Soul Retrieval or Soul Reconnection?

Differing from the Western allopathic disease model of illness, shamans look at the spiritual cause of illness, which might manifest on an emotional, mental, and/or physical level. The shamanistic perspective is that illness is due to some loss of the soul, and restoring health requires the shaman to retrieve the soul and return it to the sick individual, by direct interaction with spirits and animal guides. Shamans often have many roles in tribal communities; as healers, doctors, priests, psychotherapists, mystics, and storytellers, performing soul retrievals, divining information, helping the spirits of deceased people cross over, and performing a variety of ceremonies for the community.

In the shamanistic view, it is believed that whenever one suffers an emotional or physical trauma, a part of the soul flees the body in order to survive the experience. Examples of the types of trauma that could cause soul loss are any kind of abuse (sexual, physical, or emotional), an accident, war, acts of terrorism, natural disasters (fire, hurricane, earthquake, tornado), surgery, addictions, divorce, even death of a loved one. Basically, any event that causes shock could cause some fragmentation of the soul.

Sandra Ingerman, contemporary practitioner of soul retrieval and author of the book, Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self, believes that soul loss is how we survive intense or severe pain or emotional/mental/physical turmoil. She writes, “…our psyches have this brilliant self protect mechanism where a part of our essence or soul leaves the body so that we do not feel the full impact of the pain. …In psychology we call this disassociation. But in psychology we don’t talk about what disassociates and where that part goes. In shamanism we understand that a piece of the soul leaves the body and goes to a territory in what shamans call non ordinary reality where it waits until someone intervenes in the spiritual realms and facilitates its return.” In Ingierman’s view, while soul loss is a survival mechanism, the problem from a shamanic point of view is that the soul part that leaves usually does not come back on its own. It is the role of the shaman to go into an altered state of consciousness and track down where the soul fled to in the alternate realities and return it to the body of the client.

The concept of soul loss and the ceremonial retrieval of souls are found in many cultures, not just those we might usually consider as having shamans. For example, in the Tibetan Bon tradition, one of the most important practices performed by Tibetan shamans of the Sichen path is soul retrieval. These soul retrieval techniques are also used in other Tibetan Buddhist schools. There are some who claim that soul retrieval can even be found in Kabbalah, connected to a particular practice called nefilat appayim, or falling on one’s face.

While nefilat appayim has been part of Judaism since the Temple still stood in Jerusalem during the holiest of rituals performed by the High Priest, another use of nefilat appayim is connected with the Amidah prayer. In Hasidism, at one time it was traditional to do a nefilat appayim after the Amidah and the Kedushah. The tradition of standing on tiptoe at each utterance of “Holy” at the Kedushah prayer signifies the desire to be in the heavenly heights, and has made a recent comeback, even among Reform Jews. After the Kedushah, Lurian Kabbalists would literally “fall on one’s face”, and it was believed that in so doing, one’s soul flew from the heights near G!d’s throne, down to the depths of the klippot, the hard outer shells encasing the fragmented shards of Light which shattered at creation, creating the opportunity to retrieve a soul from the “Other Side” that had been trapped, encased, in the klippot.

Jonathan Garb writes in his book, Shamanic Trance in Modern Kabbalah, that the close link between shamanic trance and nefilat appayim was an ongoing theme in the writings of European kabbalists of Lurianic time. It was considered a dangerous practice, with the risk that one might not return from the arduous soul journey, and therefore discouraged and discontinued.

In our own time, Rabbi Gerson Winkler is a practitioner of Jewish Shamanic healing, and Co-Founder and Executive Director of Walking Stick Foundation and Retreat Center near Cuba, New Mexico, a non-profit organization devoted to the recovery of aboriginal, earth-honoring spirituality. He is author of the book, Magic of the Ordinary: Recovering the Shamanic in Judaism, a book which capsulizes two decades of study and practice of what he considers to be “the long-lost shamanic traditions of Judaism.”

This topic begs the questions: Can the soul, or any part of it, be fragmented, or lost? Is it the soul which shatters and fragments, or is it rather the connection that has been lost, the connection between the self (personality) and the Self (soul)? Perhaps what might be retrieved is the damaged ability to know one’s soul, relate to one’s soul, understand that each of us is both personality and soul? Is it the soul that is damaged, or the personality that suffers? If it is the ability to realize and relate to our soul that gives our soul its individual meaning, then a break in this connection can, indeed, feel like a critical life-energy link has been severed, and as if a piece of oneself has left, leaving one feeling disconnected, scattered, in pieces.

Yet, doesn’t our bible distinguish different parts of the soul, between neshamah, nefesh, and ruach? In Genesis, the word used for G!d blowing a breath of life into the nostrils of adamah is from the Hebrew root indicating "breath." This word, neshamah, in its use in Genesis, does not possess personality, and only describes an inner element which animates the body. Similarly, ruach is also an animating life force from G!d. Nefesh is often used to mean “living being,” and it is also used in connection with animals. It is the life force which is connected to the blood. One’s nefesh can yearn for or cleave to someone, and is connected to the body and material desires.

Even here, there is not total consensus, for the Jewish Encyclopedia states, “The soul is called in Biblical literature ‘ruacḥ,’ ‘nefesh,’ and ‘neshamah.’ The first of these terms denotes the spirit in its primitive state; the second, in its association with the body; the third, in its activity while in the body.” As well, these three terms have a subtle evolution of meaning in later books of the bible. In particular, Ecclesiastes describes the ruach as returning to G!d (from Whom it came) at death. When Plato claimed the soul had three parts, Philo tried to connect neshamah, nefesh, and ruach to support Plato’s ideas. This was mostly rejected, and the Talmud is filled with images of the body and soul working in harmonious partnership. In the midrash Genesis Rabbah 14:9, sleep temporarily separates body and soul. The morning Modah Ani prayer speaks to this belief.

Many Talmudic Rabbis taught that the soul exists separately from the body, and also exists in a fully conscious state in an ethereal realm. Mitzvot cover mundane bodily matters such as clothing, eating, and sexual habits, because care of the body is also care for the soul. The Rabbis hold that the body is not the prison of the soul, but rather, its medium of development and improvement. Nor do they hold the Platonic view regarding the preexistence of the soul. Chabad defines soul as, “…what makes you, you. It is the fragment of G!d that makes each one of us unique. Above your body, beyond your personality, transcending genetics and even deeper than memory is the core of your being, the ineffable essence that is you. We call this your soul.”

Even if there are three aspects, or descriptions, of this thing we call soul, that does not necessarily mean one’s soul can fragment or be lost, does it? When we wish for r’fuah sh’leimah, a healing so complete it restores one to wholeness and completeness, and even when we wish shabbat shalom, we are praying for wholeness. How can we ask for wholeness if there is not some sense of not being whole? Yet, is it that we aren’t actually whole, or that we don’t have the sense of being whole, being connected to G!d?

R’fuah sh’leimah teaches that complete healing is more than alleviation of pain or treating certain symptoms; healing is about restoring the wholeness of a person, a state of being, recovering the sense of completeness that illness has taken away. In serious illness and traumatic events, life does not simply go back to the way it was before. We can be changed physically, emotionally, mentally. The way it was can never be fully restored. Being healed completely, then, sometimes means acceptance and finding a new normal. Sometimes it shifts one’s view of G!d and relationship with friends and family. Rav Nachman of Breslov taught that when a person is depressed, their intellect and mind go into exile. He also taught that joy is freedom. Depression exiles us from our better selves; to find again a sense of joy is to leave exile and return home, to be restored to a sense of being reconnected and not enslaved.  Isn’t the very concept of being partners with G!d a way to fully realize the Echad in our Sh’ma prayer: to become one, in order to make G!d One again, so that G!d, and ourselves, are not fragmented, but whole, and holy?

Perhaps the concept of soul retrieval has a place in our thinking, but maybe in a different perspective. Those who suffered severe and long term trauma at a very young age, reach adulthood feeling broken, fragmented, and defective. Developmental Trauma Disorder goes deep. In the process of healing through this, the shift comes when the individual is able to see that the soul was not fragmented and pieces of it lost; instead, the body, brain, and soul inter-connections of the young developing self were interrupted by the trauma and abuse. Recovery and r’fuah sh’leimah, then, comes as the result of restoring a sense of wholeness and completeness; feeling reconnected; embracing that one is perfectly imperfect and imperfectly perfect, even while continuing to work on being better; accepting that the past is over and cannot be undone. Over time, new neural pathways and synapses are carved into the brain, and reintegrated into the soul.

Is this similar to shamanistic soul retrieval? Is this similar to Lurianic Kabbalism and retrieving a lost soul confined in the thick klippot? Possibly, but using a different language and perspective. While traditional shamans view soul loss as a leading cause of physical, emotional and psychological dysfunctions, and the shamanic approach to healing this condition is to journey into the spirit world outside of oneself, locate, retrieve, and return the lost part of the soul, I believe there are other ways of doing similar work. The concept of soul retrieval is a potent reminder that allopathic medicine can work miracles in physical healing, but there is much more healing that needs to happen at the soul level as well, and not just in cases of severe trauma and abuse. Sadly, this part of the healing process is too often neglected.

Does a piece of our soul flee when trauma happens, or is it that an inner connection becomes disconnected? While I am not entirely comfortable with the language of one’s soul being fragmented, lost, or fleeing, I can certainly understand the concept in different terms. I have experienced feeling completely broken and unfixable; and I have experienced the feeling of being restored to wholeness. What was broken was the connection, what was lost was a sense of wholeness and being unified, and the ability to think with and live from that wholeness which was there all along. I felt broken and fragmented because I saw myself as broken and fragmented. While still being whole within myself, I needed help in sensing it again. In that way, I was reconnected to my soul, and restored to  r’fuah sh’leimah. As I have previously written, perhaps these sparks of Holy aren’t scattered “out there”, but are, rather, scattered “in here.” And our task of gathering them, tikkun ha’olam, comes from reconnecting to them deep within ourselves, tikkun hanefesh.

Interestingly, we find a nod to fragmentation and disconnection in our own calendar of holy days. Tisha B’Av is an entirely different observance from most of our holy days. Is it not a sad commemoration of fragmentation and disconnect? The spies’ negative report induced great fear and a feeling of disconnect from the land; the Temple, the symbol of the connection between heaven and earth and source of wholeness in the world, destroyed–twice–on this day… The 9th of Av is called a moed in Hebrew, literally a meeting in time with G!d.  There is tremendous opportunity on this day, for fragmentation is the very human tendency of feeling separate, alone, other, falling into a sense of despair and disconnect.

Interestingly, the root of the Hebrew word for dispute, machlokes, is chelek, or fragment. It is often noted that what we think about surrounds us; where we focus our minds becomes reality. If we think negatively, we seem to attract more negativity, while if we concentrate on more positive things, we perceive more positivity around us. While we cannot always control what thoughts pop into our heads, we can choose our reaction to them, and shift away from the self-dispute. Perhaps the worse sense of fragmentation comes from this dispute we carry on within, the mental negative self-talk loop. We too often get lost in this dispute within ourselves.

In feeling our fragmentation, disconnection, dysfunction, we often look for someone or something to blame; usually others or G!d. Yet in pointing outwards, all we find is more dysfunction and disconnection. Perhaps the biggest lesson of Tisha B’Av is the reminder that it is our own small thinking that leaves us feeling so lost, fragmented, disconnected. The spies’ report came from small thinking, and the loss of the First and Second Temples, while certainly devastations, each loss brought with it such tremendous gifts that propelled us away from small thinking and into larger, more global potential, once we finally embraced the new reality and moved forward.

The prophet Jeremiah (13:17) reminds us, “My soul will weep in secrecy for your [lost] pride.”  The Maharal of Prague explains this verse, that G!d’s “secret place” is our souls, that “piece of G!d” that resides in each of us. While a day of mourning, Tisha B’Av is truly a moed, a meeting place in time with G!d, in which we can again connect, and in that connection, find new hope and courage to move forward into wholeness. Is not Yom Kippur also a moed, a time to reconnect, to defragment and un-schmutz our souls?

So is it soul retrieval, or soul reconnection? I think the MaHaRaL has it right. G!d’s “secret place” is our soul, and our soul is that “piece of G!d” which resides in each of us. This soul does not fragment or flee, but our feeling of connection can certainly leave. The deepest level of healing comes from restoring our sense of connection to G!d’s “secret place” within us. Other traditions require a shaman, or even a Kabbalist, to go out and retrieve the lost soul fragment and entice it to come back. Soul reconnection calls us to end the chelek, the dispute, within ourselves. Oftentimes we need help in restoring the connections. I’m just not sure I agree that a part of the soul can actually fragment and leave.