Many people who meet me want to know how I came to be who I am and to do what I do. Shamanism is a religion in the broadest sense. It's practice is shared by all indigenous peoples with an underlying cosmography that cuts across through local customs, labeling systems and manifestations peculiar to regional biota. Even today, when long in retreat from the relentless onslaught of western rationalism and insensate technology, shamanism survives in native cultures on all of the planet's inhabited continents. The divergence of western religions from shamanism lies in the concepts of humans as the exclusive possessors of spiritual souls and in humankind as the lone interpreter of ordinary and extraordinary realities.
Shamanic peoples are neither so audacious nor, perhaps so foolish.
In shamanism, all of existence is viewed as highly integrated and connected. When a tree falls in the forest, a star falls from the sky. Maybe more importantly, literally everything that exists has a soul - without division into organic and inorganic. There is no hierarchical structuring of consciousness with humans resting comfortably at the top and rocks and trees at the bottom. They recognize and respect all forms of life as soulful living beings - even a rock and even a tree.