The journey to the underworld

Perhaps I sould start with the de rigeur denial of personal kookiness: I am not a new-ager, nor anything of the sort. I am a SKEPTICAL person. This is not an alien-encounter story.

I do not know of what "shamanic journeying" consists. One reason I tried it is the book I learned from suggested that:

a) It doesn't matter what it is. Try it and see if it is interesting or helpful.
b) It does not conflict with religious belief
c) Go ahead already, try it!

So I did. All mumbo jumbo aside, I'll tell you what happened.

After reading the beginning of the book The Way of the Shaman, I purchased a drumming tape online and waited for an opportunity to try an excercise in journeying, or meditation if you prefer. I have always had a low-grade interest in shamanism and spirituality, but never acted on it. I am a classic see-you-on-Sunday for a very-practical-Mass kind of average Catholic.

I have blogged on possible reasons for my interest in this. One is practical: I believe in the testimonials to the positive benefits of meditating. In the book, Michael Harner suggested that journeying is a very active form of meditation. That is, you don't try to clear you mind but rather direct it and then let it go. This appealed to me because I am irrepressibly impatient, and cannot imagine success with the sit still and repeat Ohm stuff.

So. Next problem. Before journeying: No alcohol or nicotine for 24 hours, and no food for 4 hours. This will never happen!

Yet I found myself with a rare Saturday to myself, and having slept in rather late (very rare!), I realized I would give it a try (and fudge the 24 hours without alcohol thing, sorta.)

I got the tape and positioned it for a ten minute journey, more or less. I placed the headphones on, lay back in my darkened room. I stated my intention: to enter the tunnel and journey successfully to the underworld; to explore there, without taking anything, speaking to anything, or eating or imbibing anything. In other words, no interaction, only journey and observation.

I had to picture in my mind a hole in the ground with which I was familiar, and enter the tunnel through it. I had a hole in mind. I squirmed for ten minutes without any luck. The problem I could have predicted: I can't focus on anything for more than 2 seconds.

So, probably unjustifiably frustrated, I rewound the tape for the whole thirty minutes, lay back and determined that I would try again , and at the least I would have another thrity-minute lie-down if nothing else. Immediately I thought of a different hole, and when I did it opened up and expanded, and I was on my way.

Visually, I was moving along a a very stereotypical, geometric dim tunnel-like thing. I might have been carried by water. I also could hear weird quips and knocks that would be consistent with the acoustics of a watery cavernous rocky tunnel. I actually saw and heard very little. Colors were present but muted. Turn on your Windows Media player visualisations and you have an idea, although it was very muted.

At some point I realized I was free of the tunnel and deep underwater. I could breath. Shapes floated past. A huge sea turtle perhaps, and other shapes larger than myself, perhaps sharks close by or whales far off in the murk. Some glowed with phosphorant colors.

I had no fear. Nothing was threatening. I felt I was there. It took me a minute to realize it. I'll say this and repeat it again: I was in a state of positive indifference. I don't mean that like a British author. I mean I felt objective.

I rose to the surface under a brilliant blue sky and saw a green island with a strip of white sand, and I started to swim for it. As I got closer, one of only two mildly disturbing experiences during the entire experience appeared on the beach: a hula dancer!

tbc