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and beginning a three-year intensive in 1998, it became clear that Bob Monroe’s Interstate and
Focus levels did not match the shamanic territories of the Upper World, Middle World, and
Lower World. Since shamanic work is founded on the spirits being the teachers (the trainers
only help you get to the right place/dimension for the teaching to occur), I journeyed to ask how
(or if) to blend the programs. Spirit recommended an amalgam: before leaving ordinary reality
to travel to any of the three shamanic domains of nonordinary reality, I could begin to shift my
consciousness by moving to Focus 10 and then on to Focus 12. The soul retrieval training did
not require me to start in any particular one of the three nonordinary Worlds, so before doing a
soul retrieval, I found that going to Focus 15 with my purpose strongly in mind, and being met
there in the Void by a Helping Spirit, worked quite well.
Healing
The shaman sees three major causes of illness. The first is loss of power; clues pointing to this
diagnosis might be chronic types of problems such as recurrent upper respiratory infections,
chronic depression, chronic misfortune. The shaman’s role in treating this form of illness would
be to journey to nonordinary reality and ask his helping spirits to recover a lost Power Animal,
and to bring it back to the patient in ordinary reality. A second major cause of illness is spiritual
intrusion; clues to this diagnosis would be a more localized problem such as ulcer, localized
pain, cancer. To address this problem, the shaman’s role would be to remove the intrusion
from the patient’s body and neutralize it. It is worthy of note that the shaman does not see the
intrusion as evil but rather as misplaced energy, which has entered through an opening or
vulnerability in the patient’s own power or vitality. The vulnerability is felt to originate from
negative thought-forms generated by the patient, especially when the emotions are blocked. A
third major cause of illness is soul loss; here “soul” is considered to be one’s essence, life
force, or vitality. When a person suffers an emotional or physical trauma, a part of their soul
disconnects or splits off in order to survive the pain. It goes into nonordinary reality to wait until
it is brought back. Sometimes it returns on its own; more often, not. Symptoms of soul loss
might include dissociative disorders, addictions, post-traumatic stress disorder, and unresolved
grief. Patients often describe this circumstance by saying, “I’ve never been the same since . . .”
The shaman will journey to find help in locating the missing soul part and bring it back if it is
willing. 6
Psychopomp Work
The shaman may also escort the souls of the dead beyond the Middle World if they are
trapped there. In the first case in this paper, I think I inadvertently called back the soul of my
patient who had suicided; this event occurred spontaneously before I had received any
shamanic training. Since much of my work is in counseling people facing life-threatening
illness such as HIV disease or cancer, it is very gratifying to be able to offer assistance to help
them experience a sense of completion of this life and a sense of moving beyond. Some of my
patients and their families have benefited from TMI’s Going Home® series, and I have done
TMI’s Lifeline work both awake and in the dreamtime. Additionally, in an ongoing HIV group I
facilitated for several years, I taught the participants to journey to drumming, and then invited
them to ask to be shown the path they would take at the time of their death (an experience I
had had in my own shamanic training). Seven of the eight had very positive and deeply felt
experiences (the eighth one reported pleasant relaxation). Each was different: one reported
geometric figures in multiple spatial alignments; another a pastoral scene; another mostly light
and deep emotion. As important as the reassurance they felt was receiving specific information
that was helpful for conducting their present lives. A colleague in the shamanic training found a
council of her ancestors on one of her journeys. The council asked her to do psychopomp work
for some of them. As she completed their requests, she was surprised and moved to find
relationships within her present-day family changing and healing.
Divination
In gathering information for self or others, the shaman constantly looks for signs of the sacred
domain at work in daily life:
1. Synchronicities. This is the phenomenon of meaningful coincidences. I remember driving
on an interstate interchange while trying to decide whether to bring up the spiritual dimension
in a support group I was starting that evening. At that moment, a large hawk flew right to my
windshield, spread its huge wings at me, and veered off into the middle of dense traffic. I took
it as a sign to “pay attention” and connected the two—eagles and hawks for me represent spirit
messengers as they fly between the worlds. “I’ll talk about it!!” I said to its disappearing back.
In fact, I have come to assume that everything that happens to me may have an important
message, particularly the “bad” things. If multiple roadblocks keep coming up as I try to push
my will through on a pet project, I am learning to read the larger message. Paradoxically, that
course of action keeps me more connected to the Larger Order of Things rather than pushing
me away.
2. Casting and/or reading patterns. Using runes, stones, or patterns on rocks, and walking
through nature “seeing” what you notice while holding an important question in mind are all
associative ways to open to deeper information.
3. Journeying. Asking spirit helpers directly in non-ordinary reality is also a common form of
gathering information. TMI’s Guidelines training invites similar forms of divination as in
numbers 2 and 3.
4. Tracking dreams. In many cultures the dream state is considered an active part of one’s
life. People can learn to distinguish between garden-variety dreams and Dreams—the latter
being visitations from Spirit as the dreamer engages nonlocal Mind. Dreams can bring
information, precognition, and herald illness or healing before they manifest in the physical. A
shaman would consider dreaming one way to enter non-ordinary reality, though not
necessarily with the same intent and control as entering it from a conscious, waking state. In
Conscious Dreaming: A Spiritual Path for Everyday Life,7 Richard Moss offers an excellent set
of tools for working with this interface, particularly in journeying back into a previous dream
which one might have had, to explore its message further. TMI has recently released Lucid
Dreaming to train one for increased mindfulness in the dreamtime.
Shamanic Counseling:
Michael Harner has adapted shamanic techniques to Western and psychotherapeutic settings
to develop “shamanic counseling,” in which a counselor teaches the patient how to journey to
nonordinary reality and facilitates the process, so that the patient gets his own answers
directly. I have found this method particularly helpful with my patients, and use taped or live
drumming as well as TMI’s Metamusic® tries (the latter with simple guided imagery and
process comments) to do this. After several sessions, most people can continue to do it on
their own.
CASE 3.
One patient, C., whose son had been killed in an accident three months before, had been
hospitalized for depression and attempted suicide after his death, and had been unable to go
back to work. At an initial consultation meeting, she reported feeling her son around her at
times, and longing to open to him, but being afraid she “wouldn’t want to come back.” I assured
her I could get her back if she wanted to experience the contact more deeply. At our next
meeting, I used Metamusic Inner Journey, with suggestions to relax, to open, and to allow
herself to experience any energies or wisdom that wished to make contact for her healing or
learning. Shortly after she relaxed into the music in a recliner, her body gave a small jolt, her
face flushed, and tears began coursing down from under her blindfold. After a few minutes I
invited her to return to ordinary reality. She was radiant as she took the blindfold off, and said,
“He’s changed so much! He’s fine, and so much wiser!” She went back to work the next week,
and asked to learn how to do this for herself: “I know there must be some reason why I’m still
here, and I want to find out.”
It is powerful, and most appropriate, to help a person open the door to “higher purpose” or
“meaning of life” issues related to their illness, and to invite their own creativity and
spontaneous images into the healing process. Shamanic methods and Hemi-Sync excel at
opening doors.
At this point I feel myself and my work shifting irreversibly. I’m clearly “not in Kansas anymore.”
Ordinary and non-ordinary reality are merging, blending, and I am having many more
experiences that clearly point to All as One. Working and healing in one domain affects all the
others: it is just as valid if it occurs in the dreamscape, or in the journey, or in nonordinary
reality-they are all resonant forms of one another: hence, my deep knowledge that my own
work and service in the world needs to keep changing to accommodate this new way of
knowing.
From the shamanic perspective, we are surrounded by compassionate spirits who come to this
Middle World—Earth—and use the shaman as an ally to change the events of suffering and
illness present here. The shaman uses altered states of consciousness to make a connection
and allows the power and compassion from Spirit to flow through him. However, I do not
believe one has to have formal shamanic training in order to do soul-level work with a patient. I
know that well-done psychotherapy has brought back many a lost soul part, as the therapist
holds the safe and sacred space for the fragmented self to come together. I also know many
clinicians who give great credence to their hunches and intuitions, not needing to know
whether they come from the “right brain” or from the nonlocal Mind. What would it mean for
health-care training and practice to take this a step further, beyond the clinician’s and the
patient’s individual egos and five senses, to open together to guidance from another dimension
that can be far wiser than either of them alone? I look forward to the time when this becomes a
“normal” perspective in health care.
References
1. S. Ingerman, Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self (San Francisco: Harper, 1991).
2. L. Dossey, Recovering the Soul: A Scientific and Spiritual Search (New York: Bantam,
1989).
3. D. Benor, “Survey of Spiritual Healing Research,” Complementary Medical Research, 4:1
(September 1990).
4. M. Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton Univ.
Press, 1964).
5. M. Harner, The Way of the Shaman (San Francisco: Harper, 1980).
6. S. Ingerman, op.cit.
7. R. Moss, Conscious Dreaming: A Spiritual Path for Everyday Life (New York: Crown Trade
Paperbacks, 1996).
Additional Resources
Bosnak, R. Tracks in the Wilderness of Dreaming: Exploring Interior Landscape Through
Practical Dreamwork. New York: Dell, 1997. A guide to exploring dream environments to a
destination “far beyond our conscious selves.”
Foundation for Shamanic Studies Website (www.shamanism.org). More information on
Michael Harner’s training programs and research.
Hillman, J. Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harperperennial Library, 1992. A seminal text
on the imaginal realm and its power to heal and transform.
Lawlis, G. F., and L. Dossey. Transpersonal Medicine: The New Approach to Healing Body-
Mind-Spirit. Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1996. A good starting place for the clinician,
including rituals, imagery, and co-consciousness transformation.
Hemi-Sync® is a registered trademark of Interstate Industries, Inc.
© 2000 by The Monroe Institute