Born into hierarchical societies, our minds naturally take a shape that reinforces those societies and their values. We 'fit in' in order to get along and primarily in order to avoid the extreme kinds of censure that lead to death. A shaman, however, upon "facing death" destroys his or her hierarchically conditioned psyche. The subconscious drive to conformity, engendered during childhood when one necessarily had to submit to much bigger adults, was based on a superstitious (although, at other times, entirely realistic) drive to fend off a threat of destruction.
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