Shamanic journeying uses imagination, but it is not just imagination. Shamans are clear that the shamanic realms are real places, full of real beings; what we experience there is co-created, a mixture of what is there independently of us and what we bring in order to make sense of it. So a journey is mythosMythos. Metaphorical, symbolic, felt truth: the truth of art, poetry and shamanic journeys. Shamanic reality is mythologically true, not literally true, which is why journeys are interpreted, never taken at face value. More about this, metaphorically true, rather than a literal report or a source of facts.
Is shamanic journeying just imagination? #
Not to shamans. “Saying that shamanic journeys are just imagination and subjective runs contrary to, and denies, shamans’ actual experiences.”1 Nobody is asked to take this on trust. The invitation is to journey and find out for yourself, and for those who do, “the more they do it, the more they experience that it goes way beyond any personal imagination.”
The shamanic worlds are not a personal development playground. They are real places, full of real beings.
Do I use my imagination when I journey? #
Yes, and that is fine. The voice that says “you just made that up” is the left brain trying to stay in control, and the answer to it is simple: “It is true that you made it up, but there is no such thing as ‘just’ making things up.”2 Novelists and composers make things up too, and what they make can be true and important.
At the start, a lot of a journey is invented. “In the beginning, when you are new to journeying, a large portion of the journey is indeed made up. Maybe even ninety percent of it.”3 That changes with practice, as people begin “to be able to get a feel for the difference between the real and the imaginary”.4
What is the difference between using imagination and the realms being imaginary? #
Imagination is how we make sense of something real. The two are easily confused. If we are journeying properly, a journey “is not just a figment of our imagination, like a guided visualisation, but an experience of something that exists independent of us.”5 The beings of the shamanic realms are “more than figments of our imagination”, yet they are not real in quite the way a table is real: the shamanic realms are far more fluid than physical reality.6 We use imagination to describe what is really there.
What does it mean that journeys are co-created? #
That two things meet in every journey: “what we experience in the shamanic realms is co-created. It is a mixture of what is there, independent of us, and what we need to bring to it, in order to make sense of it.”7 A journey is something co-created between us and Spirit.8 We have to fashion what is there into imagery, symbols and metaphors we can relate to.
A shaman can be compared with an artist, with one difference. An artist may take licence, but in a journey what matters is faithfulness: what makes a great journey is how true a representation it is, how much it comes from spirit rather than from the shaman’s own ‘artistic licence’.9
Can I journey without any preconceptions? #
No, and trying to is a mistake. “There is absolutely no such thing as going into a journey without any preconceptions.”10 Bringing nothing does not make a journey purer: “if you bring nothing, then nothing will happen. Instead, the point is to be as aware as possible of what you bring”. This is what hollowing-outHollowing-out. The core, lifelong discipline of setting aside the middle-world self, its stories, agendas and preconceptions, so the Guides can work through us. The image: the shaman as hollow bone. Read the full answer and stalking our own stories are for. See What are hollowing-out and stalking our stories?
Are journeys with the Animal, Plant and Stone People co-created? #
Yes, in just the same way. Shamanism is a co-created process: “How you think about things, and the language you use, will shape and affect what it is that you encounter.”11 This is one reason to think of the whole species, Bear rather than ‘a bear’, when meeting an Animal in the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer.
People new to journeying often worry that what they know about an Animal or Plant will simply be played back to them. When students ask how they will know they are not just making it up, the honest answer is: “You won’t.”12 Looking things up after journeys, and finding how fitting they were, builds confidence; after a while people learn to trust the process. See Who are the Animal, Plant and Stone People?
Are the beings I meet just symbols? #
No. Paul Francis’s main Human Lower-World GuideHuman Lower-World Guide. A face put on the human Oversoul: the Ancestors met through an individual form, genuinely other than us, chosen from pre-Fall hunter-gatherer humanity. Related to as a teacher, never a master. Read the full answer is not a figment of his imagination, or a sub-personality, or a part of his psyche, but an autonomous being that he has a close, personal relationship with.13 Reducing everything to symbols humanises everything, turning every being into a projection of our own growth. The beings are real; the form in which we meet them is co-created. Treating them as real beings is part of the respect animism asks of us.
Are shamanic journeys meant to be taken literally? #
No. “It is important to remember that shamanic journeys are mythos not logosLogos. Literal, factual, analytical truth: the truth of facts you can check. One of the two modes of truth, alongside mythos. More about this; mythos meaning metaphorically true, and logos meaning literally true.”14 Like dreams, they are “full of symbolic meanings, not literal truths. You cannot use them to find out ‘facts’.” Put simply, “Journeys are never objectively true. They are mythos, not logos.”15
So the realm is real, and the journey is a co-created account of it. Its deepest meaning is personal: “in Therapeutic Shamanism the real and deepest meaning of the journey is what it means to the person whose journey it is”.16 See How do I unpack and interpret a shamanic journey?
