Shamanic practice broadens and deepens the range of potential information available to the contemporary world that has lost the awareness of its access to this. However, whether a shaman is searching in nonordinary reality for information to retrieve for someone familiar with shamanic discovery, or whether they are doing so for someone who knows nothing about it, they still face the challenge of reporting what they learned. A shaman must not only gather information from nonordinary reality, but deliver it in a form that is strengthening and healing, and this may not be such as simple and straightforward matter as it might seem.

A shaman would adhere to full and direct reporting and not hold back any pertinent information. Sounds simple, right?

But it's not. We must first factor in a few caveats: one, that only information about that client (and not someone else) would be shared, two, that such information is retrieved only with a client's consent, and three, that confidentiality can only be assured when the client was not a legitimate risk of to their own safety or that of someone else. Now, with these three 'but only if's', the full and direct reporting of a shaman's discovery is starting to look like a well-rounded, respectable contemporary human services declaration of ethical and responsible professionalism.

Someone coming to a practitioner who promises to 'tell all' would know what they could expect when working with them, and particularly, that whatever the practitioner discovered, they world learn. After all, that is why they came in the first place. Within the caveats expressed above, to straightforwardly divulge to our client everything we learn sounds like a simple matter of practitioner honesty. However, when a shaman provides information, far more is involved than simply verbalizing what is discovered. With both honesty and directness as apparent virtues, is it ever appropriate to hold back shamanic information, or at least reframe it into different words? Let's take a look at what we say and how we say it with a scenario that might launch us into all sorts of issues about what and how shamanic practitioners report what they discover and explore this idea of simply 'saying it like it is'.

Let's start with a hypothesis: a client has learned through their physician that they have a terminal illness. This client then comes to a practitioner who has a vision of the client's death by a fall from a horse.

Right Speech

If we are even minimally alert emotionally, we are likely sensitive to the potentially challenging nature of anyone facing their mortality. Compassion suggests that we might weigh how we report to this person because one of our first rules of thumb is to do no harm.

Compassion is a broad characteristic among contemporary practitioners. Among these, I rarely encounter those whose approach is not heart-based. In part, I credit this to the compassionate approach of contemporary shamanic teachers who then encourage this quality in their students. However, compassion seems to be equally a characteristic of these students themselves, who seem to be seeking shamanic training not from an urge for power or even out of abject curiosity, but from a desire to help others.

In Buddhist terminology, the conscious pairing of compassion with speech has been called 'Right Speech', suggesting that wisdom and compassion can guide how and what one says. 'Right Speech' refers to the care with which we choose words and frame what we say so that it might be healing and strengthening, rather than harmful.

Returning to our hypothetical client, even without going into the substance of what was learned (for example, falling from a horse), we might already feel compelled to choose our words compassionately. For instance, instead of a strident but matter of fact "You fell from a horse and died!" (with the unspoken subtext 'so just get over it'), compassion might suggest a healing and strengthening approach, conveyed through a softened voice or gentler tone.

Certainly, we would hope that this hypothetical client's hypothetical physician used 'Right Speech' when presenting them with the diagnosis of terminal illness. A compassionate, understanding and healing approach is no less important from a shamanic practitioner.

Is A Vision Metaphorical, or Literal?

Even without touching the substance of the information retrieved, we can already see how we might not simply 'say it how it is', but rather modify its expression to meet the healing needs of a shamanic client. However, this is just the beginning when we then start to take into consideration the information itself.

Shamanic information comes in visions, words, feelings and in innumerable other subtle ways with which a shaman has learned to  listen to their experience. A 'literal' understanding of such a vision suggests that the information held in that vision would then also take place in ordinary reality in exactly the same manner as seen. Certainly, this can and sometimes does happen, but any vision's potential is not simply constrained to its literal range. In fact, a vision's meaning may have nothing to do with the literal particulars of a vision at all.

For instance, if during a divination journey a practitioner sees someone change from human features into those of a threatening snake, this does not mean that this person is literally going to turn into a snake. As a metaphor, it could suggest a core understanding that rests on associations we might make with snakes; perhaps as an example, and this being only one of a multitude of many possible meanings, that there is something 'snake like' about that person or how they are becoming.

So returning to our hypothetical vision of a man falling to his death from a horse, this may actually come to pass in the concrete world of horses and ground: this man may one day decide to clamber up on a horse and proceed to fall to his death. However, metaphor runs rampant through shamanic visions, and fluency in working with an amorphous and shifting world of metaphor is a significant characteristic of shamanic expertise.

Whether any vision point to physical events or whether it is a metaphor whose meaning can suggestively point in many directions, may only be discovered by life events that unfold over time. However, it should be noted that the very distinction between 'literal' and 'metaphorical' does not exist when working from within a complete shamanic paradigm.

The contemporary world's broadly shared paradigm (understanding) of reality, heavily influenced by the last several thousand years of religion, separates 'spiritual' from 'physical'. In a shamanic paradigm, there is no such distinction. A shaman working from within a shamanic paradigm has no meaningful reason to tag nonordinary experiences as either literal or metaphorical.

To a shaman, a vision is what it is. What is known is that somewhere in that vision's core is something that is vital to a client.

The Many Faces of Metaphor

Metaphor is not a depiction of actual events, and the degree to which a shaman's discovery is anything more than metaphor is a constant unknown. Because we do not know if shamanic visions are depictions of ordinary reality events or as a metaphor for more than that, they must all be treated as suggestive situations that contain a core understanding that is important to a particular client.

Shamanic visions are generally notorious for metaphor. However, we might be also alerted to its potential in this particular vision of death because the client was facing a terminal illness. Notwithstanding, we shouldn't jump to conclusions. Being metaphor, a vision of death may just as easily refer to the terminal nature of anything, and may not at all be referring to mortality due to physical illness.

This is because a metaphor's core information rests within and beyond the particulars of a vision itself. In this case, a mortal fall from a horse conveys core information about termination, but there is no reason to suspect that this is referring to the literal interpretation of physical death. Plus, there are other core features, such as falling, being atop something, or perhaps losing control of something that would normally be directed, and all of these are potentially some of the 'core' aspects amidst a metaphor. It is, however, within such visionary pieces that the meaning may rest.

Since the predominant manner with which practitioners are shown information is through metaphorical visions, we are left with no choice than to treat all visions as metaphor. If this alarms us that we may then fail to take note of something drastically important, treating a literal vision as metaphor does not lose anything, for the core of a metaphor is the same as the core of a literal interpretation: in this case, being carried, falling and dying.

What is important about metaphor is that the potential relevance and meaning of the core elements can vary.

Where Meaning is Found

Because this particular vision may be metaphor, as we noted above, it is important to not jump to conclusions simply because we know this hypothetical client is facing a terminal illness. Though it may be death due to illness that is being suggested, it is just as possible that the vision is referring to the terminal nature of something else, something that may be equally or even more important to that person than their own physical existence. For instance, the vision of death may point to the loss of an intimate relationship with someone, which to this client, might be something more threatening than their loss of life.

When a practitioner seeks information (divination) for someone, the visions that they receive are not about them, but about the person with whom they are working. This is generally understood, but even more than this, the meaning of shamanic information can only be fully grasped by the one for whom it is intended. When a practitioner teases the core from the metaphorical nature of a divination vision and does not attempt to 'translate' it, they provide their client with the most information possible, for they have successfully passed the information to the only person who is able to fathom the full and correct meaning of it.

In this case, one might tell the client, "I saw you fall to your death from a horse," but not leave it at that. Since most of our contemporaries are already caught up in ordinary reality 'literal' ways of understanding things, we should follow up with something like, "...and since my visions that carry information often come to me as metaphor, I encourage you to look at this for what it might loosely suggest or bring up for you, and not simply narrow its interpretation to an actual fall from a horse."

Shamanic practitioners understand reality 'loosely' and far more broadly than most of their contemporaries. The shaman sees information, for instance, through the movement of birds or the bend of a tree. Shamanic awareness spots otherwise overlooked information within what the contemporary world simply tags as practical events and situations. Practitioners have to be gentle and understanding when working with the many around us who have grown up in the constricted, narrowed awareness of the physical and literal, and who have not yet recovered our broader indigenous understanding. Encouraging clients to look for metaphor is therefore vital when working with people today

Shamanic practitioners are also aware of many other aspects to life that the contemporary world tends to miss. For instance, the shaman works from a cyclical paradigm in which the world's events are understood as a continuing process, rather than as an interwoven nest of segments that are bracketed by beginnings and ends. From a cyclical perspective, this vision may signal the client's need to accept their mortality and move forward, just as Winter comes before Spring. Strength and personal support can come with an understanding that loss and letting go are as important and necessary as new life.

Yet, even this may not be where the vision points. Is it about the client's coming to terms with their mortality? Or, could it be about the terminal nature of something else equally or more important to them? The answer to this is simple: we don't know. What we do know is that it is what comes up for the client, which is the answer.

Responsibility

Shamanic practitioners have access to a broadened field of information because they have not forgotten the wider range of perception that is indigenous to humanity and firmly rooted in the natural world. Only from what has become the contemporary world's narrowed perception does shamanic practice seem extraordinary.

Because we have access to this information, we are also deeded responsibilities that otherwise might not exist. What the shaman reports and how they express it always rests on a considered judgment at a certain time and place, something for which they must accept full responsibility.

So what do we say and how do we say it? First, there must always be an abiding sensitivity to how we convey what we learn. There are no absolute rules to this, though we have covered a few of the important matters to take into consideration.

There is the need for sensitivity regarding using Right Speech, the Buddhist term for compassionately framing and choosing our words to best elicit a client's strengths and understanding.

Then, there is the awareness of metaphor and that shamanic visions commonly hold deep, core information, and that such information may have nothing to do with the literal particulars of the vision itself.

Moreover, there is our specific awareness that the information we receive is meant for our client to digest, and that it is they - and no one else - who are most fit to determine its meaning and relevance. Not only must our clients realize that shamanic visions are often metaphorical and may contain pieces of a puzzle, but that it is they who are the best, and perhaps only one, who are able to put those pieces together and fathom their meaning.

Lastly, because those in our contemporary world are often far removed from our indigenous understanding and may fail to recognize that there are many layers of potential meaning in ordinary reality events and nonordinary shamanic visions, it is incumbent on us to educate our clients in how to begin working with the information we provide.