--- title: What does rewilding Soul mean and how do we discover our gifts and life direction? description: "Rewilding Soul means finding, befriending and gradually becoming your Lower-World**Lower-World.** The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in…" url: "https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/wiki/what-does-rewilding-soul-mean-and-how-do-we-discover-our-gifts-and-life-direction/" updated: "2026-11-10" category: The recovery tags: - Adult - Bill Plotkin - ecological crisis - gifts - "hunter-gatherers" - life direction - "Lower-World Soul" - purpose - rewilding - romanticising - service - soul - talents - Wild Soul --- # What does rewilding Soul mean and how do we discover our gifts and life direction? Rewilding Soul means finding, befriending and gradually becoming your Lower-World**Lower-World.** The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. [Read the full answer](/wiki/what-is-the-lower-world/) Soul: the wild, free, undomesticated Human you were meant to be, buried beneath the stories of a domesticated culture. Your gifts are your Soul expressing itself, and your direction in life comes from letting your Soul shape how you live. Wild does not mean chaotic: Soul is kind, ethical and an Adult, and becoming ourselves serves the world as well as us. ## What does rewilding Soul mean? Undoing our domestication**Domestication.** The process by which, in domesticating other species, we domesticated ourselves. When dated precisely, Domestication begins with the Neolithic era, before the Fall proper, which begins with the first city-state cultures around 4000 BCE. What rewilding works to undo. [More about this](/wiki/what-does-domestication-mean/) and becoming who we really are. "We have to connect back to our true self, underneath the layers of separation and domestication. We have to re-wild our own selves."^[1](#note-1) For most people that true self has never had the chance to grow: "Their real-self is like a seed that has never had a chance to grow; a potential that was never realised."^[2](#note-2) When you find your Soul, "you can begin to get to know it, befriend it, fall in love with it and gradually become it, let it mould and re-shape you into what you are meant to be".^[3](#note-3) 1. Paul Francis, [*The Shamanic Journey*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/the-shamanic-journey/), Chapter Seven, "Rewilding Ourselves". 2. Paul Francis, [*The Shamanic Journey*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/the-shamanic-journey/), Chapter Nine, "The Mask We Wear". 3. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Introduction, "What This Book Is About". ## What is Wild Soul? Your Lower-World Soul, your truest self. "It is a part of us that is wild and free, free from the domestication and baggage of the human middle-world**Middle-world.** Ordinary physical reality together with its energetic layers: the realm of individuality, separation and mixed intentions, and the only realm where harm is possible. "If there is a hell, then it is the middle-world." [Read the full answer](/wiki/what-is-the-middle-world/)." It is "both who we truly are deep down, and the blueprint for what we are meant to grow into and become in the world."^[4](#note-4) "It is the Human hunter-gatherer that Mother Earth**Mother Earth.** The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: "The Earth is indeed our Mother." [More about this](/wiki/who-is-mother-earth/) intended us to be, both an individual and at the same time an inter-connected part of the web of life."^[5](#note-5) Students explore Wild Soul in depth in the Next-Steps course of that name. See [What are Soul, Spirit, the middle-world self and the body?](/wiki/what-are-soul-spirit-the-middle-world-self-and-the-body/) 1. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter One, "Our Lost Human Soul". 2. Paul Francis, [*Rewilding Yourself*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/rewilding-yourself/), Chapter Seven, "What Happens When We Die?". ## Is Wild Soul the same as being wild or rebellious in ordinary life? No. Soul is wild in the sense of undomesticated, not chaotic. "That part of you is good. It is kind and compassionate, empathic, considerate, and naturally ethical. It is also brave, authentic, wild, untamed, undomesticated and free."^[6](#note-6) And "One essential thing to know is that Soul is an Adult."^[7](#note-7) 'The rebel' is one of the protective [fort-holder](/wiki/what-are-child-orphan-fort-holder-and-protector-parts/) parts of us, the parts that stayed behind to help us cope; the fuller teaching on rebellion is for students. See [What does it mean to become a True Adult?](/wiki/what-does-it-mean-to-become-a-true-adult/) 1. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter One, "We Can Trust Our Nature". 2. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Four, "A House Built on Soul". ## Why can Wild Soul imagery be risky? Because 'wild' is easily misread. The books do not discuss this as a topic, but they warn against misreading it. One misreading is [romanticising](/wiki/arent-you-romanticising-hunter-gatherers/) hunter-gatherers: "This has got absolutely nothing to do with romanticising the past."^[8](#note-8) "They were just people. Human beings with flaws like us."^[9](#note-9) Another is imagining Soul as something other than human: "It is not going to look like a glowing ball of energy, or a fairy, or some kind of winged beast. Your Lower-World Soul is You."^[10](#note-10) A third is thinking that rewilding means going back to a hunter-gatherer life, which it cannot be. 1. Paul Francis, [*Rewilding Yourself*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/rewilding-yourself/), Chapter Three, "Choosing Hunter-Gatherer Ancestors as Your Primary Human Guides". 2. Paul Francis, [*Rewilding Yourself*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/rewilding-yourself/), Chapter Three, "Myths to Live By". 3. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Four, "Meeting Your Soul". ## How do we discover our gifts? By noticing what makes us feel alive. Developing a talent usually takes hard work and practice, so what keeps us going? "Because doing something well that we have a talent for makes us feel good. It is our Soul finding a way to express itself in the world; it is us being able to be what we were meant to be. This makes us feel alive."^[11](#note-11) 1. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Three, "Embracing Our Gift". ## How do we find our direction in life? By letting Soul shape how we live. "Soul provides the healthy Templates on which to base an authentically-lived life. Your middle-world self**Middle-world self.** The everyday self (ego, persona, head-and-heart), made of our stories and experiences. A genuine and needed part of the Inner Tribe: of service, not in command. [Read the full answer](/wiki/what-are-soul-spirit-the-middle-world-self-and-the-body/) will then need to translate and adapt these Templates, to make them relevant and useful in your everyday life".^[12](#note-12) The sign that we are on track is not a dramatic revelation: "what grows in you is a quieter but more constant and grounded feeling of rightness. A harmony of being that comes from being the Human Being you are meant to be."^[13](#note-13) The practices for meeting Soul and living from it are in *Finding Your Deep Soul*, and are not given here. 1. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Four, "Growing into What You Were Meant to Be". 2. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Eight, "The More Down to Earth Version". ## Why does shamanism matter for the ecological crisis? Because the crisis comes from disconnection, and the shaman's role is to see it and wake people up. That is "the definition of the word "shaman"": someone "who can see in the dark and see the things that other people cannot, or will not, see." When humans stray from right relationship, "it is, and always has been, the role of the shaman to wake people up, to heal their wounds, and to provide the healthy stories that help people come back to right-relationship."^[14](#note-14) Becoming ourselves is part of this: as [Bill Plotkin](/wiki/who-is-bill-plotkin-and-what-is-soul-initiation/) put it, "the world cannot be full until we become fully ourselves."^[15](#note-15) See [How do we reconnect with the other-than-human world and heal cultural Power-loss?](/wiki/how-do-we-reconnect-with-the-other-than-human-world-and-heal-cultural-power-loss/) 1. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Three, "The Taker Society Is a Cult". 2. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Four, "Digging Down to the Soul". ## What is the deeper purpose of shamanism? To bring us back to who we were meant to be, and to serve. "If you do the practices, they do change you. Bit by bit, surely and steadily, they wake you up and bring you back to life, back to who you were meant to be."^[16](#note-16) And "the role of the shaman was, and still is, to be of service."^[17](#note-17) The other Peoples already know this: "The meaning of life is to be what Mother Earth intended you to be. Rocks, trees, and cats know that exactly."^[18](#note-18) So "Let your Human, Adult Soul shape your life. From that place, find ways to be of service in the world."^[19](#note-19) 1. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Three, "Shamanism Can Wake You Up". 2. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Three, "Wearing Your Clothes Back-To-Front". 3. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Eight, "Stories about the Meaning of Life". 4. Paul Francis, [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/), Chapter Eight, "Activism". - [What are Soul, Spirit, the middle-world self and the body?](/wiki/what-are-soul-spirit-the-middle-world-self-and-the-body/) - [Can modern humans recover an animist way of seeing and undo domestication?](/wiki/can-modern-humans-recover-an-animist-way-of-seeing-and-undo-domestication/) - [What does it mean to become a True Adult?](/wiki/what-does-it-mean-to-become-a-true-adult/) - [What is the difference between Soul and a soul part?](/wiki/what-is-the-difference-between-soul-and-a-soul-part/) - [What is the Lower-World?](/wiki/what-is-the-lower-world/) - [*Finding Your Deep Soul*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/finding-your-deep-soul/) (the whole book, especially Chapters One, Four and Eight) - [*The Shamanic Journey*](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/book/the-shamanic-journey/) (Chapter Seven, rewilding ourselves) - [all courses](https://www.therapeutic-shamanism.co.uk/shamanic-courses/)