We are “possessed” by our own minds; we are in need of exorcism. Although we believe we possess our minds it is the mind that thinks this. The mind appears to be a demon that through the power of habit and repetition “possesses” the totality of the human being. Language and thinking are its primary tools, its ultimate drugs. Religion may have been the opiate of the masses but it is language that is the opiate of Everyman.
We grow up being habituated to the language of our elders, formed to a certain inescapable shape in the image of our mothers, fathers, ancestors. Those who attempt to awaken from the demon of the mind are involved in a life of exorcism, an attempt to see through what has become the standard, the routine, the normal.
This is the role of the shaman in the modern world. To break free of possession, to exorcise oneself of the mind without losing the mind, to remain aware of the thin but real and definite line between the psychotic and the shamanic or sacred/ecstatic.