Intro
This section looks into how healing was viewed before the psych industry existed.

Copyright Steven Simmons ©

Indigenous Healing
Indigenous practices and religions all have the same themes running through them:
Most of the above are an expression of humans creativity and storytelling e.g. art & music tells stories, Dance & Rituals reenacts stories. All religions have the same 7 concepts going through them.

One way that the Shamans plant the seed of awakening in others is through storytelling. Because the Shamans realized that the mind is always dreaming and creating stories, they began to tell stories as a way to pierce the veil of the mind. - Don Jose Ruiz
The Eternal Song is a documentary looking at different indigenous cultures, that can be viewed for free or with a donation.
The documentary touches on the fact that western culture has historically overpowered indigenous cultures and brought along capitalism & religion, the cultures have suffered negatively. If you look at western religions and indigenous practices, one might see that they all have the same principles yet something gets lost within the culture in the transition.
In Christianity Jesus told parables as stories, Prayer and hymns, art in churches stained glass windows, the lamb and dove in the bible. Community and Eucharist/Mass as a ritual.
The historical generational trauma being re-enacted, released via myths and storytelling along with the wisdom of the local environment get lost.
Children play out their story when they are connected and powerful. The power over nature of western capitalism society and the separation of people within modern society mean the healing gets lost. It's capitalism and western culture causing the issue.
Our identity within the figures of myths and stories get lost and the speed at which society is developing, further impacts this.

02:26

YouTube

The Eternal Song (2025) - Official Trailer

https://theeternalsong.org The Eternal Song is a cinematic prayer—a journey across timeless lands, sacred cultures, and the healing currents of ancestral wisdom. Through the voices of Indigenous Elders, healers, and communities around the world, we bear witness to the ongoing scars of colonization, the resilient spirit of Indigenous communities, and the sacred interdependence between all beings. This film is more than a story—it’s an invocation of ancestral healing. It reveals how modernity se

Copyright Steven Simmons ©

Parallels between Spirituality, Psychology
Dr Daniel P Brown states that Buddhism is a theory of mind and Spirituality mirrors Psychology. I noted that playing and swimming in water got my daughter out of overload every time play stopped resolving trauma or stress and could be symbolic of a christian baptism, that got me looking at religious rituals and acts to see others could also be healing.
note; I am only slightly familiar with Christianity and Buddhism. All different religions would probably have something they could add to the list.

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The Power of Myth - Joseph Campbell's work
At 58:20 Joseph Campbell states that he views all religions are true for their time. If we could find what the truth is and separate it and bring it into a new set of metaphors, we would understand:
I think it would be nice if that metaphor is that their 'acts' and rituals are symbolism for things that all heal our children and/or our own mental health, they answer the question psychology ask: "What does it mean to be?". The acts have purpose.
Everyone is right, we are all talking about the same thing in our own cultural language and cultural traumas. As human we naturally try to power over each other from our own relational wounds. Instead of separating with individualism we need to all come together as one, bringing all our wisdom together as a global tribe. Lifting each other up. Yet all religions have a structure of "Power Over" vs "Power With".

Copyright Steven Simmons ©

Vedic Views On the Body
The Taittirīya Upaniṣad speaks of five sheaths that enclose the ātman (self of a living being).

The Wisdom Sheath is similar to cell intelligence covered under Michael Levin video in the psych concepts section.

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Lucid Dreaming/Dream Yoga
Why Do We Dream?
A 7 year old had a nightmare where a teacher took her out of the school into a field, in that field was a female vampire that looked really scary. The teacher started to feed the children to the vampire. The child woke up scared, said to herself, "I can do this, this is a test, I can be brave" and went back to sleep to face the vampire. She was able to continue the dream. She put her hand up to be eaten next and she climbed into the vampires mouth…
She changed into a dog and all the children turned into sheep. The vampire instructed the dog to chase all the sheep, collect them and feed them to her. The girl ran through the field (as a dog) chasing and catching all the children and bring them back to the vampire and feeding them to her.
The next day the 7 year old girl showed a massive leap in her fear of exploration, she would run off whilst out walking with her parents where previously she would be too scared to go a couple of meters ahead, her personality opened up more and her teacher commented on her increased confidence in class. The dream was symbolic of a teacher that had traumatized her on her first week of pre-school when younger, taking her out of the school, off around a field causing a separation trauma that made her to go into emotional overload.
All that it took to teach a child to do lucid dreaming was to explain the concept to them. That if they realize they are dreaming they can control the dream. Walking through the possible symbolism of any nightmares with them so they can see how it can reflect their day time fears or past experiances.
If you can control your dreams, you can process stresses whilst sleeping. You also learn that your waking reality is just a creation of the same perception of day time thoughts and can be controlled. Improving meta cognitive awareness.

Copyright Steven Simmons ©

The Importance of Dreaming

Is it all of our dreams colliding ~ Our Hearts In A Room, Florist, Emily Sprague.
Like Lucid Dreaming at night time where one can control our night time dreams, our day time reality is just each others day time dreams colliding.
  • Asleep vs. Awake: When asleep, the dream is chaotic and fluid. When awake, our "material frame" (the physical world) forces our perception into a linear structure, making the dream feel solid and real.
  • Subjectivity: Because we are always dreaming, our perception of the world is subjective, filtered through our own minds, rather than an objective truth.
  • Creation of reality: From birth, individuals are taught to participate in this collective dream through parents, schools, and religion, which shape attention and perception. Through repeated instruction, we learn society’s definitions of right and wrong, acceptable and unacceptable, and ultimately construct our personal reality.

Copyright Steven Simmons ©

The 4 Agreements To Live By
based on The 4 agreements by don Miguel Ruiz
  1. Be Impeccable With Your Word: Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Use the power of your word constructively, in the direction of truth and love. Words can be white magic or black magic like computer code and virus used for hacking. e.g. Hitler and Trump as examples of black magic.
  1. The Power: Your word is a powerful tool for creation or destruction. Being impeccable means not using your word against yourself (through self-criticism) or others (through gossip or negative talk).
  1. Don't Take Anything Personally: Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own "dream."
  1. The Power: When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you avoid needless suffering. Taking things personally makes you an easy victim of others' emotional poison.
  1. Don't Make Assumptions: Find the courage to ask questions and express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama.
  1. The Power: We often assume we know what others are thinking or what will happen, which leads to disappointment and conflict. Asking for clarity instead of assuming can completely transform your relationships.
  1. Always Do Your Best: Your best will change from moment to moment, day to day—it might be different when you are sick versus well. Under any circumstance, simply do your best.
  1. The Power: When you Always Do Your Best, you avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret. You do the action for the sake of the action, not for a reward, and you enjoy your life.

Whilst words are powerful, actions speak louder than words. It is harmful to people around you, if your words and actions do not match.

Copyright Steven Simmons ©

History of Spirituality
Some people have tried to map a timeline of different religions.
Each branch would contain some form of healing wisdom that we could all use if we learnt from each other.

UsefulCharts

World Religions Family Tree Poster

Discover the comprehensive family tree of the world's major religions, featuring all key branches of Buddhism, Chinese Religions, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and more. This poster offers an insightful overview perfect for deepening your understanding of global faiths. Crafted on thick, premium gloss paper, it offers exceptional durability and a vibrant finish to enhance your study and reference experience.

Copyright Steven Simmons ©

Magik, Manifestation and Willingness
The art and science of causing change to occur in conformity with will.
— Aleister Crowley
Magik is like planting seeds in the subconscious:
  • Rituals, symbols, chants, and visualisations bypass the critical, logical mind and speak directly to the emotional/subconscious layer of the psyche.
  • The subconscious shapes perception, habits, creativity, and behaviour. so influencing it can lead to real-world changes in attitude, action, and outcome.
  • This is similar to how affirmations, guided imagery, or hypnotherapy work by embedding new beliefs and patterns below conscious awareness.
Crowley described magik as “training the mind to focus on a single aim” which echoes modern cognitive-behavioural and neuroplasticity principles.
Magik is essentially psychological self-engineering:
  • Ritual provides structure and story
  • Symbol anchors emotion
  • Will or intent engages the implicit consciousness.
Rather than controlling supernatural forces, it aligns your inner world so your outer behavior naturally shifts changing how others respond. That shift can appear magical from the outside but really you are changing you thought at an implicit level and impacting other people at that same implicit level. Like how a conflict resolution lawyer can ask leading questions in a negotiation that lead the other party in the negotiation to suggest the required solution.
If you can read peoples play and traumas, you can offer resolve or you can take resolve away, manipulate, coerce and control a mind and a persons (re-)actions. This concept explains voodoo, occult, pagan, black magik type concepts along with manifestation found in modern pop psychology and prosperity gospel.
The eastern version is 'I Ching', the book of change. Prosperity and Confucianism. The mysticism has been removed and it's positioned as wisdom on how to interact with the world.

Stanford

James Doty on the neuroscience of manifestation

In Mind Magic, James Doty explains how your attention can be redirected in a way that can change your brain and help you realize your goals.

Copyright Steven Simmons ©

The Journey Inwards - How schizophrenia is viewed within indigenous tribes.
This is a talk on schizophrenia & psychosis and how it is seen historically through early myths and religions. It mentions that it is like a psychedelic experience and should be turned into an inward journey. In theory how practitioners plan to support a negative experience in psychedelic therapy would be a sensible way to support people through psychosis. Vs the current suppression of symptoms that prevent the body's final attempt at releasing trauma and currently leaves people lost to society.
10 Steps to Understanding & Supporting Psychosis

If you understand that crying and play like non-directive child led play being scarred by trauma lead to psychosis as there is no natural release left and its the minds last attempt at healing. It's a failure of society, a failure of compassion. Lower activation, heal one's cry's shiver and heal play, then heal their attachment. Not trigger someone into psychosis psychologists like Stanislav Grof suggests in Spiritual Emergency.
Whilst one person might overcome it and be a 'shaman' in that they can read the symbolism another that couldn't would be mentally ill? If it was understood everyone could overcome it with a guide.
Understanding the above around myths, would help someone if they were stuck to find their way out of psychosis and not get lost in the symbolism though.

Copyright Steven Simmons ©

Shamanic Healing: Is it symbolic play in a lucid conscious state.
Psychosis is a mix of your trauma, your sensory input of the environment blending in to a waking dream, lucid nightmare state. LSD without the colors (e.g. some countries its a happy experience, AI psychosis, 90s UFO psychosis). If one understands myth and symbolism one can separate the trauma vs sensory inputs. This is the shaman. They go through it and learn to be able to read and 'play' through it symbolically and not be caught up through the delusions, symbolism and 'visions'
As they are highly sensitive and subconsciously read relational signals, a shaman can learn to bring themselves into that lucid state of consciousness whilst with the person that needs healing. They then read and bring that person trauma into their consciousness whilst having the ability to keep the separation of 'traumas' or not bring their trauma's into it and guide the other person out of their psychosis/ mental sickness to a resolve via this form of symbolic abstract play.

Like Schizophrenia, Psychosis is a spectrum and has different types that Drs do not seem to understand. e.g. Dissociative without visual or auditory hallucinations.

Copyright Steven Simmons ©

Crazy Wisdom & The Crazywise
Phil Borges has a documentary called Crazywisdom and a few Tedx talks which details the role of indigenous healers and guides.
Buddhism also has the concept of Crazy Wisdom;

Crazy wisdom without realizing that the underlying base behind it, is the complete realization of the natural state and the ability to remain in it at all times while engaging in any activity of body, speech and mind. Until this capacity is reached, emulating external facets of crazy wisdom leads to the accumulation of a vast store of negative karma. If one is unable to remain in the natural state at all times then one must perform virtuous actions, accumulate merits and use any methods needed in addition to practice sessions where on is immersed in the contemplation of natural state. ~ Yongdzin Lopn Tenzin Namdak
Note how this is similar theme to Positive Disintegration's 'become the embodiment of your gift, improve society with your gift and find peace.' embody the natural state through sharing your gift and virtuous deeds. This also aligns with working towards meaning and purpose having positive neuroscience data.

Copyright Steven Simmons ©

Myth, Religion, Role Models & Stories
Karl Popper, the philosopher of science, said that scientific theories can never be proven true, only falsified, they survive only until contradicted.
Religions are always true as they are a personal mythical beliefs systems that rely on faith. Myths are other peoples religion. Old religions or belief systems that die out become myths.
“What myth does for you is to point beyond the phenomenal field toward the transcendent. A mythic figure is like the compass that you used to draw circles and arcs in school, with one leg in the field of time and the other in the eternal. The image of a god may look like a human or animal form, but its reference is transcendent of that.”
Modern society is evolving so fast we are losing the ability to connect to the myth, the office worker isn't Athena or an agricultural society like biblical times, or we aren't solitary mountain farmers in harsh Tibetan conditions.
Folk stories were a way to connect modern time to past myths.
“We’re all without dependable guides. Yet even now you can find two guides. The first can be a personality in your youth who seemed to you a noble and great personality. You can use that person as a model. The other way is to live for bliss. In this way, your bliss becomes your life.”
Guides can be found in Poets, Artists, Singers, they tell the modern myths. The 27 club, Kurt Cobain, Jim Morrison, Amy Winehouse are cautionary examples. Taylor Swift is gifted and a positive example, Sports personalities would also be others like Beckham or Messi. They support the individuals 'hero' journey of finding your path, but individuality has to be transcended. Guides are in people like Buddha, Jesus, Baháʼu'llá where the lesson is we are all one if we come together. It is found within us and it is also found outside of us when we connect together.
Though unity we heal and lift each other up, through compassion and forgiveness, through putting more back than you take out of society. If we follow and listen to our hearts and work towards our purpose and meaning with love and compassion. If we all hold each others pain and give resolve through play we all lift each other up and heal our fears and traumas.

Copyright Steven Simmons ©

Giftedness in Religion
Paganism like Celtic has Druids (priests, scholars, philosophers), Bardos (poets, musicians and singers), Seers (Prophets), Sages (Wisdom), Ovates (visionary or diviner, skills in divination, herbalism, and healing).
Hindu Gurus and Swamis in Hinduism, Sudis in Islam, Lamas & Yogis in Buddhism, Shamanism, Healers and Herabilism across Indigenous cultures.
Christianity talks of 'gifts of the spirit' in 1 Corinthians 12.
It states that there are many types of gifts of the spirit
4 There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. 5 There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. 6 There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work.
7 Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. 8 To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, 10 to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. 11 All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and he distributes them to each one, just as he determines.
27 Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it. 28 And God has placed in the church first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healing, of helping, of guidance, and of different kinds of tongues. 29 Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? 30 Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues[d]? Do all interpret? 31 Now eagerly desire the greater gifts.
It goes on to detail the greatest gift being love:
If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
8 Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
13 And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Copyright Steven Simmons ©

Common Themes Across Roles within Religion
Intermediaries Between Worlds: Many of these roles serve as intermediaries between the human and divine realms, whether through prophecy, rituals, or spiritual practices.
Guidance and Wisdom: Whether through divine messages (prophets), philosophical teachings (gurus, sages), or traditional knowledge (griots, healers), these roles often focus on providing wisdom and guidance to their communities.
Healing and Protection: Healing, whether physical, spiritual, or emotional is a central theme. Many of these figures serve as protectors of health and wellbeing, using herbs, rituals, or spiritual insight.
Preservation of Culture: Just like bards and griots, many of these roles are dedicated to preserving culture, traditions, and sacred knowledge, ensuring that generations to come stay connected to their ancestral roots.
While each culture has its unique traditions, the roles of seers, sages, bards, and healers appear across many belief systems, reflecting universal human needs for guidance, connection with the divine, and understanding of the mysteries of life.

Are twice exceptional children, modern day's societies version of these roles, lost to a broken mental health and education system and a modern society with a lack of/lost understanding?

Copyright Steven Simmons ©

Meditation & Prayer
Vedic & Buddhist traditions all have meditation as a key ritual. Christianity also mentions heart meditations in it's Psalms. Along with prayer.
A Nun has complied a vast array of teachings from different practices, ranging from things like christian mystics, sufi, theravada, dzogchen and mahyanana; with or without music.

Google Drive

All Folders - All Traditions - Google Drive

The Monroe Institute.

The Monroe Institute

Free Meditations

The world's premiere organization for the study of human consciousness. Offering residential mediation retreats, online courses and research programs for the study of expanded states of consciousness using audio supported guided meditations. Access expanded states of conscious with Robert Monroe's Gateway Experience.

Metta Group have a daily meditation, the 84 meditations are loving kindness/metta visualizations based on Dr Brown's Ideal parent figure protocol.

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Next Section - Future of Psychology

Copyright Steven Simmons ©