Are you overcomplicating astral travel?

Here’s the thing: By far the most common question I get from people is “how do I astral?” Which is, well, a big question. It begs other questions, like:

>Why do you want to travel

>WHERE do you want to travel

>Do you have jobs you need to do over there or are you gonna hang out?

etc etc

But here’s the thing: Often people decide to travel, and then they get stuck. They try a method they maybe heard about once, and it doesn’t work, so maybe they research another method. Maybe they pick up a book on the topic, maybe the book tells them “you’ll know you’re astral traveling when you can rise out of your body and see it on your bed.”

BOOM. Imma stop you for a minute.

There it is. This is the moment the Gold Standard™ for the new person gets set in stone. The mind now says “If I’m not hovering above my body with full range of vision, I’m not Traveling, with a capital T.”

So now we have this goal. The person may feel a little more confident because there is a road map in front of them, and that map may have steps, often detailed by a book author, or maybe even a blogger here on tumblr. Maybe the person tries the steps, and fails. Maybe it takes months. Maybe it takes years, but eventually, maybe the person gets frustrated, and they give up.

"I just can’t travel", they say, truly discouraged, or "I’m just not meant for this, if I was, I would have been hovering outside my body by now." They maybe pack up the books and leave it be.

Perhaps you see people on tumblr or blogs that talk about full blown OBE or extreme situations, and then you internalize THEIR gold standard, and then you fail to achieve the standard. Same situation applies.

I'm going to stop you right here. What happened?

1. Person decided they wanted to travel
2. Person researched or was told what “authentic” travel looks like
3. Person attempted to reach the “authentic” standard
4. Person failed, and then
5. Assumed they were not meant to travel, due to their failure to reach “Authentic Travel”.

BUT

Here’s the secret, friends:

1. There is no one form of “authentic” astral travel. You will find this is an epidemic with older books on the astral, when astral “travel” or astral living was equated on a wide scale with your classic OBE, or Out Of Body Experience. So in reality, what many people are trying to achieve, when they want to travel, is an OBE. Based on what books/people tell them. But that is FAR from the only way to astral—in my case, for example, I’ve never achieved full OBE—and not for lack of years of trying. (Because I thought that was How One Astral Traveled)

1-A. THERE ARE MANY FORMS OF ASTRALING BESIDES “TRAVEL”. I don’t travel because I lead an astral double-life—I “tune in”. An OBE is wrong for my circumstances, and if I would have learned that sooner, it would have helped me a lot. There are people that astral-trip only in dreams! People that astral-trip only while DAYDREAMING! People that mentally trip but never leave awareness of their body, people who can’t “see” anything there but hear everything perfectly, people who can only see the astral in black and white, people without a “form” or a body, people with only a bizarre pinprick field of vision! HONESTLY IT’S ENDLESS. Learn your style!

2. Because there is no one form of “authentic” astraling—there is no ONE WAY to achieve the travel! If you fail at going OBE, there may be a perfectly good reason you aren’t suited to that route! The failure here also lies on authors and books that imply there IS one way of authentic travel, and therefore, the user is set up for a failure situation a lot of the time. (And for example, OBE LEAVES your body open for attack or walk-ins in a lot of cases—did you ever think this was your natural energy defense system preventing you from leaving yourself a shell?)

3. Your way of travel is probably NOT going to match someone else’s, so you absolutely need to drop the gold standard now. I am NOT telling you to give up on discernment, because that will keep you alive when you reach the astral. I am telling you that if you have lofty expectations of what the astral is going to be like for you based on someone you’ve read (including me!) you need to drop it before you go, because it’s likely to mess you up. I have listened to hundreds of different astral experiences, and I co-run the astral atlas—it’s all remarkably different for each individual based on your needs and jobs.

4. Your ideas of the astral are probably going to get blown out of the water when you get there anyway. Know this. Expect it. It will constantly surprise you and remind you that this isn’t In Your Head, and in doing so it will shatter your ideas of what it is, over and over again. 

5. Stop complicating things. If I had a nickel for every time person that came to me and asked why they can’t astral, and I gave them the idea of “Well, did you try opening a door?” and then the look of revelation descended, I’d be rich. This is not a blame on you, because I don’t blame you for this over-complication thing. We’re humans, we like to complicate everything, it makes us happy and whatnot. It makes me almost tremendously happy to shroud things in pomp and circumstance. But seriously—have you tried opening a door? Like. Visualize a door, and then open it, and then walk through. That’s how I first got to the astral.

After weeks of trying and doing all this complex strategizing, eventually I was told to visualize a door, and walk through. And then I was there.

I’m not saying it’s always easy to get to the astral. It has ways of keeping you out (or in) inside mental spaces or white rooms until you’re ready to be out on your own. This is where discernment and patience come in. But I AM saying if you find yourself failing over and over again at this thing, ask: Is it because you have an unconscious Gold Standard? Analyze why. And then, let it go. Because it’s not going to help you, it’s just going to make you anxious and perpetuate the failure cycle, trust me. And then ask: Am I overcomplicating my approach/expectations because of my gold standard? Analyze that, let it go.

Then, try an amazingly simple thing like opening a door, and stop cutting yourself off at the pass, and just let it happen.

You might be surprised at the results.

(This post is aimed at people who a) WANT to astral and b) have a hard time doing so for unknown reasons. It is not suggesting everyone should astral if they don’t want to or have no interest, if that wasn’t self-evident.)

(Gratuitious long distance reiki session images)

(Current set up for clients!)

(Reiki points I use in sends circa last year)

(Reiki send for a recent dead person in absentia)

(Reiki jar from last January's yearly reiki send for peace)

Shadow Work III: Timing

Part 3 in the Shadow Work series: Timing and Shadow Work.

{Note there is where we're getting into the nitty gritty opinions section, so disclaimer: This is my opinion and my version of shadow work and you are allowed/encouraged to disagree and change this to suit yourself and your needs! Shadow Work is not a monolith, and neither is Paganism}

(Note in this post I am talking mostly about Emergency work/Complex Work, as I have the most experience with that type. The Timing for self work can be entirely different, though much of this applies to both)

You might wonder why I'm dragging out the nuts and bolts decision making process for shadow work, as opposed to methods, and Woo, and the Juicy Parts. 

Partly it's because many don't think there IS a decision making process that goes into highly emotional work (as if those two things can't coexist), and it's partly because many haven't experimented with, or examined, their limits, and the decision making process involves you looking at, and accepting, those limits and their validity. So--onward, to Timing!

Life is largely a huge game of timing. You can apply for hundreds of jobs, but timing is what often gets you the one. Right place, right time. Sales at the store are limited. Most people plan their families around other events in their lives/their stiaution. Timing is half luck and half planning, if you ask me. It's how you 'randomly felt like going to the grocery store at 8 AM on a Saturday, and you ran your cart into that random person because you were super freaking tired and they ended up being your spouse and what a weird story, right?' Seriously.

Timing is an undercurrent in everything. It's more acceptable to ask someone to date you as a stranger than to marry you. It's more expected to wear shorts in the heat than in negative temperatures. It's more appropriate to say "I'm sorry" than "Congratulations" at a funeral. It requires some situational-reading, y'see, and the same for the Work.

To say this another way, there is a such thing as taking Shadow Work upon yourself at the wrong time, and the wrong place, because you are at your limits emotionally and physically at that time. There is a situation that involves trying to take the Work on to get around the natural emotional grieving process or speed it up, when in reality your needs dictate you need to let that part happen first. There IS an order to this vague thing we call Shadow Work, and it's important to consider not just "when", but "IF" you should do it for yourself at this current time.

Basically, you need to not be at your breaking point to attempt shadow work in a safe environment. It's not meant to force you into a breakdown when you're on the verge of completely losing it. It's meant to help you bury things that are ready to go. In my experience, if you try and speed the grieving process this way or force yourself into a breakdown, the shadow work often "fails" in some way or another. You can't get through it or it doesn't "take". I say this because MANY TIMES I have thought my grieving was over and I was set to process the tail end, and only in the middle of working when I broke down sobbing and clawing my face (in the negative sense--there is a positive release like this too, in terms of reaction) and breaking in half I realized I wasn't actually over it, and I needed to process fresh things first, then try again later.

I have since learned the timing better, and know to wait until my body tells me it's time.

In short, Shadow Work isn't a tourniquet to stop the blood from a fresh wound. It's the cast or the bandage you put on the wound after it's bled itself out and most of it has been stymied. 

We all know everyone processes life altering events differently. For some, the grieving process is a lot longer than others. I know that I take a very very long time to process and get over huge events, and you can thank my earth-sign moon for that, because we have a hard time with drastic and sudden change, him and I.

When I was just starting out I thought I had to do shadow work consistently, like on a monthly basis, but it turns out that was far too soon for what I was working on. I was almost trying to do shadow work while the trauma (in this case abuse) was still happening, so what occured? I would do the work, and walk right the fuck back into the situation I was shadow-working on and revert immediately. It was honestly not a good idea. It took a solid 2 years after getting out of that situation for me to do the PROPER shadow work for it, and bury it/move on.

You don't bury somebody in the process of dying, you wait respectfully for them to take their time to pass, and then you start the rites. In this way you could say shadow work is very linked to death working. You take the time for yourself to heal enough to do basic life functions, and then you can begin to think about the work.

Let me rephrase that--

Directly after a traumatic event, seriously, don't even think about the work. It shouldn't be a priority. Surviving is your priority. Kick and scream and cry and handle the immediate fallout however you, as a human, like to do those things. Don't think about the work for a while. Let the event simmer and stew for a solid few weeks, at least. After the immediate shock period ends, you can test your limits. Shadow Work involves calling up events in gory detail and reliving them, then dealing with that final fallout, but if you're stuck in a period of crying 4 times a day because you can't HELP reliving them already--don't even think about the Work. Shelve it for another few weeks. Do not feel ashamed about doing this: As I said shadow work is a decision. It is your decision when and IF you take it on. You don't have somebody to please here; this is purely for your own well being. Forcing yourself to relive things you can't think about without breaking down completely at the current time isn't shadow work, it's mental torture. (PLEASE don't do that, seriously.)

The ideal time to do Emergency-type shadow work for an event is on average for me a few months to a year after the event. By that time everything is good and simmered for me and most of my depressive anger has gone out of me; rationalizations in their place. At this point I have analyzed and analyzed the situation multiple times, and it has largely exited my consciousness, because I did those mental work-throughs. This is very important. I often say shadow work is successful when you forget that you did it. The ideal time for it is when the trauma just comes back to bite you at random times, but you can handle those times without much emotion or upheaval in your day, and you want some help to handle the last bits of that thing, because you recognize it has no real positive impact anymore on your life. You have to be in a strong enough and safe enough place to survive reliving those events and letting them go, and that takes no small amount of courage and preparedness.

It's not a forgetting process; more of an accepting and cutting one.

---

This brings me to my final, more practical, point about timing.

Assuming you recognize you have an issue to work on and want to begin the work, I suggest choosing a time when you can be alone in your house or find somewhere you won't be interrupted. If that's when you go to bed because it's all you have, that can work out.

I prefer an empty house in case I get really deep into the work, because it does create almost a trance state or an ecstatic state, and in that state you might thrash or cry or vocalize and not necessary be worrying about someone else coming to ask if you're okay.

Note you can have somebody with you if you prefer, and you trust that person. The thing is, they have to be prepared to see you go into what might look like from the outside a semi-violent fit of emotion, and NOT step in unless asked. The expressive, ugly part that makes us uncomfortable is supremely important, and it's not good to quell it. Part of the shadow work is giving yourself the safe space to ugly cry and claw the carpet and chant profanities and not be composed and perfect and Okay.

Make sure you're in a safe spot, whatever that means to you, and feel free to call deities or guides to aid you. Make it a ritual, if you prefer. Make it something to celebrate, if that works for you. The Work is positive, even if it is difficult and painful, and you have the right to celebrate having the courage to begin.

OTHER POSTS IN THE SHADOW WORK SERIES:

• Part I: A Series of Little Deaths
• Part II: Types

Shadow Work II: Types

Shadow Work is the monolithic term that I and other uses for this kind of thing, but what it is and what are the types of work?

To define the term, to me Shadow Work means facing the dark parts of my life on purpose, instead of burying and sweeping them under the rug. It is a conscious and necessary process in which I choose to face these things on a regular basis. This process in turn keeps me healthier, more stable, and more prepared to handle trauma and emotional times.

(For the hows and practical applications, you'll have to wait until part IV)

Within this idea of Shadow Work, there are many approaches, and this often depends on WHY you're doing the Work.

I have divided it into:

• Immediate or Emergency Shadow Work

This is what I consider shadow work in direct result of a traumatic or otherwise life-changing event. Doing Work to assist or aid with a recent death, a break-up, past abuse, assault, disease, divorce, and things of that nature. This is the most common type that I will do.

Additionally in my experience, this type of traumatic experience has the most likelihood of leaving the individual with fall-out that shadow work alone won't fix. This includes the obvious psychological trauma (which counseling can aid) but also the metaphysical fall out of soul-piece loss and cords and connections. It is common to have a single event cause a series of issues that need to be approached from several angles.

             + Assisted Shadow Work

             I put this under the first heading because it is possible to have aid from the Spirit worlds for your work, and indeed it might constitute a LARGE part of the work you do with a particular spirit. Granted you can be assisted in any case of Work, not just a trauma.

            Note the roles can be reversed. If a SPIRIT needs help with ITS traumas or its work, the individual can be brought on to bear witness and act as a support or aid system to the spirit. This sometimes occurs in people who work with spirits that need to cross; shadow work is often the last leg of the journey.

• Self-Focused Shadow Work

         This is work that is undertaken as a direct result of a desire to change or focus on a particular quality of your own personality that you personally do not like. If you have deep seated anger issues, or anxiety, or problems trusting others, that's what this is for. It is usually long-term and can have many facets and layers, as issues rarely develop in a vacuum.

         For instance, my work on my self has been mainly in the area of my anxiety. So I sat down semi-regularly with myself to work on that. Additionally, I find this type of shadow work, the process of changing old habits and patterns, needs to be attempted on the fly to combat things often and repeatedly, versus emergency shadow work, which is in some ways FEELINGS ALL AT ONCE and becomes vastly better after.

            +Preventative and regular Shadow Work

         You can, in fact, do preventative shadow work. This is more like a check-in you do every so often to see how things are. You might not think there's anything bothering you anymore, but it's worth it to sit down, be silent, and really look very deeply into the well just to see. It's not a bad thing to clear the crap before it becomes bad.

• Complex Shadow Work {Multi-Type}

         This is my name for work that encompasses emergency and self-focused at once, because let's face it, a lot of the time they are inseparable  So this just means yes, you can be working on SEVERAL issues at once, in the same work.

• Multi-Lifetime Work

        This type is specifically referencing old, OLD issues you have left over from past astral lives or what-have-you. In many situations issues build and stay with us and they may not surface until several lifetimes later. In this life I did a ton of shadow work that centered in a life hundreds of years ago, in a different time, because it became apparent it was still bothering me. When you begin digging into your issues on purpose, you uncover a lot of shit. Some of it is ooooollllddd. Don't be surprised when this happens.

Note these are my definitions after doing this for a while, and you may have more, or less.

The reason I mention types is because in the next installment, which is on timing, I will be covering the fact that your timing largely depends on your issue, and it's very important to be mindful of why.

In the process of Shadow Work, often once you pull the plug on the bathtub of feelings, it doesn't stop. You will work with one issue, and solve it, and in solving that issue you unlock another you completely repressed, and another, and so on. This is why any type of Work should not be undertaken lightly, or at the wrong time.

More on this in part III!


OTHER POSTS IN THE SHADOW WORK SERIES:

• Part I: A Series of Little Deaths

Shadow Work, I: A Series of Little Deaths

I know I have talked about shadow work before (here) but I have done so much of it and learned so much FROM it in recent months, I feel a series has become necessary, and needed. Shadow work, in my sight, also remains misunderstood in the greater woo-woo community.

So I give you part 1 of the Shadow Work posts: A Series of Little Deaths.

This post is about the philosophy of shadow work.

What I have learned in the past few years of my life, which is when I began paying attention and I "woke up" to the astral, is Life seems to be nothing but a series of little Deaths.

They are little as in small, so many of us don't notice. You keep on chugging through the worst of everything, and there are ups and downs, but rarely do you look backwards and contemplate the series of graves you're leaving behind on your path of chugging forward.

It happens when you love and lose and it really affected you and you can't eat for a month. It happens when you lose someone to death that you really cared about. It happens when you lose a pet, or a family member to something other than death. It might happen when you have a health scare, and nothing actually happens. It might happen when you missed hitting that kid at the intersection by millimeters, because you weren't paying attention. It may even happen when you wake up and somehow you can't remember where you end and someone else begins, and it's terrifying.

We are dying all the time, and the deaths are not the same, nor the same intensity, for everybody. It's pretty much always painful, even when it's sorely needed. You KNEW you had to end that relationship, but it hurt anyway. You KNEW your family member was losing a fight with their health, but it hurt to let go all the same. It's easier to buck up and keep moving forward and get over it than it is to sit with the self you're in the process of burying and hug it and let it cry.

We're told it's bad to wallow for a long time in feelings or depression or normal human reactions to loss. 

This is worse in situations that are considered 'commonplace' or like 'regular life things'. We're told to get over it, it's not a big deal, it was just a break-up, it was just a move, it was just a job loss, just a best friend that hurt you deeply, not like it was a REAL event. Not like somebody died, or something.

Somebody did. YOU did. But maybe it wasn't visible to them.

"Small" things can affect us greatly. And if you acknowledge that you have the right to feel like you're dying because of an "insignificant" life event, because it was significant to YOU, then you are on the right track.

That's what shadow work is for.

It's terrifying to wake up and realize you've lost pieces of yourself. There are stages of grief, they say, but they don't tell you the last stage is dying yourself. Acceptance, they say. Acceptance often means admitting you will never be the person you were before, again. 

You'll be similar, yeah. Still "you" at the core. But something is gone, now, that wasn't gone before, and you will heal and you will come out stronger, but not the same. And that's not a bad thing, but more of an acknowledgement. At the end of your Work you will look back and you will not understand, recognize, "be" that same self anymore. You will wave to each other on opposite ends of the path, and turn and walk away. You will feel like that self is a stranger, because the transformative process of your little death, and your work to go through it, and then eventually build a little headstone and say farewell to that self, has divorced you from it. Put you outside your body, unable to feel, see, and think that way again. 

The Work puts you on the outside the same way having astral awareness does. Shadow work gives you vivid, and sudden, and constant self-awareness. You will know the deepest parts of yourself, and guide those parts by the hand through your inevitable walk into the void and out the other side. And when you are on that other side, you will not look back, and you will know the work is done.

You won't realize you've completed the work until days, months, years later. You'll realize suddenly, as you're drinking some tea and smiling to yourself in Winter, that you haven't thought about Him in 6 weeks. That the things that friend did were really shitty and you will never, ever let someone treat you that way again, because you're worth so much more, and suddenly you actually BELIEVE that you are. 

When you are on the other side, the shadow work will be worth it, because you'll forget why you had to do it to begin with. 

And the You that comes out will be a hundred times better than the you you began with, even if it doesn't feel like that now. It will.

OTHER POSTS IN THE SHADOW WORK SERIES:

• Part II: Types