Post by Shaman on Jul 8, 2007 17:19:38 GMT -5
Opening the Doors to the Self: The Shamanic Journey
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
We understand the breadth of depth of the self in many ways through many types of experiences. The method of understanding our experience as human beings is often that of directing or projecting parts of ourselves either outward or inward. The self at a soul level, operating through the language of images, reveals what parts of ourselves are seeing understanding at ever-deepening levels. In relationships with others, we project these parts outward in the form of images. In dreams, we project these parts inward in the form of images. The reflection we receive back gives us information on which we base our sense of self.
The images projected inward in dreams and those projected outward into external relationship both have the same source. That source is the self at a soul level. It seeks to reveal all that is hidden by projecting these images outward or inward. This is an effort to allow the individual to integrate the experience and information contained within those images and return to a sense of wholeness.
For many of us, this process takes place almost entirely unconsciously. We feel that life just happens to us, that our dreams are just fragmented recreations of our daily lives.
But, if we allow ourselves to begin to trace the images we create in relationship while awake and in dreams while asleep, we begin to perceive patterns. These patterns can be further elucidated through conscious intention and explored through the shamanic journey.
In this exploration, images open to reveal patterns. Patterns open to reveal motivation. Motivation opens to reveal what is needed for understanding. The need for understanding opens to reveal the fulfillment of that need. And the fulfillment is the self at a soul level. This path can be taken from many different starting points to understand many different issues. And the shamanic journey provides the compass and maps for any path, at starting at any point, and leads always to the rediscovery of the self at a soul level.
The journey into the self at this level is the journey which the shamanic experience defines. It is taken in an altered state, very similar to the hypnotic state, but this state is induced with repetitive soundings, such as drums, rather than words. The shamanic journey provides us with direct and controllable access to the inner workings of our selves at a soul level. The images which energy patterns take within the shamanic journey reveal the nature of ourselves at a soul level. They even point to the realities in which the soul is contained. Although our ability to perceive the information available to us in non-ordinary reality is ever-expanding, that ability can be severely tested at each level of understanding which the shamanic journey unfolds for us. Although the shamanic journey reveals ever more complex levels of reality, the form which it takes is quite simple. A drum or other repetitive percussive instrument is sounded at regular intervals. In indigenous cultures where horses are common, a shaman might say s/he is riding the drum like a horse to non-ordinary reality.
What is this non-ordinary reality where so much is revealed about the nature of the workings of the self at a soul level? The existence and the general cosmography of non-ordinary reality has been described in very similar fashion in cultures which are vastly dissimilar in all other ways and which have arisen in different corners of the globe. Before describing non-ordinary reality, it is important to note that discovery and journeying in non-ordinary reality is participation in a process, not an establishment of a belief system.
This description, which has emerged from cultures across time and space is as follows. There are three worlds: the upper world, middle world and lower world. It is understood that the upper world and the lower world are the realms where compassionate spirits or energies can be contacted. The middle world is understood to be made up of ordinary reality (" the every day world" we experience when awake) as well as a non-ordinary reality where other classes of spirits or energies also dwell. Generally speaking, the spirits people come across who are involved in spirit possession, hauntings, or other anomalous encounters are understood to be confined more or less to the middle world. Therefore, journeying to the upper world or lower world does not involve the encounter with these classes of spirits.
Access to the upper and lower worlds in non-ordinary reality is generally undertaken from a known point in ordinary reality. This is a place in nature in ordinary reality where the person making the journey has been and knows well. The departure point for the lower world is generally through a cave, hole in the ground, hole in a tree or through a body of water. The departure point for the upper world is generally through a high place such as the top of a tree, mountain or hill.
In many cultures, the shaman has been charged with interceding with the spirit world on the behalf of another person. This intercession generally involves a request for assistance in healing on a physical, mental, emotional or spiritual level. In order to act as an agent for healing, the shaman spends many hours developing relationships with compassionate spirits which are understood to be available in non-ordinary reality. The shaman develops these relationships by journeying in non-ordinary reality. The shaman also journeys in non-ordinary reality to seek help from these spirits when s/he is asked to provide a healing.
It is not common for all the members of the culture to have access to the knowledge contained in non-ordinary reality. However, anyone with an interest and dedication in understanding the nature of the shamanic journey and non-ordinary reality can have this access. Anyone with strong intent can develop a relationship to at least some of the knowledge contained in non-ordinary reality.
So, it is simply a matter of focusing one's intention to journey for understanding. We journey to create relationships with the energies which dwell in non-ordinary reality within us. These energies, which are traditionally called spirits, appear in many different guises, usually in the form of a felt or seen image.
These guises are generally forms in nature, but can also be mythic figures or beings which are close to our culturally-held notions about reality. The guise these energies choose are the bridge they make to contact us. The bridge we make is our attention and intention to make contact. When both sets of intentions are aligned we are able to interact with these images taking form within us in non-ordinary reality. This allows us to gain insight and understanding about the nature of our lives in ordinary reality.
Over the course of 6 to 10 sessions, the client is taught how to journey in non-ordinary reality. He learns to establish relationships with different points of inner power which appear as forms of nature, and he learns how to interpret the information which is received. The client is helped to connect the information received in the shamanic journey to the larger context of his relationship to himself at a soul level.
By the end of this cycle the client is able to function independently in non-ordinary reality to gain insight on issues which once seemed unknowable or unsolvable. He becomes able to understand more clearly the influences which affect the future. He becomes more able to make decisions based upon a sound understanding of those influences.
I will often use the information gained through a shamanic journey as I would the information gained through a dream. Information from both experiences is generated in image form, which is rich with nuance and possibilities. As in dreams, the much of the information contained within the shamanic journey is "coded" in such a way as to evade the defenses of the conscious mind. Learning how to "read" these images is an extension and elaboration of the "sixth sense" mentioned earlier. Developing this skill in the decoding of information provided in the journey is very helpful in situations in ordinary reality which require deeper understanding than the five senses provide.
To understand how this process works, the texts of two journeys, taken by a person who had no previous experience with shamanic journeying follow.
Through our hypnotherapy sessions, she was able to identify patterns in her external relationships which had been robbing her of her energy. She found that she was able to trace the patterns of energy behind her relationship interaction which were almost contrary to the nature of the external interaction. In other words, she began to see how she was actually being robbed of life energy in relationships which thought were feeding her emotionally and intellectually. She was stunned to find that these patterns, which had been hidden from her when understood within the context of conscious-mind reality, were so easy to perceive in an altered state.
As she began to regain her physical energy by applying what she had learned in hypnotherapy, she wanted to learn more about energy patterns and the way energy is used. This is a subject I find very hard to teach anyone about through the use of words alone. It is a subject which must be understood experientially in order to begin to fully comprehend the myriad of implications it contains. I decided that the internal teachers found in the shamanic journey would be much better than I in teaching her what she wanted to know.
Michael Harner, to whom I am deeply grateful for making accessible the complexities of shamanic reality, introduces people to shamanic journeying with a journey to the lower world. I do the same. This journey is designed to facilitate an encounter with a power animal. The idea of having an inner teacher appear in the familiar form of an animal allows for a broad communication of emotional and mental qualities. This form generally makes it easier to interact with the enormous energy and wisdom which is brought to bear in such an encounter.
As I mentioned, the journey is taken with the eyes closed, lying down, and to the beat of a drum.
The following is the text of her first journey to the lower world to meet her power animal. It is presented with her permission:
I am going to a sinkhole or pond which is sunk down into the ground near where I grew up. I am walking into the water. It is very dark. I start to go down. I am just dropping into the sinkhole. I see lots of tree roots and things sticking out. They brush me a bit. Looking down, it is very dark. I have stopped falling. I am sitting cross-legged. Looking up, I see a dark hole above me, like a cave. I am in a place with narrow ceiling 4 feet above the ground. There is a dirt floor. There are grass and stones. I am on fours, I start crawling through the cave. It is not so dark that I cannot see. There is some light. I don't know where it is coming from. There is a windy tunnel. It opens to a cavern. There is a lake at the bottom of the cavern. There is a boat. There are murals, or hieroglyphs on the walls. I get into the boat. It starts floating out into the lake. I put my hands in the water. It is very dark. A dark navy blue. There is a creature in the water. It looks like a seal. It is coming up to the boat. It's got big dark eyes. It is floating around the boat. It is greyish in color. This is my power animal. The seal is swimming ahead of the boat. Somehow, the boat is following it. It is swimming on top of the water. I am not sure what to think of it. I am going towards what could be sunlight or moonlight. The lake is narrowing. There is an archway, not a tunnel, which opens and the water flows out through it like a river. It is moonlight and forest. There are tall, tall trees, like cedars. The seal is swimming around the boat and it pushes it over to the side. There is a path. I walk along a path beside the river and leave the boat behind. The seal follows me. We come to some kind of cliff. There is a waterfall. I am standing on a cliff on a mountain overlooking a city. It is nighttime, with lots of lights. It is not artificial light, but candlelight and firelight. I stop. I sit down on a rock and look at the city. The seal stays in the water and moves toward to the edge and looks with me. I am not frightened. It is not somewhere I have been. I get the feeling that someone was here before me. But I have not seen them. I get up and walk along a path. I get back into the boat. The seal leads the boat back through an archway into a cavern and into the middle of the lake. It swims up beside the boat and almost gets into the front of the boat. It looks at me. It is a seal, but the face is almost more human than seal. It is trying to tell me something. It gets back into the water and swims circles around the boat. It disappears into the dark, swimming half in, and half out, of the water. I go back into the tunnel. Back into the hole. I am going back up and coming out of the water. I am back on the ground and out of the sinkhole. I am on the path, walking.
As you can see, the shamanic journey shares some characteristics with dreams. In both realms, the image is the main form of communication. Players in both realms understand what is asked of them and how to communicate without necessarily resorting to words. There is much more information contained within a simple interaction than would appear if actions were taken only literally. Forms can shift without logic but the form shift seems utterly logical at the same time.
The fact that the seal's face seemed to be human part of the time does not seem illogical in the context of the journey. This shapeshifting or form-shifting is common in non-ordinary reality. I am sure there are more reasons for this than I understand. But some explanations lie in the fact that the spirits or energies using the form or image to communicate with are not always in complete control of the world of form. And, they tend to choose forms which suit the moment and fill the need of communication in the present without so much regard to future form as a basis of communication. Also, more information can be conveyed in shape or form shifting, so spirits or energies tend to use these changes to add complexity and shading to the information they are trying to convey.
Most important, in both the dream and the journey, information is presented which completely circumvents the constructs and defenses of the conscious mind. In dreams, the coding of this information is often more intricate than in the journey. I suspect, however, that the intricacy of the coding in dreams is due more to the lack of intentionality than anything else.
Because the attention is so focused in the journey, the images are more easily related to the intention of the journey. Most of us tend to bumble, willy-nilly, through the issues of our lives. Because of this, the messages our dreams contain often seem to be scatter-shot, rather than carefully aimed. This is due to the lack of corresponding target in conscious-mind reality rather than any failure in communication in the dream itself.
The nature of the focus or target is, in fact, the main difference between dreams and shamanic journeying. The journey is intentional and focused. The dreamer does not necessarily intend what he will dream. (Although I would argue the same mechanism, the self operating at a soul level, is directing both sets of content). The person making the journey chooses when to enter and when to leave the journey; the dreamer, unless he is lucid dreaming, typically does not appear to have control over when the dream begins and when the dream ends.
By Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D.
We understand the breadth of depth of the self in many ways through many types of experiences. The method of understanding our experience as human beings is often that of directing or projecting parts of ourselves either outward or inward. The self at a soul level, operating through the language of images, reveals what parts of ourselves are seeing understanding at ever-deepening levels. In relationships with others, we project these parts outward in the form of images. In dreams, we project these parts inward in the form of images. The reflection we receive back gives us information on which we base our sense of self.
The images projected inward in dreams and those projected outward into external relationship both have the same source. That source is the self at a soul level. It seeks to reveal all that is hidden by projecting these images outward or inward. This is an effort to allow the individual to integrate the experience and information contained within those images and return to a sense of wholeness.
For many of us, this process takes place almost entirely unconsciously. We feel that life just happens to us, that our dreams are just fragmented recreations of our daily lives.
But, if we allow ourselves to begin to trace the images we create in relationship while awake and in dreams while asleep, we begin to perceive patterns. These patterns can be further elucidated through conscious intention and explored through the shamanic journey.
In this exploration, images open to reveal patterns. Patterns open to reveal motivation. Motivation opens to reveal what is needed for understanding. The need for understanding opens to reveal the fulfillment of that need. And the fulfillment is the self at a soul level. This path can be taken from many different starting points to understand many different issues. And the shamanic journey provides the compass and maps for any path, at starting at any point, and leads always to the rediscovery of the self at a soul level.
The journey into the self at this level is the journey which the shamanic experience defines. It is taken in an altered state, very similar to the hypnotic state, but this state is induced with repetitive soundings, such as drums, rather than words. The shamanic journey provides us with direct and controllable access to the inner workings of our selves at a soul level. The images which energy patterns take within the shamanic journey reveal the nature of ourselves at a soul level. They even point to the realities in which the soul is contained. Although our ability to perceive the information available to us in non-ordinary reality is ever-expanding, that ability can be severely tested at each level of understanding which the shamanic journey unfolds for us. Although the shamanic journey reveals ever more complex levels of reality, the form which it takes is quite simple. A drum or other repetitive percussive instrument is sounded at regular intervals. In indigenous cultures where horses are common, a shaman might say s/he is riding the drum like a horse to non-ordinary reality.
What is this non-ordinary reality where so much is revealed about the nature of the workings of the self at a soul level? The existence and the general cosmography of non-ordinary reality has been described in very similar fashion in cultures which are vastly dissimilar in all other ways and which have arisen in different corners of the globe. Before describing non-ordinary reality, it is important to note that discovery and journeying in non-ordinary reality is participation in a process, not an establishment of a belief system.
This description, which has emerged from cultures across time and space is as follows. There are three worlds: the upper world, middle world and lower world. It is understood that the upper world and the lower world are the realms where compassionate spirits or energies can be contacted. The middle world is understood to be made up of ordinary reality (" the every day world" we experience when awake) as well as a non-ordinary reality where other classes of spirits or energies also dwell. Generally speaking, the spirits people come across who are involved in spirit possession, hauntings, or other anomalous encounters are understood to be confined more or less to the middle world. Therefore, journeying to the upper world or lower world does not involve the encounter with these classes of spirits.
Access to the upper and lower worlds in non-ordinary reality is generally undertaken from a known point in ordinary reality. This is a place in nature in ordinary reality where the person making the journey has been and knows well. The departure point for the lower world is generally through a cave, hole in the ground, hole in a tree or through a body of water. The departure point for the upper world is generally through a high place such as the top of a tree, mountain or hill.
In many cultures, the shaman has been charged with interceding with the spirit world on the behalf of another person. This intercession generally involves a request for assistance in healing on a physical, mental, emotional or spiritual level. In order to act as an agent for healing, the shaman spends many hours developing relationships with compassionate spirits which are understood to be available in non-ordinary reality. The shaman develops these relationships by journeying in non-ordinary reality. The shaman also journeys in non-ordinary reality to seek help from these spirits when s/he is asked to provide a healing.
It is not common for all the members of the culture to have access to the knowledge contained in non-ordinary reality. However, anyone with an interest and dedication in understanding the nature of the shamanic journey and non-ordinary reality can have this access. Anyone with strong intent can develop a relationship to at least some of the knowledge contained in non-ordinary reality.
So, it is simply a matter of focusing one's intention to journey for understanding. We journey to create relationships with the energies which dwell in non-ordinary reality within us. These energies, which are traditionally called spirits, appear in many different guises, usually in the form of a felt or seen image.
These guises are generally forms in nature, but can also be mythic figures or beings which are close to our culturally-held notions about reality. The guise these energies choose are the bridge they make to contact us. The bridge we make is our attention and intention to make contact. When both sets of intentions are aligned we are able to interact with these images taking form within us in non-ordinary reality. This allows us to gain insight and understanding about the nature of our lives in ordinary reality.
Over the course of 6 to 10 sessions, the client is taught how to journey in non-ordinary reality. He learns to establish relationships with different points of inner power which appear as forms of nature, and he learns how to interpret the information which is received. The client is helped to connect the information received in the shamanic journey to the larger context of his relationship to himself at a soul level.
By the end of this cycle the client is able to function independently in non-ordinary reality to gain insight on issues which once seemed unknowable or unsolvable. He becomes able to understand more clearly the influences which affect the future. He becomes more able to make decisions based upon a sound understanding of those influences.
I will often use the information gained through a shamanic journey as I would the information gained through a dream. Information from both experiences is generated in image form, which is rich with nuance and possibilities. As in dreams, the much of the information contained within the shamanic journey is "coded" in such a way as to evade the defenses of the conscious mind. Learning how to "read" these images is an extension and elaboration of the "sixth sense" mentioned earlier. Developing this skill in the decoding of information provided in the journey is very helpful in situations in ordinary reality which require deeper understanding than the five senses provide.
To understand how this process works, the texts of two journeys, taken by a person who had no previous experience with shamanic journeying follow.
Through our hypnotherapy sessions, she was able to identify patterns in her external relationships which had been robbing her of her energy. She found that she was able to trace the patterns of energy behind her relationship interaction which were almost contrary to the nature of the external interaction. In other words, she began to see how she was actually being robbed of life energy in relationships which thought were feeding her emotionally and intellectually. She was stunned to find that these patterns, which had been hidden from her when understood within the context of conscious-mind reality, were so easy to perceive in an altered state.
As she began to regain her physical energy by applying what she had learned in hypnotherapy, she wanted to learn more about energy patterns and the way energy is used. This is a subject I find very hard to teach anyone about through the use of words alone. It is a subject which must be understood experientially in order to begin to fully comprehend the myriad of implications it contains. I decided that the internal teachers found in the shamanic journey would be much better than I in teaching her what she wanted to know.
Michael Harner, to whom I am deeply grateful for making accessible the complexities of shamanic reality, introduces people to shamanic journeying with a journey to the lower world. I do the same. This journey is designed to facilitate an encounter with a power animal. The idea of having an inner teacher appear in the familiar form of an animal allows for a broad communication of emotional and mental qualities. This form generally makes it easier to interact with the enormous energy and wisdom which is brought to bear in such an encounter.
As I mentioned, the journey is taken with the eyes closed, lying down, and to the beat of a drum.
The following is the text of her first journey to the lower world to meet her power animal. It is presented with her permission:
I am going to a sinkhole or pond which is sunk down into the ground near where I grew up. I am walking into the water. It is very dark. I start to go down. I am just dropping into the sinkhole. I see lots of tree roots and things sticking out. They brush me a bit. Looking down, it is very dark. I have stopped falling. I am sitting cross-legged. Looking up, I see a dark hole above me, like a cave. I am in a place with narrow ceiling 4 feet above the ground. There is a dirt floor. There are grass and stones. I am on fours, I start crawling through the cave. It is not so dark that I cannot see. There is some light. I don't know where it is coming from. There is a windy tunnel. It opens to a cavern. There is a lake at the bottom of the cavern. There is a boat. There are murals, or hieroglyphs on the walls. I get into the boat. It starts floating out into the lake. I put my hands in the water. It is very dark. A dark navy blue. There is a creature in the water. It looks like a seal. It is coming up to the boat. It's got big dark eyes. It is floating around the boat. It is greyish in color. This is my power animal. The seal is swimming ahead of the boat. Somehow, the boat is following it. It is swimming on top of the water. I am not sure what to think of it. I am going towards what could be sunlight or moonlight. The lake is narrowing. There is an archway, not a tunnel, which opens and the water flows out through it like a river. It is moonlight and forest. There are tall, tall trees, like cedars. The seal is swimming around the boat and it pushes it over to the side. There is a path. I walk along a path beside the river and leave the boat behind. The seal follows me. We come to some kind of cliff. There is a waterfall. I am standing on a cliff on a mountain overlooking a city. It is nighttime, with lots of lights. It is not artificial light, but candlelight and firelight. I stop. I sit down on a rock and look at the city. The seal stays in the water and moves toward to the edge and looks with me. I am not frightened. It is not somewhere I have been. I get the feeling that someone was here before me. But I have not seen them. I get up and walk along a path. I get back into the boat. The seal leads the boat back through an archway into a cavern and into the middle of the lake. It swims up beside the boat and almost gets into the front of the boat. It looks at me. It is a seal, but the face is almost more human than seal. It is trying to tell me something. It gets back into the water and swims circles around the boat. It disappears into the dark, swimming half in, and half out, of the water. I go back into the tunnel. Back into the hole. I am going back up and coming out of the water. I am back on the ground and out of the sinkhole. I am on the path, walking.
As you can see, the shamanic journey shares some characteristics with dreams. In both realms, the image is the main form of communication. Players in both realms understand what is asked of them and how to communicate without necessarily resorting to words. There is much more information contained within a simple interaction than would appear if actions were taken only literally. Forms can shift without logic but the form shift seems utterly logical at the same time.
The fact that the seal's face seemed to be human part of the time does not seem illogical in the context of the journey. This shapeshifting or form-shifting is common in non-ordinary reality. I am sure there are more reasons for this than I understand. But some explanations lie in the fact that the spirits or energies using the form or image to communicate with are not always in complete control of the world of form. And, they tend to choose forms which suit the moment and fill the need of communication in the present without so much regard to future form as a basis of communication. Also, more information can be conveyed in shape or form shifting, so spirits or energies tend to use these changes to add complexity and shading to the information they are trying to convey.
Most important, in both the dream and the journey, information is presented which completely circumvents the constructs and defenses of the conscious mind. In dreams, the coding of this information is often more intricate than in the journey. I suspect, however, that the intricacy of the coding in dreams is due more to the lack of intentionality than anything else.
Because the attention is so focused in the journey, the images are more easily related to the intention of the journey. Most of us tend to bumble, willy-nilly, through the issues of our lives. Because of this, the messages our dreams contain often seem to be scatter-shot, rather than carefully aimed. This is due to the lack of corresponding target in conscious-mind reality rather than any failure in communication in the dream itself.
The nature of the focus or target is, in fact, the main difference between dreams and shamanic journeying. The journey is intentional and focused. The dreamer does not necessarily intend what he will dream. (Although I would argue the same mechanism, the self operating at a soul level, is directing both sets of content). The person making the journey chooses when to enter and when to leave the journey; the dreamer, unless he is lucid dreaming, typically does not appear to have control over when the dream begins and when the dream ends.