For really real jouneying,

My body aches, it aches. I cant decide if it was getting out of bed last night to use the bathroom that effed my back, or the amount of journeying I did yesterday. My whole left body is all out of wack.

I went to a class yesterday hosted by Christina Pratt, it was on the basics of shamanic journeying. I have been wanting a basic primer into going into the otherworld. I mostly wanted to know if I was even able to do it. I also wanted to do it under the experience of someone, experienced in doing it! It was also a response to a prayer that was answered in less than 24 hours. There was a sacrifice involved. I had to give up buying (yes, I am a gamer nerd I will admit it) SWTOR and canceled my pre-order to pay for the class. Honestly, I could have afforded both, but MMO's are something I really have to check myself on, they can consume me. As much as I don't want to admit it, I have been told to give up hardcore gaming up. So I have.

She covered the world tree, moving up and down it; a concept that I was already familiar with. Intention, how to craft questions, spirit etiquette, etc. Our goal was to find our helping spirits.

I was really nervous, and really shy. Hah! I am a pretty serious hermit, so getting out like this was a little awkward for me.

She started drumming. I already knew of which tree would be my door, and I asked it (an Alder I know of) to allow me to go to the lower world. And I sank, I swam through dirt and rubble and was plopped out into a tunnel, the very back end of a dirt tunnel. There were roots, water on the floor and it smelled like deep rich earth, I was naked and covered in muck. I had been there before! I just never went outside of the tunnel. The doorway to the "outside" was surrounded by brambles and weeds. I stepped out of it, it was twilight and the sky had a sort of green cast to it.

It would take me ages to explain all that happened. We did several journeys that day. There was a snake, a horse, an arrogant bird, another animal that I feel a lot of pressure not to talk about or even mention his name. There was also, One Eye.

Personally, when I watched Valhalla Rising I saw One Eye as very Odin-esque. I was really curious about this, because I didn't know if this was me putting him in the journey, or if it was some sort of spirit using this image and archetype I have in my head to represent something. He was quite ambivalent to my presence. He drew me a sigil in the fire ash that we were near. Like in the movie, he was mute and did not speak. No one spoke to me in the lower world, they all communicated to me via emotions and feeling. Throughout my entire visit I was being told to LISTEN.

Each time we journeyed I found getting to the otherworld easy. It almost made me a bit skeptical, because it came so naturally. But I had the distinct feeling that I was in fact, in two places at once. After we would get back I would be groggy and a bit blurry eyed. I think I may have built up a bit of a stigma around it, or my own personal ideas of what it would actually be like or what it should be like made it harder for me in the past. Or, had I been doing it this whole time and didn't even know it!? I'm still processing the whole thing.

The upperworld was nutty, but I got there. We actually paired up with other people in our group and did a journey on behalf of our partner. That was so fucking cool! My partner and I exchanged our questions and went off. He came back to tell me why I always have the ocean in my dreams, and I told him why he hasn't had the motivation to paint. We had a good laugh because while I was traveling I kept hearing this rich southern mans voice saying, "that boy got cobwebs!" So when I came back, I had to put on my southern draw and tell him, "boy you got cobwebs!" It was good fun. It was also good to talk to people about the crazy shit I experience without them thinking I'm insane.

Now, I'm off to hobble around the house and get some work done. There is a lot to process still, but I am very glad that I am doing now, and not just thinking about it.