It’s a long-standing tradition in indigenous societies to visit your village shaman if you thought you’ve been cursed or spiritually injured by another. These injuries usually came at the hands of a sorcerer, a paid agent of one’s enemies. We modern folk, who have worked long and hard at civilizing ourselves, dislike such talk because it raises the hackles of ancestral superstitious impulses that we want to think we have long buried (and don’t ever want to see again).Middle World practitioners know how alive and kicking these impulses are—however much grave dirt we may try to throw on them. It’s not evil, really. It’s human. It’s human when you harbor ill-will toward that mean aunt who just took away your favorite toy. Enough 9-to-5-ers have an image of their bosses that they torture in order to relieve the burden of their unjust serfdom. For that matter, how many corporations have cursed their clientele with goods that are intentionally fashioned for profit and not for the benefit of the populace?

Thoughts are things, we’re oft told. If we can heal ourselves or manifest our wishes, then it stands to reason that we can also harm ourselves and manifest our nightmares. Positive thinking is ineffective when it denies the actuality of what’s going on. If we shut our eyes and start reciting positive mantras, we’re shutting ourselves off from the world of reality. The irony is that we’re doing it because deep inside we’re scared of what’s REALLY going on…meaning that the root intention of our actions (our rites) validates what we fear (please read this sentence again).

So again, it behooves all people (but practitioners especially) to closely examine the seeds of their actions—even when it’s wrapped in shiny denial.

The validity of curses need to be handled with level-heads. After all, we can scare more soul out of our clients by filling their minds with stories about curses and possessing thoughtforms–leaving them more vulnerable than we found them. This goes against the very things we’re trying to help them with.

But how do we talk about how curses without freaking our clients out? The very nature of curses implies intention to harm, injury, vulnerability, unjust causality, existential uncertainty and fear of the unknown. A big mosh-pit of human chaos.

The strategy some practitioners enforce is:  Do the work–but don’t talk, think or otherwise mention it ever again. Perhaps this works for some, but as a client I’ve always sensed when this sleight-of-hand is operational (and this was even before I began practicing shamanism). The subsequent dissatisfaction created an urge to know the truth, something II also see in many clients. Because not telling them what’s really going down is equivalent to telling them that neither they nor the practitioner can handle the truth.

And what does it mean when we can’t handle the truth? If truth isn’t the thing that we’re handling in a shamanic session, then we are just trading in image and facades. “Can’t handle the truth” means that, in our shamanic work, there is not a presence, a consciousness, a wisdom, a power that’s present/conscious/wise/powerful enough to handle what’s really happening. Not true.

For instance, when a kid has gashed their shin or broken their arm, and their friends run from the scene screaming bloody murder, it deepens the kid’s sense that something is majorly (perhaps irreparably) wrong. On the other hand if an adult comes along who is sympathetic to the pain and tells the child, in a knowing way, that everything is going to be okay then the pain can be borne in a space of safety.

This even works when the child has been the target for intentional misdeeds. An adult can either deepen the child’s sense of injustice and wounding, or the adult can help bring the child to understand some valuable life-lessons, take appropriate action, and teach them how to effectively deal with such situations–all with the understanding that these things happen. The quicker we learn to take them in stride, the easier our lives will be and the faster we can get on with more important things like friendships and growing into the people we’re meant to become (instead of meditating on the wrong-doing and possibly perpetuating the victim-pattern throughout life).

Where does such mature, attitudes blossom? In our own hearts and minds when we deal with our own pockets of fear and victimhood, When we become aware of those little (un)intention seeds inside the ideas of ourselves that we maintain to preserve functional sanity. It means diving into our own history (personal and ancestral), peeling back layers, and realizing that we can fix the unfixable. We can stare into the darkness of our deepest fears, and when we come out of it okay enough times, we can begin to gain confidence. In other words, we’ve initiated ourselves (with serious Spirit help) and passed the guardians of something we thought was impossible.

To the degree that practitioners don’t take their own Hero’s Journey into their own fears, is the degree to which they will unintentionally invest and perpetuate victimhood in their clients. At best, such language evokes a commiserating sympathy and at worst contributes to the client’s victimhood. Clients who come to practitioners to commiserate aren’t interested in actual healing. Folks serious about healing want to run to the hands of reassuringly adept, mature practitioners.

Only the solidity of many self-honesty sessions will provide the safety of a capable, compassionate adult to the person in need. In a smooth shamanic session, not only is the practitioner’s truth-meter active, but so is the client’s. So faking it often won’t fly with the Compassionate Helpers. And the inauthenticity may also register with the client on an unconscious level and cause them anything from irritation to anxiety.