What is a Shamanic Journey?
When you hear of a shamanic journey, what exactly is that?
In core shamanism, the main “thing” a practitioner does to access healing, power, and information is called a shamanic journey. When a shaman journeys, he or she does a number of things:
Enters into an altered state of consciousness
Accesses nonordinary reality
Works with helping spirits
If any of these three elements are missing, the person is doing something other than core shamanism.
Let me break each of these things down:
Entering into an altered state of consciousness
Our ancestors discovered, without the benefit of modern medical equipment, that there were multiple states of consciousness. Some states of consciousness were useful for ordinary day-to-day tasks, like planting crops or gathering water. Other states led to transpersonal experiences. Experiences where the practitioner was able to transcend normal human capabilities for gathering information, influencing the environment, and healing.
While some cultures relied on hallucinogenic plants, called entheogens, many others discovered that trance states could be achieved by performing or listening to certain rhythmic sounds. Across the world, shamans use drums, rattles, clacking sticks, bells, even wind instruments to induce trance.
With modern technology, we can actually measure changes in people’s brainwaves when they journey. We know that around the world, for thousands of years, people have been inducing what are called Theta brainwaves to enter a spiritual transpersonal state. This is a state that you naturally enter during sleep, but rarely during waking hours.
The trance state is important to be able to set aside the perception of ordinary day-to-day reality (just called ordinary reality or OR) and see the underlying spiritual reality on which our material world is layered. We call the spiritual world entered during a journey of nonordinary reality (or NOR).
Accessing Nonordinary Reality
Once a shamanic practitioner enters into the proper altered state, he or she then accesses nonordinary reality.
Nonordinary reality can be described as the spiritual realms which underly our physical reality. In core shamanism, we recognize and travel in an upper world, middle world, and lower world. The reality is that there seem to be infinite worlds, think of parallel spiritual universes.
These worlds are where the actual journey happens.
The shaman has been trained to send part of his or her soul into these spiritual realms to do whatever spiritual tasks are required.
Working with Helping Spirits
A shaman is always in relationship with his or her helping spirits. Helping spirits include power animals as well as ancestor spirits, weather spirits, spirits of nature, teacher spirits, and others.
All spiritual work in core shamanism is done with the help of one or more helping spirits. The practitioner acts as a conduit for the helping spirit. The work itself varies greatly depending on what is to be done.
During a shamanic journey, the practitioner meets with helping spirits in nonordinary reality to work with them to accomplish the intent of the work