The Shaman's Way of Healing in Light of Western Psychotherapy and Christian Tradition

This is an unusual interdisciplinary book, as the title suggests, and is introduced by a quotation from Malidoma Somé to the effect that the soul can only be healed through connection to both the visible worlds of nature and community and the invisible powers of ancestors and allied spirits. The first part explains the approach of shamanism, drawing on the author's own background and experience. Then it moves on to the relationship between shamanism and Christianity, including the healing capacities of Jesus and his own and a Jesuit's experience of initiation, opening his heart to its full capacity for love and tolerance of pain. The third part considers the relationship between shamanism and psychotherapy, including the putative role of spirit beings. The book is erudite and engaging, and will benefit healers and therapists. I particularly appreciated his quotation of Meister Eckhart about the seed of God in us:

The seed of God is in us. Given an intelligent and hard-working farmer, it will thrive and grow up to God, whose seed it is, and accordingly its fruits will be God-nature. Pear seeds growing into pear trees, nut seeds into nut trees, and God seed into God.

Man can become God, because God became man and thereby deified human nature. The old man is the old man, the earthly man, who grows older day by day. His end is death.

The inner man on the other side is the new man, the heavenly man, in whom God shines.