Working with Your Upper World Teacher

Working with Your Upper World Teacher

If you have learned how to do a shamanic journey, with journeys to the Upper World to meet with your Master / Teacher / Guide, here are some steps that I would recommend you follow up on.

1)   Find images, photographs, artwork or objects, and sound recordings that remind you of your Upper World experiences.  These reminders can be very abstract such as a shimmering of color, or very concrete such as a shell or a crystal or rock.  You can also create an artwork that reminds you of what you saw and felt.  These reminders can be photographs that reflect a quality of light, a sensation or mood, or recordings of sounds that remind you of experiences in the Upper World.  The reminders can also be specific scents.

Scents serve as powerful reminders for me.  A certain shampoo reminds me of staying at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge in Orlando, Florida, for example.  When I use it, the scent can instantly transport me to that environment where animals from the African savannah roam freely as I watch from lookouts.  Some scents that remind me of Upper World journeys are whiffs of perfectly ripe mangos and delicate roses in full bloom.  When I smell these scents, I can feel my energy shift, and I am reminded of experiences that I have had in the Upper World.

 

2)   Find images, photographs, artwork, objects and sounds that remind you of your Master / Teacher / Guide (if you have several, then a reminder for each of them).  Even when your Teacher is an indescribable Being of Light, you can draw or think of words that evoke that presence, or find an object that reminds you of that extraordinary energy.

 

3)    Keep that energy with you, of your Upper World Experiences and that of your Master/ Teacher/ Guide (if you have several then of each of them) – in your car, or, if the representations are small enough, you can keep them in your wallet or your back pocket.  Feel that energy in the present moment.  Also, if there is an experience in your life that reminds you of that energy, allow yourself to pursue that experience.

My first Master / Teacher / Guide emanates an energy that reminds me of walking slowly through the white foam created by waves on the beach on a summer day.  Translating that sensation into words, I would say that his energy is warm and exquisitely gentle, yet permeating, just as the salt water permeates the top layer of roughened skin on my feet and softens it.  When I have the opportunity to walk on the beach in summer, I walk in zig-zags from one foam clump to another, putting my feet slowly into that foam, and feeling that sensation. In doing so, I reconnect with his extraordinary energy.  I then mentally express my gratitude for his teaching me to experience this delicious energy.  This practice serves to remind me that I can manifest that warm and exquisitely gentle energy in our face-paced world-it only takes a moment’s awareness on my part.

 

4)   Practice Journeying to the Upper World to meet with your Master / Teacher / Guide.  Ask questions, and then hear/ observe/ feel the answers.  Experience the energies and teachings, and bring these with you into your everyday reality.  And then observe how your experience of everyday issues shift, when you remember the teachings.

 

For those who have not learned how to journey to the Upper World, you can still follow the first three steps listed above with those Teachers that you are drawn to.

For those interested in learning how to do a shamanic journey, I recommend the books and recordings found here.

For further information about shamanism, I recommend Sandra Ingerman and The Foundation for Shamanic Studies.