Quotes from Michael Harner

He (the Shaman) is a self-reliant explorer of the endless mansions of a magnificent hidden universe.

What's really important about shamanism is that there is another reality that you can personally discover...we are not alone.

Shamanism is a great metal and emotional adventure, one in which the patient as well as the shaman-healer are involved

Keep in mind that no matter how successful you were in dancing your animal, that in itself is not proof that you still have its power. You may only be dancing a memory. A successful experience does suggest, however, that you may have at least had such a guardian spirit in the past, if not now. The dancing itself, however, is no proof in itself, one way or another.

Incidentally, no matter how fierce a guardian animal spirit may seem, its possessor is in no danger because the power animal is absolutely harmless. It is only a source of power; it has no aggressive intentions. It only comes to you because you need help.

Anthropologists teach others to try to avoid the pitfalls of ethnocentrism by learning to understand a culture in terms of its own assumptions about reality. Western shamans can do a similar service with regard to cognicentrism. The anthropologists' lesson is called cultural relativism. What Western shamans can try to create, to some degree, is cognitive relativism.