"Yet to go forward, it is helpful to look back. Therapy did not begin with Freud. Modern sciences, allopathic medicine, and psychotherapy are only a couple of hundred years old, yet they are based upon alchemy and a shamanic ancestry as old as the human race.

Everything you do that is fun is based on shamanism. Dancing at discos until you go into a trance, screaming yourself 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."

- Arnold Mindell, "The Shaman's Body"

#theway