Wildspeak

Altered states of consciousness throw up a lot of confusion in Western society. People often asking themselves ‘what do they look like? what do the feel like? how do I get one? Okay, was *that* one? I don’t know!’ Many people that I’ve talked to who are learning shamanism often struggle with the concept of journeying, because they don’t know how to identify it, and are so used to consciousness. Worse, they may even be suspicious of it, mistrust it, or just assume that anything that isn’t consciousness must be delusion.

There are many different types of altered states of consciousness (which I’m going to refer to ASCs for convenience), and we slip in and out of them throughout our lives. Dreams are an example of an ASC that we all experience. And another that you may be familiar with is that blank state that you can enter into when life is feeling particularly hard. Ever catch yourself just staring blankly at something? Welcome to a very meditative state of consciousness! If you can learn how to employ that exact feeling during meditation and put a positive cast on it, you’ve learnt how to find a reservoir of inner peace.

Likewise, for those of us who do repetitive motions like cleaning, artwork, manual labour, or anything that is basically the same thing over and over again, you may find that you eventually enter an almost trance-like state. It is ‘trance-like’, because it is a form of trance. In fact it is an excellent preliminary state for journeying.

Journeying is – to me (different shamanists have different viewpoints on this) – the act of taking such a state and then using it in order to visit other realms in the otherworlds. Trance state can also be used to help create powerful visualisations of our internal universe and inner states which can be very transformative and healing.

Even the simple act of withdrawing enough to visualise an internal walk through a ‘garden’ (that looks however you want it to look) is the act of moving away from consciousness, into an ASC.

Studies (referring here to the work done by D. Goleman into the work of the mind) into consciousness and trance are showing that there is not only one or two types of ASC. There are countless types of ASC being employed in different religions worldwide. A shaman’s state of ecstasy may be very different to a Buddhist’s cultivation of deep, inner stillness and peace. And indeed, different shaman’s experiences of ‘ecstasy’ and trance from culture to culture may be perceptions and experiences of differing ASCs.

What is important is that these different states are all aimed to bring about some form of growth, though that growth may be focused in different areas of a person’s soul or psyche. It is also how we differentiate from a spiritual ASC, and an ASC associated with mental illness – like dissociation. The mechanics of dissociation are similar to those of a shamanic trance state, the difference being that one is an involuntary coping mechanism that is often employed unhealthily; the other is a tool used voluntarily (usually, and ideally) to achieve growth and transformation.

It’s easy to get confused about ASCs, so it’s important to be gentle with yourself, and remind yourself that you already know how to achieve a few states of ASC without even really thinking about it! Bringing it under your conscious control is a skill that can be mastered, and then using them to journey is a further skill. But that’s all it is. There is no magic trick to it, and it is something that almost everyone can do (some take longer than others, but there’s nothing wrong with that either).