- Excerpt

 

Shamanic Journeying:
A Beginner's Guide

by Sandra Ingerman

INTRODUCTION

The excerpt, below, deals with a common barrier to successful travel in non-ordinary reality: the secret belief that your journey might just be a product of your imagination.

Sandra Ingerman is an ideal author for this gentle introduction to the world's oldest spiritual practice. As former director of education at the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, she has taught shamanic journeying to thousands of novices. A licensed marriage and family therapist and mental health counselor, Ingerman is a board-certified expert on traumatic stress. She is the author of the classic text, Soul Retrieval: Healing the Fragmented Self (HarperSanFrancisco), among other books.

In Shamanic Journeying readers learn to use a fundamental technique practiced by shamans worldwide to connect with spiritual helpers, to access personal guidance and healing, to help others and the planet, and to reconnect with nature and its rhythms. Learn to:

More information about the book, Shamanic Journeying: A Beginner's Guide, and author Sandra Ingerman, follows the excerpt. Enjoy!

 

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Am I Making Up My Journeys?

by Sandra Ingerman

The most common challenge that people new to the practice of shamanic journeying face is the fear that they are making up their journeys -- that it is all happening in their imaginations and is therefore irrelevant.

Most of you reading this have been raised in a society where you were taught that invisible realms do not exist. You were taught that only what you can see, feel, hear, taste, and smell is real, and the rest exists solely in your imagination. After all these years of basing your perception of reality on what is tangible, to hear someone tell you that you can travel to non-ordinary reality and ask invisible spirit beings for advice and guidance is confusing at best. This question comes up for almost everybody when they first begin the practice of shamanic journeying.

As children, many of us took great comfort in our ability to communicate with loving and caring beings in invisible worlds. However, as we grew up and became socialized into believing solely in physical reality, our relationship with the invisible world dissolved.

However, many of us yearn to rediscover the invisible world and our interconnectedness with all seen and unseen beings. On a profound level, we all know there is more to life than material possessions, what society tells us is true, or what we experience with out five senses.

Several years ago I was teaching an introductory workshop in journeying where the question of the imagination was very pronounced. Over and over again people asked me in different ways, "Am I making up my journey?" During a break, a Brazilian woman came up to me to tell me how surprised she was that so many people were plagued by this question. She had grown up in a culture where there is a strong belief in spirits, and for her there was no question as to whether spirits were "real." However, my parents certainly did not talk about power animals and helping spirits at the dinner table when I was growing up -- nor did most of the parents of the workshop participants!

My experience has shown me that the best way to evaluate the validity of your shamanic journeys is on the basis of your results. If you keep up the practice of shamanic journeying, you will begin to see useful and beneficial results arising from the guidance you receive. Remember, shamanism has traditionally been a results-oriented system, and it is important for you to evaluate your results on an ongoing basis. The important question to ask yourself is, "Do I get information that makes a positive difference in my life?"

When you begin to see significant results, your mind will begin to quiet down, and eventually you will find that you are no longer distracted by the question of whether or not it is all happening in your imagination. However, if you try to battle your mind or beliefs while you are journeying, you will spend much of your journey time in internal dialogue and be too distracted to receive any clear information. What I do when my analytical mind interferes when I am journeying is to simply agree with what it has to say, and then continue on my journey. And what I recommend to you is that you give journeying an opportunity to reveal its benefits to you over time, which will satisfy your discerning mind.

People in our culture often forget to "lighten up" when doing spiritual practice. We tend to take everything too seriously, putting too much pressure on ourselves. Traditional shamans and healers are always laughing. Being overly serious in our journeys and lives disconnects us from our own creative potential. Learn to laugh at yourself and have fun with your practice. You will find as you journey over time that your helping spirits have quite a sense of humor and are always trying to get you to lighten up.

When I first started journeying, my power animal would find humorous settings to teach me about asking appropriate questions. I remember in one journey I went to the Lower World to meet him. When I showed up in the pine forest where he lives, he was dressed in a fancy waiter's uniform, wearing spotless white gloves. He showed me to a small table that was decorated with a crisp white tablecloth and a small vase of flowers. He pulled out a chair for me and handed me a menu. I opened the menu, and was surprised to see what was inside. There were two columns containing different questions. My power animal announced that the question I was intending to ask was the wrong one. I had not even told him what my question was, so obviously he was tuned into my intention before I even spoke it. He then explained that the questions on the menu were appropriate to ask, and that I could choose one question from column A and one from column B to ask him during my journey. I think this is a wonderful example of how the spirits can teach us through humor and playfulness, which helps keeps the practice more lighthearted.