The Ethics of Influence

The Ethics of Influence

A Shamanic Inquiry into Power, Belief, Discernment & Responsibility

There is an old wildness in the fact that we belong to one another.

None of us comes through this life alone. We are born into relationship, shaped by what surrounds us, and changed by what we meet along the way. Other lives enter us, and we enter theirs.

We've always needed what exists beyond the boundary of our own knowing. Another pair of eyes. Another history. Another way through the forest.

We meet. We listen. We learn from what we couldn't have known alone. Something passes between us in that meeting. We affect one another.

This isn't a flaw in our nature. It's part of what it means to belong to a living world.

But there's vulnerability in being reachable.

Influence can be used against us. People can use what we trust, what we fear, what we long for, even what we experience as sacred, to move us toward what they want. Our money. Our agreement. Our loyalty. Our power.

And still, I don't want the answer to be closing myself against the world. I want the wild exchange. I want to be changed by what I love, surprised by what I don't know, and able to receive something from another life without surrendering my own.

Maybe this is where discernment begins.

Not in becoming unreachable, but in learning how to remain ourselves while something else has the power to move us.

A Shamanic Perspective

Woven through many shamanic teachings is an understanding of life as a sacred web. Human beings aren't separate from land and animal, ancestor, spirit, or one another. We belong to something far older and larger than ourselves.

We are born into a world that's already alive.

It has its own ways, its own rhythms, its own unfolding.

Animals move through territories shaped by hunger, weather, mating, migration, birth and death. Rivers follow the shape of the land. Seasons turn and life responds. Nothing lives entirely on its own. Everything is touching something else, depending on something else, changing and being changed by what it meets.

We are part of this too.

From a shamanic perspective, influence begins here, in relationship. To be alive among other lives is to affect and be affected. We move within the web, we pull upon it, and something moves in response. To belong is to participate, and participation has consequence.

This is also where reciprocity begins. We receive from the living world, and we give something back through the way we live, the choices we make, and the relationships we tend. We aren't only being shaped by the world. We are shaping something in return.

And this matters in our relationships with one another.

When I share something I see, sense or believe with someone who trusts me, that trust can give my words more weight. What I offer comes through my own eyes, my own experience, my own place in the web. I may see something clearly and still not see all of it. The other person may question what I offer, disagree with it, understand it differently, or see something I missed. There needs to be room for that, for what I know and what they know to meet without one having to silence the other.

For me, this is part of the ethics of influence. Not making myself smaller. Not pretending I don't know what I know. But holding what I know with enough openness that another person's knowing can remain alive beside it.

The web is always larger than what any one of us can see.

I can listen deeply and still not hear everything. I can trust what I sense without making certainty out of what I cannot know. I can honour mystery without closing my hands around it.

Maybe this is the humility the web asks of us: to know that we matter, that what we do has consequence, and that the web will always reach farther than we can see.

The Power Between Us

There is power in what happens between us.

A conversation can change the direction of a life. Someone can see what we cannot yet see for ourselves. A few words, spoken at the right moment, can open a possibility we hadn't known was there.

There is something beautiful in this. We need one another. Sometimes another person's experience, presence or insight helps us find a way through something we couldn't find alone.

But power is always part of the meeting.

It can come from knowledge, experience, position, confidence, trust. It can come simply because one person is standing on firmer ground while another is searching for somewhere to put their feet. Power isn't always something we take. Sometimes it is given to us because someone believes we know the way.

And the ground between two people isn't always level.

There are times when we are more open to another person's influence. When we're grieving. Searching. Afraid. Standing at a threshold and unable to see what comes next. In those places, the words of someone we trust can reach further into us.

When that person is a teacher, healer, spiritual practitioner, mentor, or someone we believe can see what we cannot, the balance can shift even more.

This is how power can gather quietly between people.

Not necessarily because anyone has set out to control another. Sometimes one person is looking for direction and another appears to have it. One is uncertain and another sounds certain. One is asking, and another is answering. Little by little, more weight can gather on one side.

And power changes what is possible in a relationship.

It can make a suggestion feel like instruction. An interpretation feel like truth. A disagreement feel harder to speak. What might have been easy to question on level ground can become much harder when we have begun to believe that someone else knows something we don't.

This is where I think we have to pay attention.

Not because power itself is wrong. Power can protect, teach, create, open doors, help someone find their footing. But the more influence we hold in another person's life, the more carefully we need to notice what our weight is doing there.

The danger begins when there is less room around what we say. When questioning becomes difficult. When disagreement is treated as resistance, failure, fear, or evidence that someone simply isn't ready to understand. When another person's certainty begins to matter more than what we are actually living and experiencing.

That is when influence can begin to become something else.

When Influence Becomes Manipulation

Influence becomes something else when another person's freedom begins to narrow.

Manipulation doesn't always look like force. It can come through care, belonging, certainty, spiritual authority, even a genuine desire to help. That is part of what can make it difficult to recognize. Something real may be woven through it. Affection may be real. Insight may be real. And still, something in the relationship can begin to close.

The change may be small at first. We begin measuring what we say. A question catches in the throat. A "no" becomes harder to give. We start noticing what keeps us close and what creates distance.

And slowly, the ground beneath our choices can change.

We may still feel as though we're choosing freely, but some choices now carry a cost. Belonging may depend upon agreement. Approval may disappear when we question. We may begin leaving pieces of what we know, feel or notice unspoken because keeping the relationship has begun to matter more than bringing our whole selves into it.

This is what I keep returning to when I think about manipulation. It doesn't have to take away every choice to change the ground we're choosing from.

For me, this is where influence crosses a line. Not because another person affects me. We cannot live without affecting one another. Not because they see something differently than I do. The line is crossed when their influence begins to require something of my freedom in order for the relationship to remain intact.

A healthy relationship can survive a question. It can survive uncertainty. It can survive a "no."

Guidance and Practical Reality

Guidance still has to meet the ground.

A dream can turn us toward something we might not have noticed. A journey can open a path we hadn't considered. An encounter with an animal can land in the body before the mind has words for it. I believe these ways of knowing matter.

But then comes the life we are actually living.

A dream may turn me toward someone, but then there is the person themselves. How they live. How they treat me. What happens over time. A sign may catch my attention, but it doesn't have to become an instruction.

Something can be meaningful without becoming a command.

This matters because meaning can gather force quickly. We can make a person sacred because they appeared in a dream. We can mistake synchronicity for direction. We can give an experience more authority than it can truly hold.

And still, I don't want to close the door on mystery.

The body can know before language does. Dreams can reach places daylight doesn't. An animal appearing at a particular moment can shift something in us that explanation never could.

I want both.

The dream and the daylight. The sign and what happens next. The mystery and the ordinary evidence of my own life.

Maybe discernment lives in the meeting between them. Not in dismissing what can't be proven. Not in surrendering myself to it. But in allowing what I receive to remain in conversation with what actually unfolds.

Guidance may bring me to the door. It doesn't decide whether I walk through. I can listen to what brought me there and still say no.

A Clean No

The more I think about influence, the more I understand the importance of leaving space around what moves between us. Enough room for something to be questioned, reconsidered, felt differently, or simply refused.

I want to be able to listen deeply to someone without having to agree with them. To be moved without having to follow. To receive something meaningful and still question it later. To love someone and still say no to what they ask of me. And I want the same freedom for the people who come into relationship with me.

We can affect one another without either of us disappearing inside the other's certainty.

And somewhere within all of that, there has to be room for a clean no.

Not a no that requires an argument. Not a no that has to prove the other person wrong. Not a no that makes everything that came before it false.

Simply:

"No. That isn't mine."
"No. I don't believe that."
"No. I don't want that."
"No. Not anymore."

There is something deeply respectful in allowing a no to remain that clean.

A Spiral Way Perspective

The spiral has never asked me to remain who I was when I first entered it.

We return. To people. To places. To relationships. To teachings. To things we once said yes to. But we don't return as the same person.

Life has entered us since the last turning. We've seen things we hadn't yet seen. Lost things we thought we would keep. Learned what our earlier selves couldn't have known. And so the same thing can look different from another place on the spiral.

I can return to a relationship that once felt right and discover that something has changed. I can recognize what it gave me without believing I must continue receiving it. I can have meant the yes I gave then and mean the no I give now. One doesn't make the other false.

This may be one of the gifts of the spiral. It makes room for relationship to change because the people inside it are alive. What once nourished may no longer nourish. What once protected may begin to confine. What once belonged may no longer belong.

And sometimes the relationship hasn't changed at all. Sometimes what changes is our ability to see it.

We return from another place in ourselves and notice what we couldn't notice before. The spiral leaves room for another look. Another answer. For what is true now to be different from what was true then.

We don't have to make our former selves foolish in order to honour what we know now.

The spiral simply allows another turning.

A living relationship must have enough room for both of us to change.

Allies for Discernment

There are times when discernment asks for more than thought. We may need another way of listening, something that brings us back into relationship with the living world and with the quieter intelligence of our own bodies.

An ally does not have to give us an answer. Sometimes its gift is the quality of attention it awakens in us.

Here are five allies I might turn toward when exploring influence, discernment, relationship and my own knowing, followed by an invitation to discover who might meet you there.

Deer - Sensitivity
Deer notices before she understands. Her body is listening to the forest: a change in wind, a movement among the trees, something almost imperceptible shifting at the edge of awareness.

Deer reminds us that discernment sometimes begins there, before explanation, in the body's first response to what it encounters. She invites us to notice what changes in us without immediately deciding what our noticing means, and to remain sensitive enough to hear the quieter signals beneath what is being said.

Fox - Discernment
Fox moves through edges. Forest and clearing. Concealment and exposure. Nearness and distance. She knows how to pause, watch, change direction.

Fox can accompany us when something does not quite fit, when what we are being told and what we are sensing do not entirely agree.

Her medicine is not suspicion. It is attention. The willingness to look again, to notice what has been overlooked, and to wait before giving our trust, agreement, or next step.

Salmon - Inner Knowing
Salmon travels through changing waters and powerful currents, yet carries an ancient orientation toward home.

She reminds us that discernment is not about remaining untouched by what surrounds us, but about knowing how to return to ourselves after we have been moved. When another person's certainty, expectation, or way of seeing begins to pull us away from what we know, Salmon can help us listen for the deeper current beneath all the others, the one that still knows the way home.

Raven - Mystery
Raven can bring us to the edge of what we think we know.

When meaning gathers quickly around an experience, Raven reminds us that mystery does not need to be solved in order to be meaningful. Something can matter deeply and still remain partly unknown.

Raven leaves room for another possibility, for what has not yet revealed itself, and for the humility of knowing that what we see from where we stand may not be everything there is to see.

Bear - Sovereignty
Bear returns us to our own ground.

When another person's certainty, authority, or interpretation becomes louder than our own knowing, Bear reminds us of the weight of our own body and the right to remain inside ourselves.

Bear does not need to argue in order to stand. There is power in knowing what is ours to receive, what is ours to question, what is ours to refuse, and when no further explanation is required.

Find Your Ally
And perhaps the ally you need is not one I could choose for you. It may be an animal that keeps appearing. A tree you find yourself returning to. A river, stone, plant, ancestor, place, or helping spirit whose presence changes the quality of your attention.

Rather than beginning with What does this ally mean? you might begin somewhere quieter: What happens in me when I am in relationship with this being? What do I notice? What becomes clearer? What remains unknown?

Then let the relationship have time to become itself.

What We Cannot See

Some things only become visible when the conditions are right.

Sometimes it takes rain, a certain angle of light, a moment of stopping where we might otherwise have kept walking, to see what has been there all along.

And once we have seen it, we cannot quite return to believing there was ever empty space between us.

The Thread Between

An Original Story by Lorriiii Dragon Dream

A spider had built her web between two young spruce trees at the edge of the path. I nearly walked through it.

The morning was wet enough that every strand held water. Without the rain I might never have seen what was stretched between the trees.

I stopped close enough to see the spider at the centre.

The web was larger than I first thought. One thread disappeared into the lower branches of the spruce. Another travelled farther than seemed possible before fastening itself to a stem of goldenrod.

The smallest movement reached everywhere. Wind touched one edge and the centre trembled. A drop grew heavy, fell, and the whole thing answered.

The spider waited.

I stood there longer than I needed to, looking at all those threads I would ordinarily have passed without knowing they were there, each one carrying the movement of something happening somewhere else.

Then an insect struck the outer edge. The web shook. The spider moved.

She didn't need to see what had happened. The movement reached her through what connected them.

And I thought of all that travels through the unseen threads of a life.

A sentence spoken years ago that still moves when something touches it. A belief inherited so early I can't remember receiving it. A person whose way of seeing entered mine.

Someone I loved changing the shape of what I thought was possible. My own words travelling outward into lives I may never fully know.

We are touching threads all the time. Most of them are invisible.

I moved around the web and continued down the path. When I returned later, the sun had risen high enough to dry the rain.

The web was still there.

I simply couldn't see it anymore.

Practices for Discernment

Creating room to notice, question, and remain with your own knowing

Discernment is something we can practice. Not only when we are facing a large decision or trying to understand whether something is true, but in the small exchanges of ordinary life.

In the moment before we answer. In what happens when someone offers us an idea. In the way our body responds before we have found words. In whether there is room for another person to disagree with us.

The following practices are simple ways of creating a little more room around what passes between us.

The Pause
Influence often moves faster than discernment. For one day, experiment with a small pause before you respond. Before you answer a question. Before you agree or commit. Before you offer advice. Before you share what you see. Before you try to help, fix, reassure, persuade, or explain.

One breath may be enough. Ask yourself, What is happening in me right now? You don't need to analyze what you notice or change what you were going to say. The practice is simply to create a little room between what happens and what comes next.

Notice When the Room Disappears
Think of an interaction in which you felt pressured, persuaded, confused, obligated, or unable to hear your own response clearly. You don't have to decide whether the other person intended to manipulate you. Instead ask, Was there room for me?

Room to question. Room to disagree. Room to take time. Room to change my mind. Room to say I don't know. Room to say no without having to build a case for it.

Sometimes we cannot know another person's intentions, but we can notice what happens to our freedom in their presence.

The Shape of an Answer
Think of something in your life that you know is a wholehearted yes. Bring it to mind and notice what happens in your body. Then think of something you know is a clear no. Again, notice what happens in your body. Notice whether your body responds differently.

Now bring to mind something you're uncertain about, something you haven't yet decided. Sit with it for a moment. Notice what happens when you imagine saying yes, then no. What changes when you consider maybe, or simply acknowledge that you need more time?

There is no particular feeling you're looking for, and no answer you need to reach. The practice is to become more familiar with the different ways your own knowing makes itself felt.

Leave Room for Another
The next time you offer something to another person, whether it's advice, an invitation, an interpretation, or something you perceive or believe, notice what happens after you have spoken. Let them think. Let them feel. Let silence remain silence for a moment.

Ask yourself, Can what I have offered remain an offering? Can they question it? Interpret it differently? Take part of it and leave the rest? Need more time? Decide it isn't for them? Can they say no?

Notice what happens in you if they do.

Let the Offering Remain an Offering
Pay attention to the moments when you want another person to understand, agree, accept what you see, or respond in the way you hoped. Notice the impulse without making it wrong.

Then experiment with loosening your hold on the outcome. What changes when you allow what you have offered to belong to the other person's discernment now?

Responsible influence may be partly this simple: I can offer what is mine without needing it to become yours.

For Your Journal

If something in this reflection has stirred a question of your own, you might want to follow it a little farther. To write into it, sit beside it, or simply notice where it leads.

Some questions don't give themselves up quickly. They follow us. They catch on something half-remembered, stir beneath an old certainty, return when the house is quiet or we're walking alone. These questions are meant for that kind of listening. You don't need to answer them all. Take the ones that catch somewhere in you, and let them travel with you for a while.

• Where in my life do I feel most free to question, disagree, change my mind, or say no?
• Where have I learned to doubt something I once knew clearly?
• What beliefs have shaped me so deeply that I can no longer remember when they first entered my life?
• Whose voices still live inside the way I see myself, other people, or the world?
• When have I mistaken someone else's certainty for my own knowing?
• What have I once said yes to that may no longer be mine?
• Where might my own certainty leave too little room for another person's knowing?
• What am I influencing simply by the way I live, speak, listen, choose, or remain silent?
• What becomes possible when I don't need to know everything before I take the next step?

You don't have to come away with certainty. Sometimes the question itself is enough to loosen the ground, open another way of seeing, or return something to you that had gone quiet. Let whatever rises belong to you. Let whatever remains unanswered remain open.

Still Open

None of us moves through this world without touching something. We enter one another's lives. We leave words, memories, questions, permissions, wounds, possibilities. We change the shape of things simply by being here, and we are changed in return. Most of the threads will remain invisible. Maybe that is why the way we hold them matters.

I don't want to stop being influenced. I don't want to become so defended against manipulation that nothing can reach me, or so certain of my own discernment that I can no longer be surprised. I want to remain permeable to the world. To Deer appearing at the edge of the trees. To the dream that follows me into morning. To another person seeing something I couldn't see alone. To the possibility that what I know today may deepen, change, or become something else entirely.

I want to remain permeable to the world without losing my own place within it. To receive what comes and still remain inside my own body, my own listening. To be moved without surrendering the part of me that can question, turn, say yes, say no, or simply say, "I don't know yet."

Maybe this is what I keep returning to: not a life beyond influence, but a life awake inside it. To be touched without disappearing. To be changed without abandoning myself. To let mystery remain wild without giving it authority over my life. To offer what I know without closing another person's hand around it. To remember that every certainty I carry has edges I cannot see.

The web does not ask us to become separate. It asks us to become more conscious of what travels along the threads.

And still, the world keeps entering us. Rain. Dream. Animal. Memory. Another human life.

And still, we enter the world.

So this is where I leave you: not with an answer, but with the question still alive. What will you let enter you? What will you question? What will you carry forward? And what will you leave at the edge of the path?

With love from the wild edge,

Lorriiii

© 2026 Lorriiii Dragon Dream | SpiritDrumming.com
Words and images are living offerings — please share with credit and care.

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