Embark on a Shamanic Journey
K: Non-ordinary reality? You mentioned this a few times. Please, elaborate.
S: Of course. Non-ordinary reality is an experience that is outside the space-time continuum. For example, you are in your living room, not asleep but acutely awake, and you see yourself crossing a stone bridge beneath a waterfall somewhere in a rainforest. Then, you have a conversation with a jaguar that totally makes sense to you—and you receive information from the jaguar that illuminates your current life situations—this is non-ordinary reality.
K: How is this different from a drug-induced experience and other forms of meditation?
S: If we speak in scientific terms, bearing in mind that I am not a scientist, this is a lucid dreaming state, a daydreaming state. Typically, alpha or theta brain wave activity would be present. A person is aware of the dream as ordinary reality.
Now, it could be said that LSD or other powerful hallucinogens can yield an experience like non-ordinary reality. However, the brain state triggered for a contemporary guided shamanic journey is triggered without the use of chemicals or drugs of any kind. Although some tribal shamans from the rain forests of Brazil, Peru and Ecuador use Ayahusasca, a powerful hallucinogenic to help them “see” where a person’s illness is and receive instruction on how to heal it, you aren’t likely to find that in a contemporary shamanic practice.
K: I understand. Let’s get back to the process or experience of the shamanic journey.
S: In my practice, shamanic journeying begins with drumming, or sometimes I use tribal rattles along with appropriate background music. During a shamanic journey, clients merge with their higher consciousness, their deepest selves in order to encounter and “converse” with a power animal or a spirit guide or teacher. Some clients will merge with other aspects of nature of the elements. Some travel to sacred sites and experience sacred ritual.
As we progress with the journey, a client may experience any of three alternate worlds, Lower, Middle and Upper. Hopefully, they’ll encounter all three, at different times, different journeys.
The Lower World is a mirror of our world (it has nothing to do with hell). It is similar to the dream phase of sleep. Here, you encounter your power animals. Even if the animals you encounter are mythical creatures, it is still the Lower World.
When the Guides and Teachers are more Human than Animal, you are in the Upper World. The Upper World functions at a higher frequency. Here we encounter Spirit Guides or Teachers . . . sometimes Angels or ancestors.
The Middle World is our world. It is our physical reality. When traveling in the Middle World, a client can get beyond ordinary time and space to visit a sacred site, or a loved one that is very far away. By way of the Middle World, long distance healings occur.
