I was working with a shaman journey CD recently, and spent a couple of weeks developing a routine for guided meditative exploration using spirit animals and then indigenous tribal members somewhere in South America. Like anything else, I approach each type of exploration with a heavy sense of skepticism. If my skepticism is too heavy, and as a result I can't calm my mind enough to enter an exploration state, I just try another time. Daily stresses can damper such experiences from reaching any level interest and I bore super-easily.
The trick is to relax to the point where you have stopped your mind. This takes practice, and I'm convinced that in today's world it is something that is and will continue to be difficult to do, almost in a sadly ironic way. Once you have calmed the mind though, and can enter into a meditative state where you start to not-think, when you can slow the thought process almost to a complete hault, the gate is near. You get to a point where the thoughts that pop up are much less frequent, and as such are easier to just observe without judging or becoming engaged in a circle of thoughts.
I didn't like the CD itself very much, but I'm hard to please in that area. I decided to use it anyway, since it was the first disc of that type - a shamanic journey - that I had bought. Sometimes I chuckle when I read or hear some people talk about the worlds the shaman move in. I wonder if they really know. I wondered if the guy who was guiding me on the CD really knew. I have known several people who have journeyed using Ayahuasca and other intense methods. Part of my background includes some extensive unguided journey work in my younger years with similarly potent chemical assistance. Those experiences are now etched in my mind as some of the most profound feelings, sounds and images that I have ever been exposed to. From the total of my past intense experiences with such journeys, coupled with those of friends, what can frighten you most is ultimately yourself. Maybe in a future post I'll talk about that further.
Most of the nights that I worked with the disc were fruitful, I guess a bit to my surprise. I had an intense astral experience several weeks earlier, feeling the presence of energies that I hadn't felt since I was a child. My "them" were back. That was part of the reason I bought the CD to begin with. Robert Monroe and/or Michael Newton talks about a similar concept in his books, among which is a Council of Three... energetic beings assigned to us in higher dimensions to guide us on the path of spiritual development. The premise there being that we have all agreed to spiritual contracts, are here to fulfill a purpose and will go on to further development work in our next vibrational level, wherever that is.
On the second night of the second week with the disc, after flying, albeit guided, to the Amazon to meet my tribal guides, my consciousness had settled back in my living room and I remained in meditation in the dark for about an hour. I thought it had been fruitful. I met two guides named Puht and Muh. I distinctly took note of their painted faces in the hopes that I could find a match somewhere online. White paint overall with mostly blue and a little red. Thick blue lines came out from their eyes. I have seen a few documentaries about tribes in the Amazon such as the Kayapo, yet these facial markings didn't trigger anything in terms of something I'd seen in daily life. As I started to come out of what was a very deep meditation, within my mind's eye all I could see were transparent bubbles much like champagne or soda. I felt a very slight vibration in my body, a slight buzz. The bubbles covered my mind's eye and I could see them for a second or two after I opened my eyes in the dark room. "That's new," was my first thought.
