A teacher can be both internal or external. For the shaman, the teacher often took the form of an inner guide or spirit. Just as often, shamans were trained and educated by other shamans in their community.
Whatever form they take, the teacher starts the shaman-to-be on a program of discipline, both physical and mental, to develop the will as well as to disrupt the shaman's ordinary--that is, comfortable--state of mind. This is in order that his mind may be opened to new possibilities and modes of awareness. Such disciplines can include fasting, sleep deprivation, physical exertion, isolation, or exposure to extremes of hot or cold.
The aim and effect of these disciplines is to change the way the mind perceives reality.
4) Culmination of the quest--death and rebirth:
The quest culminates in illumination, or a life-changing breakthrough.
This may take the form of a vision, a special insight, or--and this is most common with the shamanic experience--an experience of death and rebirth.
Again, whatever form it takes, the end effect is the same: "a realization of one's deeper nature and a resultant self-transformation" (Walsh).
5) The final phase of return and contribution to society:
Having healed himself, the shaman is now spiritually equipped for the task of healing the world--that being his immediate community.
Whereas the quest itself was a turning away from society and into his deeper, inward self, the quest ends with a return back into society in order to share and give from what was learned and attained on the journey.
This story of the shaman's development, the hero's journey, is in essence a description of the human story. The experience of an artist, a teacher, a scientist, a writer--the experience of any human story worth telling--follows this same general pattern. An encounter with a crisis or problem, and then through the work of resolving it, the discovery of something profound that can benefit the whole world.
The hero of the hero's journey is the one who brings something true and worthwhile into this, our shared human reality, out from the alternate reality of one's own inner self.
This is the great spiritual work, and it is the essence of the shamanic life.
Ian Van Harte, Author
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