutes. My mind refused to participate in the ceremony.
My studies in shamanism and anthropology helped re-
duce the barrier set up by my unconscious need for clarity. I
finally decided to allow my occasional experiences of telepa-
thy —which I had never been able to understand be my —
guide. go and allowed the effect of the mystery to lead my
I let
body along its way. The ceremony took hours. Our healers
stripped us and reclothed us as Africans in order to initiate us
into their mysteries. Their love and the awe I experienced
during those two days and nights enabled me to get around
the barrier of clarity.
Clarity no longer binds me today; whenever someone
wants to know what she is going to encounter in working on
herself, I simply admit that I do not know. I can only say that
she may want to know, but that the best way to discover what
is on the other side is to hold reservations at bay long enough
to let processes themselves disclose their own nature. Bring

clarity along. Do not fight it, but use it to define as much of
the unknown as possible.
When you start worrying about security, fear is at your
doorstep. Fear is a difficult enemy because, even if you
are using your sense of clarity, the imagined danger of the
unknown worries you. You are afraid of being hurt, run
92 ARNOLD MINDELL
down, or killed. Fear is usually wrapped up with the loss of
identity. If security is crucial to you, the unknown feels
threatening. Therefore, it is helpful to work on erasing per-
sonal history and realizing that you are ultimately more than
your identity. Losing yourself for short periods of time is not
the worst thing that could happen. It could even be a relief.
When you accept and respect your fears, you are no
longer in danger of dying at the hands of the unknown; in-
stead, you participate in your own transformation. If you
relax your previous identity before it is eliminated, you can
meet uncanny forces that are stronger than you are and learn
new things. Finally, you feel stronger.
But when your self-confidence begins to irritate every-
one around you, power may be a problem. After you get past
clarity and fear, the problem of power looms up. Power is
truly a most troublesome enemy, for you attain it without even
realizing it. When you assume that the experiences you have
are the ones that others should have, when you think your way
is more or less the only way, you are troubled by power.
Power is especially troublesome if you have had big experi-

ences. From your limited but incredible experience of the un-
known, you make maps of the path you have taken and believe
others must follow the same route. When power overcomes
you, you act wise, have answers for everything, and feel in-
sulted and defensive if others do not agree. You interpret, ad-
vise, explain, and warn, as if you, not nature, were the teacher.
Perhaps the worst side of power is inferiority. You have
such immense images of who you

ought to be that anything
less than those images depresses you. Thus, when you are not
inflated, you are depressed and miserable because you your-

self cannot follow the golden path you have determined for
everyone. Power is a dreadful enemy; it makes you lose your

humor and become increasingly depressed, serious, and
bossy.Power seduces you into thinking that you know what
should happen. The truth of the matter is that no one has any
more power than anyone else, and you have only that power
which is given to you in any moment.

Everyone remembers their moments of power and can
recall what they have been through. The voices and messages
of your way were meaningful to you and the world you lived
in at that moment. But times change, and the power of that
moment and its message may mean nothing in the next mo-
ment. Your chance for remaining connected to the uncanny
forces in nature depends upon remaining open to them and
being able to experience one moment after the next.
To get around power, try accepting it. It must be present,
because you are still not following your own rules and regula-
tions. If you try to use your power on that part of yourself
that needs a good kick, it might transform into laughter. Then
you will realize that you are your own worst apprentice but —
who cares? Finally, you start relaxing, and before you know
it, nothing seems to matter.
After you have worked with fear, clarity, and power, you
meet one of the most difficult barriers of all: old age. Old age
is truly subtle and can occur at any age. It seems to me that old
age begins with a feeling of detachment. Then, before you

know it, you get bored, and suddenly old age is upon you.
you have overcome power, when connection to
After
the world and importance to others are no longer interesting,
the greatest conflict arises. Why go on with life at all? What
for? Suddenly you are not merely enlightened but exhausted.
You feel you have had enough and done more than was
needed. How about some vacation? Why not let everyone else
care for that crazy world? This kind of old age is not detach-
ment but a subtle and chronic depression that hides a crucial
insight. You must truly die to become yourself; even your de-
tachment must die. It, too, is just another state of mind. The
exhausting kind of detachment is apathy that arises when
compulsion is past.
If the sense of old age leads to a metaphorical death,
however, emptiness can turn to creativity, and you can start to
develop a beginner's mind again. Even a near-death experience
can be a new beginning. Of the people I have worked with
who were near death, everyone who was not too severely
94 ARNOLD MINDELL
brain damaged to speak after returning from a comatose state
has behaved as if life were continuing. Many have said they
wanted to work on themselves. I recall how my mother told
me with a smile, just before she died, that she was coming to
Zurich to study. Peter, the man I report on in my book Coma,
Key to Awakening, said just before his death that I should
was going to go
take care of his wife and children and that he
on working with me.
Old age, it seems, is only an enemy when you need to
die. Once you have died, you can go on living more fully than
before.
The Ally
One of the differences between a warrior and a hunter is
that a warrior has an ally. This is the mark of the shaman.
Once you have learned how to hunt and have learned to deal
with some of your barriers, a next important step is to develop
a relationship to an ally.
According to Eliade, "A shaman is a man who has im-

mediate, concrete experiences with gods and spirits; he sees
them face to face, he talks with them, prays to them, implores
them —but he does not 'control' more than a limited number
of them." Those gods and spirits, those allies most familiar
1
to the shaman, are often dogs, bulls, colts, eagles, elk, or

brown bears. The ally may be the spirit of a dead shaman, or
it may be a minor celestial spirit. It may be called the "bush
soul" in Australia or the "nagual" in Central America or

Mexico.
To assist in his learning, the warrior must find himself
either a magical inner guru or a teacher. The psychology be-
hind this is that you need to realize and respect something
besides your present identity as your teacher. The ally is a
teacher that, while a friend of our ordinary mind, sym- is the
bol or expression of an altered state of consciousness. The ally,
you could say, is a bridge between the worlds. In shamanistic
terms, becoming whole means finding your ally and asking it
to help you find other lost or missing parts of your soul.

According to all shamans, the ally is a necessity, for it
can help you understand things that other human beings
could not possibly know. The ally can carry you beyond the
boundaries of yourself and give you a sense of friendship and
security in the world that ordinary life cannot give you.
The ally balances you and can give you a feeling of
power when you experience yourself as weak. But it can also
make you feel worthless when you are ambitious, ill when
you want to govern life. The ally is impossible and dangerous;
yet without it, life is empty. Without a conscious relationship
to an ally, all you can do is search for altered states of con-
sciousness by addicting yourself to foods or drugs.
Does the concept of the ally sound unfamiliar or strange
to you? Remember your childhood teddy bear, which kept
you company when things got rough? That toy bear was nice
to you even when no one else was. Your dolls and stuffed ani-
mals were parental allies that showed you how to love and
care for yourself when you faced the night alone. Or they
were your child allies, doing things that were naughty and
forbidden to you.
Not just the shaman, but everyone searches for imagi-
nary friends, dream figures, and outer teachers to model for
and guide them when life seems impossible. Such figures ap-
pear almost automatically when you must enter the river of
dreams. Near death, you will probably be like others and sud-
denly notice already-dead parents or friends who appear to
help you across the threshold into new dimensions. You expe-
rience parents and wise people who have died as superb allies,
especially if you loved them.

Most adults forget their allies, but many have phases of
searching for helpful outer teachers or inner spirits. Some
pray to God. A shaman or seer must have familiars, beings
that inspire and teach, speak in strange tongues, and educate
about things that humans could not know.
Allies are a part of your personal psychology, but they
seem to exist outside you as well. In fact, much of life may be
organized by something like a guardian angel. While you are
96 ARNOLD MINDELL
working at your tasks, you feel that you are doing them.
However, when you look back, you may have the feeling that
whatever you have done was done by a force other than your-
self. Don't you sometimes feel as if you would never have the
power or courage to accomplish certain jobs alone? You sense

that something like a guiding light, a helpful angel, or an ally
is behind your fate.
may appear in dreams, fantasies, and body symp-
Allies
toms. Or they may appear first after an attack from a friend or
in the midst of a difficult crisis. The most powerful allies im-
pinge upon you. You want life to go in one direction, but un-
conscious energies go in another.
Most people I have worked with discover their most
valuable allies as adults. Though I haveknown many people
who have had allies, few like to speak much about their rela-
tionship to these figures, since it is such a deep and personal
matter. Jesus was an ally of one of my healers. The ally of one
of my favorite teachers was Jung. And Jung says in his autobi-
ography that he spoke with several figures. The ancient wise
Philemon was most helpful.
figure he called
Testing the Ally
Before using their allies to help them journey into other

worlds to find the soul or missing objects, shamans measure
the value of their allies, considering coyotes and dogs to be
2
less valuable than bears, for example. The ally is a spirit that
may have power but no intelligence, perseverance but no

heart, wisdom but no feeling. The ally is not necessarily wise,
whole, or complete by itself. Know your allies.
Shamans say that a person is no better than his ally. The
problem is that few people know that they even have an ally.
Most think they have no power at all, which really means that
their powers are unconscious. Some people, however, have al-
ways had something like a spirit helper.
Do you have a spirit helper? What is your ally like? Do
you have a figure or object or body feeling from which you
seek guidance? Did your ally first appear during a crisis, when

—
you could go no further? What happened to you then? That
special help you once got —
the wisdom, strength, or cunning
might be or have been your ally. Do you still use this figure?
Get to know your deepest self, this ally, and meet it. Learn
about its strengths and weaknesses.
If your ally is a coyote, you tend to be like that animal;
you might be liar or a cheat. Don't be naive about yourself.
Some allies, perhaps all allies, inflate you. True, they give you
what you do not have in the moment. But they may also make
you act and feel wiser, tougher, better, or more enlightened
than others. They may even make you feel sick and worthless
if you are too ambitious. The nature of the ally's power causes
these effects.
Many allies, even dead spiritual teachers and guides, can-
not help you much with everyday life because they have little
interest in mundane reality. These allies look interesting in
dreams, but if untested, they take you into fantastic realms or
transpersonal flights of wonder, avoiding banal, everyday
human problems.
Sometimes, in fact, don Juan's comments sound like the
voice of his ally. This may be why many of Castaneda's read-
ers thought that don Juan was only a part of the apprentice's
imagination. Nevertheless, don Juan (or the figure called
don Juan, whom Castaneda may have put together from
many different people) has the sound knowledge of some-
one with a great deal of real experience in differentiating un-
usual and altered states of consciousness. Don Juan is even
able to look carefully at his own teacher. His teacher's ally
was the devil's weed, which made him act too powerfully,
don Juan says.
Some communities differentiate shamans into so-called
black and white types, depending upon the nature of their al-
lies and the kind of magic they are able to do. Don Juan com-
pares two allies' experiences he calls "the devil's weed" and

"the little smoke," both of which could be induced with
drugs. He prefers the experiences of the little smoke, which
leads to detachment. He tells Castaneda, who naturally falls in
98 ARNOLD MINDELL
love with the power of the devil's weed, that there is no longer
any need for the weed. Don Juan dislikes power. In earlier
times, he says, Native Americans could perform phenomenal
deeds and were admired, feared, and respected for their
power. But now, he says, the power of the devil's weed is no
longer needed. 3
Ifyou think psychologically, you can understand the ex-
periences of the weed and the smoke induced by drugs as nor-
mal states of mind that you usually go through without
identifying them as such. The people around you, however,
notice when you are possessed by the weed or the smoke.
When you feel disempowered during certain phases of
life, you seek more of the weed's power. But looking for such
power is only a momentary phase of development, for it leads

to unsustainable relationships and a community in which
everyone beats up everyone else. In any case, it seems to me
that whether your ally has the characteristic of the devil's
weed or of the little smoke is a matter of where you are in
your development. Early on, you need power and must
grow stronger to live in the world. Later on, however, you
grow tired of being forceful and need a new kind of spirit
helper, something like the little smoke that brings you heart
and patience.
The Devil's Weed

You can sense when someone is possessed by the weed
because she cannot let go of who she is and what she has pro-
duced. How many teachers do you know who, perhaps like
yourself, are possessed by theirown systems and become
blind to everything else? Yet, according to shamans, there is
no judgment about this. The only

final crucial thing is to be as
objective about your ally as possible.
Be careful about being seduced by your ally's flattery. If
your ally is like the weed, then your inner deity seduces you
and makes you ambitious. You can't stand your friends and
colleagues who are doing as well as or better than you are.
You can't wait to put them down.

The most typical characteristic of those who become ad-
dicted to the devil's weed is that they suffer from having been
hurt and constantly fight off a sense of unworthiness. They
want to be stronger for fear of weakness. They seem to be par-
ticularly susceptible to being liked or disliked by others. If
they lose a friend, they are not simply jealous, but violent.
Perhaps the real weakness they suffer is a lack of compassion
for themselves or others. Instead of developing heart, they get
tough and are attracted to tough people, which in turn makes
them feel even less loved.
While you scarcely realize that you have been seduced
by the devil's weed, that ally makes you a prisoner and addicts
you to compliments. When you don't get enough compli-
ments, you become, without the weed, wimpy and hateful.
An example of someone possessed by the devil's weed
comes to mind. An unhappy man who had been too gentle for
years suffered from a lack of aggressiveness and definitive-
ness. He found himself becoming more and more militant. As
he investigated his new powers, he became inadvertently ag-
gressive and began to disturb everyone around him. Slowly,
he came to feel tougher and smarter than others and began to
teach others what he felt they needed to know, even though
they hadn't asked for enlightenment. Finally, one day, he
sensed that something was not right and asked me, in his pow-
erful fashion, to "mow" him down. I didn't want to do this
because I him and because I did not have the power he
liked
thought I had. It was his weed telling me what to do.
In any case, there was no way out. I implored him in
vain to find his lost humility again. Finally, he pressed me be-
yond all of my limits. I lost my temper and mowed him down.
"Shut up and change!" I yelled. Though my explosion had a
great effect, I felt terrible for having acted roughly, even if
only for a moment. Immediately after I was forceful, I begged
forgiveness for having been tough on him. My sadness must

have touched him, for he changed on the spot. Several days
after the confrontation, he told me that he realized he had
been possessed by power and, of all things, thanked me.
100 ARNOLD MINDELL

This person was magnificent. Not everyone could change
so quickly.He realized he had been possessed by power, he
had the humility to change, and he said he wanted to learn
more about himself. I must admit that during times when I
have been possessed by the weed I have had no humility. The
problem with spirit possession is that those who are in it
never experienceit as such. When you are possessed, you are
moved out of your own house, so to speak. You never think

you are possessed by an ally because you are so impressed
with feeling something so powerful.
The feelings of power or worthlessness impress you so
immensely that you lack the distance to see that this state of
mind could ruin your life if untested. If you awaken and inter-
act with the weed, however, you have the freedom to use its
power as needed and then drop it. You can have access to the
devil's weed without being possessed by it. You may accom-
plish amazing feats of strength but will not identify with your
accomplishments afterward.
In all of my life I remember only one person who has
had such access to the weed's power and yet been free from it.
This was Barbara Hannah, a teacher of mine who was in her
eighties when I met her in Zurich in the 1960s. I will never
forget her using the power of the devil's weed one day during
a class she was giving. An obnoxious class participant went up
had given and asked an irritating
to her after a lecture she
question. was standing between my impossible classmate
I
and Ms. Hannah when the classmate insisted on getting her

foolish question answered.
Ms. Hannah, to my great surprise, let out an incredible
hissing sound, like that of a snake. My classmate, who had
seemed inflated to me at the time, turned pale and almost
collapsed. Ms. Hannah responded suddenly by sweetly and
quietly asking the shocked student if she had forgotten her
question. "Poor one," Ms. Hannah said, "you look pale. Shall
I get someone to take you home?" I could not believe the
change in that dreadful classmate. The next time I saw her, she
actually looked attractive, and Ms. Hannah was as nice as

could be to her. She was not possessed by the weed but had
used her power as an ally to bring about useful change.
The Little Smoke

The power of the smoke is very different from that
little
of the weed. While the weed requires power or strength, the

smoke challenges you to have heart and to think of eternity, of
the next century. If your ally is the smoke, then you worry
about everyone's future, not only your own.
There is something noble about this ally; those with it
seem to have pure hearts. The smoke neither loves nor hates;
it puts you in a mood that enables you to step out of the circle
of emotions. In Tibetan terms, the smoke is the ally that gets
you off the Karmic wheel. In fact, though the weed and the
smoke are named after hallucinogenic drugs, the moods they
arouse within you are in everyone, all the time.
The strength of the heart, regardless of its manifestation,
frees you from the turmoil and commotion of daily life; it
helps you to laugh at your own and others' foolishness. Even
more important, the smoke gives you the capacity to perse-
vere when things seem tough or when odds are against you.
The weed may give you the strength to defend yourself in
but the smoke gives you something more:
difficult situations,
detachment from the fight. It reminds you that what is hap-
pening is only momentary and that everything especially —
—
people changes like the seasons.
While the weed makes you feel responsible for every-
thing that happens, the smoke reminds you that your job is to
ride the powerful waves of change, not to create them. Both
allies are the metaskills you unconsciously use when working
on yourself. While the weed tries to push and change your be-
havior, the smoke encourages you to go deeper into it. The
weed wants permanent solutions and resolutions; the smoke
recommends seeing clearly. With the smoke as your ally, you
can accept weakness. The smoke presses you to measure
events by eternal standards. It wants to know if your life is
sufficiently human.
102 ARNOLD MINDELL

Though the attitude of little smoke is usually associated
with wisdom, age, and detachment, many young people also
have the spirit of the little smoke. I remember once running
near Mombasa on the eastern Indian Ocean. The weather sud-
denly changed, and it began to pour so heavily that I had to
seek shelter in a cave on the beach.To my surprise, sitting on
his heels in that cavewas a young Kenyan man. He smiled at
my shock at seeing him sitting there so quietly.
The man said his name was Amani, which means
"peace" in Swahili. Amani's parents had named him after the
Africans took Kenya from the British twenty-some years ago.
Amani said that I and most white people had a more difficult
time than the Africans because most white people are always
striving for something, going somewhere, needing something.
He said that the Africans had learned to be absolutely happy
over long periods of time with almost nothing.
Amani was a man of peace. He had found his own little
smoke, so to speak, and I did too for that moment in that cave
on the eastern Indian Ocean.
The Body as Ally
I have had various allies. After completing my studies in

physics and in Jungian psychology, found myself constantly
I
talking to the same two allies for years, a female and a male
spirit. The potency of my relationships to these figures showed
up constantly in my fantasies, dreams, and meditations.
Then I learned dreambodywork, and I found these vi-
sions in the feelings of my body. I learned to consult my body
as an ally, asking it what to do in certain situations. I spent
months trying to follow the unpredictable nature of my phys-
ical sensations instead of changing them. I went through un-
usual experiences while hiking for days in the Swiss Alps. Up
until that time, the early 1970s,had suffered from constant
I
colds and flus. But following my dreamingbody helped me

with this problem. I developed enormous sensitivity to the
cold and learned to intuit the wind and breezes before they
even seemed to blow. I would sometimes find myself running,

as if for my life, as my body taught me how to hide behind
trees or large rocks whenever a little breeze came up. I enjoyed
playing with the breeze, rocks, and trees, but I also appreci-
ated the resulting freedom this gave me from the flu. In fact, I
did not get a cold or sore throat for many years thereafter.
Though an ally is a source of wisdom that may appear in
your visions or auditory hallucinations, it can also appear in
other channels. This power can be found as the force behind
spontaneous dance or movement, in the wise directions of
given body sensations, or in the sense of awesomeness in the
wilderness.
What is the connection between body wisdom and ally
figures? Whereas the names you give your allies usually refer
to visual pictures or stories, like the weed or little smoke, the
appearance of the ally in the body ismore difficult to formu-
late in words. To understand the wisdom of your body, ask
yourself what drives your body. What does the "push" or fa-
tigue behind your body feel like? What does it look like?
Ask yourself what part of your body feels wisest. Try
doing this right now. Scan your body and feel the answer.
What does your body wisdom feel like? Feel it and try to
make an image that corresponds to the feeling. What does this
picture look like? See this picture located in that part of your
body. If you have a question, ask it of this part of your body,
this ally. Ask it lovingly, and wait, feel, or listen for an answer.
Or let this wise part move you just now.
Various cultures locate the seat of consciousness and
wisdom in different places of the body: the bottom of the
spine, the solar plexus, the heart, the neck, the eyes, the top of
the head. The important thing for you is to consider the possi-
bility that your greatest wisdom may be located at a certain
point in your body.
Thus, allies appear as feelings, dreams, and spirit figures,
perceived in visual, auditory, and body channels. I call the body
experience of the ally, which is essentially proprioceptive and
kinesthetic, body power. Health and fitness depend upon our
104 ARNOLD MINDELL

awareness of this body power. If you store this sense of en-
ergy in your body, it can perform incredibly.
People who have body power seem amazing to us. They
have immense and energy. Have you ever stored your
vitality
energy instead of dissipating it? Storing power means noticing
body wisdom, feelings, and the direction of energy when they
are present, using and finding secondary processes when
they happen. It means noticing unpredictable, subtle body
feelings and following them with the second attention instead
of throwing them away; and it means getting up when you are
awake and lying down when you are tired.
If you neglect the body's signals, however, then you dis-
sipate power, or negate it, so to speak, and you will be fat and
old in no time. 3 You manipulate and use energy that does not
belong to you and force yourself to do things against your
nature.
To store power, you need to notice signals and feel when
you are on track in your dreamingbody. The more you culti-
vate this relationship, the more congruent you are in what
you do. Slowly, in time, your body will begin to feel like a
dreamingbody, and you will find yourself capable of doing
unpredictable things and tasks, of having more energy than
you would ever have expected.
As the apprenticeship continues, don Juan advises
Castaneda to trust and to let out what he calls personal power
so that it can merge with what he calls the power of the night.
He tells the apprentice to abandon himself to the power of the
night, or he will never be free in his body. The darkness, he
says, problem only because Castaneda relies on his normal
is a
senses and not on his "gait of power," the same power used to
power spot. 4 The gait of power is a matter of feeling
find his
and movement. It is authentic movement and is not easy to
verbalize.
Therefore, I on your experiments with body
must rely
feelings and recommend the following. Literally close your
eyes and let your body impulses move you about. Try not to

organize movement; just let it happen. If you abandon your-
self to your body, you move in the right direction, that is,
toward personal growth. If you do not do this, your body or

ally may develop symptoms that you will be forced to follow.
If you follow your body, it is an ally; otherwise, you experi-
ence it as your opponent in need of healing. A shamanic view
of dreambodywork is that following your body is like follow-
ing the lost parts of your soul.
have often been amazed by the movement processes of
I
people suffering from chronic movement disorders such as

Parkinson's disease or multiple sclerosis. These diseases con-
body power. I remember one woman in particular
tain a lot of
who was from multiple sclerosis. Her feet thumped
suffering
uncontrollably and painfully on the floor as she tried to walk
around. When Amy and I helped her exaggerate her move-
ment, assuming it was part of her gait of power, she banged on
the floor and began to curse a friend who had been bothering
her. The more she kicked, the better she felt, and, of all things,
the better she could walk. The ally in her body was trying to
encourage her to be angry, using her disease to express itself.
In a way, when she abandoned herself to her body, it showed
her the right direction.
Body experiences are not haphazard. They are meaning-
ful. The more troublesome they are, the more they seem to be
potential allies. But most people sense their bodies only when
they are sick and they feel the body is an enemy. By shifting
attention, by using your second attention, you and everyone
around you could have the body as an ally.
If you follow your body, you move through the world as
if you knew it like a map. Body sensations are then experienced
as if they were connected to the entire gravity and electromag-

netic fields of the earth, the power of the night. The dreaming-
body seems then to be partly yours and partly the connection
to the universe. When you are in your dreamingbody, you ex-
perience its power as not belonging to any living creature.
106 ARNOLD MINDELL

I a man who was dying of leu-
remember working with
kemia. He
had been growing gradually weaker and now was
at the end of his strength. When I arrived at his house to see
him for the last time, he could hardly talk, so I laid down near
him on his bed. He was a medical doctor and knew the seri-
ousness of his situation. To my surprise, after a few moments,
he suddenly mumbled to me very quietly, out of a half sleep,
"The energy and power in my body are not going to die but
will go into my son and you." He gave me the sense that the
dreamingbody is independent of the real body and continues
after death, choosing where to go next.
Power, shamans say, does not belong to anyone. It gives
itself away when the time is right. This man's body power
wanted to share itself. Perhaps he had been thinking before

his illness that his body power, his ally, belonged only to him-
self. What we call life is an ally itself that is shared by those
closest to us.
EXERCISES
1. Work on a path barrier. If you feel impeded by some-
thing, perhaps it is clarity, the need to understand and be in
control of what is happening. Or
your problem fear, terror
is
of what you do not know? Perhaps it is power, your posses-

sion by your potential significance or insignificance. Or the
sense of being old, depressed, or detached could be hindering
your energy. In any case, choose the barrier closest to you and
work on it.
Try different ways of working on your barrier. If clar-

2.
ity isyour barrier, use that clarity consciously. Study and plan
where you are headed as much as you can. Take clarity with
you on your trip; use control during times of abandon.
If your barrier is fear, focus on the thing that makes you
afraid. Become the way you imagine this fearful thing to be. If
your barrier is power, try telling a story about your importance

or unimportance; then believe or debate with this story. Use
power to change yourself instead of others.
If your barrier is old age, greet it, let it go, and die. If you
were dead and freed from detachment and depression, what

would you do next? Now do it.
Connect with your allies. Remember a wise human

3.
figure from a dream, or imagine such an inner figure now, a

figure with wisdom. Take a moment and speak to this figure,
and make a note of the conversation. Alternatively, remember
a friendly animal you have seen in a dream, or imagine such an
animal. Can you feel this animal? What is it implying?
Feel and scan your body slowly. Where do you sense
your body's power, wisdom, or ally? What does it feel like
there? What image fits that body area? This image is a body
ally.
If you now have or ever have had body symptoms in

this area, imagine your ally within these symptoms. Feel any
changes in your body that occur when you identify with the
ally.
Imagine that you are your ally, and give your ordinary
self a message.
Finally, experiment with feeling and seeing your body
wisdom all the time, not just during this experiment. If your
personal history hinders this experiment, ask your ally to re-
move your sense of self-importance.
108 ARNOLD MINDELL

CHAPTER 8
THE ALLY'S
SECRET
The body contains many secrets, and connec-

tion to it increases
presence. Moreover,
your vitality and sense of
body awareness is a
basic element of living in the moment.
Shamans have a lot of names for body powers, such
as "luminous fibers," the "will," "magic," "healing
hands," and "journeying to other worlds." The
exact location of body wisdom is a personal matter.
You can perceive the environment with your ordi-
nary eyes, ears, and sense of touch or with other
senses of your dreamingbody. Shamans experience
this dream and body phenomenon as part of the en-
vironment. Sometimes it appears as a force in the
belly or as fibers that attach themselves to the
109
world. Sometimes your dreamingbody makes you notice it as
if it were an aspect of the world itself impinging upon you.
Normally, you occupy or use only two or three sensory chan-

nels consciously: seeing, hearing, and perhaps smelling. But
you can develop your capacity to feel as well. Then you may
develop an authentic movement awareness and connect to
others directly through your body's intent. I have met people
who can sense the world through their back, their neck, or the
center of their forehead as well as through their stomach.
To your ordinary mind, the body's acts seem haphazard.
The body seems tired, awake, nervous, aroused, sick, or ex-
cited at unpredictable and awkward moments. According to
many schools of medicine, the body is sick, wrong, and in
need of correction when symptoms appear. These schools
teach you to relax, to let go of or repress tensions and other
physical events that you cannot understand.
While these schools of thought are important to under-
stand, the dreambody message is different. It is nonpathologi-
cal. From this inner viewpoint, your body is potentially wise;
it perceives the world directly and has a will or intent. This in-
tent attaches itself to events according to the significance they
have for your overall growth and for the world at a given mo-
ment. The same energy that seems to oppose you in the form
of an illness can unveil itself as an intent, a power with a pur-
pose different from your consciousness. We have been able to
prove this experience worldwide. But you need no outer
proof, because everyone knows how the body's sudden reac-
tions can saveyou and others from life-taking accidents.
Unless you know, test, and develop this ally, however,
you cannot always use the body's power when you wish. If
social circumstances prevent you from following the move-
ments of your dreamingbody because such unusual movements
may upset others, you can always use other channels, such as
vision. You can switch back and forth between the feeling of
the dreamingbody and a visualization of this feeling to find
and follow the body's wisdom. Instead of doing something in
110 ARNOLD MINDELL

movement, you can express somatic information visually or
verbally.
I remember an embarrassing time years ago, when I was
first my practice, when I had an inexplicable urge
beginning
to touch my clients. I had felt uneasy for several hours
one of
before I allowed myself to admit that my left hand felt com-
pelled to touch my client's chest. I did not feel physically at-
tracted to the woman; was not sexual but
the impulse to touch
was had been
closer to the yearning for discovery. If the desire
to touch her hand, there would not have been a problem. But
her chest? Naturally, I didn't want to follow this impulse and
wondered what the reasons were behind it.
I thought about it and tried to repress the urge and put it
out of my mind. After a while, however, I could no longer

repress my dreamingbody, and I told my client about the
impulse.
She said that she trusted me and asked where my hand
would go. Without knowing why, I told her where on her left
breast I would touch
She was open to experimenting, and
her.
I asked her to put her own hand there. To her surprise, she felt
a lump, which she had not known was there. A subsequent

biopsy proved that the tumor was malignant. She had the
lump removed and made a complete recovery.
My dreamingbody was helpful to her in this instance.
But it may not have been as helpful if I had not tested it,
doubted it, and at first repressed it. The ally has a truth, but
this can only reveal itself completely through your wrestling
with it, making it as useful as possible.
The Last Dance

Thus the ally can appear in visions, body experiences,
the environment, or relationships. In native traditions, body
powers even withstand death. Following several native North
American traditions, after a long and complete life, the war-
rior allows his body energy, memories, and experiences stored
in the skeletal muscles to express themselves for the last time
THE SHAMAN'S BODY III

while death stands by as a witness. This "last dance," as don
Juan calls it, recalls the struggles and stories of the warrior's
life.
The last dance is the dreamingbody set free to express it-

self. work with dying people, I have seen how the final
In
processes of life occur in altered states of consciousness. Dur-
ing the last hours of life, people transcend the idea of death
and perform unbelievable acts. They put off death while
deeper and more important events arise.
Sogyal Rinpoche, in his The Tibetan Book of Living and
Dying, shows that a central part of Tibetan spirituality is
focused upon remaining aware during the altered states sur-
rounding death experiences. This book is especially inter-
esting to me. When I first encouraged people to use their
awareness and follow their body impulses near death, many
thought comatose people were more or less dead or not pres-
ent. Western thought so far has made death only as painless as
possible, not as awesome as possible. Shamans, however, fol-
low their breathing, their coughing, even the fluttering mo-
tions of their face or limbs —
their dreamingbody, or last
dance. I related in chapter 7 the case of the man who was sup-
posed to die of leukemia. The last dance I reported there put
off death to such an extent that the man came back into nor-
mal life for eighteen months afterward.
But the last dance does not always happen sponta-
neously. Without awareness, it may not happen at all. In
Coma, Key to Awakening, I speak about a man called Peter
who was drowning from pneumonia during his last hours of
life. Peter had been given an overdose of morphine so he
could die painlessly and rapidly. Amy and I worked with him
even as he choked, fully comatose, near death. We encouraged
him to believe in himself, to go on with his coughing, whether
or not it was the pneumonia he was drowning from, and to
make all the noises he wanted. After several hours, he did his
last dance. He
spontaneously and suddenly sat up straight in
the midst of the coma and stared at us with his eyes crossed.
To make the story short, he came out of the comatose state,
112 ARNOLD MINDELL

and a new consciousness arose. He talked and even sang with
us for hours. As we worked further with his cough, his sput-
tering sounds turned into aheartwarming and ecstatic song.
was the wee hours of the morning. The medical staff
It
was amazed by this man's energetic activity but also disturbed

because he was waking others. Through his noises, move-
ments, and song, Peter vented all sorts of emotions his love —
for the universe and for his friends and others. His dance
transformed and reversed his symptoms temporarily. His
throat cleared, and even his kidneys began to work again as
death waited while he completed his final dance.
Death had to stand aside and witness this incredible
human being. As
courageous wife stood by his side, his
his
real body was dying, but he had climbed into his dreaming-
body and was living and experiencing inner stories, feelings,
and myths. His dreamingbody was living as never before, and,
just before he died, he told us in a sober state that he had
found the key to life.
The last dance is more awesome than can be described
for those who have not experienced it. But the dreamingbody
has incredible powers and intent; it wants to be complete and
live as the universe lives. In my experience, this last dance may
not occur without assistance, however, just as the Indian's last

dance may no longer occur without the right sort of tribal
shamanistic environment.
Battle with the Giver of Secrets
The dreamingbody is an ally that does not always give

its message or power without a courageous encounter. Sha-
mans find the ally's secrets during vision quests in lonely,

abandoned places in nature or in other-worldly visions. This
means that you can find the ally in the wilderness, in inacces-
sible and remote spots, or in deeply unconscious and sec-
ondary processes in your life.
You can also gain access to the ally by meditating, taking
drugs, overeating, smoking, or running long distance. Don
Juan gives Castaneda drugs like the devil's weed and little

smoke to help him gain access to the ally's world and to knock
out Castaneda's stubborn, rational primary process.
All of these methods are dangerous, however; if you do
not find the ally within them, they can become addictions. In
a way, an addiction like drinking alcohol or smoking is the
ally's attempt to reach your awareness. For instance, if you get
drunk, you may gain access to far reaches of experience, even
come close to delirium or a coma, and get out of your head to
find your body ally creating poetry. But alcoholism is danger-
ous. That is why shamans have always suggested a warrior's
trainings and community support to find what they wanted
and to avoid the dangers of addictions that can eventually
wreak as much havoc as healing.
Alcohol especially is an immense problem among many
indigenous peoples, including shamans. In my experience
with such peoples, alcohol is a symptom of trying to find
dreamtime in cosmopolitan reality; it is a symptom of a loss of
rootedness in wholeness and dreaming, and of the depression
and pain of oppression and disenfranchisement. Drugs are a
means of getting around personal history and journeying to
other realms to find the missing pieces of reality. But without
carefulness, drugs become a destructive ally.
It is important to battle with the ally. Don Juan recom-
mends that, when facing the ally, you gather all your courage
and grab the ally before it demolishes you, go after it before it
hunts you. You must continue this chase until you connect
and the struggle begins. Then you must "wrestle the spirit to
1
the ground" and hold it there until it gives you power.
The battle with the ally can occur in ordinary conscious-
ness or in dreams. One of this book's reviewers had an im-
mense dream about the ally's secret. In this dream, she met
and battled an ally. She describes the dream as follows: "I was
standing by a lake, and an unusual fish rose out of the water. I
got scared because it had such a long nose. It was fat and
looked like a pig with fluorescent pink-and-yellow colors, as
if it had been painted. I batted it on the nose, because I was
scared of it, so it would go away. It went back down, and then
114 ARNOLD MINDELL

itcame back up again and talked to me. It said, 'Your problem
!'"
isthat you are too rational and need to be more irrational
The dream has special characteristics that belong to this
woman, but the bat on the nose was her battle with the ally.
She was worried at the time of the dream about her worldly
responsibilities. When she played with the colorful fish-pig in
her imagination, it complained and said that it did not want to
work. It wanted her to be a pig, make a mess, and relax.
The pig within this woman did not talk until she battled
with it in her dream. It is important that she first resisted or
hit the fish; she did not just accept it or become possessed by
it.That would have meant that she would just be a pig,
overeat, or become messy. After she pushed it back into the
water, the ally came out a second time with its secret, the real
message: Be more irrational. The power coming from the fish
was the encouragement to examine the unknown in life.
Tezcatlipoca
Don Juan's description of the battle with the ally must

be related to ancient mythical Aztec stories about a terrifying
god, the feared Tezcatlipoca. According to the Aztec legend,
the Aztecs thought that Tezcatlipoca wandered at night in the
shape of a giant, wrapped in an ash-colored veil and carrying
his head in his hand. When nervous people saw him, they
died. But the brave man seized the giant, saying he would not
let Tezcatlipoca go until sunrise. The giant begged to be re-
leased and then cursed. If the man succeeded in holding the

monster until daylight, Tezcatlipoca changed his tune and
offered wealth and invincible power if the man would set him
free. The victorious man received four thorns as a pledge
from the conquered. The brave man tore out the heart of
Tezcatlipoca and took it home; but when he unwrapped the
cloth in which he had folded it, he found nothing but white
feathers, a thorn, ashes, or an old rag. 2 The archetypal ally
Tezcatlipoca is likened to the summer sun, bringer of life. But
near the equator, the sun also becomes a killer. Tezcatlipoca
appears to us as a personal spirit, but the spirit belongs to the

universe, just as the sun belongs both to the earth and to the
cosmos.
The archetypal and most powerful ally is different from
a protective figure such as Buddha, Jesus, or a dead parent; it
is an impossible god of darkness. In the Aztec myth, it is por-

trayed as the most terrifying experience, the thing that scares
you most and that is furthest from your ability to control.
According to the legend of Tezcatlipoca, you must wres-
tle with the ally and chase it before it chases you; that is, you
need to get its secret but not become possessed by it. If the ally
is the kernel of an altered state of consciousness, a message pre-
saged in illness, irrational movements, and impulses, then

wrestling the ally means processing with it to find its meaning.
Wrestle with the sense of being possessed; pull the message out
of fearful fantasies, out of the air and down to the ground, or
you might lose precious information. Wrestle with an addiction
to get its message. Struggle with physical pain until its gives its
message. Ask the gods why they have created life as they have.
What is Tezcatlipoca's secret message? According to the
myth, it is white feathers, a thorn, ashes, or an old rag. These
gifts symbolize spiritual qualities with no immediate worldly
values. The key to life is an old rag, a feather, ashes not some- —
thing to do or achieve, but a feeling about life. In the dream of
the pig-fish with the long nose, the gift is the feeling that life is
a crazy and irrational place and must be lived in that way.
The encounter with the ally is potentially lethal. If you
have ever been terrified by a possibly dangerous illness, 70U
know what that encounter with the ally feels like. The bottom
line is death. You either get the ally's information or fear for
your life. On if you become infatuated with
the other hand,
the ally, you get carried away by it and can become addicted
to its power unleashed by a drug.
Sacrifice to the Ally
This may be why the Aztecs feared Tezcatlipoca more

than any other god and offered him blood sacrifices. They
believed he had the power to destroy the world if he so
116 ARNOLD MINDELL

wished. Every year, they chose the most handsome prisoner
to personify that god. The prisoner was taught to sing and
play the wear flowers, and to smoke elegantly. He
flute, to
was richly garbed, and eight pages were assigned to wait on

him. For a whole year, he was heaped with honors and plea-
sure. Twenty days before the date fixed for his sacrifice, he re-
ceived four young women as his wives, personifications of
four goddesses. Then began a series of festivals and dances. Fi-
nally, when the fatal day arrived, the young man was taken
with great pomp out of the town and sacrificed on the last ter-
race of the temple. The priest opened the breast of the pris-
oner with one cut of his obsidian knife and tore out the
which he offered to the sun. 3
palpitating heart,
What is the meaning of this dreadful sacrifice of the most
handsome prisoner bonded to the four goddesses (ignoring
for the moment the repellent sexism in this and other myths)?
The story must be trying to say that you need to serve your
ally god and sacrifice your worldly good looks, your success.
Since Tezcatlipoca is the sun, you must first honor or con-
sciously give to the impulse to burn, to live ecstatically. This
sacrifices a part of your ordinary self and makes you a kind of
criminal, because ecstasy is repressed in most societies. Once
you serve your ally, old parts of you die, as new parts con-
nected to transpersonal experience begin to live.
If you and do not go through this

are gifted with an ally
process consciously, the ally can you. Think of the musi-
kill
cal composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, for example. This

great man served his musical ally genius. He wrote music but
was possessed by alcohol, which finally killed him, still in his
Though no one can judge another human, I
early thirties.
often wonder what would have happened to Mozart had he
lived more with his ally and slain the good-looking, worldly
part of himself, as Aztec myths suggest. Instead, he tried to
live a middle-class, bourgeois life (though his alcoholism
made this almost impossible). Saying no to alcohol and yes
to its divine manifestation might have meant saying yes to
creativity and no to his standard lifestyle.

It's easier to speak of this battle than to live it yourself,
however. If you have ever felt inspired, you know some of the
good feelings of being driven by a powerful ally. You also know
on ordinary living and friendships.

the toll that ally takes
Meetings with allies are presaged in nightmarish child-
hood dreams in which you barely escape the monster's
clutches. Often, these early dream figures catch you, predict-
ing the crises that will occur periodically later on in life. At
every point as you continue through monsters seem tolife,
threaten your ability to adapt by provoking behavior that

seems unacceptable. There are the crises of your school days,
when the ally makes you act more complicated than your
school system or parents wish. Then there are your twenties,
during which you tussle with choosing a profession; the ally
is always convinving you to change professions or choose
one that seems unrealistic. The ally is there again in the
crisis of midlife, threatening to overturn your whole life,
disturbing relationships, and throwing life into apparent con-

fusion. Finally, in old age, the demon appears again, making
you irritable and impossible, reducing your tolerance for
worldly pursuits, and meddling in the affairs of friends and
relatives.
Again and your moods and dis-
again, the ally appears in
turbs relationships. Since your problems come from other di-
mensions, you never feel that you are the cause of your
troubles. But others think you are. You, meanwhile, insist that
they are the difficulty.
Your most ancient human task is to recover everything
that makes you whole, to find your soul, to discover your
demon. This means noticing where that demon is and then
processing its uncanny energies. Remember the woman with
multiple sclerosis I mentioned in chapter 7? If you think of
the body problem as the ally, the message to this woman was
to be unpredictable, to express all her feelings. Because she
was courageous, she could do this. To seek the ally's secret
and find the key to existence before you are driven to madness
or illness takes a lot of courage.
118 ARNOLD MINDELL

The ally, the ghost that spooks you, is more than your
personal demon. Like Tezcatlipoca, the ally is a cosmic star, a
universal deity, something in the atmosphere everywhere. It is
in your family, your group, and your nation. The ally is a ne-
glected collective spirit. It is the outlaw, the shadow of your
whole community, that aspect of culture that will not abide by
the present system.
Thus, the demon is everyone's disorder, but also every-
one's potential future renewal. It acts out an important role in
the world, a role typically missing in culture; it is the mad
you, the perverted you, the ecstatic you, the rebel, the suffer-
ing and wise you. From earliest childhood, you have dealt
with not only your personal demon, but the world's most un-
acceptable psychology. The battle with your personal ally is
simultaneously global work.
The gods and spirits are not only yours but everyone's.
You suffer from fantasies and body problems that not only
plague you, but are found in everyone's dreams about the
same time. Your suffering is the mythic conflict between the
spirit of the times in which you live and the unknown demon
of renewal. That is why, if you are a successful warrior, your

battle not only turns the demon into a helpful adviser but will
relieve the atmosphere around you. As you forge your own
basic nature anew, you change the world, a shaman who bat-
tles with demons to protect her community.
With each battle, you come closer to something eternal,

and dropping your personal history becomes easier. The ally
demands not only momentary change, but a total reappraisal
of your personal identity and worldview. Your gods and god-
desses demand that you accept your mythical nature and un-
dertake feats that you think should be left to the gods.
Remember Peter, the dying man I mentioned earlier in
this chapter? As he came out of his coma, he yelled, again and
again, "I have found the key to life!" Amy and I never did
completely understand what that key was, but the last dream
he had before dying gave us a hint. In that dream, he was lost,
but he found his way by following the gigantic footsteps of a

mythic figure through the snow. He was following the foot-
steps of his ally through the unknown, across the threshold of
physical life. The ally, appearing in the gyrations of his own
incredible dying body, was showing him the way to eternity.
EXERCISES
1. When you feel ready to work with the ally, consider
the events in your life that have been most difficult, terrifying,
baffling, or blocking.
2. Choose one such difficult accident, symptom, rela-

tionship problem, or nightmare.
3. Study the threat. Feel its nature. Focus upon it. What
does it feel like to be its victim?
4. Now prepare for a switch. Experiment with leaving
your old victim identity behind for a moment and stepping

outside the problem. When you are ready, experiment with
becoming the creator of your problem. If it was an accident,
feel or imagine a powerful force or ally that could have cre-
ated it. symptom, feel or imagine the nature of a spirit
If it is a
that created the symptom, whose power you have been feel-
ing,and then imagine being that spirit. Feel the symptom
maker, andmake a picture of it. Try creating a human face. If
your problem is a relationship difficulty, imagine or feel some
being that could make this relationship so difficult. Paint or
draw this spirit; play it or ask a friend to play it for you.
5. When you are ready, confront the spirit. Get its mes-
sage. Wrestle with the ally by questioning it as you play it.
Feel its message, and find out what aspect of yourself, if any, it
opposes in your personal life. Can you change in some small

way? Can you sacrifice or transform your personal life to in-
corporate the power of this demon so that it is your ally?
How could the ally eventually enrich the culture in which you
are presently living?
120 ARNOLD MINDELL

6. Feel the energy of the ally, and imagine employing it
usefully in a worldly task right away.
Take some time to get ready to sing and dance. Finally,

7.
get the ally to danceand sing. Move with its energy, getting it
to make sounds in accordance with your movements. Get it to
sing a song with words. Don't forget to record its song. After
all, if you have gotten this far, you have wrestled the ally to
the ground and found its secret.

CHAPTER 9
THE DOUBLE
Gradual place as
changes in your identity take
you work on yourself patiently
for years. You get to know your moods;
your problems transmute as their origi-
nal apocalyptic visage takes on a more human form.
During this time, you become more creative and
live closer to your body energy and dreams. It al-
most seems as if your ally has disappeared, or at

least it shows up in your dreams in less dramatic
forms. Sometimes it even bears resemblance to you.
This transformation of you into the ally and
the ally into you is a product of increasing congruity
and wholeness, foreshadowed in the Aztec myth of
123
Tezcatlipoca. The name Tezcatlipoca means "smoking mir-
ror. " The ally's mirrorlike aspect is that he reflects the face
that fights him. Thus, the ally is the forerunner of the dou-
ble —the picture whole self; the dreaming-
of your eternal,
body with your face.
Now you can see why hunting and warriorship play
such prime roles in the works of many modern authors on
shamanism. The central focus on warriorship today is not due
to history, because shamans and indigenous cultures did not
focus intensely upon
this aspect of spiritual life. The term
"warrior" does not even appear in the index of Shamanism,
Eliade's seminal work!
The momentary emphasis upon warriorship is connected
more to the period you are living in than to ancient times. As
you move toward a new century, you are confronted with
greater diversity than your tribal relatives had to deal with in
their ethnic groups. You no longer live in an ethnically homo-
geneous tribe. Your present culture is more diverse than any-
one would ever have guessed possible. You are faced with the
approach of a global village without having learned how to get
along with one another. We seem unable to avoid racism,
poverty, homophobia, harming the environment, crime, and
other issues. No one can repress diversity issues. Hence, your
unconscious fascination with war and also with warriorship.
But the outer dimension of your predicament is internal
as well. Racism, for example, can only arise in an individual
who has cut himself off from the color or nature of others
within himself. White people of European ancestry need to
affirm the nature of all those whom they colonized. People of
the Americas are one-sided without recognizing the Native
American spirit in themselves; Australians are like rootless
trees without connection to aboriginal life. You are inadver-
tently racist if you only accept one side of yourself. You can
try to ban others from your concept of the world, but you
won't succeed this way with your own soul. Just think of it:
Australians only recently gave aboriginal people the right to
124 ARNOLD MINDELL

vote. And many so-called modern people still think shaman-
ism and indigenous groups are savage. These prejudices create
splits, tensions, and fascinations in war and warriorship.
As you grow wiser, you find yourself becoming more
concerned with people whom you have repressed. New con-
flictsmay arise, within you because of the parts of life you
have repressed. You need and needed warriorship, but once
you have met your ally, you come together, and it seems as if
warriorship were only a phase of life for you. Perhaps with-
out ever having noticed this phase, you freed yourself and
picked up parts of yourself that you were not ready to admit
earlier in your life.
From the present vantage point, the battle with the ally
has been a battle with yourself and with a part of your culture
that has been repressed. Now, as your fascination with war
abates, you wonder why everyone else seems to be so pos-
sessed with power issues.
As your innerwork, discipline, courage, and steadfast-
ness transform into a new work, you find yourself less at war
and more at harmony with the inner world that you reflect. In
fact, before you know it, you begin to develop a double, as
your outer appearance begins to match your inner one.

Modern literature on consciousness has not paid suffi-
cient attention to the study of the double, and so it is a plea-
sure to begin here with the double's empirical nature and the
stories of the shaman guru don Genaro.
The Double and Double Signals
Have you wondered why you may dream of an ani-

ever
mal or weird situation after having been upset by some inter-
action at work or with a friend? A shaman's view of this
dreaming process would be that neither you nor your friends
are themselves. You are all animals or weird-looking beings.
Likewise, when don Juan helps Castaneda call up images
of his friends through the use of fantasy, all of Castaneda's
friends appear as symbols, such as mushrooms, tigers, or

other animals. Don Juan says that these figures represent the
friends' allies.
In other words, fantasies and dreams of your friends are
images of their essential but unintegrated nature. You are
going into dreaming dimensions to actually see what was
missing from or happening in reality. You just did not know
Thus, your dreaming sees your friends' unconscious, their

it.
secondary processes, in the symbols or dreamlike figures that

govern their actions.
In a way, you are always dreaming about the hidden
powers behind everyday life, behind surface reality. Dreams
depict disavowed aspects of the world. In ordinary reality,
—
you do not focus on these aspects rejected selves and unrep-
resented, hidden aspects of the environment.
However, you may have a friend who is her real self in
everyday life. She actually behaves the way she is and thus
appears as herself in your dreams. Castaneda, for example, is
shocked to discover that one of shaman mentors does

his
not appear symbol in his
as a fantasies. Genaro appears to
Castaneda as Genaro himself. Castaneda is so stunned that
don Juan tries to calm him down by explaining: Genaro is
now his "twin." There is no possible way to decide whether
he is real or not, yet Genaro's double, according to don Juan,
is just as real as the man himself. Genaro's double, in fact, is
1
the self, and this explanation should be sufficient.
This explanation would suffice if you were a practicing
and enlightened Taoist. But you. probably identify yourself
with the time, space, physical body, and doings of Western
culture. When the shaman explains that Genaro is neither real
nor unreal, neither a dream nor reality, neither dead nor alive,
he means that the sorcerer identifies himself as much with the
spirit that moves him as he does with the world. There is no
longer a difference between the two. He is at once real, unreal,
and neither.
If someone is his total self, you him
see as himself in
your fantasies and visions. That is why Genaro in dreamland
looks as he would on the street: He is whole. How did Genaro
126 ARNOLD MINDELL

get to be this way? He could just be congruent. Or he might
have been in therapy for years. Or other shamans may have
journeyed into forgotten realms to find split-off parts of his
soul. Perhaps he simply inherited the shamanic spirit and no
longer acts one way while feeling another.
In terms of processwork, you normally identify with
primary processes and disavow secondary ones. You develop
edges against your secondary experiences. If you were hurt as
a child, parts of your childlike nature are split off and appear
only in dreams. If you were handsome or beauti-
afraid to be
ful when you were no one
a teenager, or wanted to dance
if
with you, the teenager may have left your conscious mind and
gone into another world. You may have put all of your animal
nature away if the people who brought you up were afraid of
their own instincts.
you end up split into parts. These parts are
In any case,
in the underworld or the celestial realms, as shamans have dis-
covered. Today we also know that they are present but dis-
avowed parts of themoment. They appear in your body
signals, even if you are not conscious of them and if others
cannot make sense of your double signals, that is, the behavior
with which you do not identify.
For example, if your childhood was difficult, you will
repress your childlike instinct and whine and complain in-
stead of playing. If you repress these signals, your friends
become confused and dream about these signals as childlike
figures to which you feel unconnected. Hence, you can ap-
pear in others' dreams as a baby, a fairy, a monster, a business-
man, or a guru, depending upon what you disavow at a given
moment.
Your dreams and body signals give you a chance to find
yourself again. Dreams display parts of the world that you
can learn to recognize inside yourself and also in your friends.
Consider the possibility that your experiences, fantasies,
dreams, and body sensations, all aspects of the dreamingbody,
are specific to a given environment and moment in time. In
this way, awareness means not only personal innerwork but

outerwork as well. Awareness means waking up to the nature
of the world around you.
An example of how this may work comes to mind. Amy
and I decided to experiment with being our whole selves with
a mutual friend, Rachel. We each took the task of recognizing
our own double signals and then living them, of living our
dreamingbody.
As we began, Rachel found herself flirting. She used her
second attention on herself and focused on signals that
seemed like flirting to her. She experimented, flirted, and
made eyes at me. Meanwhile, Amy, who was studying her
own signals, found her shoulders moving. She too used her
second attention, held these movements in her consciousness,
and began to allow them to unfold. She followed her arms,
which were trying to flap, and suddenly she became a wild
bird. Amy screeched at Rachel for flirting, making us all laugh
uncontrollably. We were people, but we could just as well
have been three birds working out a relationship conflict.
We recovered from our laughter, and I tried to find out
what was happening with me. I noticed that I was trying to act
as if nothing disturbed me. Then I found myself pulling my
head in and realized that the two women had frightened me.
Getting into my double, I ran away from them both, scream-
ing for safety from their powers. Again, we all broke into
laughter.
When I asked myself what I was running from, I real-
ized that it was not only their power but my own neediness. I
felt undeserving of all their attention and was afraid to ask for
it. Itook courage and asked for help. I had problems of my
own and asked them to help me with them. The two women
did the same sometime afterward. By getting into our double
signals, we were congruent for that moment. We were living
our doubles.
Fields and Projections
You may ask if you are just dreaming or projecting your

own inner images onto your friends when you dream of them.
128 ARNOLD MINDELL

The answer to this is yes, a projection occurs every time
something inside of you finds an outer object to hang itself
upon. But, whereas projection is an idea coming mainly from
individual psychology, the double is a field concept. If a cer-
tain image is in the field around you, then you find it in your
dreams, and others may dream or experience it as well. Field
concepts are shared experiences, so to speak. They are prod-
ucts of your personal psychology and of the psychology of
others around you, but they are more than that. They belong
to the entire field.
Your double can be located in a certain space and time,
but from the outside, it may seem parapsychological. Others
may see you anywhere on earth. If shamans knew physics,
they might say that you were yourself and yet also a part of a
universal quantum field.
The simplest way to develop a double is through your
dreaming. In your dreaming world, you can put the parts of
yourself together. In process terms, you arrive at the double
by becoming aware of secondary processes, noticing dream-
like experiences during waking life, and sensing and living the
energy of impulses and figures until they become you. Don't
wait until the night to dream; dream now, and dream con-
stantly. This is a matter of awareness in feeling, moving, see-
ing, hearing, and relating.
Notice how you are trying to act; then notice if any-
thing else is happening, and if it is, step into it. The big prob-
lem is stepping out of your old identity and into the
—
dreaming process stopping the world, so to speak. As you
develop awareness of your feelings, let your body sensations
direct your behavior. This is developing the double through
dreaming.
The connected you are to yourself, the more you
less
make teachers and gurus out of people who are connected to
themselves. You describe them as wise, terrifying, loving, and
powerful. When you experience such body powers yourself,
you tend to think of them afterward as unusual trips. But
while you are living your dreamingbody, you do not feel

awesome, terrifying, or powerful. You just feel well, present,
and at home.
The double becomes real for you when you live your
secondary processes and get around doubts and hesitations.
Take responsibility, and live what you perceive and experi-
ence, regardless of what others might think.
Stepping Out of Time

You may appear to step out of time and even seem to ap-
pear in two places at once. Don Juan explains to Castaneda
that a warrior who is on ordinary time,
fluid does not focus
The warrior
since he does not experience himself as an object.
only notices afterward that he has been in two places at once.
This has been only "bookkeeping"; it has not influenced him
while he was acting fluidly.
Don Juan says that, for the warrior like Genaro, there is
only one process. Only the outsider thinks the warrior is in
the midst of two different episodes. The warrior notices only
afterward that he has had two separate experiences, "because
the glue of the description of time is no longer binding."
This is a highly differentiated understanding of percep-
tion and sounds more like modern psychology than ancient
shamanism. Or perhaps we are beginning now to integrate the
worlds. In any case, a parapsychological event may be seen
from two viewpoints. Magical events can be experienced in at
least two ways: by the outside observer and by the shaman
living them.
As an outsider, you live in ordinary time and space, in a
given social or community context. You behave like everyone
else. Your intention and identity belong to that time and area.
When you look secondary processes, since you do not par-
at
ticipate in their flow, they appear symbolic, strange, and erratic.
You see your own acts as events outside the rules of normal
behavior; they break social codes and even the laws of time and
space. As an outsider you think that you are either a warrior
who has a physical body located in a given place at a certain
time, or you are a projection or a figment of the imagination.
130 ARNOLD MINDELL

Since you act as if you only see "real" bodies,you think
that you must be a spirit who can step out of your body and be
in two places at one time. That is why Castaneda thinks he sees
Genaro in one place when Genaro is in another. He assumes
that Genaro must have developed a double. If Castaneda were
—
with Genaro, inside the experience if he could participate
—
and step into the river of dreams he would realize that
Genaro is simply real wherever he is experienced.
If you are in your dreamingbody, then everything is real,
and you feel life is as it should be. If, however, you are in a
normal state of consciousness, identified with your primary
process and the doings of the everyday world, then you are
shocked and amazed when some of your dreams seem real,
and you call them synchronicities, or doubles. Likewise, you
think others who are congruent are also magicians.
In one story in Tales of Power, don Juan and Castaneda
try to escape from a friend of Castaneda's who wants to meet
don Juan. Outside a modern office building, don Juan gives
Castaneda a shove between his shoulders and sends him reel-
ing through the office, through space and time. The shove dis-
orients Castaneda to such a degree that he travels backward in
time to a marketplace on the previous Saturday and wanders
through scenes that had happened then. He actually witnesses
events that took place a week earlier in a place he had never
been.
Though improbable, going backward in time is possible,
according to the rules of physics. Antimatter is same as or-
the
dinary matter, but it is short-lived. Richard Feynman, a Nobel
Prize-winning physicist, developed a theory of antimatter
that reminds me of don Juan's double. Feynman had two sto-
ries of what happened to an electron in a field: the insider's
and the outsider's stories.
Feynman's outsider theory states that when an electron
enters a magnetic field, new parts of matter are temporarily
created. A new electron and its antimatter double, a positron,
appear. Next, all three particles —
the old electron, together
—
with the electron-positron couple travel forward in time

together until the positron, or double, eventually annihilates
the original, old electron within the field. Meanwhile, the sec-
ond, new electron continues on outside the magnetic field.
Mo one notices, of course, that this electron is any different
from the original one. These creations and annihilations are
something like a story of being killed by your double and
then being reincarnated.
Feynman used a second story to also explain what hap-
pened to the original electron, a story without extra creations
or annihilations. He used an insider's viewpoint. He said that
the first electron was fluid. Tnstead of getting annihilated by
its ally, it could become a fluid warrtor, notice trouble coming,
and change. It could become its own double and travel back^
ward in time. From this perspective, you don't need concepts
like matter and antimatter, but niujt consider
tliat an electron
in a magnetic field can go backward in time and then forward

again. The electron becomes temporarily paranormal, that is,
free of time and space.
Thus, acts like feeling yourself going backward in time
are equivalent to living like antimatter in the quantum me-
chanical world. You either bump into your ally or step out of
time and become eternal. In ordinary life, you might appear to
others as if you were part of a mysterious, parapsychological
event. If you have a double and are a warrior following your

dreamingbody, such stories are normal.
Living the dreamingbody is simple: You do it sponta-
neously if the courage to follow what you feel and
you have
improvise comes. Yet for the ordinary observer who
life as it
does not sense the dreamingbody, and who is therefore on the

outside, anything that does not correspond to consensus real-
ity is an awesome, incomprehensible sorcerer's act.
The chance to experiment with the double and step out
of time and space, out of your primary processes, presents it-
self any time you begin to unusual or any time you are
feel
caught in the midst of a situation that excites you. Loaded,
tense, or complex situations split you into parts.
132 ARNOLD MINDELL

Consider, for example, walking at night along a dark for-
est path or speaking in front of a large group of people. These
activities separate you into parts. One
part identifies with
your shy or scared self, and another connected
is to imagined
malevolent, evil forces in the forest or critical people in the
group. Naturally, you disidentify and disavow the malevo-
lent, powerful side of yourself. A shaman, however, applies
her second attention to this force to find out more about it.
In any case, you suddenly find yourself being two things
at once: the victim and the critical, menacing figure. While the
average you becomes split, disavowing the evil forces and the
dreams and double signals about them, the aware you becomes
both parts, first one and then the other. As a shaman, you let the
world provoke or direct you. You remain your normal self, en-
joying the evening walk until your fear comes up. Then you
notice this fear, apply your second attention, perceive the mon-
ster, and behave unpredictably You might become the power-
ful monster and start growling instead of splitting off the

monster. Or you might start running for your life, letting your
body take you wherever it wants to go. An outside observer
would notice that you are breaking the rules of normal behav-
ior and think you are hilarious, mad, or parapsychological.
I once heard a story about a meeting of the American
Humanistic Psychology Association. Abe Maslow was con-

ducting the meeting. Suddenly Fritz Perls was seen crawling
under the table at which Maslow was sitting. "Papa, be nice to
me, please be nice," Perls whimpered from the floor, while
pulling on the leg of Maslow's trousers. Perls was living his
double, following the will of his dreamingbody. Yet his little
child role must also have been a part of the group atmosphere
that was not represented.
Large group scenes create complex fields. This may be
why you tend to avoid large groups, for they bring up aspects
of yourself that you want to avoid.
Dying people seem to automatically get into their dream-
ingbodies and travel through time and space. I was able to

substantiate this with a Swiss client who told me several days
before he died, while we were sitting together in Zurich in the
1970s, that he was in Hamburg at a stoplight on a certain
street where there was a traffic jam. I called a friend I knew in
Hamburg and discovered that there was a real traffic jam on
that otherwise quiet street at that moment. From the out-
sider's viewpoint, the dying man was in Hamburg and also in
Zurich. He was in two places at the same time. From his view-
point, he was living in his dreamingbody. At one moment he
was with me, and at another he was in Hamburg.
Secondary processes, like dreams, may be linked to the
entire world. Your personal life is not only personal. From the
outsider's viewpoint, you suffer from dreams, body problems,
neuroses, and relationship and world problems. But from the
insider's viewpoint, you are everywhere at once and have the
chance to step out of space and time and be anywhere, at any
time.
The ordinary way you live is probably on a path without
much heart. It mercilessly carries you about as a piece of life-
less matter. You kick yourself about as well, pushing yourself
unconsciously, acting as if you determine your own fate. The
path of heart, however, is illuminatedby the warrior's view-
point. When something new comes up, the warrior intensifies
it, tightens himself, and steps out of his prescribed venue to
avoid time and perhaps even death.
Dreaming the Self
Don Juan calls the act of developing a double stopping

the world, stepping out of the identity you have. He says that
your ordinary dreams the double. However, once you
self
have learned to dream the double, things reverse, and you re-
alize that, actually, the double dreams the self. You yourself
are a dream, because the double is dreaming you, just as you
normally think you have dreamed it. 2
You normally identify yourself with the everyday self,
your primary process, because your personal history and
identity are important to you. But the more you become
134 ARNOLD MINDELL

aware of secondary processes, the more it becomes possible to
stop your normal identity. In the moment you do that, your
dreamingbody becomes the base reality, which seems to dream
up your ordinary world in order to realize itself.
You know that your dreamingbody, or your double, re-
ally creates what you experience as ordinary life, trouble, and
body symptoms, because you dream up problems when you
get bored. You have no other way to announce who you are
except to disturb yourself and limit yourself with ordinary
life.
In his autobiography, Jung tells of an encounter he had

with the double just before his death.
I had dreamed once before of the problem of the self (i.e.,
double) and the ego. In that earlier dream I was on a hiking
trip. I was walking along a little road through a hilly land-

scape; the sun was shining and
had a wide view in all direc-
I
tions. Then came to a small wayside chapel. The door was

I
ajar, and I went in. To my surprise there was no image of the
Virgin on the altar, and no crucifix either, but only a wonder-

ful flower arrangement. But then I saw that on the floor in
front of the altar, facing me, sat a yogi — in lotus posture, in
deep meditation. When I looked at him more closely, I real-
ized that he had my face. I started in profound fright, and

awoke with the thought: "Aha, so he is the one who is medi-
tating me. He has a dream, and I am it." I knew that when he
awakened, I would no longer be." 3
Jung explains that his dream represents "his unconscious

,,
as the generator of the empirical personality. He says that
this dream showed a reversal of reality. Rather than see life
from the viewpoint of the normal identity, the ego, this dream
shows that the ego is the dream of the unconscious. He says,
"Our unconscious existence is the real one and our conscious
world a kind of illusion, an apparent reality constructed for a
specific purpose, like a dream which seems a reality as long as
we are in it. Unconscious wholeness therefore seems to me
. . .
4
the true spiritus rector of all biological and psychic events."

The spiritus rector, the guiding spirit of life, is what you
are when you identify and step into a secondary process.
Then you your double, the maker of dreams, body life,
are
and uncontrollable world events. Jung's spiritus rector, your
dreamingbody, and the shaman's double dreamed up the
world we all live in.
EXERCISES
Close your eyes and imagine that you are dreaming
1.
about your friends, one after another. Who are these friends?
Which ones are themselves? Which are animals, trees, chil-
dren, or dragons?
Recommend to your friends that they experiment with
acting like the animals or other images in your dreams and fan-
tasies. After the experiment, ask them how close your images
are to aspects of themselves that they have not taken seriously.
Discuss with them how your imagination of them is a shared
altered state of consciousness that you also have within you.
Develop your double. Ask a friend to sit with you and

2.
to close her eyes and dream or imagine who you really are.
Now, as an experiment, try to become the person in your
friend's imagination. Discuss afterward how close her vision
comes to your reality. How close is her vision to what is
needed in the relationship between you?
3. Develop your double in public. What sorts of outer

situations or fields upset you or get you into emotional trou-
ble? Re-create the outer scene in your imagination or with
some friends. Now notice how you are trying to behave, and
also notice which feelings you are rejecting. Instead of letting
these feelings make you incongruent, let the rejected feelings
move you to speak, dance, or sing. Get into your dreaming-
body, and become a role in that field. Is this role needed in
some way by everyone? Is it a missing spirit? Now set this up
and practice it the next time you are in public.
136 ARNOLD MINDELL

CHAPTER 10
THE PATH
OF HEART
The in
dreamingbody begins
everyday life
to manifest itself
with training in awareness,
picking up unusual movements, and feeling
strange. In time, awareness skills work al-
most automatically. You find yourself more lucid

and awake even while you are engaged in the most
mundane of activities, such as sleeping, shopping,
talking with friends, working, and so on.
But then something unexpected happens. As
you become more lucid, you may find yourself for-
getting those awareness skills that you worked so
hard to learn. You now have times when you are
simply wakeful. Something fogs out the memory of
how you arrived at the present place of awareness.
137
—
This development is typical in many psychological and spiri-

tual traditions.
Zen succinctly explains this development: Before Zen, a
mountain mountain; during Zen, a mountain is no longer
is a
a mountain; and after Zen, a mountain is a mountain again. In
other words, before you begin your awareness training, life is
—
normal either full of trouble or just fine. Suddenly, you are
aware of dream figures and ghosts, of unconscious and con-
scious parts, of your secondary and primary processes. Every-
thing contains hidden messages and meanings. The world is
full of parts, complexes, shame, repression, childhood pain,
allies, signals,and abuse. You must be a warrior to survive.
You discipline yourself and lead a tight life.
Finally, after Zen, there are no longer any hidden mean-
ings; the world is itself again. At this stage, there seems at
times to be nothing to think about. The drive to understand
the world as composed of things and parts soul and body —
diminishes. You forget about being a hunter, a warrior, and
even that incredible ally. Instead, you experience only periods
of ongoing awareness. You learn through your feelings and
intuitions to be more congruent. You go back and forth be-
tween the worlds without calling them separate. You even
wonder why others speak of separate realities, of individual
and environment, of human being and nature, of conscious
and unconscious. Sometimes you even think that others are
wrong and that you have seen the light.
But you must be careful. The next step in the Zen story
should read, "and the mountain crumbled and had to be re-
created again." If you are not going to be wrecked by the bar-
rier of old age, the training has to start all over again. It is easy
to see how lucky an apprentice is to have found a master, but
you should also remember that the master is lucky to be trou-
bled by the stubborn beginner. Left to himself, a good teacher
never seems to have the energy to reveal the crucial details of
his discoveries, the necessary overview and compassion that
help others. The apprentice forces the teacher to begin again.
138 ARNOLD M I NDELL

I love to think of Lao Tsu, the legendary author of the
Tao Te Ching, that ancient and core classic text of Taoism.

According to legend, a town's gatekeeper stopped Lao Tsu as
he was leaving the city in advanced old age and begged the an-
cient master to write down his wisdom. Without the struggle
between the gatekeeper and the Taoist master, we would not
have the teachings of the Tao Te Ching today.
Old age is a barrier unless you are a curious and stub-
born beginner who constantly wonders about fundamental
questions and the overall meaning of life. Don't you often ask
yourself, What is the meaning of life? What is this world all
about? Though there are no general answers, still there are
guidelines, depending upon the school of psychology that in-
terests you, the spiritual tradition, race, and religion.
One answer from the world of the shaman is that life is
about ecstatic journeys into other dimensions. It is not only
about solving problems or finding lost souls out there. That is
good enough. But it is really more. For a shaman, life itself is
an ecstatic journey, full of trance, ascent to celestial realms,
and battles with the underworld. Life is about the adventure
of altered states. At the same time, it is the greatest detective
mystery there is.
Mirroring many Native American traditions, don Juan
answers questions about what life is all about by the "path of
heart."As his teachings draw to a close in A Separate Reality,
don Juan drops the jargon and paraphernalia of warriorship
and centers upon shamanism's bare essentials, the feelings or
metaskills behind the work and not just the tools of shaman-
ism. He advises Castaneda that, upon returning to his every-
day he will be confronted by important problems and
life,
will no longer be able to live as he previously has lived. A war-

rior needs an overview. He needs much more than skill; he
needs wisdom to continue living and dealing with the prob-
lems of everyday life.
Don Juan recommends finding and following the path

of heart. Any process you follow is just one of many possible

paths. Therefore, you must remember that "a path is only a
path." If the path you are on feels wrong, then you should feel
free to drop it. Every path is relative, and knowing whether to
stay on or to leave your path requires clarity and self-
knowledge. Your heart will tell you when it is time to leave a
path and when it is time to stay on it. 1
The Old Path
Sometimes you continue with old paths, even when

your heart tells you not to. You may be staying on a path be-
cause it is the only one you know. Out of fear, you dare not
think of yourself as anything but a daughter, son, partner, fa-
ther, mother, executive, housewife, or student. Fears of new
roles, financial insecurity, and even closed-mindedness to new
experiences keep you from significantly changing and living
your dreamingbody in the world. You feel obliged both to
yourself and to others to maintain the personal history you
have created. Personal history is a prison that you seem to
have created for yourself.
Another drive you stubbornly on a path is
that keeps
ambition. You may be convinced that the path you have cho-
sen will not succeed, yet you feel it must. Thus you spend
most of your time trying to achieve success on the path even
when the effort is agonizing. In addition, you stay on these
paths not only because of pride and hope for success, but be-
cause you believe that you alone must create success, even
when your heart tells you that something feels wrong. You
know that life is trying to redirect you, but you cannot listen.
You may also stay on your chosen path because you feel
tired and finished. You have been through so much already
that changing paths at this point seems impossible. Together
with depression, exhaustion convinces you that nothing mat-
ters, that the world situation is hopeless and will never change.
Discipline
Western psychologically oriented teachers say that you

need a strong ego to make important decisions about your
140 ARNOLD MINDELL

lifeThe shamans say that you need a disciplined life to deter-
mine whether a path is right or not. There is a crucial differ-
ence between Western and Eastern teachings, between what
you might call modern European and aboriginal or spiritual
thinking.
Psychological and spiritual systems require either an ego
director, which determines what should happen, or a disci-
plined awareness, which notices what is happening. Systems
based upon the development of ego consciousness stress sta-
bility and individuation. Self-knowledge is the core. Indige-
nous systems stress becoming everything or worshiping
nature and finding a path with heart.
Each system has a part of the truth. The right tradition is
the one you believe in at any given moment. When you are in-
terested in the future of the world, however, you find yourself
searching for paths with heart. They make you keep a watch-
ful eye on your own sustainable and available energy and
upon relationships to others. Indigenous heartful systems in-
cludecommunity and environment. The ego system informs
you more about the nature of specific parts of yourself. When
you need answers about your individual nature, you find
yourself with therapists, who speak of unknown parts. When
you have questions about life as a whole, the environment and
path of heart are the teachers.
—
To find the path of heart to follow the stream of na-
ture —
you need more disciplined awareness than self-
knowledge. For the path of heart is simply the path that is
"easy"; it is the ancient Tao, but no one can follow this Tao
without awareness of what is happening. In those moments in
which you use your second attention, feel your dreaming-
body, and find the Tao, you know that you are on track, be-
cause, whether you are working hard or not, you feel like you
are not using any energy. Everything happens of its own ac-
cord, and you seem to be riding a wave on the path of least re-
sistance. Though you may be in the midst of a whirlwind, still
it is the path of least action, the path sometimes referred to in

Taoism as "not doing," or "wu wei."

Courage
You also need courage in order to find the path, because

when you change, those around you may be affronted. They
feel your changes hurt them, and then they may seek revenge.
Since friends and colleagues have been a part of the old path,
some may not support your changes.
Thus, to have heart, you need courage to detach from
other's opinions. With courage and discipline, you notice that
you are a secondary process for the whole community. It is
not you alone who wants to change, but a cultural path that
wants to change. Your changes may therefore somehow be
right for everyone else.
Heart is different from sentimentality. Sentimentality at-
taches you to the way things are and prevents you from chang-
ing when the time comes. If you are sentimental, you listen
too long to the fears and complaints of others. Or perhaps the
others are a part of you that resists change. In any case, you
wait, taking time to grow and gain detachment. One day you
realize that your choice to leave a path and follow the one
with heart affronts others because you are their nagual, their
dreamlike fate.
For the teenager who must fight her parents, the parent
who becomes a teenager in love, the teacher who leaves his
students, or the group member who revolts, change creates
momentary suffering. Hence, you need an inner discipline
and courage to keep your mind on eternity while caring for
the pain of the moment.
Detachment
Don Juan places the utmost importance on the courage

and solitary meditationneeded to choose the path of heart.
The only way to make this decision is to be free of fear and
ambition and to have the wisdom of an old person. The crucial
question is whether or not a path has heart, because if it does,
you are on the right track. If it doesn't, it is of no use. One path
makes you happy and strong, while the other weakens you.
142 ARNOLD MINDELL

The path of makes you feel strong and happy
heart
about your life follows your dreams, your dream-
because it
ingbody, your mythical task. The other path is linked mainly

to your primary processes, your old identity and its rigidly
programmed doings. On this path, you become moody and
complain; you feel like the victim of your path, sacrificing
yourself for others.
The path of heart is a fluid path without rigid identities.
It is Way, the Tao. It is water. It is form-
the ancient Chinese
less and has no plans but flows wherever a passage opens up
for it. The warrior on the path of heart is like a flute that lets
the wind blow through it, making its own music.
You alone can make the decision about the path of heart,
because in order to follow the dreamingbody, only you can
perceive of and feel it. Your old age will help you remember
that nothing is more important. After all, you own nothing
but your own Your perceptions
inner impulses. are the only
things that really belong to you. Perhaps only old age rela-
tivizes the importance you place on other people's opinions
and enables you to realize that the most important thing you
can do is to value what you sense. You suffer if your path has
too little heart, and deep down you have a sense of living
senselessly.
I have had to leave a path without heart several times
without tools or courage. Each time has been a struggle. Such

changes require clarity and the ruthlessness that comes from
inner certainty, characteristics of which I did not have enough.
The first time I consciously left a path was when I was in
my teens and left a woman I was with because I knew the rela-
tionship would not work I had to do the same in
out. Later on,
other relationships, and though was older, it was no easier.
I
Once, getting on the path of heart meant changing my profes-

sion from physics to psychology; later Ichanged the particular
method of psychology that I studied. Each change felt like a
matter of life or death. Each time I hoped that this would be
the last time I would have to make such a change. I barely real-
ized that the path I was yearning for was an ever-changing one.

The Busy Streets
Since at this point in your apprenticeship you always

seem both the warrior's discipline and the Taoist's
to lack
heart, you wonder if it is at all possible to live the dreaming-
body in the real world. Is the path of heart only attainable
when you are alone, with a master, or in therapy? Can it be
lived in the city?
Don Juan tells Castaneda at this point that the busy street
outside the house they have been in has been Castaneda's
world, his "hunting ground." 2 Since no one escapes the doings
of that world, the warrior reverses his attitude and makes
modern world useful. In Zen, this would be
every bit of this
the moment when the second training begins, when the monk
has finished his time in the monastery and is ready for the
world. It is the moment when you receive a diploma. The time
has come to live what you have learned. The Native American
spiritual tradition accepts this moment as the right one, the
only possible one. All the worlds are here, now. There is no
heaven or earth outside of this moment.
If you view the world from the path of heart, you under-
stand it to be the place to be for the moment, the place that

you need in order to grow. The world is awful and awesome;
from the viewpoint of the path of heart, what happens is
meant to be used, completely and fully; dreamtime governs it.
The world is not just an ordinary reality; it is the universe, a
village where we all struggle together to find our entire selves.
Here is where you find your greatest teachers, your body,
your relationships, your dreams, your environment. Where
else can you become yourself but in the wilderness with
cougars and bears or in the city with battles, drugs, and the
dangers of everyday life?
But the master's teachings are always somehow incon-

gruent. They speak about living the nagual in everyday life,
yet they always seem to take place mainly in an ashram or a
wilderness. Most masters do not work in town. Most will not
run for political office. Perhaps that is why you vote so rarely.
144 ARNOLD MINDELL

Why do great teachers live only in our dreams or in
seclusion? Why does their path of heart take them into the
mountains or into an ashram? Is it because they do not value
ordinary life? Or is it that some teachings do not deal with
relationships, everyday life, and today's world? Perhaps we
must become the new teachers, who sit in the midst of a fist-
fight or a race riot and claim that this is the right hunting
ground. Teachers who say that fights are bad, that people
should not riot, and that the city is somehow wrong may sim-
ply mean that, like us, they do not know how to deal with the
world as it is.
Castaneda's teachers try to balance the dichotomy be-

tween journeying into foreign dimensions and living on the
street by explaining how painful it is to have immense inner
experiences and then to go back home again. To a person hav-
ing a powerful experience, home sometimes seems like the
wrong place to be. Everyone seems materialistic. Castaneda
makes the Yaqui teachers sound like many spiritual teachers
who consider our everyday selves to be unenlightened idiots.
Before you have to deal with an ally, the world consists
of predictable events and situations that are difficult and un-
avoidable. After you recognize the ally and the dreaming-
body, the world from which you have come seems limited,
and people there seem to be cut off from life. The integration
of the ally and the creation of the double change you abruptly.
But this change is not permanent. The tendency to re-
turn to the home from which you have come means that you,
too, are an ordinary person; otherwise, you would not still
love much of what you left there. Some of your old feelings
persist, though you can no longer identify with that world.
Change happens so rapidly that you barely have time to grow
older and allow its ruthlessness to transform your old self. It
is as if you are half-cooked; part of you follows fate, while the
other still longs for an imagined golden age.
So you first go backward in your attempt to liveyour full
self. You return to rediscover the world and begin by thinking
you have to enlighten others. This is a lonely moment, in

which you find yourself sitting with old friends whom you no
longer know. The problem is that the others are attached to
things that you have partially dropped. And so you find your-
self laughing quietly and alone at things others are not inter-
ested in.
But this loneliness is a sign that you have more work to

do, for abrupt changes take years to digest. Integrating the
ally means living the double all the time. Jung describes the
pain and loneliness of this period: "There was a daimon in me,
and in the end its presence proved decisive. It overpowered
me, and if I was at times ruthless it was because I was in the
grip of the daimon. I could never stop at anything once at-
tained. I had to hasten on, to catch up with my vision. Since
my contemporaries, understandably, could not perceive my
3
vision, they saw only a fool rushing ahead."
Even more painful, perhaps, is that you cannot under-
stand yourself during these times. You are compulsive, driven,
irritated by others, and still lonely and impatient. The mad-
ness of the ally is still around, pressing you to live and express
its message. The car in front of you is always in the way. Why
must you wait so long to get the overview you need to sup-
port your impossible self in the world?
Jung delineates the way in which the ally separated him
from others: "I know things and must hint at things which
others apparently know nothing of, and for the most part do
not want to know. Loneliness does not come from having no
people about one but from being unable to communicate the
things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain
views which others find inadmissible. ... If a man knows
more than others, he becomes lonely." 4 Ordinary people seem
like phantoms to you as you sense more of your dreaming-
body. You cannot share your ideas and activities because they
seem inadmissible secondary processes, city shadows for the
culture that you are living in. For this reason, one nagual
looks for another to feel at one with. You look no longer for
an ordinary relationship, but for one chosen or revealed by
the path of heart.
146 ARNOLD MINDELL

Today, there may be more support and empathy for
visions of allies and the shaman's training than there were at
earlier periods in history. Who knows? In any case, we find
ourselves living at the beginning of a new century, at a time
when democracy is struggling for rebirth, when alternative
and shamanistic thinking are becoming almost mainstream.
Yet there will never be an agreement on how to live the double
in everyday life. For those on the path of heart, existence will
always happen at the periphery of what others call life.
As Jung wrote, the pain of loneliness is balanced by the
magical experience of the double, of living with a "secret, a
premonition of things unknown. It fills life with something
impersonal, a numinosum. A man who has never experienced
that has missed something important. He must sense that he
lives in a world which in some respects is mysterious; that
things happen and can be experienced which remain inexplic-
able; that not everything which happens can be anticipated.
The unexpected and the incredible belong to this world. Only
then is life whole. For me, the world has from the beginning
been infinite and ungraspable." 5
What couldJung's secret have been? Some have specu-
lated about extramarital affairs. Jung's political views were
naive, even impossible. Though he was widely respected, he
was also widely disliked, perhaps misunderstood by many of
his contemporaries. Some envisioned him as a mystic or a
madman. Don Juan was aware of how culture misunderstands
the shaman. He said that a man of knowledge should erase
his personal history so that the thoughts of others would not
kill him.
Perhaps you can never completely return to the town
and the people you have loved, for you no longer contribute
congruently to the old belief system, its cultural rules, and its
superstitions. Your sense of your body and of dreamtime hin-
ders you from arriving in the twenty-first century. Your spirit
makes you uncomfortable as long as you act like others. You
try to perform the doings of reality, but something in you
grieves and searches for that mysterious thing that makes life

worthwhile. You lament your losses, because your new
ground is not solid enough to stand on yet. You may even
dream that all who have loved you have passed away while
your spirit has wandered nostalgically in a regression. At this
point in Castaneda's apprenticeship, his development and the
world seem incommensurable. His innerwork remains sepa-
rate from the world outside.
Shamanic studies need to deal with exactly what hap-
pens when you come back to town, how people react, and
how you interact with them. Interaction with the world is a
new stage in shamanism that we must all develop together.
EXERCISES
1. Describe your momentary path in life. Feel it. Does it
give you joy, or does it weaken you? What part exhausts or

bores you? Notice where you are living. Is this the right
place? Imagine, if possible, using the present path to grow
more. Don't work at trying; just see if growing more comes
easily.
2. Drop the path without heart. If you are happy with

your path, it is the path of heart; otherwise, it is not. If it is
not the right path, or if you need help leaving elements of

your present path that are not right for you, consider the
following:
Imagine that you are very old, wise, and heartfelt. Ad-
vise yourself about your path. Are you doing too much of one
thing and not enough of another? Feel and imagine a heartfelt
way to leave your path if it is without heart.
Some inner figures might resist your path of heart. If
you yourself are one of these people, go back to your personal
history and notice the change that must happen in your iden-
tity for you to live on the path of heart. Outer people also re-
sist your changing to a path with more heart. Imagine them
now. Imagine changes in their world that, in your mind,

should happen because of your changes. What meaning could
148 ARNOLD MINDELL

your new path possibly have for others? Imagine these people
and discuss it with them in your mind.
3. Move onto the path of heart. Pretend for a moment at
least that you and detached, and humbly follow
are free, old,
what life wants from you. Pretend that you have the courage
to change and that you are doing so now. Imagine that you are
on the path of heart. Tell a friend about this path and how you
got there.

DREAMING
IN THE CITY
CHAPTER 11
DEATH
OR
SORCERY
The body wants

stress
to dream. It needs to reduce
and also to become the creator of
trouble. It wants to live at the edge of the
unknown and gets weak if it is only pro-
tected or "healthy." The dreamingbody requires
more than wellness; it wants challenge, risk, per-
sonal power, and freedom. Even more than this, the
body must seek danger in order to become itself.
The dreamingbody will never be healed through
healthy living alone, becauseit seeks the uncanny,
at the edge, through dreaming. Don Juan puts it

dramatically when he says that the body loves ter-
ror and darkness and gains personal power from
these elements. 1
153
Your bodyon a creative journey. In your fantasies,
is
dreams, and you return to magical places, moments, and

reality,
teachers who have given you access to power. You review prob-
lems and traumas and experiment with ecstasy in your dreams,
not only to untie the knots of your personal development, but
to search for increasingly difficult tasks and experiences. The
ability to be yourself requires more than self-knowledge; it is a
matter of loving, struggling, failing, and rising again.
Therefore, after powerful inner experiences, you return
home, not only for sentimental reasons, but because this
everyday life is as much a wilderness as the forest is. Today,
shamanism must deal with world on fire, one huge, hot
a
greenhouse, troubled democracies, and impossible relation-
ships. This world is part of everyone's path of heart, and
everyone around you seeks transformation. Returning to the
everyday world not only reconnects you to what you have
left behind, it reminds you of what was boring and painful
and catapults you into a life-and-death conflict: living with

the nagual in the city.
Your home challenges you to realize your visions in

everyday But since your experiences may conflict with
life.
the lives of others, everyone will have to change. And as we all

change, we in turn transform shamanism, for its ancient set-
ting is no more. Forgetting shamanism will never work, be-
cause psychology and medicine become one-dimensional
without their ancient sister. Thus, shamanism will have to
play a major role in reshaping our helping professions.
Therapy and Sorcery
As shamanism confronts psychology, therapy will be-

come more community oriented, heartful, and magical. At
present, medicine and therapy value the average person and
aim at survival. The on the quality of life and
sorcerer focuses
improvises as she goes along. The world of the sorcerer is
madness and magic, while at worst therapy seeks to tame your
demons or at least to explain them so that you will be able to
fit in with others.
154 ARNOLD MINDELL

From the present viewpoint, it would seem that therapy
was developed to support the worldview of the middle
classes. It is available to those who have the money, time, and
security for introspection. It takes you to the door of other
worlds, senses and explains what ison the other side, and
closes the door again. Therapy grasps the life of the average
person and focuses on how to make it more secure. Stop your
addictions, don't be abusive, increase your self-esteem, know
your anima and animus, don't get into trouble with your
clients, don't be codependent, act like others, and choose a
partner of the opposite sex.
The more adventurous methods sniff at the door to the
other world or cross over for short periods of time but recom-
mend consensus white reality as the measure for what is good.
Look at dreams, feel and understand the body, and find the
missing feeling in relationships, and the world ought to be in
order again. Except that it is not. Something big is missing.
There is no jazz, no color, nothing interesting happening in
the community.
Sorcery adds another dimension to the work. Like the
therapist, the sorcerer opens the door to the other world, but
unlike the therapist, the sorcerer follows her ally and goes on. A
sorcerer's life is not complete until she goes through the door to
the unknown and keeps going until the wall between the worlds
disappears. The sorcerer's world has no doors, few boundaries,
and no opposites in it. She dances until she is exhausted, not
until she finds the meaning. She does not "integrate" parts of her
unconscious or study herself; she follows her body.
Being an average person, sorcerer, warrior, hunter, or
therapist is a matter of timing. All are aspects of one another.
If you are a sorcerer, life is art, poetry, and madness. You
perform a script that is written as you act. If you are a thera-

pist, you study the script and the actress, asking what it all
means for tomorrow.

Shamanism adds spice to personal transformation, just
as therapy gives modern shamans a way to earn a living. The
therapist pays attention to the forgotten, the sorcerer to the

ridiculous. The sorcerer gladly runs into trouble because of
her love for the absurd. She nourishes the thief, the liar, and
the lunatic.
While madness is shadow problem of therapists who
the
fear insanity, the warrior shaman nourishes the uncanny. He
re-envisions madness as a gift to be developed, an emergence
of the spirit. Just as death is the warrior's adviser, craziness
should be the therapist's.
Many therapies were developed to work with the middle
classes. They support the normative values of dominant cul-
tures: family,work, education, knowledge, health, sanity, and
everyday life. They stress insight and personal growth, life
and happiness. Yet they seem to ignore prejudice, economic
disparity, and violent racial conflicts.
The sorcerer is different. Until recently, she was rarely
middle class, and she dealt with death as well as life, voodoo,
and love. The shaman worried about the sustainability of her
community and cared for it by dealing with spirits in the air. If
the life of an individual is the implicit goal of therapy, then
death, the mystery of darkness, and community renewal are
the realm of the sorcerer.
Death
When your brain is sufficiently dead, people of Western

thinking gather around your body and pronounce you dead.
That's it for you. You get the red light. If you end up in a
coma beforehand, people will be nice to you, but they really
think you are not around. Those who have not worked with
comatose with the Tibetan or Egyptian Books of the
states or
Dead say that exist in a coma. If you look like a
you don't
vegetable and don't talk, you have no personality. Where do
they think you went?
Our twenty-first-century world dislikes introverts and
fantasy-full states so much that when your time has come to
die, you may even feel guilty. The message you will get from
everyone is, "Do everything, but for god's sake, don't be a
loser and die!"
156 ARNOLD MINDELL

That is why you feel awful when you get sick. Not be-
cause you are ill, but because you feel like a loser. Everyone
treatsyou as if you don't have a dreamingbody. No one listens
to your dreams. Yet most people are very busy with living at
the point of death. Everyone I have worked with reflects what
Elisabeth Kubler Ross said years ago, that near-death people
are focused upon learning and loving. Why not? The fact that
you are ninety-five doesn't mean you can't have an affair. And
people do have dreamingbody experi-
affairs in their "final"
ences. I expect that, as this information becomes more widely

known, conferences for the so-called dying on shamanism, re-
lationship, and dreaming will become mainstream.
In any case, while everyone else is running from death,
the shaman immerses himself in it in order to live life more
fully. Therapists feel obliged to preserve consciousness, to
classify and eradicate pathological aberrations. The sorcerer,
on the other hand, respects death, as does the Buddhist who
reaches enlightenment through meditating upon his demise.
The shaman in you lives daily with the sense of death,
while the rest of you fights the depressing thought that life
will soon be over. I think it is as the shamans say: Only the

sense of imminent death shakes you loose from your momen-
tary attachments and fears, from your interest in the programs
you have set up. And so the sorcerer welcomes death as the
end to a lifestyle that has long since run out of steam. The
shaman finds transformation and ecstasy not tragedy or fail- —
ure — in death.
Controlled Abandon
If the relationship between psychology and shamanism
goes well, both will nourish each other. The sorcerer isn't per-
fect, and the ideal shaman must master more of the world. We
need teachers to model living on the path of heart and meeting

the ally in the city, in relationships. The shaman knows that
the ally is not just the spirit chasing her in the wilderness. But
moving from the ally in the wilderness to a burglar at the
front door requires rethinking.

Therapy has a lot to learn from shamanism, especially
around the area of the second attention. Here is finally the
name for the ability to stay with and focus on experiences that
you normally ignore. Any therapy that deals with the uncon-
scious looks infantile in this realm compared to the Yaqui
Way of Knowledge.
Developing the second attention requires focusing on
subtle signals for extended periods of time while retaining
access to ordinary reality. This is a matter of abandon and
control, of abandoning your identity and controlling the evo-

lution of processes by following them intently. The more you
experience and know
about these states, the more control
you have while in them.
Controlled abandon is a useful concept necessary for
working with altered states of consciousness. Therapists who
help people near death or in comas, or who help people to de-
velop their total selves, will need the shaman's viewpoint. You
can begin with dreams, body experiences, relationships, move-
ment, the world, or internal dialogue. Notice what happens,
keep control over your awareness, and let go.
Some cultures teach the second attention more than
others do. Many of our Japanese students had a lot of con-
trolled abandon. Amy and I worked with a doctor while we
were in Tokyo who was fascinated by one of his dreams,
which he interpreted as indicating old age and death. In his
dream, one animal had been slowly eating another animal to
death. He told this dream and asked what it meant in the
midst of a seminar. We were all standing in a circle.
"Am I going to die?" he asked. I didn't know, but I said
that his process would interpret the dream. I thought that if
the spirit created the dream, then it would have to interpret it
as well. We agreed to use our second attentions on whatever
dreaming process would emerge.
We stood facing one another. His face became tense, and
he suddenly complained about his rapidly, irregularly pound-
ing heart. Sweating and confused, he asked me what to do. I
replied that since his heartbeat had come to his attention, this
158 ARNOLD MINDELL

process would show us the way. "Let's use controlled aban-
don and follow that irregular heart." Hesitantly, he experi-
mented with walking around the room to the rhythm of his
heart. He stomped as if he were a pounding heart and loudly
and clearly pronounced his discovery: "I am in the military." I
asked him if the military were at war with something. In a

powerful general's voice, he boomed, "The military is at war
with responsibility! It hates responsibility and refuses to be
eaten alive by it! The war is with responsibility!" This insight
had an amazing effect on him. He leapt for joy, left the circle
of participants, and sat down. Everyone clapped with enthusi-
asm, but, to tell the truth, I don't think anyone, including me,
really knew why. It took us fifteen minutes to catch up with
his instantaneous enlightenment.
The doctor's second attention had explained his dream
to him. He was being eaten alive by responsibility and was not
following his heart. His heart had become a warrior, showing
him how to react to a without freedom. I was amazed,
life
however, at his ability to let go and follow the river of dreams.

To understand dreams, you need the shaman's con-
trolled abandon to let the river of dreams explain itself. The
sorcerer in you seeks contact with the awesome and numinous,
not with rational insight. The contact itself brings what Zen
calls "satori," or sudden awakening from direct experience.
The shaman shares certain characteristics with the Zen

master and the Taoist priest; you will need these characteris-
tics in working on yourself. Therapy and self-transformation
happen best because of the way you work, not because of

what you do. Concepts like the second attention and con-
trolled abandon come out of the context of the crazy wisdom
teacher, the part of you that is open to nature, that has no-
where to go but follows the streams and impulses of the mo-
ment. The attitude you have in working with yourself and
others needs as much attention as the issues at stake.
In any case, interpreting dreams interests the mind, for-
wards your understanding, and enriches normal existence, but
it does not necessarily awaken your body. If you integrate

dreamwork with shamanism, dreams become an invitation to
altered states of consciousness. On the other hand, if you inte-
grate psychology with shamanism, you can drum to enter
trance states, find lost souls in other worlds with dreaming,
and find these same states peeping out of your own double
signals.
Partners as Naguals
How does shamanism work on relationships? Since every

healer is different, this question can never be answered. How-
ever, the goal of the shaman is to journey through altered
states to find solutions. This leads to the realization that you
can never completely know who you are or with whom you
are living. What happens when two people live their dream-
ingbodies together is even less describable than when one lives
it alone.
If you and your partner simultaneously use your second
attention, you stop the world, you change it. You might turn
into wild animals or distinguished royalty, lovers or fighters,
depending upon your process. Central American shamans
might call you a "nagual woman" and a "nagual man."
I remember a couple whom Amy and I worked with. Jan
was upset with Donald because he always talked about other

women. She told us that every time they took a walk, he
would flirt with a passing woman. Donald admitted that this
was true and that he, too, was upset about his behavior. Amy
turned the whole thing around. She told both of them to focus
their second attention upon the unknown, the ghost between
them. Amy explained that the woman Donald talked about
was a secondary process, an ally that was constantly disturb-
ing the relationship.
The couple did not seem I encouraged
to get the idea, so
them and controlled abandon
to use their second attention
and imagine this other woman. They focused on her, and then
Donald found what it was that excited him. "Oh," he said,
"she's so romantic." Before Jan had a chance to react, Amy
told Donald to practice controlled abandon and become this
160 ARNOLD MINDELL

woman. To everyone's surprise, Donald actually became what
he imagined the other woman to be. He spoke and moved
passionately and romantically. That was all they needed. Jan
was so excited by this new behavior that she embraced him,

saying that a romantic husband is exactly what she wanted.
The "other woman" was the couple's ally, a troublesome fig-
ure disturbing both of them. This figure was a preview of

Donald's double signals and his wife's greatest hope.
The ally, then, is a shared phenomenon that everyone
needs. But to get to this dimension of relationship, you and
your friends need to be nagual people and accept the spirit,
using second attention and controlled abandon.
Shamanism not only enriches relationship, it is relation-
ship. Dreaming together is a core experience that binds people
together; it was the center of tribal culture. Without it, rela-
tionships can be loving, compassionate, secure, or troublesome,
but not amazing. Together, we spin worlds that are difficult to
maintain alone.
Caretaker of the Absurd
More than anything else, the sorcerer is the essential as-

pect of self-transformation. With some coaxing, the sorcerer
can teach the therapist how to make the profession worth
practicing by being the caretaker for the absurd. He turns
things around and transforms difficult events into fun.
We all sense strange little symptoms and sometimes life-
threatening problems in our bodies. While the therapist in

you tries to heal these problems, the sorcerer looks for the vir-
world in which symptoms survive.
tual realities, the
This reminds me of Karen, a woman I worked with once
who was in her last stages of cancer. One day several weeks
before she died, she was sitting in her wheelchair and could
barely speak. The pain was intense and exhausting, and she
had no energy to walk. Yet when she coughed or tried to
speak, the slightest smile could be seen at the corners of her
mouth. I asked her about what I thought might be a smile, and
she assured me that she was smiling for no reason. "I've gone

through all the treatments," she said, "and I am refusing any-
more help. Fm in the pre-dying stage." She smiled some more.
I used my second attention to focus on that seemingly
irrational signal. "I love your smile," I said. "It gives me the
sense that you have already was wrong; she did
died." But I
not identify with that signal. In fact, she became more serious
and said that she was not happy. "I want to get happy before I
die," she said. "That's why Fm here."
Instead of insisting that she be serious and face her
death, I decided to take another route. "Others might notice
you are already happy and wonder how you could laugh at
such a time. Where does your sense of humor come from?" I
asked.
Karen looked at me, confused. "Hmmm, well . . . why
should I be miserable?" she asked and smiled again. "I am
looking forward to dying." I could not help but encourage
that little smile. "I see that you've already gotten one of the
big keys to life: grinning and having a good time."
That must have been powerful for her, for she looked at
me with tears in her eyes. "You make me cry with happiness,"
she said. "You see something in me that nobody else sees."
Then she explained to me that this was her second bout
with cancer. She had waited too long to go to the surgeon be-
cause she loathed conventional medical institutions. Finally,
she had decided to start a vigorous treatment against the can-
cer, but it was too late. She said that everyone had criticized
her for her negligence.
I looked at her and said, "They didn't understand that
you were risking your life to take an alternative route. And
they couldn't see that, in some way, death is a friend."
She agreed. "Yes," she said with excitement, "Death
could stop me from hurting, and death could help me to free
my spirit."
I asked her where her spirit would go once it was free.
Karen thought for a second and said, "It would have fun! You
know," she confessed, "I don't really want to get well. I
would have too many problems. I'm sick and tired of them."
162 ARNOLD MINDELL

"Great/' I said, "Let's just die to all your problems." I
felt guilty about feeling so well at a moment like this, but I re-
membered my own shaman teachers from Africa. It seemed to
me and
that their love for the uncanny, their second attention
abandonment, were there to help Karen and me drop our per-
sonal history and seriousness about dying.
I suggested that, even though Karen was in a wheelchair,
we might work with movement. I told her to follow whatever

happened. She agreed and tried to stand, though she had to
bend over because the tumors in her spine made it impossible
for her to stand straight. I asked her to focus upon her bent
position without judgments, to find out what it felt like to
stand in a bent position. She said her position gave her the im-
pression that she was an ape —an ape beginning a race. Where
was the I wanted to know. She roared with laugh-
race going,
ter and told me
was going nowhere. She said she was just
it
being an ape having a good time.

This ape was her ally, her gait of power. The ape was her
double. "Your body is supporting your nature, showing you
how to fool around, how to start a race and not even worry
about completing it." She wept with happiness and cried out
that life was truly absurd. She had always been so serious and
demanded of herself that whatever she started she must finish.
Laughing, she said that now that we had started, we were also
finished with our work. That was her last dance, her way of
teaching all those who witnessed that enjoying the race, the
process of transformation, was the important thing. It doesn't
make any difference if you finish; the important thing is to get
started.
EXERCISES
1Consider a relationship problem that you have had re-
.
cently. What
part of you does the other person criticize? Try
getting back into that relationship, but this time, do some-
thing absurd. Experiment with your second attention. Be-
come the part or characteristic that the other criticizes. Let go
of your personal history and experiment with enjoying it.

Now use this critical part of yourself independently of that
relationship. Use it practically for yourself and others. Your
partner must have been seeing an ally that was far from your
awareness.
2. Imagine for a moment that you have permission to
go crazy. Notice how you feel. What do you look like?

Now imagine using this madness in your relationships.
Don't only try to get them in order, but stir up a little trou-
ble. Do something awesome instead of waiting for life to do
something to you.
164 ARNOLD MINDELL

CHAPTER 12
DREAMING
TOGETHER
When you consider your friends to be

warriors in a shamanic clan,
come
you be-
teachers to one another, and
your group becomes the nagual.
This is one way to integrate shamanistic teachings
into group life.
Think of Castaneda. At one point in his ap-

prenticeship, he tells the story of being challenged
by an apprentice with whom he has been flirting.
As the two near her bed, she turns and almost kills
the unwitting apprentice. She blasts him out of his
unconsciousness and wakens him to lucid dream-
ing. In fact, all of Castaneda's colleagues are awe-
some and worthy opponents at one moment or
165
another, supporting, teaching, and challenging each other.
They are naguals for each other. They are wild, yet heartful;
solitary warriors, yet immensely interactive with one another.
Their relationship styles are uncanny, because they are being
themselves and facilitating each others' transformation.
Shamans' stories are filled with lessons about how war-
rior clans develop. Such groups are organized by a common
interest in awareness, a drive that operates decisively but
mysteriously in the background of relationships. Though
Castaneda did not community element in his teach-
stress the
he reports on clearly have much to teach
ings, the traditions
us about creating and sustaining a lively and meaningful
community life.
The implicit lessons are that no one succeeds in con-
sciousness unless everyone does and that your warrior col-
leagues are as important as your teachers in your learning.
The image of the solitary warrior in don Juan's stories is mag-
nificent, but it makes no sense without a warrior clan. A
group of warriors behaves like an interdependent network of
awareness enthusiasts. Each one takes the next as a friend,
partner, and worthy opponent. To be a warrior means to be
your true self, that is, to be difficult, loving and playing tricks
on your friends to help both them and yourself to awareness.
Don Juan even admits how important his apprentices are to
him. After all, Castaneda's stubbornness has forced don Juan
to grow as an effective teacher.
As indigenous tribal life is breaking apart under the im-
pact of modern technology, shamanism is not just fading away
and becoming a dreamlike relic of the past. It reemerges in the
myth of awareness and challenges us to become our maximum
selves. Everyone is dying to live ecstatically in a community
where spirits and people are equal. Without shamanlike inter-
actions based upon the second attention, individual and com-
munity life is incomplete. Your community would be a dull
place without unpredictable spirits and worthy opponents
forcing you to become whole.
166 ARNOLD MINDELL

Mombasa
When Amy and I travel to foreign countries, we fre-

quently seek out indigenous communities and their witch
doctors to help us understand the ways the spirit moves in the
places we work. I especially remember the experience we had
in a ceremony with two Kenyan healers, on the east Indian
coast of Kenya, near Mombasa.
The ceremony began when we first landed in Mombasa.
I asked one of the employees at the hotel where we were stay-
ing to take us to a witch doctor. He hesitated and then told us

that his uncle would see us the next day.
When the time came, we drove our rented car along
rough dirt roads, in the heat of the equatorial Kenyan bush, to
meet the witch doctor. Each mile we drove carried us deeper
into the spirit of Kenya and further from our ordinary reality.
We parked near a mud hut and were immediately surrounded
by the entire village of people.
on the earthen floor,
Inside the hut, sitting cross-legged
were ahusband and wife team of witch doctors. The man was
a body healer, the woman a seer. On the wall hung old yellow-
ing and worn certificates, in English, attesting that they were
witch doctors. Our healer couple spoke only Swahili. It was a
pleasure to meet these quiet and reserved people who worked
as laborers by day and as magicians by night.
They were at once impeccable hosts, ordinary people,
and mystics. They treated us with innocence and extreme hu-
mility. They took our hands, welcomed us into their tribe, and
spent hours exchanging our Western clothes for simple and
colorful cloth. They wrapped the cloth around our naked
bodies and proclaimed, in a very special moment, "Now you
are African/' Their openness healed a problem I had been un-
aware of, a disease I did not know I had. Deep inside of me
was making me half ill. I had forgotten that I had
a longing,
wished the world I lived in would give me this sense of be-
longing. I had been made to feel guilty for not participating in

some groups; I had felt loved in other groups, but none had
given me the sense that I was crucial to its well-being.
In any case, when ceremony began, Amy and I sat
the
quietly in a small group of people made up of the husband and
wife team, her friends or sisters, and various stragglers from
the village, who were there for unknown reasons. The woman
healer read from some holy book, perhaps the Koran. As she
read, she half sang and, after a few minutes, fell into a trance
and began rolling on the floor, allowing herself to follow her
dreamingbody. We were the clients of sorcerers who were
plummeting into the depths of our souls and bodies. After
having cared for so many others, we were more than touched
by the manner in which the entire community was now gath-
ering as the ceremony went on to support us. Even the little
children were there, the ones who would take our hands the
next day and proudly show us their swimming hole, a river
filled with wild animals and vegetation foreign to us. As the
healers sang and rolled, I felt supported and renewed in my

work.
The psychological community I had grown up in looked
down upon therapists interested in group experience, and so,
in my own weakness, I had felt guilty about occasionally
inviting group participation in my work with individuals.
Now I realized how important this participation was. The
older tribeswomen held our hands in the evening darkness,
comforting us before we met with the unknown. The dim
light of their torches filled the hut with love and companion-
ship. The whole village took part, appearing with somber and
respectful faces, all expecting to be healed by whatever would
happen.
As the witch doctors sang and danced, two "sisters"
who had up until then been quiet participants from the circle
rolled forward into the center, moving ecstatically in trance
states. The healers changed visage as they journeyed into un-
known spaces. They let their own processes direct them as

theymoved unpredictably around the circle. While the
168 ARNOLD MINDELL

woman sang and moaned, the man moved rapidly and unpre-
dictably about, his psychic hands performing surgery on pas-
sive clients, using a quick, sharp knife that drew things from
their bodies without making one incision or bringing out one
drop of blood.
We were awestruck, terrified at his dexterity but also re-
lieved to be in a place so weird that it felt like home. We shall
never know exactly what the others suffered from. All I know
is that I was sick at heart from a lack of connection to the in-
visible. Our bodies needed that ceremony honoring the spirit,
the second attention, the unusual, the uncanny.

To remember myself, I need contact with my African
sisters and brothers, with Native American traditions, Japan-
ese masters, Indian teachers, and aboriginal diviners. The body
needs awesome experience, fear, and the power that comes
from a loving community. Without such experience, ordinary
life misses something that affirms its reason for existence.
The capacity of this couple to perform miraculous heal-

ings was impressive, but the most healing thing was their
worldview, which placed the uncanny in the center of com-
munity life. All of us are burdened with problems that cannot
easily be solved. Yet we hide these problems or feel inferior
because of them and relegate the spirit to visions of the night.
Today, modern Africans living in big cities like Nairobi
are embarrassed by their native healers and hesitate to men-
tion them, though many still believe in them. Yet we all need
these healers, more than ever. Without them, we tend to forget
and are embarrassed about our secret connection to the un-
canny spirit of life. And community life needs the spirit that,
through the figure of shamans, centers it and facilitates its core
experience, healing its members through dreaming together.
Shamans heal by reminding you of the dreamingbody.
They model awareness and the dance of the spirit. Archaic
systems of ecstasy, the community's living center, give a vil-
lage its life. The tradition of community healing, the idea that
one person's suffering is part of the whole community, creates

human warmth and contact. Without such trance dancers, a
group of people becomes an abstract and meaningless entity, a
city whose members are obligated to fulfill empty duties. No
one can lead a meaningless life for long or tolerate cities with
no purpose.
A New View of Your Home Town

In a shaman's view of the city, the spirit is everywhere,
waiting to dance. The shaman would advise you not to feel
badly if the people around you at work seem boring or im-
possible; like wild animals, they are the spirits that provoke
you to reach your own totality. By running into trouble with
others, you are forced to plumb the depths of yourself.
Aboriginal bush is full of spirits, but your present city is
full of neglected ghosts as well. The world is filled with people

and forces whose signals go unseen or unheeded. Each com-
munity dreambody is composed of people, things, and spirits.
Daily business consists not only of people trying to make
money, but of warriors struggling for freedom.
This may be why you have strange dreams about your
colleagues and why you hope in vain that leaders or managers
will be warriors, teachers, or priestesses. You search for a
new world, a place where enlightenment is the background
process trying to happen in daily business. In this ordinary
and special place, you and all those around you are dreaming,
trying to find the path of heart and an ally within existing ten-
sion and relationship conflicts. Today's city is populated
not only by people but by and naked powers shifting

lost
aimlessly through the streets. In sections of the city where
crime and violence rule, you have to develop your shaman's
body to survive. In conflict areas, no one succeeds unless every-
one does.
A recent conference in Oregon comes to mind. Several
hundred people from all over the world had convened to
—
study conflict resolution how to get along with one another.
I especially remember the seminar's beginning.
170 ARNOLD MINDELL

Things had become suddenly intense when someone
criticized the conference organizers for advertising certain
events that they were unable to stage at the conference. The
critics made their point, and the organizers apologized. Yet
the conflict dragged on for some reason. Suddenly, an African
American stood up and loudly called for his "forty acres and a
mule." The room froze.
Though this conference took place in the United States,
few knew that the U.S. government had promised each freed
slave forty acres and a mule after the American Civil War but
had never fulfilled that promise. Back we went into the unfin-
ished business of the earlier time. The conference became a
community as it switched gears, so to speak, putting its sec-
ond attention on the issue of racial repression and the conflict
between the U.S. government, white Americans, and African
Americans. The African Americans wanted the debt repaid.
With the surfacing of this tense interracial conflict,
seemingly out of nowhere, the original conflict about the or-
ganization disappeared. It was a year before the citizen
demonstrations in Los Angeles, where African Americans ri-
oted in response to unfair treatment, yet the organization's

broken promise was plummeting us into the
like a catalyst,
different reality that the whole nation would experience a year
later. A futurist or a witch doctor might say that the African
American had followed his shaman's body, putting us all

where we needed to be, in the pain and trauma of racial in-
equality and injustice.
Various opinions, feelings, and positions were expressed,
but the issue was not relieved until someone stepped into the
African American position and spoke movingly and congru-
ently about the pain of being an African American in white
America. "Many of you have suffered at the hands of your
parents and are still complaining about that today. No? Then
don't expect an abused person whose race has been oppressed
for centuries to stop complaining. The suffering we blacks
have endured is ancient. And we are still in pain and anger

today, not only for the past, but because rightnow everyone
in this room we
should forget our pain and move
thinks that
on. We are angry because everyone hates listening to pain and
no one is prepared to pay what is due."
That did it. Everyone understood that the African
Americans' pain, everyone's pain, comes not only from the
past, but from the present, in the way we all ignore suffering
and criticize the sufferer for not progressing beyond pain.
Only when you accept pain and change its source in the pres-
ent can you move on.
Until that person spoke about the agony of the African
Americans, pain had been a forbidden subject. But as soon as
it was represented, it was no longer a disavowed and hungry
ghost, but a living spirit that animated and unified. In that

moment, everyone was ill, and at the same time, something
was healed. Everyone belonged to the same tribe, and all of us
were warriors focusing our second attention on the world as
we dreamed together.
Shortly thereafter, another problem arose. Several Jew-
ish women took issue with a participant who had been in
Hitler's army during the Second World War. The man de-
fended himself as best he could but finally admitted that he
loved Hitler because Hitler had promised the German people
a way out of misery and poverty. "Hitler showed the strength
no one had to break the depression of the Treaty of Ver-
else
sailles," he This man's love for Hitler split the group, and
said.
its dreamingbody became the Second World War. People took
sides and spoke in anger and pain. Some became so furious

that they threatened to lynch the man, while others pleaded
for mercy.
Many people, especially people of European background,
don't like conflict and try to avoid it. Thus, the kind of devel-
opment which so much pain and conflict arises is the kind
in
that many shun. Yet you unconsciously want conflict; you
know it is present, and that is why war has been so central to
many cultures for thousands of years. It is one of the few
things left in which everyone moves in a trance, together.
172 ARNOLD MINDELL

But there are better ways to "shoot straight" than with
guns. A group in which everyone is in turmoil is like a world
at war: The evil one is the enemy to be overcome. We tried to
handle the conflict with Hitler's soldier in a civil manner.
Some of us spoke for him, others against him. Yet there
seemed no end in sight, because no one would admit that he
or she had ever done or would ever do evil. Evil was a figment
of everyone's imagination, a ghost projected onto this man
like a spirit in the The man gave adequate reason for this
air.
projection at that time. Yelling at him, however, would not

kill prejudice, nor would his punishment bring back the dead.
man
developed his second attention, no-
Finally a Swiss
ticed the missing secondary process —
the group soul and —
went deeply into it. He spoke with tears in his eyes. "I am a
guilty one," he said to everyone. "I was a child of Swiss par-
ents who lived during the Second World War, and some of my
people supported Hitler by turning Jews away at the border.
Many who were turned back entered concentration camps
and were killed. How can I ever repay the world for the fact
that I am guilty by implication? I am guilty, very guilty."
His expression of guilt and sadness broke the spell. That
group came together because someone's second attention and
controlled abandon led us to the missing ghost. Someone
must take responsibility for the problems of today and yester-
day; otherwise, evil is a disembodied ghost. This huge com-
munity shrank in size and became intimate, for the moment,
at least.
The world that dreams together becomes a community

if someone with a shaman's body steps over a cultural edge
and ventures out, with controlled abandon, into the un-
known. That person must use her second attention and ability
to dream together to help the town experience the unknown
by letting it move her.
Atsame conference, when the gays and lesbians
that
spoke of having been brutally rejected by social rules, no one
wanted to admit their prejudices or homophobic reactions to
homosexual relationships. Finally, once again, someone found

a part of himself thatwas homophobic and clearly stated that
he was against gay people: He had the foolish prejudice that
gays and lesbians were neurotic. This man dropped his per-
sonal history of being a liberal, alternative thinker and became
the prejudice that was in the air.
He created violent reactions and a clearing. People spoke
about prejudice and unconsciousness. Ideas about political
change and homophobia arose. No solution could really
occur without greater political awareness of the issues in-
volved. Yet slowly that group of several hundred people
began to feel like a town I could live in, a place where the un-
spoken could arise, where pain and suffering were present,
heard, and felt. Just as our Mombasa healers had sought the
troublesome spirits who were bothering us, this group sought
impossible ghosts in its tense background. Dreaming together
brings momentary unity out of diversity.
Unconscious figures, dreams, ghosts, and spirits come
not only from human from the earth. We
bodies, but also
should expect genus loci spirits, or earth spirits, around the
world to rebel as well. According to James Swan, in Delphi,
Greece, where Gaia was worshiped in ancient times, an alu-
minum plant threatens to pollute the surroundings. 1 Indige-
nous tribes are upset about the dying spirit of the rainforests.
The Masai are no longer allowed their rituals on Mount Kila-
manjaro, in Tanzania, and Australian aborigines are angry that
tourists can climb over their sacred rock, Uluru; after all, those
same tourists would not climb on the roof of a church. Native
Americans are fighting loggers because the U.S. and Canadian
governments build roads over sacred Native territory.
For a sorcerer, the entire earth is a holy spot, which every-
one else neglects. No one takes unpredictable earth events
seriously enough. Not only is the environment neglected, but
everywhere the spirit of the place goes unseen by the second
attention. Even dirty streets in modern cities full of sky-
scrapers and filth, where millions must prepare their evening
beds, can be places of power as well as caverns of abysmal
174 ARNOLD MINDELL

suffering.Wherever you walk on earth, there is both the sa-
cred and the mundane.
For instance, everyone is appalled by Bombay, a city
with enormous suffering. Some corners of Bombay have so
many people that Times Square, Manhattan, feels empty by
comparison. Poverty-stricken people panhandle for money
everywhere. According to the India Times, as many as fifteen
thousand impoverished people from the countryside invade
Bombay's slums per week at certain times of the year. The un-
happy and poor street people of Bombay impinge upon tour-
ists, who can survive there only briefly. The stench and
wretchedness of certain corners is so intense that the only

reasonable first reactions are philanthropy, dysentery, and
horror.
Yet there something in the steamy heat and smog of
is
Bombay something that gives you another

that affects you,
viewpoint of the terrible poverty. In spite of the problems, or
perhaps because of them, there is normally a surprising lack of
violence on the city streets. The clash between Muslims and
Hindus is changing this scene at present, yet why at other
times has Bombay been so quiet? Is it the Indian philosophy
of Karma? The concept of Karma can also lead to the kind of
passivity that lets poverty happen.
But the Hindu scriptures have something more com-
pelling than the laissez-faire attitude of Karma. India accepts
the beggar as a demonstration of psychic and social problems,
as a city shadow, a dramatic reminder of the effects of Karma.
The message of the beggar is to "observe your life and im-
prove your lot, or you, too, will look like this next time
around."
I think the message is even more complex. Something
special holds Bombay Amy and I had arrived there
together.
South Africa. The city's poverty was un-
just after being in
bearable, but compared with what we had just seen in Cape
—
Town in 1990, before the apartheid state was dissembled
Bombay seemed happier, although poorer. Freedom plays a

huge role in making people happy. Amy and I bathed in this
freedom and let Bombay's field invade us. Living in Bombay
meant letting our dreamingbodies merge with the problems
but also with the powers of that ancient city.
While we were there, Amy came down with the most in-
credible heat rash we had ever seen. We decided to try dream-
bodywork on her welts before going to the hospital. She felt
into her rash and experienced wild claws tearing at her skin.
She saw a picture of a tiger, and as she moved and felt the tiger
in her body, she realized that it contained her disavowed reac-
tions to a particular street corner in Bombay, one that stank so
much that she had gotten sick. With courage, she allowed her-
self to play the tiger, reacting against the stenches and finally
transforming her reactions into a gloriously happy and ec-

static dance.
As she got into the heat rash, her ally, the tiger, emerged.
Her skin felt and to shout nasty,
better as she began to growl
stinky opinions and thoughts that she had been repressing.
She decided to share some of these thoughts with her friends
in Bombay. Her relationships became temporarily impossible,
but her welts drastically improved within minutes. That city
was a hunting ground where she had found the monster Kali,
the fierce goddess of the streets.
The Mahalakshmi Temple
The day Amy and I landed in Bombay, we were drowsy

from jet lag, the change in and the smog. Without un-
altitude,
packing, we put on our running clothes and followed our
trancelike state into the stream of people and traffic, down the
most forbidding streets. Our dreamingbodies were our basic
map, guiding us in the direction of least resistance and maxi-
mum danger.
We depended upon our bodies to find the most energiz-
ing and forbidding scenes as trail markers. Soon our run me-
andered through smoldering alleys to the sea, past screaming
vendors and snake charmers. One snake enthusiast let her
176 ARNOLD MINDELL

snake stick its head out and hiss at us. Our shudder indicated
to us that this was the right track.
Where the alley suddenly opened onto the Arabian Sea,
people were throwing flowers and fruits into the water as a
sacrificial ritual. We
watched, hiding behind the worshipers.
In the distance, a strange old man with pure black skin,
dressed all in white, with a shocking white beard, was waving
at an invisible something in the air. His violent gestures
matched his wild eyes. His motions were ecstatic as he contin-
uously beckoned toward the sky. He was talking to himself.
City life, as this man represented it, looked better to us with
every moment.
I was staring at the man when he suddenly turned and
looked back at me from a distance. I asked a worshiper who

spoke English who the old man was. I was warned that he was
a madman. I thought he looked magnificent. Someone like
that would be arrested or put into a mental institution in Eu-
rope or the United States, but he looked no more dangerous
than people I have worked with.
I wanted to meet him. The old man must have been tele-
pathic, for he turned toward me at that moment and walked

over to where we were standing. Perhaps he thought we were
crazy, too. A worshiper near us timidly translated the old
man's Hindi into English. Smiling broadly and waving his
hands in dancing movements toward the sea, the man said,
"The seas go out and the seas come in. Now it is high tide,
soon it will be low. We must offer what we have to the Great
One who lives not only in the sea but also beneath the ground
and in the sky."
These statements not only convinced me that he was
sane, but confirmed my original impression that there was
something special about him. "God is all around," he bel-
lowed in Hindi, gesturing with outstretched arms toward the
heavens. "We sense that, too," I replied. After staring at us for
afew moments, he said to the translator that he could see that
we had our own spiritual tradition and yet followed the same

gods as he. I mumbled in return that he must be a seer. "No,"
he insisted, continuing in the same vein. "My ears are Shiva's,
and my eyes are the eyes of Shiva. I merely report on what-
ever I hear and see. not me, but god who speaks."
It is
He said with his white garments blowing in the

all this
offshore wind on that hot day. He spoke with such genuine-

ness and warmth, I felt the streets of Bombay had blessed us
with a nagual, a wise teacher. He smiled and slowly turned his
head upward, gesturing again to the skies. He laughed, and
the world around him seemed to smile as he turned the chaos
and clutter of Bombay into gold.
"All is Shiva," he said, and
understood that every busi-
I
ness, group, and city is our

a spiritual experience waiting for
appreciation. As we left the shore, we found out from people
on the streets that the spirit we had been following that day
had brought us to the Mahalakshmi Temple and that he was
its high priest.
"All is Shiva," the high priest had said. Community life,

even the one you are in, is god as well. Shiva, god of aware-
ness, is a picture of the earth's perception, the group mind of
little gatherings and international conflicts, the global dream-
body. The search for this body gives at least some meaning to
madness and to the chaos around you. From this perspective,
the world is mess, but it is also one immense warrior's clan, a
madhouse in which we all disturb and provoke one another
toward freedom.
EXERCISES
1. Consider dreaming together with your community
and entering into a transformative group experience. Choose

one of the groups you are in and ask yourself what feelings,
thoughts, or moods you have about the group. Do you gossip
about your friends there? What do you say in private about
others?
2. Ghosts are aspects of people that you gossip about but
that no one represents directly. Imagine a ghost, a figure behind
178 ARNOLD MINDELL

your own gossip. Imagine jealousy, power, ambition. How
does your ghost look? Make your face look like its face. When
are you possessed by this ghost?
3. What conflicts in your group related to this ghost are

trying to surface?
Imagine that you or someone else plays this ghost

4.
during a meeting. What seems to happen? Are people sur-

prised? Happy? Angry? Completely represent the forbidden
ghost.
5. Now, as a creative possibility, see if you can consider

that your group has another spirit, a mythic figure that is try-
ing to awaken people. What might this spirit look like in your
imagination?
Imagine your group coming together. Consider what

6.
it might look like if both the gossip ghost and the ghost that
wants to awaken people were present. At least discuss these

different spirits. Better yet, try dancing as these ghosts would.
Experiment with moving and speaking like them, or present a
short play. When you do this in public, ask others to join you
in dreaming as you step into this dance. Some may dance the
part of one ghost, some the other, and the ghosts may interact,
conflict with each other, and play.

CHAPTER 13
PHANTOMS
AND
REAL PEOPLE
chapter 1, 1 mentioned that don Juan tells Cas-

In taneda that the spirit determines how you iden-
tify yourself, whether you are an average person,
a hunter, or a fluid warrior. Don Juan says that
when you remove doubt about the reality of the
spirit, the spirit changes, making it possible for you
to useyour second attention. It is finally up to the
move your assemblage point, that is, the
spirit to
way in which you assemble or construct yourself.
Without the help of the spirit, you may know
about shamanism but be unable to use it in your
life.
I experienced the spirit that moved me in a few

of my teachers. They called themselves by different
181
names. They were therapists, witch doctors, shamans, and
gurus, yet they all played the crucial role of the spirit for me.
These teachers fascinated me; they turned me on and around,
confused my old self-image and what I had believed was real.
The ones I remember had personal power; they were mystics,
uncanny and impossible. I have experienced and loved other
teachers, too, yet I seem to have forgotten them.
Though I never used the term "apprenticeship," I learned
as if I were an apprentice. I studied with these teachers and
was in therapy as much as possible —
not only because I was
neurotic, but because, above found elements of shaman-
all, I
ism in those relationships, in the love between master and ap-

prentice. We focused on specific things, yet I studied the way
they lived, basking in the incredible interactions they had with
me and with others around them. They helped me to move my
assemblage point and detach a bit from my phantom hood.
Healers and Teachers
I remember my first experience with the nagual in the

person of Joan, a woman who suddenly appeared out of no-
where in the late 1960s. One day, while I was working in my
little on the lake of Zurich, the phone rang. I picked it
office
up, and a voice on the other end said, "Hello, Dr. Mindell, this
is Joan. Please don't hang up. I am calling you from the Zurich
airport. Jesus, my spirit helper, told me to go to the airport in

New York and wait for someone to give me the money to take
a trip."
She explained that she had gone to Kennedy Airport and
waited there for a few hours until someone actually gave her
the money to buy a plane ticket. Her spirit had told her to buy
a ticket to Zurich. Now she was standing in the Zurich air-
port, and Jesus had told her to open the phone book and call
the first number her finger landed upon. That is why she was
now on the telephone with me.
I was speechless, not just because I was in the middle of a
session with a client, but because her story was so fantastic. I

told her that I would make some time and would be waiting
182 ARNOLD MINDELL

when she arrived. An
hour later, she was sitting in my office,
telling me wanted me to start writing books. I
that her spirit
protested that I was only twenty-eight and was just finishing
my studies. I was convinced that I had nothing to say.
Joan ignored my protestations and simply told me that
her spirit insisted that I write. I had never been interested in
writing, but she proceeded to tell me that writing would heal
my biggest problem. I laughed and told her that my biggest
problem was my huge financial debt. She was silent and went
into a trance. When she spoke a few minutes later, she ignored
my problem and said that I should not pay so much attention
to what my colleagues were doing but should get on with my
own work. I loved what she was saying, but I doubted her. We
decided to see each other several times more.
A breakthrough happened one morning when she came
into my office and told me that her spirit had said I should
stop playing with myself at night. I became furious and de-
nied that I did that, even though I did. From then on, how-
ever, I took her spirit seriously.
After I had had about ten sittings with Joan, she left
Zurich. Ten years later, my first book, The Dreambody, ap-
peared, and soon thereafter other books her spirit had pre-
dicted emerged from my typewriter. Books earn little for me,
but the connections they have created with people around the
world have enriched me beyond my wildest hopes. In addi-
tion, Joan had said things to me that time in Zurich about my
relationships with others that had seemed outrageous but that
have proven true years later.
Twenty years after our last contact in Switzerland, Joan
suddenly reappeared. This time she found me in the back
woods in a cabin somewhere in the American Northwest. She
knocked on the door and walked right in, saying she had
found the cabin by following an eagle. She walked past me into
the cabin, saw Amy, and embraced her, calling her by name
without ever having met her. Then she sat down and promptly
reported that she had seen me on the steps of a courthouse
fighting for new forms of education. She has always been far

—
ahead of me. Perhaps it will take another twenty years for me

to realize that educational vision.
Joan's message to me was that there is more to life than
who I thought I was attracted, mystified, even enlight-
was. I
ened by her. When she was around, I felt so much energy that
I could have run for miles. I was always buzzing. We were
some pair.
But things were not perfect between us. Like most ther-
apists, I certainly needed a push. But perhaps, like some
shamans, her talents lay in listening to the spirits and not in
listening to people. It seemed to me that when I did not follow
or comprehend her spirit's messages, she not her spirit —
tried to force me to obey. I was no angel; I was as stubborn as
possible. I was too impressed by my personal history and
needed someone who could turn me on to my own powers of
transformation, to help me become a warrior. I needed some-
one to give my assemblage point a shove. But instead of
changing, I was turned off by her pushiness and her lack of in-
terest in my ordinary self.
The tougher she became, the less enchanted I was with
her. She was the master of incredible powers, but, in spite of
her connection to infinity, she seemed to me to be a victim to
her own one way. Her insistence upon this one way of doing
things made her ordinary for me. Like others off the path of
heart, she was possessed by the very spirit that healed and of-
fered insight to others. She was a winning warrior who was
losing the battle with the devil's weed, a savior who may not
have heard the message herself. I remembered don
spirit's
Juan's warnings that people become "phantoms" when they

are hypnotized by common sense, by others' beliefs, or by the
spirit itself.
Gurus
Swamiji, a guru in India, was more complete than Joan

and the witch doctors in his verbal descriptions of magical
happenings. He had many negative predictions about the fu-
ture of our world and a lot of magic. Shiva, he said, was the
184 ARNOLD MINDELL

world field. If Shiva went against you, you might still live, but
if the guru went against you, nothing could save you. One of
the ashram's posted signs said that the disciple should choose
no other teacher.
These statements did not befriend Amy, who is wary of
nondemocratic procedures. understood the warnings philo-
I
sophically as a voice of old India, reminding us that the facili-

tator is as important as the spirit. Still, I feared that the guru
might be a phantom and not a real person.
When we landed in the ashram after hours of traveling,
we went straight to the meditation hall. In spite of my spiri-
tual aspirations, I fell asleep in a heap in one corner. Amy
heard me snoring and called over to me to wake me up. The
guru, it seems, had broken his traditional routine and was
going to appear this afternoon, instead of waiting until the
evening. I loved his unpredictable nature. It reminded me of
don Juan, who said that the hunter catches his prey because he
is not like it, not fixed by heavy, inflexible routines.
The guru came forth from his private chambers and had
us called to his feet to speak with him. Later, two of his disci-
ples said that he had spoken longer with us than he had with
anyone else in the fifteen years in which they had known him.
I was touched by his interest in us.
I told the guru about my need for renewal and courage
in world work. He responded that service, not meditation,

was the fastest way to illumination. Here was someone who
lived in a state of meditative detachment from the world, but
who recommended service to others. I instantly felt at home
with his attitude.
But the guru's forcefulness made me uncomfortable. No
one can know another human being, and yet I got the impres-
sion that he was neither detached nor growing. Was I simply a
modern man expecting the impossible from this person whose
life was based upon a three-thousand-year-old tradition? I
tried to remain open-minded and remembered that modern

India has deep connections with Austroasiatic and aboriginal
1
times. Still, though he was a fearless sorcerer and a courageous

human being trying to fill the empty position of eldership in a
world devoid of elders, he, too, was a phantom, a real person
with the potential to grow to completion without identifying
as such. Why should I have expected him to be different?
When will I stop looking for teachers and either discover them
in myself or in the community as a whole?
In any case, according to the guru's interpretation of an-
cient texts, only if someone like the guru is present can an in-
dividual or organization survive. The symbolic meaning of this
statement is that, without a shaman facilitator, individual and
group processes may not unravel constructively. Nowhere are
there enough shamans with second attention to pick up dou-
ble signals or practice controlled abandon. There are always
too few people around who are sufficiently humble to help
the rest of the people move in and out of spirits in a field.
Thus, only if someone or some group behaves as a wise elder
can you survive as an individual or organization.
Gurus try to awaken your spiritual potential, yet their
personal behavior, under the guise of tradition, sometimes
violates your trust. If a teacher takes herself too seriously, she
becomes a phantom, telling others what to do. But perhaps
just such phantom teachers are the best teachers, reminding
us that the truth must be discovered again and again, every
moment.
Kenyan Healers
The Kenyan healers whom I mentioned in chapter 12
had advantages over Joan and Swamiji. They lived in a com-
munity that believed in them and that had no written history
to obey. Joan lived in the Western world. Everything that the
Kenyan healers did was communal and interactive as well as
full of the nagual. For example, one healer agreed to heal us
only after having asked us if we wanted and were ready for

her healing. She insisted upon nothing. Her detachment gave
me hope that she was a true warrior and seer. I told in chapter
12 how this beautiful person chanted and hummed herself
into an incredible trance while her husband and son played
186 ARNOLD MINDELL

their musical instruments. Others were there, too, including
apprentices who were learning the art of witch doctors. She
said that her son was also considered a student. We were all
learners together.
After some minutes, the woman and the apprentices had
ground. Yet our healer had come back
fallen in seizure to the
to ordinary reality after a while and asked us again if we
wanted to go further. Our translator explained that she was
saying that Western medicine could not help us with what was
bothering us. We needed special treatment. I was all ready to
dive into the healing ceremony, and Amy, too, after a mo-
ment's hesitation, gave her assent.
This time, both the man and the woman began chanting
and sent everyone present into a deep reverie. The woman
went into another trance, and others in the room also fell into
trances, yelling and rolling about. The scene reminded me of
some of our own workshops on altered states and made me
feel at home. I even thought that what I do with people might
have originated here. It seems that living the dreamingbody is
a unifying, cross-cultural experience through which you can
understand and be understood by others.
Suddenly, the healer's husband and son had become
alarmed as the woman reached the greatest depth of her trance.
They started questioning her rapidly in Swahili, but she did
not respond. Our translator shaman had gone
told us that the
reality. Her
too far in her trance and had lost contact with
husband and son had become frightened and intervened by
playing romantic music to woo her back to this world.
We were astounded that, in that system, as in Yaqui
shamanism, drowning in the nagual was considered incorrect.
Confusing real people and invisible spirits was strictly forbid-
den. Here was someone we could trust. This woman dealt
with spirits without wanting to get carried away by them. She
could love people but separate them from the spirits in the air.
She was a master of everyday life, yet could leave the world
and go into trance states and later talk about them. For me,
she was a true and eternal teacher and a real person.

In any case, she regained consciousness and related her
visions to us. She had seen the evil ones who were bothering
us and proceeded to describe our greatest problems back
home. What to do now was the question. She again asked us if
we wanted to go on. We eagerly agreed, figuring it was too
late to turn back now. She questioned us about our problems
in great detail and then decided to intervene on our behalf in
the spirit world.
Now we were asked to wait outside the mud hut with
the rest of her group while our healers created a decorative
sand painting on the hut floor. They painted the image of the
evil spirits they had seen in their visions. When they were fin-
ished, they invited us back in. They explained that the next
step was to create a ceremony to reverse the evil effects that
were making us sick. They had decided to paint a picture in
the sand of what had been done to us and then to reverse it.
Amy and I were directed to sit on one part of the sand paint-
ing, huddling together under one shawl. Our hosts began
chanting, praying, and dancing. They prepared medicines and
brought in a pair of live chickens. I remember whispering to
Amy, "Hey, this is getting scary. Sitting on the sand painting is
great, but do you think we'll have to swallow that medicine?"
Fear had become my barrier. But it was too late to be-
come nervous about dysentery or malaria. One of the sha-
mans spooned the medicine into his own mouth and then,
before we could resist, with the same finger, spooned it into
ours. Like children, we put it in our mouths but hesitated, and
he said quickly, "Swallow it!"
Ugh! Medicine! I discovered that it tastes the same the

world over. But the ceremony was just beginning. We were di-
rected to walk meditatively back and forth over the human-
like figure painted on the sand, in order to reverse the bad
effects. The healers bathed the chickens in sacred water and
then slapped our bodies with the living chicken wings. I knew
that live chickens were essential in African ritual, but having a
live chicken wiped over your head, back, and chest is an expe-
rience to remember.
188 ARNOLD MINDELL

Finally, after what seemed like hours, we were allowed
to go home to an uneasy sleep. Miraculously, we felt well the
next day, and we returned to the hut to get new medicine,
which had been prepared during the night, in our absence. We
took our prescriptions and sat quietly for whatever was going
to happen next. To our surprise, the entire village came for a
—
meal of grilled chicken the same birds that had been used in
the ritual the night before. The love and friendship of our
African family showed through all of their interactions with
us. Our healers treated us warmly and kindly, leaving their
shamanic visages from the night before ingrained in our mem-
ories forever.
The whole experience moved me to tears. These healers
were real people, not phantoms. They were true elders, the
caretakers and leaders of their tribe. They gave any child who
came by their hut a penny in order to honor the powers from
which power and "medicine" came. For them the child was
the spirit behind healing. Everyone there was poverty-stricken,
but the spirit of the child wasand central to the art. That
rich
culture encouraged everyone to live with the unknown within
the context of the everyday world.
Our shamans in this community were wise people who
mediated between people and spirits, working directly with
the local psychic field. At the same time, they worked in town
at menial tasks. Our interpreter informed us that we were the
first non- Africans to see that ceremony. Only once before had
these people worked with a white person.

Their work impressed us for many reasons. First, they
continually asked us for our agreement about going further.
Second, they felt that it was crucial not to identify with any
reality, either the world of the spirits or that of ordinary peo-
ple. Yet they greatly respected both.

In our healers understood that they went off track
fact,
when they identified their "clients" with the spirits that both-
ered them, as the woman apparently did in the midst of the
ceremony. This particularly impressed me. Most of us forget
that we are different than the moods that possess us, that our

friends, too, are different than their troublesome spirits. This
viewpoint is especially difficult to hold when you get hurt by
others. Then you identify others solely by their actions, ne-
glecting to consider that what hurts you about someone else's
behavior is a spirit or mood that not only possesses that per-

son, but is in the air. By forgetting this, you forget to honor
both the spirits and the people.
I cannot remember ever having seen a Western therapist
inadvertently identify a client with her unconscious problem

and then get out of that frame of mind. Jung apparently apol-
ogized if he got into bad moods with people. I also remember
seeing other witch doctors do that. I recall how a Native
American medicine healer living with a tribe in Canada lost
his temper at Americans because of the way the Canadian
government was treating Indians. He stormed out of the room
in which we were doing a group process. Then he came back
to apologize for his bad mood. Naturally, like most readers, I
thought his anger was justified, but he felt it had harmed
others, and he was genuinely apologetic. Here was another
real teacher.
I don't want to place these wonderful people on ped-
estals too high, yet it was touching to see this man and our
Kenyan healers take responsibility for their moods and their
possible effects on the world around them. I have never seen
anyone else consider what their moods do to the community
they live in, much less apologize for these moods and change
them. It is as if these healers were differentiating themselves
from the spirits that moved them. I feel loved and privileged
to be around others who worry not only about themselves
but about what they are doing to me. Such human beings need
to be honored.
These teachers gave me a lot. They awakened me to the
spirit of large-group situations. In large gatherings and in gen-
eral, your viewpoint only partially belongs to you. A view-
point is also a spirit in the field, which, taken together with all
the other spirits, makes the world whole. My definition of
190 ARNOLD MINDELL

being a real person is being awake to the spirits that go through
you and taking responsibility for their effects on others.
Whenever you get stuck, you are momentarily possessed
by the spirit of a role that you are inadvertently playing. The
healing for this situation is, as our healers showed us, inter-
vening between the people and the spirits and encouraging the
people to express the spirits and move on. If you are attracted
by one and the same spirit or role all the time, you are unfree.
Still, you are only the channel and not the spirit itself. If you
choose to forget this, you become a phantom instead of a real

person.
In central Africa, where Western psychotherapy has had
little impact, shamanic methods are used when Western medi-
cinefails. The shamanic approach does not require anything
more from the "client" than he can give. The shamans are
compassionate with the suffering, phantomlike nature of the
clients and do not blame the clients for being as they are.
These shamans try not to become phantoms themselves.
The shamans who healed us took full responsibility for
their awareness of the spirit and only asked for minimal com-
mitment for their awareness. No integration was required
except, of course, for the taking of the medicine. Shamanic
healing works with anyone, even with those not overtly inter-
ested in becoming warriors. We wanted to pay these people,
but before they would take anything from us, they had to go
into trance to feel what was right for the spirit. What healed
most of all was that these shamans were real people.
Phantoms and Real People
The phantom, unlike the warrior, ignores ghosts and

simply becomes possessed by them. For the phantom, every-
thing is terribly serious. When you are a phantom, you are
constantly in pain, troubled, worried about the state of the
world, caught up in either destroying or saving it.
How do you become a real person instead of a phan-

tom? As I wrote in chapter 6, whether you become a hunter

or a warrior is a matter of the spirit. At every stage of develop-
ment, personal growth is a matter of an unknown force. You
remain phantom, or you may for moments become a hunter.
a
Then you track your prey, kill it, and eat or integrate it while
remaining in ordinary reality. Perhaps you become a warrior.
Then you confront the other world and step into it.
The person on the path of heart, however, is everything
and nothing. In this state, you are a real person, almost de-
tached, moving fluidly and rapidly between states. Sometimes
you are just an ordinary person, sometimes a warrior, some-
times a nagual teacher.
There are times when you must coerce yourself and
make a vow to step out of the morass of the self-importance
and moods of phantom life. You may need to vow never to
lose another battle with the ally and to forget your whole self.
Thisvow always seems to come after you have had enough of

your own moods, boredom, and compulsions. A growing
—
need arises after you have been drugged enough by moody,
—
foggy conditions to become the one who processes these
states instead of the one who is depressed or inflated.
But if the vow fails, you must wait for a signal from the
unknown. What else can upset the phantom's belief that the
world is a place in which to succeed and fail instead of a hunt-
ing ground in which to be transformed? The phantom's view-
point is everyone's reality. When you are a phantom, either
you are bored with life, because you have no goal, or you
swing wildly between enthusiasm and depression, depending
on whether you have done something.
As a real person on the path of heart, you may appear to
be like everyone else: stubborn and ambitious, jealous and in-
sulted. But your laughter gives you away. There is something
free about you in this state. You practice democracy at the
deepest level, listen to inner and outer voices, and live and
leave each voice as the moment requires.
Ancient and modern shamans follow their dreams and
wait for magic animals and unpredictable turns of fate to gain
access to this appealing state of mind. They wait for their
192 ARNOLD MINDELL

calling. Today, however, the very time of day may be the call-
ing. By the virtue of your being alive today, you are called
upon to develop your potential for the second attention and
controlled abandon or to admit that you take no responsibil-
ity for the environment.
Now is do business by dreaming with others
the time to
together. If you viewed as weird or fantastic today, you
are
may console yourself. Tomorrow, phantomhood, which ig-
nores the spirit and is possessed by it, will be seen as an epi-
demic disease with a high mortality rate.
EXERCISES
1. Describe yourself when you are a phantom. Which
moods tend to possess you longest, and what do you look like
when you are possessed? Notice what feeling like a phantom
does to your body. Notice when and if your phantomlike
moods serve or provoke the enlightenment or development of
others.
2. Describe yourself when you are Notice what you

real.
look and feel like when you feel fluid and can act like a phan-
tom and also detach from it. In these real moments, what role
do you fill in the world around you? When you are real, per-
haps you feel as if you are on the path of heart. Others around
you may need you in this role; they may even participate in
creating the role for you to occupy.
3. Honor your teachers. Which men and women in your

past have played the role of the spirit for you, of your nagual?
Who confused your old worldview and helped you to become
real? Remember your favorite teachers. What were their tasks
in life? How far did they get with their tasks? How are you in
the midst of completing their tasks? Choose one teacher now
to honor, and take a moment with the following fantasy.
Think of this person as part of a line of real people. Imagine
what spirit or what mythical or real teachers were behind that
person.

4. Now look back into history and see your real teachers
and the spirit lineage standing behind them. This vision may
connect you not only to your teacher, but to yourself, as a real
person with an incredible history. Take a moment and experi-
ment with honoring your teacher, your lineage, and even
yourself.
194 ARNOLD MINDELL

CHAPTER 14
THE DEATHWALK
f you wrestle your demon, you find moments of

pleasure, freedom, and exceptional energy
whether you win or lose the battle with yourself.
I Perhaps best of all, you have moments of feeling
real and congruent, free from the fears and symp-
toms of phantomhood. Now you know you have a
double and sense your shaman's dreamingbody.
But sometimes you forget these experiences and
wonder just how much of the dreamingbody can be
lived in this life. On the one hand, your love for the
world tempts you back to pester and play with
everyone else. But on the other hand, the ecstasy of
experience may entice you to leave forever.
195
—
In the last pages of Tales of Power, don Juan explains to

his apprentice that the place in which they stand is their last
crossroads together. Few warriors, he says, have ever survived
the encounter with the unknown, which the apprentices are
about to face. The nagual is so intense that those who go
through the final encounter find it unappealing to return to
the tonal, "the world of order and noise and pain." 1
Remember those dramatic feelings of wholeness that ac-
company the discovery of the dreamingbody? It is difficult to
leave such an experience and go back to ordinary reality. Re-
turning from a wonderful vacation, a meaningful relationship,
or an intense inner experience is painful, because you fear los-
ing the connection to your whole self.
Thus, you experience difficulties after your encounter

with the nagual. Returning to the state of ordinary affairs
the world of the tonal, where dreams, body experiences, and
—
secondary processes are not valued is not easy. Don Juan
warns his apprentice that if he does not choose to return, he
will disappear, as if swallowed by the earth. But if he does re-
turn, he will have to wait and finish his particular task in life.
Once this is finished, the apprentice will have command over

the totality of himself. If he returns, don Juan explains, he will
be confronted for the first time with the idea of the task to be
fulfilled. This is no ordinary job, don Juan warns, but a
worldly undertaking that may take a long time to complete.

The task the apprentice must fulfill is one bestowed upon him
by his teacher.
Don Juan tells Castaneda that in earlier times, teachers
never searched for apprentices. The personal power of both
teacher and apprentice set up their relationship, so that force,
desire, or intrigue never bonded the two. Since power chooses
the teacher, you may also assume that power chooses the task
linked to that particular teacher.
I can verify this from personal experience. When I first
went to Zurich, my intention was to complete my studies in

theoretical physics. Fate had it, however, that I stumbled into
a fellow student who was so infatuated with his analyst that I
196 ARNOLD MINDELL

decided to enter analysis as well. Thus, fate introduced me to
my first teacher.
Then one day, while I was sitting outside a cafe watching
the people go by, I noticed a charming European gentleman
sitting at the next table doing the same thing. As I looked at
him closely, I saw in him a mixture of old-world-style and
wakeful presence. I asked him what he was doing, and he re-
plied dryly, "Same thing
you." as
We spent an enjoyable afternoon together, talking about
women and cafes, and decided to meet again the next Saturday
afternoon. The next week we had a wonderful time again, and
we continued to meet each Saturday afternoon, until one day
Idreamed that this man was my real teacher. At the time of
my dream, many weeks after we had first met, we had been so
busy chatting, drinking, and laughing that we had not yet in-
troduced ourselves. What was his name?
The next time I saw him, I shyly told him my dream and
asked him if he were also interested in dreams and such things.
He laughed aloud and said yes, he had recently gotten inter-
ested in such things. He must have seen how puzzled I was by
his behavior, for he looked me straight in the eye and told me
that he was president of the Jung Institute in Zurich, and the
nephew of C. G. Jung. Shocked, the official aspect of my ap-
prenticeship began.
We spent a lot of time together, and he became a true and
incomprehensible nagual for me. He was at once a spiritual
teacher and a man thoroughly anchored in this world. He told
me his job was to teach me about the unconscious through
living; we spent most of our time together doing anything but
conventional analysis. We walked, talked, and met at unusual
times and in strange places. Later on, we met with others; I
loved watching him interact with others. He was so charming,

and I felt so antisocial. Today, I realize how lucky I was to
have met him.
Inevitably, my task became wrapped up with this man's
and when he died years after our first meeting, I dreamed
fate,
on the day of his funeral that his double jumped out of the

grave and into my lungs when
I inhaled. Sometimes I still
feel that a part of him me, which may be why he still ap-
is in
pears in my dreams, directing me about the nature of my per-
sonal task.
Since that time, a few people have chosen me to be their
teacher, and I have been amazed at how
dreams of
clearly the
these people link their tasks to mine. The personal powers
of both the teacher and the student set up their meeting, and
the same power chooses the task symbolized by that teacher.
In other words, the task is a shared spirit, which in some cases
may take generations to complete. It is as if student and
teacher are part of a long lineage whose history and future ex-
tend backward and outward to infinity.
There is something freeing about the antiquity and im-
personality of the task, and something wonderful about the
participation of those who are living and dead in fulfilling it.
Relationships at this level are both intimate and free. I re-
member learning this from a man in Bombay who came to
me after seeing me for the first time at a lecture. He said, "Dr.
Mindell, I would like you to be my guru." I recoiled a bit,
feeling embarrassed, and began wondering how to deal with

his feelings.
Today I am
grateful to him, however, for having been a
guru for me showing me how to deal with feelings. "Dr.
in
Mindell, don't worry about this. It is impersonal," he ex-
plained. "It has nothing to do with you and me. You have be-
come my guru, but you do not have to do anything. I will
carry your picture with me and talk to it when necessary."
Though this may sound to a Westerner like a one-sided
attitude, there is eternal truth to it. The apprentice's and
teacher's powers create their relationship and their task. All
connected to the myth of consciousness have at least one task
in common: to develop the second attention and relativize the
one-sidedness of our awareness, enabling ourselves and others
to live more fully. Castaneda's task, for example, was appar-
ently to bring the powers of the night into the day via the
teachings of don Juan.
198 ARNOLD MINDELL

The exact nature of the task dependsupon your individ-
ual talents and weaknesses, the period you live in, and the as-
pect of your teacher's task that she has not completed. Hence,
it is just as don Juan says: The task is bestowed by the spirit of
the teacher, either directly or indirectly through dreams and

love.
Deathwalk
Don Genaro tells about problems connected with this

task. He recounts a tale of what happens while you wait for
the task to be completed, a time that I call the deathwalk. Ac-
cording to this story, there was a band of male warriors who
lived in the mountains many years ago. When one member of
the band disobeyed the group rules, he had to face the others
and explain himself to them. They found him either innocent
or guilty; if they found him guilty, they lined up to shoot him
while he walked in front of them.
The condemned warrior, however, was given a chance. If
he walked in such a special way that no one could pull the
trigger, or if he survived his wounds, he was free. The story
goes that in fact some people did manage to live through that
deathwalk. Perhaps their personal power touched their com-
rades, making it impossible for the others to shoot. Or per-
haps the condemned warrior was so centered and calm that
his detachment saved him.
According to the shamans, this story means that if you
choose to return to everyday life after your training, you must
wait on this earth until your task is done. Your waiting will be
like that walk of the warriors in the story: Every step could be
your last. The difference is that your comrades are the execu-
tioners in the story, whereas in real life, the spirit itself is aim-
ing at you. 2
In any case, everyone caught in this situation has "run
out of human time," and the only things that can save you will
be your learning and the impeccability you employ while com-
pleting your task. This means that you are on a deathwalk.
Your interest in awareness and personal growth binds you

with others, not only through mutual friendship, but through
your need for challenge and provocation.
Conflict, both inner and outer, is the fate of the warrior.
All are in the midst of a deathwalk insofar as the world con-
stantly challenges you to become your entire self. An average
person feels that the world is The difference be-
against her.
tween the state of mind of an ordinary person and that of a
warrior is that a warrior realizes that the worst conflict is with
his own phantom nature. As a warrior, you know that the
world is a hunting ground, and everyone is an ally, tripping
and troubling you until you tap the ally's power, the dream-
ingbody.
Thus, your warrior's death squad is composed of both
your inner critics and outer friends and enemies depending —
upon your state of mind. Friends can be worthy opponents,
demons, and allies, whose secrets you must discover. They
seem like opposing powers within you and all around the uni-
verse. These erstwhile friends are your mythic warrior group,
inner and outer criticism, generated by jealousy and uncon-
sciousness, by your relationship to a teacher and to fellow
students, and by your own ally, which breaks social rules.
This group is dreaming together.
The Rules
The group are the
implicit laws of this inner or outer
rules of your community, the intentions you have somehow
agreed to live by. They may be the unwritten laws of your
family and culture and/or the ideals and rationale of the na-
tion. Within your warrior's family, they are that group's laws
governing relationships and the roles of women and men.
They are the implicit rules of dealing with outsiders. If you
are part of a religious group, you live by certain rules that
govern belief and lifestyle. If you are a scientist, you are
bound by the conventions of empiricism and rationalism. As a
teacher, you must model academic behavior and teach people
to adapt. For the therapist, rationalism is supposed to win
over shamanism.
200 ARNOLD MINDELL

As a person, you must follow the definitions of normal
human behavior and repress perceptions that lie outside this
definition. Your racial group frowns upon mixed relation-
ships. As woman, you must fight three thousand years of
a
domination. As a man, you must work until you drop no re- —
laxing! If you are gay, lesbian, or bisexual, you must be careful
about showing that, or you could be killed.
If your particular group attacks you first in your
dreams, then you can go into therapy and meet your own re-
sistances. Yet this may not succeed, because self-doubt, that is,
your attackers, can block you even from seeking help, dream-
ing, ormoving. Inner attacks are at their maximum when you
attempt to change and be real. Sometimes only a shaman who
looks for your lost soul can help.
The jury spirit manifests outwardly as your neighbor, a
group, a country, the tax department, the world. In fact, your
very existence on the planet at the turn of the twenty-first
century means that you are bound by the conventions of the
past and the hope of a new age. At any time, you are requested
from inside and out to do as others do and to identify with
what others want you to be. Changing without permission is
forbidden.
The world of your attackers is like a gigantic phantom
field inwhich you must move. As you work and fulfill your
task, you become fluid, changing from moment to moment,
coming from and returning to old roles, inadvertently break-
ing the central rule: Do not tamper with your own personal
history. But, of course, you have had to.
Upsetting your own sense of yourself, changing identi-

ties, and dropping personal history has been tough and excit-
ing. Now it is shocking to hear old friends accusing you of
breaking the explicit and implicit rules of the past. This con-
flict is painful enough, but worse is to come. Breaking a group
rule puts you against a far more formidable foe than even
intimate family and friends. The rule breaker must stand be-
fore centuries of human assumptions and the outrage of its
defenders.

—
Fate has made you an outlaw. As a warrior, you one day

had to disobey one of these cultural laws, almost by defini-
tion. You upset and threatened belief systems and goals. Since
you are a warrior, you have had to step over edges and un-
wittingly disturb the web of which you are part. Your body
stops the world by living the energy in symptoms. Aware-
ness and the second attention make you more unpredictable
in relationships. Your sense of the unknown leads you to
support spirits that others have forgotten. Now you are in
trouble.
The Executioners
Is it your fault if you remind others of dreams they do

not want? And who can blame the group, either for resistance
to you or for the life-and-death struggle that ensues? These
people are fighting for their lives, equilibrium, homeostasis
indeed, for the perpetuation of history. "Do not disturb us
more than we can take," they say.
From a global viewpoint, you disturb your organiza-
tional system, and history must fight for continuity. In this
universal and fated interaction, the warrior's friends become
the voices of the web. Their warmth turns to ice. They accuse
you of unjustifiable behavior, egotism, and criminality as they
become possessed by their lawmaker role in this eternal
drama of human history.
The collective you live in must pursue you for what it
experiences as criminal acts and bring you to trial, just as you
have challenged other rule breakers in the past. Now it is you
who enters into a life-and-death struggle with the universe. It
is your warrior's fate to feel prosecuted and to face the collec-

tive jury. The ecstasy of the nagual suddenly turns into a
nightmare as your closest friends become your worthy oppo-
nents, challenging you your acts.
to take responsibility for
If you are not careful, back into phantomhood
you fall
and strike back at those who injure you. With luck and aware-
ness, however, you remember the warrior's view and realize
202 ARNOLD MINDELL

the significance of your battle. Your comrades are not simply
the lowly phantoms you once despised, and their shots are
not the attacks that make you bleed. Rather, they are the voice
of history asking you to repay culture by expanding your
sense of yourself to include others. Either remove yourself
from your acts and see your trouble as a debt you owe his-
tory, or fight like a hero and die like a phantom.
The beginning warrior forgets these grand visions in the
midst of her tensions and in the crucial moment claims before
the court that she had no choice, that she had to commit her
crime. If you had not heeded the words of the demon, ex-
pressed the impulsiveness of your dreamingbody, and obeyed
the commands of her death, you would have become sick and
disordered. You could not have said yes once again to the de-
mands of adaptation and no to your inner world. There was
no middle way of reasonableness.
Though their hearts may be stirred, the jury's verdict
must still be "guilty." Following inner life and producing
trouble are not allowed. Either follow the ally by yourself,
they will say, or follow the rules of the collective. To follow
the ally within the collective is to disturb others.
This jury may complain
that as long as you are around,
business can no longer go on as usual. Why must you go in
the opposite direction? Wouldn't it be easier to follow the
prescribed routes that others seem to walk? How can you
smile at things others take so seriously and be serious about
what others ignore? The jury would like to give you another
—
chance indeed, you may be a remarkable person but it can- —
not do so because your nature won't allow it to. These people
must shoot to kill you at the edge of the cliff and make certain
that you realize that your acts were a matter of life and death.
Thus, your lesson is that following the ally secures nei-
ther collective approval nor longevity. The path of knowledge
is a forced one in which you constantly meet inexplicable
powers. The path of heart is as terrifying as it is meaningful. It

could result in early death.

Surviving the Deathwalk
According to don Genaro and don Juan, some warriors

have been so centered that they have made it across the firing
range without being shot. Their comrades just could not pull
the trigger. Was the warrior so congruent and at one with his
previous acts and crimes that his dreamingbody pulled him
through unharmed? Or was he just so tough that he recuper-
ated from a broken heart and wounds?
Perhaps it was not the warrior who governed the situa-
tion but the members of his jury who realized that their friend
was living something out for everyone. After all, every band
of warriors, every group of people, is connected by some sort
of awareness myth. Each part of the group is a channel of
awareness capable of carrying and expressing messages from
the unknown.
An enlightened jury would have to reason that if the
town kills one of its citizens, it only succeeds in destroying his
body. The voice and message carried by that warrior cannot
be killed. New ideas and ways of living are more vast and
more permanent than the people who speak them. The ideas
will haunt the town in its dreams long after the warrior has
died. In this way, the voices of the past continue today as roles
in the present, parts that are needed for the sake of collective
wholeness. This is why witchcraft, shamanism, and, I hope,
indigenous life can never be completely destroyed.
In any case, since you temporary rule breaker
are a
within the group, you are also its secondary process, its ghost
spirit. To kill you is not only inhuman, but ineffectual.
Dreams live on after your death. No idea has ever been killed.
Besides, you might argue, your community's rulership could
have been too rigid; otherwise, it would not have dreamed up
a warrior to unwittingly create a revolution.
If you face the jury today, you will have the feeling that
you have been here before. The global viewpoint that you are
everyone who has ever broken a rule may enable you to sur-
204 ARNOLD MINDELL

vive. The jury, which fights for the ways things have been,
has also always been here. Moreover, not only you are on
trial, but so is all of humanity that has broken environmental
rules.
You are living in a world that itself is on trial. So remind
your potential executioners that they, too, have run out of
time. As human beings thrash about for solutions to the over-
whelming and apparently unsolvable planetary problems they
have created, nature is aiming at the human species, just as the
jury aims at the warrior.
Yet you knowyou cannot wait for your world to
that
awaken spontaneously, for you may observe its change from
the grave. You must wake up and can no longer afford to see
your rule breaker's journey as only a personal battle of indi-
viduation. The results of your deathwalk are important for
everyone. Your individual attempts to become your whole
self are provoking change around you, even now as you read
this. Eternity asks you, so to speak, to model world change as
the whole planet considers how it will survive its deathwalk

with nature.
To survive the deathwalk, you must be both vulnerable
and invisible. First you must cry for yourself, as the victim of
your own and other's unconsciousness. Then you must stand
strongly and congruently for yourself, against opponents. Fi-
nally, you must drop your personal history and smile. If you
have gotten this far, you have the power even to take sides
with your jury, to see its viewpoint and attack yourself before
it can shoot. Now, if you succeed at nothing else, at least you
will be on the path of heart and learning.

Remember death, your old adviser? Disappear before
the guns of the enemy and remove your own personal history
before it can shoot. As a fluid warrior, not only are you your-
self, but you have the opinions of the jury. Moreover, you are
a spirit or a role in a field. Your fluidity should give you

compassion both for yourself and for your persecutors,
friends, and community. The moment you find your shaman's

body, you will gladly admit that your time is up. The jury that
witnesses such a last stand, in which you leave your own his-
tory, will be a jury that has had its job taken away.
Such a last dance may
not uphold death, but it will
surely preserve you forever. Like a spirit free from all roles,
the legendary warrior carries her body and her death in her
own hands and sees her life in perspective. The world is not
only her enemy but her awakener. Something eternal watches
the way she deals with minority opinions. Something huge is
sensitive to unconsciousness and brutality.
The worst problem with the deathwalk is not its in-
evitability or even its universality, but the way you and every-
one else freeze into a particular role during its occurrence,
afraid to move or to admit that everyone is on trial. We are all
gods who could facilitate pain but usually don't. Thus, each
time one of us takes the witness stand, the whole world goes
on trial. Every time a disturber tests the rules, the entire group
is under examination.
History reminds us that a few have always survived and

transformed together with their communities. There has al-
ways been a don Juan who has taught about the totality of
human beings, who has gone on the path of self-discovery, re-
turned to Ixtlan, and gone on to transform others. In fact, our
present study due to don Juan's own survival of the death-
is
walk. He must have been impossible for those around him,

but he lived through their anger and loved them enough to
give as much as he took.
Until now, our world has gone through a relentless cycle
of dreaming up and killing its most unusual shamans and
teachers, who have then returned in other forms to help.
There has always been Lao Tsu, returning in the last mo-
a
ment before death to write a Tao Te Ching. Think of the Na-
tive American chief Hiawatha and his dreams, which helped
him teach his group how to plant new crops and survive. Or
consider the dramatic story of the Swiss Bruder Klaus, who
left his family at age forty-five in order to follow his Wotanic
206 ARNOLD MINDELL

dreams and later repaid the world with political and divine
guidance. 3 Remember Jesus, Buddha, Gandhi, Martin Luther
King, Jr., and Malcolm X. Remember Ben Thompson, the
man who read this chapter on tape and had it played back at
his funeral.
I recall many unsung grassroots heroes who have passed
their lives in relative obscurity, suffering the antithetical na-
ture of their path with the world around them. Their allies
have appeared as physical or social disabilities, homosexuality,

color differences, forbidden loves, madness, and poetry. I
think of single parents and of lonely artists trying to express

the impossible. And others have lived their fates through to
the moment of death without the support of anyone besides
their own dreaming process.
Understanding that the world dreamed their unconven-
tionality into existence would have been a small comfort for
the heartache left over when the battle was finished. But what
would really honor the memory of these people would be our
realization that those small changes that occurred because of
their struggle touch everyone today, because they are present
everywhere, at all times, in the network of connections.
The Length of Life
Thus nation and community determine in part the

length of an individual's life. In fact, the average age of human
beings must be connected to the way
which you destroy or
in
support others. The length of your life may be set by more
than genetic inheritance, good food, physical exercise, and
good and bad deeds. Just as biologists cannot properly explain
the pulse of life or the moment of death, no one knows why
an individual will live eighty years and not one hundred or
five hundred. No one knows why so many talented, gifted,
and incredible people die early.
I never thought about this problem until I read this
chapter as if I were Ben Thompson speaking at my funeral. I

think Ben was trying to say that his life had been a deathwalk,

which ended, like all our lives will, at the point where the
message he carried was too early for its time.
Perhaps you die when you fail to communicate or when
others cannot understand the messages of the spirit within
you. You die every time you fail to appreciate the oppressor
who has forced you to define your true nature. Instead of
being annihilated, as if by evil, you can still drop your per-
sonal history, become a fluid piece of antimatter, step out of
time, and become your double, your opponent.
Until now, too few of us have followed nature's myster-
ies, the messages and signals of the unknown. Taking respon-
sibility for the ruthlessness of means having the courage to
life
focusupon processes that others neglect. The same relentless-

ness that possessesyou could be the ally, which, once trans-
formed, will nourish. Then your deathwalk will not only be
your personal difficulties but the dramatic tale of global
awakening.
EXERCISES
1. Recall some of the deathwalks you are on or have
been on. When you were a child, did you battle with other
children? As a teenager, did you have trouble with authori-
ties? Did you run into conflict with your immediate family?
Have you been involved in forbidden love affairs? Have you
had or are you in an unconventional partnership or marriage?
Have you experienced a midlife crisis, in which everything
became meaningless? Are you afraid of illness, retirement, old
age, or death? Are you about to do something that will bring
you into conflict with others?
2. Imagine an opponent or jury that is now or might in

the future be against you. Who is it? What does it look like?
What is it doing and saying? Where is it?
3. Choose one of these encounters that you would like
to complete now. Encounter your inner or outer opponents,
208 ARNOLD MINDELL

at first in your mind's eye. Notice what they are doing, think-
ing, feeling.
Get into your double. Pick up your double signals in

4.
your imagination, and watch how your shaman's body deals

with the situation.
5. If you need to, remind your attackers that we are all
on adeathwalk and that nature is aiming at the entire human

race, judging the way in which we all handle conflict. Tell
your attackers that eternity might put them on trial, too, for
their abusiveness.
6. If you have sufficient perspective, refer to history. Tell

the inner or outer opponents that you are a part of culture
that has been neglected. Tell them that others have tried and
failed at this deathwalk or have not had the courage to begin.
Explain ways in which the future might be better for all if the
jury tried to understand your actions.
7. Listen to your opponents, and notice what strong,

nonverbal body feelings occur. If you cannot defend yourself
or speak, let your feelings express themselves in movement.
Allow this moment to be your last dance, and allow your
dance to unfold.

CHAPTER 15
DREAMTIME
AND
CULTURAL CHANGE
Remember the pain of the deathwalk. Re-

member what was when others
it like
treated you as an unwanted dream.When
you survive a deathwalk, you know what
it is like for a dream to almost die, for a community
to turn against you, for an ethnic group to be
tortured. If you do not recognize your own pow-
ers, when the country represses the diversity of its
citizens, its people use guns in order to dream

together.
There are only slight differences in the pain
caused by unnecessary self-criticism, contempt from
a family, oppression by a group, or scorn because
211
you have followed your shaman's body. But if you survive the
deathwalk, you could help transform our present epidemic of
abuse, oppression, and genocide into a state of people dream-
ing together.
To do this, notice abuse when it occurs. Notice racism,
homophobia, religious prejudice, and sexism. Point out to
everyone how we force individuals to enter into a deathwalk
as they go down the street, live at home, or stand in public.
Bring forward the deadly spirits, like the oppressor, and en-
courage everyone to witness the agony of the victim. In chap-
ter 12, I gave examples of racism and anti-Semitism and
indicated how
to encourage confrontation between the vari-
ous and people.
spirits
When we succeed at dreaming together, everyone real-
izes that we are all responsible for creating and changing cul-
ture. It is everyone's job to witness and investigate the altered
states of oppression, pain, rage, and freedom that permeate
our groups. We have not alleviated our cultural problems by
repressing, avoiding, or ignoring them. We need new shamans
to go deeper into them. Dreaming together is a new kind of
social activism; it means going deeper to find the basis of per-
sonal and social healing.
When you mixing innerwork and group
succeed at
process, no one have oc-
carries grudges or sees the events that
curred as only personal. In dreaming together, everyone
knows that not only the resolution to conflict is crucial, but so
is common participation in awesome events.
the sense of
Most cultures have forgotten their indigenous origins.
The modern world looks to me like a ship lost at sea, a ship
searching for its past. As it flounders about, it tries in vain to
anchor itself on fundamentalism, heroic leadership, dictator-
ship, or war, those ancient mirages of meaning. Everyone
seems to have forgotten the meaning that personal lives have
in the evolution of communities. Yet as our planet searches for
new paradigms of democracy, the central myth of commu-
nity —dreaming together, the power that once created the
world — lies only one breath away.
212 ARNOLD MINDELL

Remaining aboriginal cultures still teach about dream-
time. Native American stories recall how one man's dream
changed the entire tribe. One such story, of Black Elk, 1 tells
about how a whole tribe dreamed together.
I awoke to the importance of dreaming together after
being with Australian aborigines. The healer Amy and I vis-

ited in the darkness of the South Pacific bush, that down
under world, greeted us quietly in the evening shadows one
night and asked us to come again, to meet him the next day.
He needed time to search the rainforest for healing plants.
While going home that night, we were driving through
the healer's village when a man who seemed to be wandering
aimlessly almost walked in front of our car. We stopped, and I
opened the door to say hello. The aboriginal man got in, right
next to me, without a word. This wonderful being asked to be
taken home. At first he seemed intoxicated to the point of
delirium, but after a few minutes of complete trancelike be-
havior, he spoke clearly about himself. He was living some-
where between the oppression of colonial Australia, which
refused to accept aborigines as human beings until only a few
years ago, and the nonviolent dreamtime of the aborigines.
When he finally introduced us to his family at his home, we
experienced that same warmth, friendship, and love that
we had missed since we left Mombasa.
If you look down on aboriginal cultures for their drink-
ing problems, then consider the possibility that alcohol is a

way back to dreamtime. Modern culture divides us from our
ancient myths of a planet created by dreamlike figures who
come out at night.According to these myths, the world was
not created by the big bang and its resulting geophysical
forces. The world is the way it is because of the mythic Aus-
2
tralian red kangaroo and other deities. Whenever you imagine
the environment full of spirits, you connect to the most an-
cient part of human history, which dates back fifty thousand
years. Just as you may experience dragons and people within
you, your aboriginal mind sees the world as the expression of
mythic powers that curve the space and time of geology.

The day after we met that aboriginal man, we returned
to the Australian healer, who invited us, one at a time, into his
hut to be healed. In the seance done for me, the healer and his
wife chanted and danced. She sang, while he rubbed his hands,
first on his own body and then on mine to heal me. The cou-
ple listened closely to the problems I described and finally
blew the soul back into me through my ears and the top of my
head. He "brushed me clean" by waving a medicine plant over
my body. Later, gathering us together, he "smoked us pure"
by asking us to stand in front of his fire, where the fumes of
burning healing plants were blown through us by the wind.
It was an awesome and difficult-to-describe affair. The
couple's daughter sat patiently outside the hut and waited to

tell us that we should not discuss our experiences with any-
one. However, she said, I could later write about these experi-
ences in this book.
I understand traditional secrecy. Wherever some form of
dreamtime appears, something mysterious happens that is so

individual it may be incomprehensible to anyone in a normal
state of consciousness. It is dangerous to talk about such
things, not only because you can hurt the healing spirits, but
because your sense of the uncanny is so fragile. Every time you
experience an amazing event, your shaman's body goes on a
deathwalk before all your conventional spirits. Your rational
brothers and sisters, who are also possessed by the "doings" of
the times, oppose or feel endangered by such experiences.
Although healers may use the same methods on many
different people, their powers can cause you to have utterly
individual and singular experiences that cannot be duplicated.
Every moment with such people is dreaming together, and
your moment of power.
After the "smoking," we stood around the fire until dusk
and chatted with the healer's extended family, who had
gathered for our ceremony. That night, I dreamed that we
were in the high Himalayas. This "peak" experience was find-
ing a community whose fifty-thousand-year history supported
214 ARNOLD MINDELL

dreaming together. The couple's daughter told me it was OK
to write about this experience, perhaps because dreaming to-
gether is everyone's chance for a peak experience, a cultural re-
newal.
Community and Relationship
According to both our African and our Australian sha-

mans, illness could be caused by the jealousy of others. People
could spook or poison you directly, or they could hire some-
one else to do so. The healers did not deny that you could also
get sick from something more mundane, even from "too
much worry or rush." But the big problems, they say, are con-
nected to jealousy.
What I call networking, the aboriginal healer called
dreaming. Community consists not only of people speaking
together but of the web of people, trees, and spirits that dream
together. Dreaming is a type of force and can have serious
consequences, for it permeates all of life. If you live in a
Western-style city and have relationship problems, you prob-

ably work on yourself or try to work out your problems with
others involved. But indigenous healers have other ideas.
They say you suffer from the power of bad spirits, from jeal-
ous demons that are after you. The worst magic is voodoo, an
intervention that comes from the jealousy of others and is
meant to injure you.

Our healers had nothing to say about talking directly to
those who were jealous of us but were clear about the lethal
consequences unleashed through their bad feelings. You may
think aboriginal relationship beliefs treat jealousy too seri-
ously. But consider the following. If someone looks at you in
a nasty way, you feel uncomfortable. If several people in a
room atmosphere becomes unbearable.
are in conflict, the
Thoughts have power, and negative thoughts injure. That is
why indigenous peoples say that we live in a magical dream-
time, a global dreamfield where parapsychological synchron-
icities and illness from jealousy can occur.

Since we are interconnected, you, as a warrior, must
watch carefully over your feelings for yourself, for others, and
for the environment. Because the trees and plants are your rel-
atives, according to the earliest you have
beliefs, the feelings
about them can make them live or die. Indigenous peoples
have developed customs in which kindness is important, not
only because people are good-hearted. As an aboriginal per-
son, you learn not only to respect yourself and others, but to
honor nature if you want to survive in the environment. You
are taught to treat nature as an equal, a relative, a parent, a
brother, or a sister; otherwise, you injure the world by forget-
ting that it, too, can dream. Not only is whatever you feel
your business, it is a political reality, a dreambody experience
that you feel in your gut, that the trees notice in their leaves
and roots, that even rocks sense. Without respect for nature,
neither modern medicine nor green politics can save your
body or the trees.
The priestesses of the oldest shamanistic religions — in
South, Central, and North America; Oceania; Australia; Ti-
bet; China; Europe; and the Far East —begin with going into a
trance and dreaming something with someone. Dreaming to-
gether is like the quantumwith which physicists work;
reality
it occurs in a field waiting for actuality through your partici-
pation and observation, through your active dreaming. Wher-

ever you move on this earth, you move with me and others
through this field, our common home. Whatever you dream is
part of our dreaming together.
You can kill aboriginal people, but you cannot kill
dreamtime. In a way, shamanism can never die out. Today,

people go to discos and dance themselves into a trance, not
only because they need exercise and want entertainment.
They dream together. You watch football games
are trying to
to see the accidental mixed with the impeccable, to dream
with thousands of others. When you meet with other people
and dreaming does not happen, you get bored and avoid such
meetings in the future. You smoke and drink to dream. You
take drugs or overeat. You probably even go to restaurants to
216 ARNOLD MINDELL

dream with You put on your costume, your nicest
others.
one part and become another part of yourself,
clothes, to leave
to dream with others, even though you may not have identi-
fied socially accepted altered states of consciousness (like
changing costumes) as a form of dreaming together.
Psychologists identify basic human drives such as sex,
death, love, power, and the hope for transcendence. I add an-
other drive to this dreaming together. This is the
list: that of
community's way of following the Tao by following sec-
ondary processes. It is the aboriginal way. In the West, you
may feel successful if you are famous, rich, or good-looking.
But aboriginal people do not feel completely successful until
their relationships are in order, until their community is well.
Success in the indigenous sense depends in part upon dream-
ing together. In a world so full of trouble, dreamtime is the
only place where it is both unsafe and want to partic-
safe. All
ipate in creating the world, to find awesome powers and also
community.
Creating peace in the world, preserving our environ-
ment, caring for one another, protecting our most basic
human right —the right to live — all cannot be accomplished
without new cultures able to work on the emotional problems
not touched by political dialogue. We must learn to get along
with our neighbors. Yet, until now, we have only focused
upon negotiations between people in conflict who are willing
to talk with one another. We avoid psychological and emo-
tional problems. This is equivalent to focusing only upon
politicians interested in popularity and not upon people who
must die in battle. We cannot continue with such oversight if
we intend to live in a more peaceful world.
I recall a conference in Russia in 1993 on conflict resolu-
tion. Members of the and delegations from
parliaments
groups in conflict from various regions of the ex-Soviet Re-
public attended. After I asked that the government people and
peace activists from Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Abkhazia,
Ossetia, and Ingushetia stand in a circle together, someone
from Georgia broke the silence by saying that this was the

first time in history that these groups had even agreed to be in
the same room. I went further and recommended sitting on
the floor. Again, there was dead silence as representatives of
these groups sat together in a circle. Slowly, one after another,
these men and women spoke of the suffering of their people,
describing war, poverty, and ongoing racial prejudice.
Amy and I listened carefully and noticed that several
spirits were mentioned but not visible. People spoke of ter-
rorists invading their localities; others mentioned the effects
of imperialist policies of the ex-Soviet leaders in Moscow, but
I could find neither an imperialist nor a terrorist in the room.
I explained that, even though we had been employed by
the ex-Soviet Peace Committee to work on these conflicts,
imperialism and terrorism were unrepresented spirits in our
present community on the po-
of nations. Since negotiations
litical level were failing, why not dream together? To my im-
mense surprise, I was immediately understood. People got up

to play and stood in places set aside for the three spirits: the
imperialist, the terrorist, and the victimized community. A
dramatic tension had filled the room, when suddenly every-
thing exploded into roars of laughter. I almost fell over back-
ward in shock when these dignified women and men
transformed into spirits. Some stepped into Moscow's role of
imperialists and demanded that everyone submit to their
domination. The terrorists screamed back, "To hell with
you!" No one had any energy to be in the victim condition,
which had been so present before.
Dreamtime took over as we were transported for that
brief period into another dimension. For that morning, in that
room of one hundred and fifty people, we became a commu-
nity, crying about, looking at, and laughing about our world,
witnessing our tendency to dominate, to suffer, and to rebel.
Nothing was solved immediately, but something moved, as
the way people thought about war changed. Something irra-
tional removed our national boundaries and brought us to-
gether. For that time and place, the spirits were exorcised, so
to speak; there were no longer imperialists, terrorists, or
218 ARNOLD MINDELL

victims. This was a beginning. It was both nothing and some-
thing.
Our future global village has a lot with which to deal.
We need politicians, but we also need citizen-
will always
shaman-diplomats who deal with not only repressed gods,
but dictators, victims, and minorities in a diverse world. What
looks like trouble from one angle could be a new community
from another.
In the past, whole communities dreamed together, cir-
cling and swaying shamans took us dreaming with
as a unit as
the ancestors. As you were whole culture gained
healed, the
access to the unknown and was revitalized. Cultures of the fu-
ture will have to reinvent their own special methods of living
with dreamtime if they are to survive. Each culture's methods
will be different, but certain common elements can be pre-
dicted. People feel that lifeworthwhile when they have par-
is
ticipated in bringing up buried visions, forbidden spirits, and

dead souls into their world. That is why dreaming together
heals that eternal problem, feeling impotent about the direc-
tion of history.
The future city will be like the one you are in now, a
place full of trouble, fun, and conflict. However, it might be
different in one way from your present town. In this future
city, you will no longer dream alone, because more people will
be using altered states of consciousness, rather than gunpow-
der, to solve problems.

NOTES
Chapter 1. The Shaman's Body

1. See bibliography for Eliade, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy,
and other authors, book titles, and details.
2. I am grateful to Castaneda for the developmental processes

implied in his books —processes that many people go through as
they develop shamanistic abilities related to living the dreaming-

body Though I am familiar with all of Castaneda's works, I draw
mainly upon ideas from don Juan's first and most powerful lessons
in Teachings of don Juan, Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan, Tales of
Power, Second Ring of Power, and Eagle's Gift.
3. See especially Rinpoche, Tibetan Book of Living and Dying,
and Evans- Wentz, Tibetan Book of the Dead.
4. Sutton et al., Dreamings.
221
5. Mander and Toms, in Technology and Native Peoples, dis-
cuss worldwide obliteration of native beliefs.
Chapter 3. The Path of Knowledge

1. Eliade, Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 110.
2. Castaneda, Separate Reality, 213-14.
3. Sutton et al., Dreamings, 15.
Chapter 4. First Lessons
1. Sutton et al., Dreamings, 14.
2. Eliade, Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy.
Chapter 5. The Hunter

1. Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan, 78.
2. Knudtson and Suzuki, in their wonderful book, Wisdom of
the Elders, 102, describe how the Wintu Indians in northern Califor-
nia understand that some animals offer themselves to the hunter.
Chapter 6. The Warrior

1. Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 110.
Eliade,
2. Creation myths all deal with transcending the state of
unconsciousness, symbolized by sleep, dreams, or the underworld.
Sometimes, as in Castaneda's Eagle's Gift, 177, we find the transcen-
dence symbolized in terms of living beyond life itself.

4. Amy Mindell, "Moon in the Water," chap. 2.
Chapter 7. The Ally
1. Eliade, Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, 91-92.
2. Ibid., 90.

4. Ibid., 155.
5. Ibid., 206.
Chapter 8. The Ally's Secret
1. Castaneda, Separate Reality, 234.

2. Larousse, Encyclopedia of Mythology, 436-37.
222 ARNOLD MINDELL

3. Ibid., 437.
Chapter 9. The Double

1. Castaneda, Tales of Power, 42-43.
2. Ibid., 76-77.
3. Ibid., 77-78.
4. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 323.
5. Ibid., 324.
Chapter 10. The Path of Heart

1. Castaneda, Teachings of don Juan, 106-7.
3. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 356.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
Chapter 11. Transformation and Sorcery

1. Castaneda, Journey to Ixtlan, 216-17.
Chapter 12. Dreaming Together

1 . Swan, Sacred Places.
Chapter 13. Phantoms and Real People

1. Eliade discusses connections between modern India and
aboriginal times, vestiges of the Austroasiatic civilization and pre-
Aryan and pre-Dravidian peoples in Yoga, 344.
Chapter 14. The Deathwalk

1. Castaneda, Tales of Power, 283-84.
2. Ibid., 284ff.
3. Wotan is an archaic, German nature spirit —the "wild man"

type.
Chapter 15. Dreamtime and Cultural Change

1 See Neidhart, Black Elk Speaks.
2. Sutton et al., Dreamings.
THE INNER SHAMAN 223

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Castaneda, Carlos. The Eagle's Gift. New York: Simon & Schuster,
1985.
. Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of don Juan. New York:

Simon & Schuster, 1972.
. The Power of Silence. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.

. The Second Ring of Power. New York: Simon & Schuster,
1984.
.A Separate Reality: Further Conversations with don Juan.

New York: Simon & Schuster, 1971; Washington Square Press,
1991.
225
. Tales of Power. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974.
. The Teachings of don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. New-

York: Simon & Schuster, 1968; Washington Square Press,
1990.
Eliade, Mircea. Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Trans-

lated by Willard R. Trask. Princeton, NJ: Bollingen Founda-
tion, Princeton Univ. Press, 1980.
. Yoga: Immortality and Freedom. Translated by Willard R.

Trask. London: Princeton-Bollingen paperback, 1970.
Evans-Wentz, ed. The Tibetan Book of the Dead, or After-Death

Experiences on the Bardo Plane. New York: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1960.
Feynman, Richard. "Space-Time Approach to Non Relativistic Quan-

tum Mechanics." Reviews of Modern Physics (April 1948).
Halifax, Joan. Shamanic Voices and the Shaman: The Wounded

Healer. New York: Dutton, 1979.
Harner, Michael. The Way of the Shaman. New York: Bantam

Books, 1986.
Heinze, Ruth-Inge. Shamans of the Twentieth Century. New York:

Irvington, 1991.
Houston, Jean. The Possible Human: A Course in Extending Your

Physical, Mental, and Creative Abilities. Los Angeles: Jeremy
Tarcher, 1982.
Ingerman, Sandra. Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self.
San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.
Jung, C. G. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Vintage

Books, 1965, 1989.
.Mysterium Conjunctionis: Collected Works of G. Jung. C

Edited by Sir Herbert Read, Michael Fordham, and Gerhard
Adler. Translated by R. F. C. Hull. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
Univ. Press (Bollingen Series XX, no. 12).
226 ARNOLD MINDELL

Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology. Paul Hamlyn, 1969.
Mander, Jerry. In the Absence of the Sacred. New York: Sierra Club
Books, 1991.
. Technologies and Native Peoples. San Francisco: New Di-

mensions Radio, Audio Tape no. 2298, 1992.
Mindell, Amy. "Moon in the Water: The Metaskills of Process Ori-

ented Psychology." Ph.D. diss., Union Institute, Cincinnati,
OH, 1991.
Mindell, Arnold. City Shadows, Psychological Interventions in Psy-

chiatry. New York and London: Viking-Penguin-Arkana,
1988.
.Coma, Key to Awakening: Working with the Dreambody

Near Death. Boston and London: Shambhala, 1989.
.Dreambody: The Body's Role in Revealing the Self. Boston:
Sigo Press, 1982; London: Viking-Penguin-Arkana, 1984.
. The Dreambody in Relationships. New York and London:

Viking-Penguin-Arkana, 1987.
. Inner Dreambodywork: Working on Yourself Alone. New

York and London: Viking-Penguin-Arkana, 1990.
. The Leader as Martial Artist, An Introduction to Deep

Democracy: Techniques and Strategies for Resolving Conflict
and Creating Community. San Francisco: HarperSanFran-
cisco, 1992.
.River's Way: The Process Science of the Dreambody. London

and Boston: Viking-Penguin-Arkana, 1986.
. Working with the Dreaming Body. London: Viking-Penguin-

Arkana, 1984.
. The Year I: Global Process Work with Planetary Tensions.

New York and London: Viking-Penguin-Arkana, 1990.
,with Amy Mindell. Riding the Horse Backwards: Process
Work in Theory and Practice. New York and London: Viking-
Penguin-Arkana, 1992.
THE INNER SHAMAN 227

Muktananda, Swami. Play of Consciousness. New York: SYDA
Foundation, 1978.
Neidhardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy
Man of the Oglala Sioux. New York: Washington Square
Press of Pocketbooks and Simon & Schuster, 1972.
Nicholson, Shirley, comp. Shamanism: An Expanded View of Real-

ity. Wheaton, IL: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1987.
Rinpoche, Sogyal. The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992.
Sutton, Peter, Christopher Anderson, Philip Jones, Francoise Dus-

sart, and Steven Hemming, eds. Dreamings: The Art of Abo-
riginal Australia. New York: George Braziller, 1989.
Suzuki, David, and Peter Knudston. The Wisdom of the Elders.

Toronto: Allen and Unwin, 1992.
Suzuki, Shunryu. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind: Informal Talks on

Zen Meditation and Practice. New York: Weatherhill, 1 970.
Swan, James A. Sacred Places. Santa Fe, NM: Bear and Co., 1990.
Tart, Charles. Waking Up. Boston: Shambhala, 1987.
Toms, Michael. Technologies and Native Peoples. San Francisco:

New Dimensions Radio, Audio Tape no. 2298, 1992.
Tzu, Lao. Tao Te Ching: The Book of Meaning and Life. Translated
from the Chinese into German by Richard Wilhelm; trans-
lated into English by H. G. Ostwald. London and New York:
Viking-Penguin- Arkana, 1985.
Walsh, Roger N. The Spirit of Shamanism. Los Angeles: Jeremy

Tarcher, 1990.
228 ARNOLD MINDELL

INDEX
Active imagination, 79 Amani, 103

Addictions, 114. See also Drugs Ambition, 140
Adler, 32 Antimatter theory, 131
African healers, 49. See also Heal- Apprenticeship (Shaman): com-
ers mitment to, 60-62; consulting -
Alchemists, 43-44 spirit during, 57-60; described,

Alcohol: aboriginal cultural abuse 7; measuring success of, 74;
of, 213; avoiding addiction to, tasks during dreaming, 84. See
114 also Shamanism
Ally, The: battling with, 109-21; Art of living, 61-62
the body as, 103-7; described, Ashram, 185
95-97; exercises, 107-8, 120-21; Assemblage point. See Identity
integrating with, 97, 143—48; se- Assembling, 17
duction by, 99-103; symbols Attention, 23-25
representing, 126; testing the, Australian aborigines: bush soul
97-99; Tezcatlipoca as, 115-16, belief, 95; desecration of sacred
119. See also The Warrior rock of, 174; dreamings, 11, 13,
229
Australian aborigines (continued) observes Genaro, 131; on self-
42, 213; native spirituality of, identification, 5; tested by

42; on nature of power, 36; Mescalito, 76; uses fantasies to
political reality of, 14 call up images, 125-26
Average man, 77-78 Change. See Processwork
Awareness: disciplined, 141; dur- Chi, 63
ing healing ritual, 191; gaining Clarity, 91-92
and losing, 137-40; meaning of, Coma, Key to Awakening (Min-
128; phases of development, dell), 95, 112
77-79 Community. See Groups
Compassion, 85, 100
Barriers: fear as, 92-93, 188; lack Conflict: dreaming to heal, 211-12;
of clarity as, 91-92; old age as a, as fate of warrior, 200-202;
139; power as, 93-94 shamanism impact on, 217-19
Beginner's mind, 69, 94 Controlled abandonment: de-
Black Elk, 213 scribed, 157-60; practicing,
Body: as ally, 103-7; connection 160-61
between dreams and, 22-23; Courage, 142
impact of wisdom on, 33; pow-
ers of the, 109-11; processing Death: dreamingbody continues
sensations of, 21-22. See also past, 107; dreamingbody during
Dreamingbody process of, 133-34; experience
Bombay, 175-78 of near-, 24, 95, 96; fantasy,
Book of the Dead (Buddhist Ti- 50-52, 54-55; freedom through,
betan), 10, 156 162-63; the last dance and,
Book of the Dead (Egyptian), 156 111-13; modern rejection of,
Buddha, 207 156-57; Tibetan spirituality re-
Buddhism: achieving process- garding, 112
work goal, 35; on imperma- Deathwalk: beginning the,
nence of life, 48; processes of 200-202; defining, 199-200; ex-
personal growth, 32; on sense ercises, 208-9; the groups re-
of identity, 10; strengths of, 12 sponse to, 202-4; length of life,
Bush soul, 95 207-8; surviving the, 204-7. See

also The Warrior
Cabalistic Judaism, 32 Depression: disguised as detach-
Caelum, 44 ment, 94-95; phantoms and, 192
Callings, 5 Detachment: depression disguised
Castaneda, Carlos: apprenticeship as, 94-95; from paths, 142-43;
of, 60; attracted to devil's weed, from personal history, 46-50,

99; challenged by woman ap- 55, 147-48; heartfulness, 85; lit-
prentice, 165-66; Eagle's Gift, tle smoke experiences and, 99

35; finds "place of power," 58; Devil's weed: power of, 98-99;
lack of responsibility of, 52; use of, 99-102
230 ARNOLD MINDELL

Discipline, 140-41 tom, 201; within large groups,
Dismemberment rituals, 48 133
Don Juan: ally of, 98; compares Dreamingbody: continues past
hunters and warriors, 77; con- death, 107; described, 3-5; ex-
cepts of warrior and the dou- perience while dying, 133-34;
ble, 8;on dangers of sorcery, experience within, 131; health
37; on deathwalk survival, 204; benefits of, 19-20, 60; mani-
detachment of, 49-50; on devel- fested by "shadow," 38-39;
oping a double, 134; on devil's processing, 21-23; require-
weed, 98-99; on facing the ally, ments of the, 153-54; shaman's
114; on gaining personal power, ability to follow, 58; Taoism de-
153; on Genaro's double, 126; velopment of, 32. See also
on hunter's training, 62, 63; on Shaman's body
importance of group, 166; on Dreamings: Australian aboriginal,
the last dance, 1 1 1-12; on living 11, 13, 42; by a double, 134-36;
environment, 41, 43; method of calls to Shamanism through, 9;
instruction of, 9-10; names the dangers of learning to, 81;
barriers, 91; on path of heart, metaskills of, 85-90; as route to

139-40; personal development power, 79-85; as social activism,
stages, 28; on personal power, 212; special tasks during, 84
105; on phantoms, 37; on Dream maker, 23
phases of development, 77-78; Dreams: appearance of allies in,
on responsibility, 52; retells ea- 97; as body snapshots, 20-21;

gle's gift, 35; on returning to re- interpretation of, 76-77; learn-
ality, 196; on self-identification, ing to have, 83; measuring
5, 181; on stepping out of time, growth through, 73-74; pro-
130; teaches how to dream, 81; jecting images within, 128-29.
tests Castaneda, 76 See also Fantasies
Double, The: described, 125-28; Dreamtime, 23
developing your, 129-30, 134; Drugs: alcohol, 114, 213; power
exercises, 136; Jung's encounter induced by, 98-99, 114; seeking
with, 135-36. See also Sec- altered consciousness through,
ondary processes 9, 96. See also Hallucinations
Double signals: described, 25-27;
power traced through, 65; rec- Eagle's Gift (Castaneda), 35
ognizing, 128; repressing, 127 Edges: clarity, 91-92; fear, 92-93;
Dreambody: The body's Role in power, 93-94
Revealing the ^//"(Mindell), 16 Eliade, Mircea: on callings, 5; on
Dreambody, 22 shaman's path, 35; on stages of
Dreambody, The (Mindell), 183 becoming shaman, 28; on the
Dreambody in Relationships, The warrior's ally, 95
(Mindell), 16 Enlightenment: Western psycho-
Dreamfields: defining, 129; phan- therapy, 32-33; Zen, 32

Environment: body powers part Hannah, Barbara, 101
of, 109-10; dangers to the, Healers: on cause of illness, 215;
28-29; shamanism on, 41-46. detachment of African, 49; Gi-
See also Nature rami, 92; Jesus Christ as, 97;
shaman's ability as, 58-59

Familiars. See The Ally Healing: dreambody viewpoint
Fantasies: appearance of allies in, on, 110; finding right spot of,
97; Castaneda uses, 125-26; 58-60; powerbody for, 103-7;
death, 50-52, 54-56; experienc- rituals, 214; shamanic approach
ing, 64-66; patterns of, 87. See to, 191
also Dreams Healing hands, 109
Fear, 92-93, 188 Hiawatha, 206
Feynman, Richard, 131-32 Homosexuals, 173-74
Field. See Dreamfields Hopi Indians, 43
Fire ritual, 45-46 Humanistic psychology, 12
First attention, 23-25 Humility: changing through,
Freudian psychoanalysts, 32 100-101; importance of, 74, 75
Fukushima, Keido, 32, 69 Hunter, The: attentions described,
28, 83; character described, 78;
Gaia, 174 commitment to shamanism,
Gait of power, 105-6 60-62; dangers of personal his-
Gandhi, 207 tory, 67-70; exercises for, 70-71;
Genaro: on deathwalk survival, shamanistic testing, 58-60;
204; double of, 126-27; step- training steps of, 62-67; vs. the
ping out of time, 130-31; on warriors, 77, 95. See also Prey
tasks, 199
Gestalt psychology, 12 / Ching: consulting, 57; on the
Gestalt therapy, 32 spirit, 70; use of divination, 12
Groups: exercises, 178-79; laws of Identity: detachment of personal
the inner and outer, 200-202; history, 46-50; maturation of,
pain sharing with, 170-76; rit- 34; path of heart's lack of,
ual by Kenyan community, 142^3; retained during dream-
1 67-70; rule enforcement by, ing, 84-85; spirit determines, 5,
202-4; shamanism impact on, 181; spirit vs. self-, 69-70;
215-19; viewpoint of large, transformation of, 5-6, 10-11,
190-91; warrior clans, 165-67 123-28. See also Personal
Gurus, 184-86. See also Teachers growth
Illness, 215. See also Healing
Hallucinations: ally appearance Indigenous culture: alcoholism
through, 104; dreaming process within, 114; breaking apart
during, 25; experiencing, 64. of, 166; connection with na-
See also Drugs ture, 44-45; dreamingbody
232 ARNOLD MINDELL

Indigenous culture (continued) Learner-teacher pairs, 77. See also
experiences in, 22; drinking Teachers
within, 213; racism against, Life: according to shamanism,
124-25; respect for nature, 69, 139; length of, 207-8; need for
141; structure of, 13 disciplined, 140^1
Individuation, 33 Little smoke, The: power of,
Initiation rituals, 48 98-99; using, 102-3
Inner Dreambodywork: Working Luminous fibers, 109
on Yourself Alone (Mindell), 16 Lying, 52, 54
Inner group, 200-202
Inside observer, 134 Magic, 109,215
Mahalakshmi Temple, 1 78
Jealousy, 215 Malcolm X, 207
Jesus Christ, 97, 207 Maslow, Abe, 33, 133
Joan, 182-84 Medicine shamans, 9, 24
Journeying to other worlds, 109 Mescalito, 76
Journey to Ixtlan (Castaneda), 37 Metaskills, 85-90
Jung, C. G.: active imagination Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 117
concept of, 79; on dream inter- Multiple personalities, 25
pretation, 86-87; encounter Mysterium Conjuntionis (Jung), 44
with the double, 135-36; inter-
action with allies, 97, 147; Mys- Nagual: described, 95, 144; expe-
terium Conjuntionis, 44; on rience with Joan, 1 82-84;
personal growth, 33; Psychol- groups which are, 165-66; part-
ogy and Alchemy, 43 ners as, 160-61; returning from
Jungian psychology, 12 the, 196; returning to the, 154;
role as, 142
Kali, 176 Native Americans: conflict with
Karma, 175 loggers, 174; dreaming, 213; Hi-
Kenyan healers: community in- awatha, 206; Hopi Indians, 43;
teraction with, 186-91; rituals power defined by, 79; red path
by, 167-70 beliefs, 28; Yaqui way of knowl-
Ki,64 edge, 8. See also Don Juan
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 207 Nature: of ally power, 98; of path
Klaus, Bruder, 206 of knowledge, 38; seeking one-
Koan, 34 ness with, 38; tests setup by, 77.
Kundalini (the serpent), 34, 73 See also Environment
Near-death experiences, 24, 95, 96
Lao Tsu, 139,206
Last dance, 111-13, 163 Old age: as a barrier, 139; influ-
Leader as Martial Artist, The ence of, 143; as metaphoric
(Mindell), 53 death, 94-95

Opus magnus, 43 174-75; exercise for the, 70-71;
Outer group, 200-202 finding the, 59
Outside observer: antimatter the- Prejudice, 171-74
ory, 131-32; time experienced Prey: hunting the, 63-67; psychic,
by, 130; viewpoint of, 134 62. See also The Hunter
Primary processes: described,
Pantanjali, 87 25-27, 80; identification with,
Path of heart: courage needed to 127, 134-35; retaining the,
find,\A\-M\ defining the, 82-83
139-40; exercises, 148^9; find- Dreambody,
Process Science of the
ing the, 140-41; lifestyle de- The (Mindell), 16
scribed, 192; within the real Processwork: defining shamanis-
world, 143-48 tic, 20-21; exercises in, 29;
Paths: continuing old, 140; of focus of, 34-35; primary and

knowledge, 31-40; to power, secondary, 25-27; psychologi-
37; using environment as, 45-46 cal, 19
Perls, Fritz, 133 Projection, 128-29
Personal growth: shamanism and, Psychic prey, 62
11-14; shamanism path to, Psychology: failures of Western,
31-40 11-14; process-oriented, 19;
Personal history: dangers of, Western psyco-therapy, 32-33.
67-70; death and, 50-52; de- See also Therapy
tachment from, 46-50, 55, Psychology and Alchemy (Jung),
147-48 43
Personal power, 105-6, 153
Phantoms: described, 8, 35, 184, Real people, 191-93. See also
191-93; exercises, 193-94; as Phantoms
teachers, 186. See also Real Red path, 28
people Reich, Wilhelm, 87
Philemon, 97 Relationships: enriched by
Power: ally provided, 96, 98; as shamanism, 160-61; exercises,
barrier, 93-94; body, 104-7, 163-64; homosexual, 173-74;
109-11; dangers of opening up nagaual, 165-66; shamanism
to, 81; of devil's weed, 98-102; impact on community, 215-19
double signals and, 65; dream- Responsibility: hunter's, 63; tak-
ing as route to, 79-85; hunting ing, 52-54, 190
for, 61-62; of the little smoke, Rinpoche, Sogyal, 112
102-3; nature of, 36, 84; origins Rituals: clarity revealed during,
of, 5-8; path to, 37; personal or 92; dismemberment or initia-
gait of, 105-6, 153; teacher cho- tion, 48; fire, 45-46; of Kenyan
sen by, 196-99; tests of, 76 healers, 167-70, 188-89; tradi-
Power spot: entire earth as, tional secrecy of, 214-15
234 ARNOLD MINDELL

Ross, Elisabeth Kubler, 157 ingbody, 58; allies of the, 95; de-
scribed, 7-8; development stages
Satir, Virginia, 1 of, 28; dreaming, 80; path of,
Satori, 159 31-40; time experienced by, 130;

Secondary processes: controlled use of attention by, 23-25; who
abandonment and, 158-59; dan- become phantoms, 1 84. See also
gers of the, 82; described, The Hunter; The Warrior
25-27; disavowing, 127; learn- Shaman's body, 3-5. See also
ing as core of, 80; relationships Dreamingbody
and, 160-61; working with, Shiva, 184-85
84-85. See also The Double Sorcerer: described, 77-78; essen-
Second attention: double signals tial to transformation, 161;
of, 25-27; focus of, 23, 25, 29; world of the, 154-56
Hunter's use of, 65 Sorcery, 154-56
Seer, 77-79 Spirit helper. See The Ally
Self-knowledge, 141 Spirits: as channel to dreaming-
Self. See Identity body, 23; determines identity, 5,
Sentimentality, 142 181; help of the, 181-82; inter-

Separate Reality, A (Castaneda), vening between people and,
139 188-91
Shakti, 73 Swamiji, 184-86
Shamanism: apprenticeship com- Swan, James, 1 74
mitment, 60-62; approach to
medicine, 191; compared to Tales of Power (Castaneda), 131,
therapy, 157-60; elements of, 196
5-8; exercise suggestions, Tao: path of heart as, 141, 143;
16-17; impact on modern soci- prey as, 64; types of, 70
ety, 13-15; initiation rituals, 48; Taoism: dreamingbody develop-
lasting impact of, 216-19; ment in, 32; on impermanence
learner-teacher pairs, 77; life ac- of life, 47-^-8; on taking respon-
cording to, 139; mastery of, sibility, 52; use of divination,
73-76; need for attention, 12; "wu wei," 141
23-25; path of knowledge, Tao Te Cbing (Lao Tsu), 36, 70,
31-40; personal growth and, 139,206
11-14; processwork in, 19-29; Tasks: described, 198-99; fulfilling
relationships and, 160-61; on your, 201. See also Deathwalk
taking responsibility, 52-54; Teachers: chosen by power,
testing described, 58-60; types 196-99; phantoms as, 186; test-
of training, 8-1 1 . See also Ap- ing pairs of learner-, 77; using
prenticeship (Shaman) allies as, 95-97. See also
Shamanism (Eliade), 5, 124 Shamans
Shamans: ability to follow dream- Telepathy, 92

Tezcatlipoca: as the ally, 115-16, emotions, 216; creating clans of,
119; sacrifices to, 116-17; sym- 165-67; deathwalk of, 199-207;

bolism of, 124 eagle's myth of, 35; exercises
Therapy: compared to shaman- for, 89-90; learning to be,

ism, 157-60; sorcery and, 79-85; metaskills of, 85-89;
154-56; Western psyco, 32-33. processwork of, 24; vs. the
See also Psychology hunters, 77 95. See also
', The
Thompson, Ben, 207 Ally
Tibetan Bon religion, 10 Way of knowledge (Yaqui): agree-
Tibetan Book of Living and Dy- ment of earth to continue, 58;
ing (Rinpoche), 112 compared to modern therapy,
Time: going backward in, 131-32; 158; right spot of healing, 59;
stepping out of, 130-34 warrior and the double con-
Trances, 187-88 cepts, 8
Transformation: identity, 5-6, Way of life, 61-62
10-11, 123-28; sorcerer as es- Will, 109
sential to, 161; through death, Wisdom: ally as source of, 104;
157 body location of, 104-5; re-
Transpersonal path, 31-32 vealed through the ally, 109-21
Transpersonal psychology, 12 Witch doctors. See Kenyan heal-
ers
Uluru, 174 Working With the Dreaming
Unconsciousness: ally as expres- £odv(Mindell), 16, 82
sion of, 95-96; channeling for World channel, 42-43
the, 23; dangers of studying the, Wuwei, 141
68-69, 81-82; desire for conflict
in, 1 72; hunter's awareness of, Yang, 32
65; investigating your, 8-11; Yaqui, 8
Jung on the, 135-36; using Year /, The: Global Process Work
metaskills to cope with, 87-89. with Planetary Tensions (Min-
See also Shamanism dell), 16
Unio mentalis, 43-44 Yin, 32
Unus mundus, 43-44 Yoga, 87
Visualizations, 79 Zen: beginner's mind, 69; on gain-

Voodoo, 64, 215 ing/losing awareness, 138; path,
32; satori, 159; on taking re-
Warrior, The: ally of, 95-97; at- sponsibility, 52; training peri-
tention described, 28; conflict ods of, 75, 144
as fate of, 200; control over
236 ARNOLD MINDELL

i^ how (<>
c\v^' 1
)RA\\I.\(; O.N H1S SHAMAMC EXPERIENCES in Afric
India, Mindt ads us on a aeatn w our worst fears and deepest

emotional crises to wake our inner shaman — our dreamingbody.
dreaminsbodv. Methods for
tapping the wisdom hidden in crises free our own internal sorcery tor use in our
daily lives. These methods enable us to become whole from within and to avoid
istic hoDes and desi res that limit our live:
e for Arnold Mindelfs The Leader As Martial Arti.
"This book shows how the deeper layers or human nature can be engaged in
large and small groups, and how capacities tor leadership can be brought into
play during many kinds of social situations. . . . Unique, groundbreaking work."
-MKHAKl. Ml'RPHY. author of The Future of the Body
door win oecome a classic szuicle tor leadersh
at empowers and preserves the ecological well-being of human beings as well
Mother Earth herself."
X. Ph.D.. ai ithor of The Four- Fold Wt\
\R.\oiJ) MIXDELI,. PH.D.. is the author of many books including Working
with the Dreamingbody and Dreambody in Relationships. He is a process-oriented
therapist and teacher at the Process Work Center of Portland in Oregon and
lectures internationally on conflict resolution and "process work" psychology.
Cover design: Adrian Morgan, Red Letter Dt ISBN-13: 978-0-06-250655-9

ISBN-10: 0-06-250655-2
Illustration: Nicholas Wilton
5 1495 <
9"780062"506559
USA $14.95 Canada $18.95

Arnold Mindell - The Shamans Body PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Arnold Mindell - The Shamans Body PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Arnold Mindell - The Shamans Body PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

What is the book about?

What is the book about?

What methods does the book discuss for tapping into wisdom?

What methods does the book discuss for tapping into wisdom?

1°' ..

Health, Relationships, and

first HarperCollins paperback edition published in 1993

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

part one: DEVELOPING A DOUBLE

part two: DREAMING IN THE CITY

was shocked to hear that my old friend Professor Ben

Thompson, from Antioch College, had died. I was even more

Thus, Ben Thompson inspired this new version of my

some of his best students to study with me in Zurich, where I

viii ARNOLD MINDELL

THE SHAMAN'S BODY

At the core of everyday problems lies the dreaming-

ingbody, becoming whole, and working with body and dream

ing and creating a meaningful life. But a central aspect to all of

cises for practicing the lessons.

ages, depends upon this spirit. But our capacity to go a step

7. The The world of nonordinary reality inevitably

THE SHAMAN'S BODY

problems with your allies.

chology advise that you either succumb to the ally or meet

mythic story behind your life, personal problems abate as

this path today, you need a certain disciplined attention that

xiv ARNOLD MINDELL

12.Dreaming Together. The town you live in is finally

THE SHAMAN'S BODY

xvi ARNOLD MINDELL

Indigenous healers have taught me that the quality

call the shaman's body. According to medicine

The shaman's body (or dreamingbody) is a

but also upon my own background as a physicist, my earlier

Elements of peak and shamanic experiences, such as pro-

the path to shamanism remains incomplete.

more meaningful, but success with your attention is like a

THE SHAMAN'S BODY 5

the shaman's calling. Of my many meetings with shamans,

Our African shamans said that their power to heal is

intimately connected to the needs and powers of the people

tures waxes as they wane, some modern students of shamanism

People with a calling to be a shaman must frequently

THE SHAMAN'S BODY

apprehension of the unknown? Why do you behave like every-

The Native American Yaqui way of knowledge and don

cial tensions requires the ability of a warrior on the path of

THE SHAMAN'S BODY 9

sulted instructors, rather than the lessons of wise and de-

you wanted advocates against your own nature.

indigenous people, but no one has power over dreamtime.

Shamanism and Personal Growth

THE SHAMAN'S BODY II

work with people in comatose states in the same way as I

would work with large organizations. Until this present

Taoism and the / Ching give me a sense of following

tions do not work directly with the person in an altered state

Masters in all of these schools and traditions have gone