Earth Spirit Dreaming: Shamanic Ecotherapy Practices - Elizabeth E. Meacham 2020

Trance States for Extrasensory Perception
Dancing with the Ancestors: Cultivating Shamanic Experience
Dream-Connecting Practices

This chapter introduces readers to practices that use extrasensory experiences to seek and create visions of healing for themselves and the world. The shamanic states that these exercises support can be considered “light” trance states, in that you are still mostly aware of yourself and what is going on around you while you are exploring reality through extrasensory perception. Deeper trance states can be reached through similar methods practiced over longer periods of time with increased intensity. Deep trance states should be reserved for places with appropriate community, training and ritual support for the one doing the deep trance visioning.

For the purposes of Earth Spirit Dreaming, light trance states, from which we can emerge relatively easily, are the goal. Still, since your perceptions are altered after these practices, it is important to very intentionally return to your body and “everyday” reality through grounding methods. Earth grounding helps us feel centered and balanced as we begin to “walk between worlds,” which is, along with many other reasons, why it is an essential step of Earth Spirit Dreaming. When beginning to work with trance states, you may sometimes feel that you are in a dream, or that things don’t feel real, even when you are not doing the visioning rituals or practices. When this happens, do things that stimulate your “normal” senses: eat fragrant foods, dip your hands in water, walk barefoot on the ground, lightly pat or tap your body and the top of your head, wiggle your toes, tap your feet on the ground. Your body is your friend when holding and learning to manage trance states. Consciously stay in your body as much as you can.

In shamanic practice, the imaginal and symbolic realms are reached through creating conditions for extrasensory perception. The Earth and Spirit methods from previous chapters help you reach the threshold of trance states, and practices from the last chapter bring you to gateways of numinous experience. In this chapter, we will use practices to bring you past the edge of magic into the fully magical, quantum, non-local and non-linear shamanic realms.

Once we set the stage — ground to earth, create the correct vibrational reality, set our intentions — we begin the primary work of moving into shamanic reality with drumming. The drum is the main medicine of the shaman. While we are exploring shamanic experience, we learn to work with drumming, dancing and singing to reach trance states. We approach these tools and methods with great care and reverence as we remember how to be magical beings once more.

The primary methods for reaching trance states, not including plant medicines, focus on basic human creative expressions: drumming, dancing, singing, making music in other ways, creative expression through art, through mask making, body paint, and many more. For our purposes, in this chapter we will focus on drumming, dancing and singing, building upon the sacred creativity of the rituals we use to support this work. Dancing, singing and making rhythm are basic for all humans as celebratory and expressive acts.

We raise vibrations through music and dance, and fundamentally enhance and alter our feelings in many ways. In Healing Across Cultures & the Good Life, the authors describe the type of drumming and movement that induce trance states as:

Repetitive, long-lasting, constant beats with concerted focus, and chanting repeatedly with constancy ... Many anthropologists have seen how music that urges dancing profoundly alters the structure of one’s consciousness, changing how one experiences both space and time ...

The many forms of constant, rhythmic percussion, such as with drums, rattles, or gongs, produce the phenomenon of entrainment. Entrainment occurs when the asynchronous patterns of the brain waves come into harmonic resonance.⁹²

EXERCISE: Creating Your Sacred Space in Shamanic Reality

Purpose

This simple visualization guides us to create a safe and very personal place in the imaginal realms. This is a place to return to again and again, and to discover and rest in your true self. Experience of our true selves recharges us for our work for the Earth and helps to guide us back to ourselves and our spiritual mission.⁹³

This guided visualization came to me in the mid-nineties, as I struggled through deep trauma work. I created a visualization, putting together a variety of guided meditations that I was working with at the time. Later, I learned that I had found my way to what some shamanic traditions call “the lower world.” It is a realm of consciousness close to the Earth’s center where fecund and primal energies reside. This guided visualization takes us back to our source, our beginnings and what has come before for us in past lives and earlier in this life. Eventually, entering the lower world in shamanic journeys will bring us to a place from which to engage our shadow and reclaim lost aspects of ourselves (also called soul retrieval). It is a place for foundational and intense healing work.

For now, the goal is to find a safe and grounding place at the entry to this realm of shared consciousness using your imagination. We will only go to the opening place of the lower world and find a central and safe place from which to rest and restore our energies. Note: do not move past the initial entry place in this realm without the guidance of a trained and trusted shamanic guide. Self-guided soul retrieval work is only to be done after much personal growth, and shamanic training and experience. Until then, work with a well-trained and supportive guide.

Description

Find a safe and comfortable place to rest, either sitting or lying down. Try to limit interruptions for 30 minutes. Create your sacred place using the ritual methods and order from Chapter Fourteen. As you move into the visualization, remember that your imagination is your gateway to the imaginal realms. You are co-creating this sacred space for yourself, so feel free to trust the images and impressions that feel right to you. To follow the visualization, you can read it beforehand or make a recording of it.

Imagine that you’re walking down a hallway. Feel your feet on the floor. Imagine your shoes lightly stepping on the floor, making a soft noise. You walk with purpose down this hallway. Soon, the walls begin to turn red. As this happens, imagine everything that you associate with the color red. Visualize these things you imagine and feel the sensations of them. Strawberries, soft and juicy, sweet and fragrant. Pomegranates, with all the seeds filling up the fruit like stars. Imagine a cool, red mist infusing your body.

You begin to feel that you’re floating on this red mist. As you step along a few inches from the ground this mist begins to turn orange. You smell the tart sweetness of oranges all around you as you continue to step softly through this tunnel. The orange, fragrant mist surrounds you and supports you. You feel warm and safe in this orange glow that carries you along as you step softly forward.

You begin to smell lemons as the mist turns to yellow. The yellow mist clears to allow bright, warm sunlight to fall across your face and shoulders. You look down to see that you’re barefoot now, and walking on soft, warm sand. You continue to step across this sand as the walls of the tunnel expand away from you and disappear. As you gaze at the sunlight falling all around you, you see trees just ahead with the light filtering softly through the leaves.

The light splits into beams that fall toward the ground in long shafts. You hear the wind moving in the leaves and continue to walk until you enter the coolness of the forest. Smell the loamy earth of the forest floor around you and feel the softness of leaves and soft dirt under your feet.

You look down to see a path as you continue to move forward, step by soft step, feeling your feet roll onto the forest floor as you walk. As you continue down this path, you begin to see a clear, small lake ahead of you. The blue is almost aqua by the shore, becoming darker where the water deepens. There are rounded, hand-sized rocks all along the shore in shades of white and soft gray and the lightest coral. The rocks feel cool and smooth beneath your feet as you continue to walk, allowing your feet to enter the water. You feel relaxed in this water, as if it is the safest place on Earth, a womb, a vessel. You know that you will be able to swim and breathe easily in this water as the memories of being in the womb come back to you. You walk further into the water until you are swimming. You swim down into the dark deep blue of the water, feeling the cool water holding you weightless and buoyant.

As you swim, you see a beautiful indigo light in front of you: an orb that grows as you move through it. As you swim closer to this bright, vibrant, undulating circle of light, you notice that it’s a gateway. You see a violet center in the orb, with a pinprick of light shooting through it. You continue to swim and the light grows until you see dry land on the other side. You realize that this is a portal between two realms. You feel beckoned to step through this shimmering wall of light as you see soft images begin to appear to you on the other side. You swim toward the portal and step onto the floor of the lake. You reach one leg through the gate, then move your whole body onto the other side into a dry, safe world. You meet a being just as you enter the realm. You ask, “May I enter?” The being nods, inviting you to pass with a turn of the body. Before you, you see a circle of land, somewhat like an island, with pathways leading in different directions toward unseen places. You know that your work today is to find a comfortable place here, leaving the pathways for another visit.

Picture the place where you are. It is natural and inviting, the landscape that you love best. Imagine the ground, the sky, the plants, trees and animals. You feel safety and love all around you as you imagine this place, which is the best place you can be. Your place. As you see this land come into form around you, you feel drawn toward a specific place on the island. Your heart begins to light up and pulse as you look around, and you begin to see a light calling to you.

You walk toward the light. As you come closer, you see a special place just for you begin to take shape. Notice what this place looks like, how it feels for you, what surrounds it. Is there an entrance to your special place? A path, a walkway, a door to enter? Let it emerge in your imagination as just the right place for you. Spend some time exploring your special place. Feel how deeply safe, relaxed and energized you feel in this place. Take time to experience all the details of your special place.

Once you feel comfortable, notice that there is something in your special place that offers you guidance. You can see, feel, touch or hear something to take back with you that comes easily to you through this unique feature of your special place. Let a gift come toward you that you will carry back or remember when you return to your everyday reality. Sit quietly in your place, relax, tell your place how grateful you are to be here and say thank you for the special gift. When you are ready, retrace your steps back to the indigo gateway that leads to the pond that you swam through earlier. Say thank you to the guide at the door. Then step through the violet light portal back into the cool water of the pond.

You easily swim to the surface, following the light of the sun. You come out of the water and find that you are on the shore, completely dry, just as the entrance to the path through the woods becomes visible. You walk back through the woods onto the sandy, warm, yellow expanse and see a door surrounded by yellow mist leading into a hallway. You step into the hallway, into orange mist that turns to a darker orange and then slowly into red. You feel yourself begin to breathe back into your body. You feel your feet where they press on the floor and you wiggle your toes, arriving fully and completely into the room where you started your journey. Now that you are back, you feel the safety and energy of your special place with you, and you know that you can go back there any time you want to.

EXERCISE: Visioning with Nature Beings — Becoming Fully Human

Purpose

As we move into re-indigenized ways of knowing, we can learn to speak and listen to nature “spirits.” In Western culture, there is the “real” world and the spirit world. As we re-indigenize our bodies and minds these false separations begin to fall away, often engendering radical and shocking sensations and perceptions when relating to beings in nature. These beings always have stories, histories, families, memories, each in their own way. When we vision with these beings, we listen to their stories and their dreams, and release ourselves into co-mingling our boundaries. We become tree singers and river walkers. Feeling the motion of life through these beings’ senses, our fingers become soft leaves blowing in the wind; we begin to sense the knowing of 500 years of old trees and millennia of mountains; a new bird is the greatest joy; the nature of death is a true opening. Visioning with nature beings, we move through the sky like the wind, hearing the names of the breezes floating above us like the birds. In this work, we become for a time the spirit of the nature beings and see through their eyes.

Description

When we are first starting to speak to nature beings, it can feel awkward and even ridiculous in the framework of Western “reason.” I remind myself in these moments that while it may feel crazy to speak to beings in nature, the actual insanity we face derives from having forgotten how to speak with nature relatives and ancestors in the first place.

The most basic way to dream with beings in nature, and to connect with the elemental nature energies, is practice. In a similar way to acknowledging another person when we pass, we begin to acknowledge the being-ness of all of nature as we move through life. Just as we develop empathy with people over time, and come to understand their individuality as well as our commonalities, we can learn to relate with nature as we speak and communicate with nature beings every day.

Over time, we foster deep relationships with nature in general, and with individual nature beings. The river near my house is a dear friend and guide. She shows me the way in my life; she moves me softly or sometimes roughly toward my spirit mission. I ask her to speak and I listen. All that is good in my life in recent years has been guided and supported in some way by her.

Forming relationships with nature beings transforms into visioning with nature beings through time commitment. Just as we come to share a vision of life with people who are close to us and important in our lives, this process happens by getting to know individual nature beings, as well as the nature of these beings. So, I know particular rivers and creeks, and I know RIVER the element. River is an important friend and teacher for me, in this realm and in the shamanic realms. The more I focus my energy and time on fostering this relationship, the deeper my visioning for the world becomes through the prism of the river.

I have other nature and animal guides that invite me to connect with them and come to me to share their wisdom. Part of shamanic experience is to practice merging our consciousness with nature and animal beings, always with permission, care and gratitude. Eventually, the “practicing,” the imagining, grows into the experience. It is important to ask for help, and let the nature spirits and animals teach us how to do this.

We are not meant to create stories only as ourselves. We alone as individuals, or as humans separated from the web of life, do not have the strength and courage needed to see the world as we have co-created it and to move into something new. On our own, we literally do not have the physical, emotional and psycho-spiritual capacity to do what is required to heal the world. We need the senses and magnitude of the entire Earth community to help us become fully human again, and in becoming fully human we play our part in returning to a balanced state of living with the planet.

EXERCISE: Creating Rituals for Trance States

Purpose

The Earth Spirit Dreaming approach is meant to teach readers to create a myriad of rituals to fulfill a variety of intentions and connect with many locations and combinations of people. Rituals are essential for healing and creative dreaming: for envisioning blueprints for transforming our stories. Rituals create the conditions for us to come into our full senses and draw in and from the power of our communities. Rituals also provide cues to our bodies, hearts and minds to move into receptive states for spiritual work.

We often want things quickly in Western culture. This can lead to an “anything goes” approach to journeying. We need to ground our spiritual work in sacred and carefully developed rituals to shift into new stories. Otherwise, we risk just creating more of the same problems and challenges that we are living with now. Awareness of our states, and clarity of our minds and hearts, allow us to move through shamanic reality with clear intention and results. We achieve this by grounding into our bodies and the Earth, asking for support and connection with Earth beings, nature spirits, ancestors, spirit helpers and the Creator of the Universe. To change our lives and our world, we need all of our many, powerful capacities. These can only evolve through consistent work with ceremony and ritual.

Description

The most important part of all shamanic work is to develop comfort and facility with rituals and ceremony. Going through them again and again is needed to bring forth your own heart wisdom and body intelligence. Well-intentioned sacred rituals, with clear intentions and methods, are the means to travel and dream in shamanic realms safely and responsibly.

The rituals built from previous chapters create the ground for shamanic experience. For those of you who are already comfortable and experienced with rituals, you can blend them with your own practice to move through the Earth Spirit Dreaming steps. Creating a sacred space, grounding and connecting with Earth and clearing the vibrational space are skills that everyone can develop. This book offers many options for creating and nurturing sacred space. Eventually, these suggestions will meld into rituals that work best for you in your own life and work.

To reach shamanic states in the Earth Spirit Dreaming method, create a ritual using the steps in order: at least one from each section. More time and more preparation with grounding and vibrational work will bring more profound “traveling” and connection in shamanic reality. And, as emphasized throughout this book, commitment to regular practice builds our capacity for shamanic experience over time.

When we reach these states, it’s important to be as Earth-grounded and as vibrationally clear as possible, so always prepare as much as you can. We can only re-vision our world by healing and shifting the mindset that’s created the current challenges that we face as a species. The first two steps, Earth and Spirit, assure us that our dreaming comes from a place of clarity and connection with the healing spirit and other beings that are helping shift our consciousness.

EXERCISE: Shamanic Journeying

Purpose

We journey to connect with benevolent, supportive energies of many kinds: spirit helpers, ancestors, nature spirits, divine cosmic light, the spirits of houses, places, endeavors, ideas...the list is almost endless. Everything in “normal” reality has an aspect or an imprint that we can relate with in the spirit realms, and there are many beings that are not from this reality. Journeying is a life-changing endeavor.

The more it is done, the more profound and magical it becomes, forever changing the way that we understand life. Eventually, the world all around begins to morph. Experience becomes infused with magical impressions and portals to new ways of knowing that are impossible to imagine from a mind deeply seated in and seeded from rational reality.

When beginning, focus on connecting with your spirit helpers. It is the spirit helpers that make journeying safe and useful. Journeying without the guidance of spirit helpers is like wandering through the world without a map, risking our lives with strangers. Every time you journey ask for a spirit helper to accompany you — not just any guide, a spirit helping guide.

A note of caution: While some shamanic practitioners journey to address issues with dark, lost or destructive energies, this is not the focus of the work in this book and should not be undertaken without very serious training in the protocols to do this kind of work. These are advanced skills that take many, many years to develop. Following the steps in this book is one way to ensure that you are working with benevolent energies for healing, and not inadvertently encountering other kinds of things that exist in shamanic reality.

This is another reason that creating sacred space and setting clear intentions is essential, especially for beginning and intermediate shamanic work. As a measure of how rare it is to reach the level of advanced shamanic training and experience to do healing work with dark energies, I should tell you that I have only met one person in my life who has this level of training and knowledge, after decades of training and experience. In general, Western people are all very young in terms of shamanic work, and it is crucial to engage with great humility.

Description

When journeying, always start with creating sacred space, grounding, clearing and setting a clear intention (as described earlier in this book). Ask for guidance from light beings that want to help you and ask for protection as you travel. When journeying, prepare, prepare, prepare! For me, the journeys are often not that long, but if I want clarity, I know that preparation is key. As this book describes in detail, grounding to the Earth and Spirit/vibrational realms creates a centered place from which to journey and vision. If we journey from a disconnected, jumbled mind that is grounded in the dominant global consciousness, this is what we will bring back and recreate again and again.

Meditate, dance, sing, drum: do everything you can to raise your vibrations and shift into symbolic knowing/embodied mind. Leave your worries at the door. They will be there to pick up when you’re done with your journey. Below are some steps to shamanic journeying. Though there are many methods, these are the steps that work best for me:

1. Prepare using a ceremony that you create with practices from this book to create sacred space.

2. Make music: drum, rattle or use a recording to help shift yourself into a trance state. If you are drumming or rattling on your own, use a repetitive beat at the rate of approximately four beats per second. If you are learning to drum or rattle for yourself, it can be helpful to use a recording at first to help you focus on your journey. As you progress with your own drumming and rattling, you can start playing with the recording and stop when it becomes distracting. When ending a shamanic journey, drum faster and more loudly at the end to help bring yourself completely back into your body and close the journey. Do not listen to shamanic drumming recordings while driving or doing anything else that requires focus, as your mind may shift whether you intend it to or not.

3. Begin the journey: there are many ways to do this. I am sharing one here that I learned from Norma Nakai Burton, creator of the Journey to Completion shadow integration process. To begin your journey, choose a place that is special to you in ordinary reality and that you know very well. As the drumming for the journey begins, imagine that there is someone with you in this place that will receive you when you return from your journey. Then, find somewhere to begin digging a tunnel to the underworld. Focus on the digging with care and attention. If this digging turns into something else, or calls you to another place, follow that invitation. When you come out of the tunnel, notice where you are and ask a spirit helper to meet you to guide you on your journey. I vet my guides carefully if they are new and I don’t have a prior relationship with them. You can ask multiple times if they are a helping spirit for you. Look for four signs from the guide to show you that they are a true spirit helper, such as seeing them from four different angles. Once you are in and have made contact with your spirit helper(s), follow the flow of the journey. If you find yourself thinking or feeling distracted, focus on the sound of the drum to gently bring you back to your journey.

4. Return! When you come back, trace your steps all the way back through your journey. This will help to imprint the journey onto emerging neural pathways and also guarantee that you return completely to your body. I spend at least five minutes making sure that I have completely re-entered my body, breathing into my body from my toes to my head, feeling from the top of my head down through my spine as I anchor myself firmly on the floor or the ground. Take time to reflect on your journey by writing it down or sharing it with others if you are in a group. This is an important step to help you integrate the journey.

5. Ground: At first, you may feel that you are a bit between two worlds when you start to journey more regularly. You may begin to feel or hear guides when in “normal” consciousness. Over time, your capacity for experiencing these perceptual shifts will grow. If this is disconcerting for you, set the intention to not feel or hear guides or energetic reality outside of journeys. You are in charge of your experience. Set the boundaries and parameters that are comfortable for you. Even though I have had things happen in journeys that felt very uncomfortable and even painful — at one point my heart was removed, and a new one implanted with fire — I always know that I have a choice to stop any interaction or leave the journey at any time.