“Being not doing” means spending time in a journey without filling it with tasks and things to achieve. In Therapeutic Shamanism, simply being with GuidesGuides. The Lower-World and Upper-World beings a practitioner works with and learns from, of whom the Power Animal is the first and foremost. True Guides are ethical to their core; the shaman’s power comes from the depth of these bonds, not from the shaman. More about this, or experiencing being Plant or Stone, can be relaxing and pleasurable, but also healing. The purpose of wide-focus journeying is to try and loosen and soften the narrow sense of being one separate individual.
What does “being not doing” mean? #
Journeys often involve things to do, healing to seek and experiences to explore, and there is nothing wrong with this. There is a lot to learn and heal, and restlessness is a very human, and very animal, way of being.
But Plant and Stone live differently. Compared with them, animals are busy creatures. To experience what it is truly like to be Plant or Stone, people first need to slow down, stop being driven by lists of things to do, and just ‘be’.
Time can also simply be spent with Human Lower-World GuidesHuman 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. Students new to shamanism often seem to feel it is very serious, and that they should be getting on with doing things. Paul Francis has spent the whole of a journey doing nothing around a small campfire with his Human Guides, and found it pleasurable and relaxing as well as healing. Sometimes there are things to be done; sometimes doing nothing is where the healing is to be had. “There are times to be doing things, and sometimes there are times to just be.”1
What happened in the “Be Kelp” journey? #
Paul went into this journey with some particular ancestral and family issues to address, and a long shopping list of things he wanted to do. He arrived 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 under the sea, and his Human Guide said, “Be Kelp”. He became a frond in a kelp forest, but after a few minutes asked how this was helping with the ancestral issues. The answer was the same.
After questioning the instruction again, he surrendered to it. In his words: “Rooted in the ocean floor, swaying in the gentle currents and tides, and doing nothing. I spent the whole journey doing that.”
“When I came out of it, I felt transformed. I felt profoundly relaxed and calm.” Despite very little happening in terms of doing, he describes it as one of the most impactful, vivid and memorable journeys he had ever done, with a huge effect on his life and learning.2
How does wide focus differ from narrow focus? #
Think of a torch with an adjustable beam. At one setting, the light is narrow, tight and intense. At another it becomes wider, softer and more diffuse.
“As modern-day humans, we spend most of our lives with our awareness in a very narrow and tight focus.” This awareness is focused on individuality and separateness. Even shapeshiftingShapeshifting. Becoming another being within a journey, fully enough to know it from the inside: one of the two routes to grokking, a transformation practice, and a direct experience of interconnection. Read the full answer can keep that pattern: first being Panther, then being Tree, with each experienced as one separate thing.
The purpose of expansion journeys is to try and loosen and soften this narrow focus and sense of individuality and separation. For the different senses through which journeys can be experienced, see What state of consciousness is used in journeying, and do journeys have to be visual?3
What does experiencing a whole place mean? #
Paul’s published example begins in a small valley with pine trees, a stream and a lake. His Guides told him to dive into the lake. Instead of becoming one of its creatures, he experienced becoming the water, then the whole lake and everything in it.
The lake was also part of the groundwater. His awareness expanded to include the water in the valley, drawn into plants, passing into animals as they ate plants and each other, and evaporating into the air. “I was not experiencing things in the valley, one single narrow-focus and separate experience after another. I became the valley itself.”
When he tried again in the next journey, it was much harder. With practice, he found he could soften the sense of separateness and experience being a whole place, such as Valley, Mountain or Ocean. He describes awareness spreading out in all directions, rather than moving between individual things within the place.4
Is expansion easy for a beginner? #
“Compared to the practices that we have been looking at so far, expansion can be a trickier practice to master, and if you are relatively new to this work then you may want to put this one off until you have more experience of journeying.”
Someone who practises mindfulness-based meditation “might find expansion journeys not too difficult”. Practice softens the tendency to put a single awareness into one thing at a time.
The published aim is to go to the Lower-World to try and become the whole of a place by softening and widening awareness. Its instruction distinguishes becoming the whole landscape from becoming a thing within it. 5
Why keep journeys simple and uncluttered? #
Journeys filled with a succession of Plants, Stones and elaborate mixtures are best avoided. One example moves from Oak to Gorilla, powdered Quartz, a tea of several plants, and a paste involving Red Ochre and Seawater. This treats the PeoplesThe Peoples. The Animal People, Plant People, Standing People (the Trees) and Stone People: our elder kin, of whom the Human People are the youngest and least wise. A family, not a hierarchy. Read the full answer as ingredients in a spell, rather than as sentient, wise teachers.
“It is more Harry Potter than shamanism.” The emphasis is on an unhurried experience in which each being has time to work its medicine, and the journeyer really experiences what is happening and how it feels. In this way, people will learn the most about its healing medicine.6
How much pressure should there be to complete practices? #
None. The list of Lower-World experiences is explicitly not a way to pressure oneself. Some may be one-off journeys, whilst others need repetition and may become regular parts of practice. Some happen spontaneously and others can be deliberately sought.
It may take years to experience everything on the list, and that is absolutely fine. The list offers suggestions for times when someone wants to journey but has no particular idea what to explore. Its practices do not have to be done in a particular order.7
