SHAMANIC JOURNEY
If you haven’t yet experienced a Shamanic Journey, I hope the story that follows will inspire you to find a practitioner who can guide you through your own amazing journey. I request your feedback on the symbolism of my own experience as some of the right brain holographic messages I received that day have still have not been made totally clear. I would like to take a moment to thank my own guide, Jnana Gowan www.powerhed.com for her expertise and passion, she dedicated so much to our class and each students experience.
The process started with a gentle guided meditation. Jnana asked us to surround ourselves with a familiar memory of nature or to find a place that was harmonizing to us that we could visualize and connect into. She then asked us to call out to our animal spirit guides. After receiving a brief visit from Jnana’s guide, a beautiful and strong black panther who’s name I now forget, I watched as the holographic version of myself closed its eyes and sent out a mental call asking my own animal spirit guide to come out and greet me. As soon as my eyes opened I saw standing before me a brilliantly colored and prideful looking peacock! I just sat back and watched as it started at me almost waiting for my next move or question. Thankfully at this point Jnana spoke in the background and asked us to ask our guides their names. As the question was forming in my head I already received the telepathic response, Swami Sitakahara. Of course this is my phonetic spelling of the name I heard that day, I am sure this is nowhere close to what the true spelling would be. Swami and I sat at the top of this floating island on opposite sides of a reflecting pool just staring at each other. To this day he has never spoken to me, he shows up in my journeys to simply be there as a guide to help me find whatever it is I am seeking.
At this point during our Journey the background drumming music started getting intense and the pace of everything picked up tremendously. The last words that Jnana spoke or at least the last words I needed to hear from Jnana were to follow our guides and that is where my story begins. With the drums rapidly beating in the background I watched as Swami took off running towards the middle of the reflecting pool, of course I chased right after him. We fell right through the middle of the pool and like a vortex got sucked straight through to the bottom of the island where we were shot out the other side. We continued fall in this cylindrical cascade of water that was surrounded by nothing, but air. The water ended up plowing into the surface of the earth and depositing us into a cave below the earth’s surface. Swami and I emerged from the pool of water onto a ledge inside the cave. The cave was light by torch light which made everything very intense and almost palpable, Swami started to run towards the edge of the cave where the torches lined the interior walls. He walked behind a curved wall and disappeared I ran after him and found myself falling down a dark obis that fell deep into the earth. Together Swami and I fell down deeper and deeper into the earth’s core where we finally hit the bottom. Again Swami took off at a run. Running through tight curving cave walls, Swami finally stopped right at the opening to a room where he waited for me. Swami didn’t go into the room, but curious as always I decided to see what it held. As soon as I decided to enter the room I lost all control over my body and was pulled right into the middle of the cave. Appearing on either side of my body was the Indian God Ganesha showing himself as an elephant with large intimidating tusks and the Indian Goddess Kali. Ganesha and Kali put a big bubble around my body and both began to blow purple mist into my bubble they did this until the purple mist was all around me. Kali then started to throw her daggers at me. This was not intimidating to me and it did not seem scary at the time. I then saw Swami appear at the opposite side of the cave. He gave me that long look and I knew it was time to go. I popped out of the bubble and moved towards his body. Swami again took off at a run and I followed him up and down another set of tight dark underground tunnels. Swami and I make a turn and find ourselves in the middle of another room this room was filled with rainbows. I started to absorb the rainbows into my body, I watched as they would enter into and out of my mouth. I was eating the rainbows and then spitting them back out. They were bouncing off the walls everywhere and all I wanted to do was make as much contact with them as possible. Again I saw Swami out of the corner of my eye and knew it was time to move on. This time our pace was not so much of a run, but a enthusiastic dancing parade. Swami’s tail feathers were hypnotizing me moving back and forth with the beats of the drums so much so that I felt I had to emulate him, so with my hands behind my back I began the peacocks dance down the torch lit hallways. We then came to a small narrow room, again Swami did not enter the room, but waited for me to decide to go in or not. I walked into the room and saw at the end of the rock formation was Buddha. Buddha was floating with his legs crossed waiting for me to approach him. Saying nothing he placed lotus peddles in the palms of my hands and as I sat there holding the exposed flowers he began to open his mouth. Out of his mouth he blew hundreds of lotus flowers all around my body and completely filled our room with the beauty of these petals. After the flowers settled on the floor i knew my time was done and I got up and walked to where Swami was waiting for me. We took our decent further into the earth, this time we went sliding down a muddy path then ended up falling through a large black hole and fell right into a boat. I knew instantly that we had landed in the river styx. At first I faced the front of the boat where Swami sat looking out onto the waters Swami wouldn't look at me so I decided to turn around. I then saw sitting behind me the grim reaper, he was steering the boat with one hand and holding a scythe with the other. I looked at his hood, I couldn't see his head and asked what do I need to know? He responded you are going to die, I laughed and said I know that tell me something I don't know. He responded saying, you need to help people. He then grabbed my hands and drew in them with his boney finger, using one finger he drew into each palm separately. The tip of his finger created these swirling purple vortexes right in the center of my hand. He then put my palms together and said I need to sit in meditation with my head back and my feet and palms together. He then returned back to steering the boat. Our boat pointed towards the shore and we began to dock. Swami and I exited the boat right next to a big Bon fire. We sat next to the fire staring into it when a fox stuck his head through and stared right at me. The fox then quickly turned and ran down a dark alley not to be seen again. Knowing my journey had come to an end, I then started to make my way back up to the earths surface with Swami and found my place back at the floating island.
This experience was my first full blown symbolic experience where the journey laid itself before me with no previously conceived expectations. I often reflect back to this experience with such love and openness and truly hope everyone can have such a moving, vivid journey.
And so it is!