Shamanism

Excerpt from an unpublished book: iHealeress, memoir of Shameless Old Lady who Befriended the Universe

Shamanism. I had a good friend Lenka. She was a petite, intelligent Slovakian lady who I met at a philosophy meetup around 2016. I loved her clear, organized thoughts and the calm way she expressed them. We became good friends.

One day, Lenka visited me and told an absolutely fascinating story about her impressions from a shamanic meetup she had just attended and during which she experienced a shamanic journey. She told me, that in the lower world, where the way into said world was explained by a shaman, she met her spirit animal which introduced itself to her as “ocelot” answered her personal questions and gave her some accurate advices. We both, as non-native English speakers, did not know what the word “ocelot” means. I googled it and the image of an ocelot showed up. I presented the pictures to Lenka. She exclaimed, ‘it looked exactly like that’. We were both puzzled by this discovery.

I was in. I couldn’t wait for the next meetup to experience the meeting with my spirit animal.

The day came. Michael, the shaman, an employee of an IT firm after some rituals gave us simple instructions and led us to the beginning of the journey. He said that it was not very probable that we would experience this journey the very first time. He said that in his case it took 4 or 5 trials before it happened.

After a ceremony of inviting and giving homages to the spirit guides, archangels and deities of various religions Michael started drumming. Obeying his instruction to go down as deep as possible below earth surface I took an imaginary elevator one thousand floors down, stepped off and slowly approached the light at the end of the long, dark, horizontal tunnel. I was in a forest of the Pliocene age, there were plants, mostly ferns, but no single animal in my sight. Finally, I looked up. There was a brown bird with a curved beak sitting on the branch of a small tree. I guessed it was a parrot. I asked a basic question and found confirmation that the bird was my spirit animal. I asked it my personal questions and after the answering I asked about its name. The answer was “Orow”.

I began to hear faster bits of drumming, the sign to return to reality number one. When I reached it, I decided to google the word ‘orow’ with great curiosity caused by the experience of googling ‘ocelot’. I did it with English spelling and nothing appeared except somebody’s surname. I googled it with Polish spelling ‘orol’ and… the identical creature which I met in the lower world, appeared on my phone’s screen. The explanation was in a foreign language.

All the participants of the shamanic circle started to share their thoughts from their journeys. When my turn came, I spoke about my experience. Lenka, who was present there, exclaimed: orow in the Slovakian language is an eagle! In Polish, the eagle is ‘orzeł’…but, Slovakian and Polish have the same roots. Is it possible that my ancestors used the word orow to describe orzeł long time ago? I learned something else, that an eagle could be brown but, up to this point, I thought of the bird as being only grey. So, it was clear. Orow, the Eagle, was my spirit animal.

I became a regular at Michael’s Shamanic meetups. My adventures with orow were diverse. In general, it was a very moody and self-absorbed bird. It treated me as an inferior being, but his advices were always right and on the spot. Once, I asked him to expose me to a three hundred sixty-degree view. My vet friend Trisha corrected me later, that three hundred thirty is the maximum for birds to see. Anyhow 360 or 330 I knew from a Castaneda book, that it is indeed possible to experience it by human. But Orow was not willing to let me see it. Once, at the end of the journey, he said to me, ‘Do you want to fly?’. I said, ‘Yeah!’ enthusiastically. We reached a very high altitude and then it happened. I saw it … amazing, breathtaking… and since then it has never happened to me again and it is beyond the ability of my imagination to recreate this view in my head without his help.

I found my experiences with shamanic journeys unpredictable, interesting, and fascinating. I met more helpful animals and even tribal humans during other sessions. I was in. I wanted to study shamanism more deeply. Michael gave me a link to the Foundation of Shamanic Studies in California of which, Dr Hanner, was the father and founder. I was lucky because soon in February 2018, Kevin, the Shaman, planned four two-day workshops in Sydney…

When the first day of a new shamanic experience came, I headed to the scout barn in Gladesville where we were going to experience the extraordinaries for the next 11 days. A beautiful leafy area close to the water was a perfect setting for it. There were maybe twenty of us. Scientists, psychologists, ecologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, the list goes on. Kevin is a real Shaman; he received his shamanic initiation from the flying shamans of Mongolia. He was an unpretentious, knowledgeable man. I crashed on him (and I guessed not only I) on the first sight. Was it his trick? To create high vibrations of the “Honeymoon Effect”; the magical high vibrational state named and explained by Bruce Lipton…

Altered State of Consciousness, ASC, could be reached with many techniques. The book ‘The life of the Galilean Shaman’ by Pieter F. Craffert, describes at least thirty methods of reaching ASC. The one, which is the most well-known in the western world, is by using hallucinogenic drugs. For example, the popularity of LSD during the ‘Hippie era’ in the 60s or the new trend of trying Ayahuasca in the South American often pseudo-shamanic industry. The Foundation of Shamanic Studies, according to Hanner’s teachings consider drumming at certain frequency as a best and purest base for shamanic journeys. They believe that plants have a consciousness as well, so for example Ayahuasca sometimes can play its own tricks on people. An ASC can be reached in many other ways, like starvation, sleep deprivation, oxygen deprivation (like hiking in high altitude), excessive physical activity, breathing techniques, withdrawn or overactive brain activities, to mention a few. It seems that Jesus’ ways of reaching ACT was by meditation, fasting, climbing mountains and breathing air with low oxygen concentration.

The first workshop in February was more general and the three after were focused on divination, finding locations of lost things and people, recovery of information from the past, communication with plants, exploring plants in the lower world, divination from rocks and other related topic.. I found it to be a very interesting exercise on retrieving information from Aborigines’ ancestors, who lived at the place we had the workshop at many years ago. According to our research, the tribe who lived there had a totem that was a snapper (the fish).

Any interaction with Aborigines’ ancestors gave me a wonderful feeling of connectedness. They treated me with love and respect. They appreciated my admiration for their wisdom. They let me swim with snappers and enjoy the ancient clear waters. I experienced many blissful moments and feelings of purification in crystal clear water.