Shamanic Journeying Quotes

Learning shamanism isn't just about acquiring techniques in how to do it, but also how to incorporate and deal with the
changes it brings to everyday life. ~ S. Kelley Harrell

Humans are a part of creation and shamanism is our way of connecting with the whole. ~ Will Adcock

As long as we string out the ecstasy of awe, we won't do the work required to mine its precious teachings. ~ S. Kelley Harrell

How come only curmudgeonly old men are considered endearing, discerning, and honorable? My own Shamanic journeying on this matter has shown me that at midlife women are invited beyond the nurturing Moon-Earth embrace into the vastness of the Milky Way, where we have light, darkness, stars, moons and meteorites at our creative, reflective, and destructive disposal. ~ Mary Trainor-Brigham

The communication function of modern writers is akin to the ancient role fulfilled by tribal shamans. All writers ultimately perform a shamanistic role in society; their mythmaking voices speak to us from the underworld after their passage to the other side. Writers place themselves in a trance-like state where their unconscious mind dictates to them what to write. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

Shamanic journeying is the inner art of traveling to the 'invisible worlds' beyond ordinary reality to retrieve information for change in any area of your life - from spirituality and health to work and relationships. ~ Sandra Ingerman

The novel comes from a long shamanic tradition wherein the shaman-storyteller himself is transformed, no longer storyteller but a character, an animal, a god, a goddess, or a natural force that is not his everyday identity. And these moments, when the characters come alive and the author disappears, take us into another world. ~ Hal Zina Bennett

My interest at the moment is to use my dreaming self (which I also access in shamanic journeying) to engage with the Earth. In my waking rational life I often forget about the Earth, or I get worried or confused by contradictory information. With my dreaming brain I can have access to powerful images of what is going on in the Earth, from day to day. ~ Amy Hardie

All Things are in constant relationship, and shamanic journey is the choice to put one's self in direct contact and concert with that relationship. ~ S. Kelley Harrell

With ecstasy, what we do Here, directly impacts what we can achieve There. ~ S. Kelley Harrell

Oh, when we are journeying through the murky night and the dark woods of affliction and sorrow, it is something to find here and there a spray broken, or a leafy stem bent down with the tread of His foot and the brush of His hand as He passed; and to remember that the path He trod He has hallowed, and thus to find lingering fragrance and hidden strength in the remembrance of Him as " in all points tempted like as we are," bearing grief for us, bearing grief with us, bearing grief like us. ~ Alexander MacLaren

And thus ever by day and night, under the sun and under the stars, climbing the dusty hills and toiling along the weary plains, journeying by land and journeying by sea, coming and going so strangely, to meet and to act and react on one another, move all we restless travellers through the pilgrimage of life. ~ Charles Dickens

Who is journeying for freedom? The one who is already free. Thoughts are impediments to seeing your own face. Don't give rise to any thought, and discover who you are. ~ H.W.L. Poonja

A few minutes after the initial excited greetings they found themselves journeying in a maxi cab with a contended expression on their fatigued countenances as the moment held promise of forthcoming days of bliss and catch-up prattle that usually follows a family reunion. ~ Neetha Joseph

Underneath the inharmonious and trivial particulars, is a musical perfection, the Ideal journeying always with us, the heaven without rent or seam. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Perspective shifted on why it must 'hurt to heal', and a series of questions kept coming to mind. I found myself wondering if these medicines always 'hurt', or do they hurt so much now to show us how separate we are from nature? Perhaps these 'revelations in pain' are necessary in order for a personal apocalpyse to occur so you may have a shift in perception, and a greater understanding of your role in the whole? To realize that we are not foreign from nature, nature is where we come from and where we return to. ~ Jennifer Sodini

[Readers] are escaping from a narrow, limiting view of the world and journeying to a place where it is possible to experience a deeper connection to our real selves and to live fully in our world. ~ Duncan Smith

Who am I? It matters not that you know who I am; it is of little importance. This clay garment is one of a penniless pilgrim journeying in the name of peace. It is what you cannot see that is so very important. I am one who is propelled by the power of faith; I bathe in the light of eternal wisdom; I am sustained by the unending energy of the universe; this is who I really am. ~ Peace Pilgrim

Health is being in harmony with the world view. Health is an intuitive perception of the universe and all its inhabitants as being of one fabric. Health is maintaining communication with the animals and plants and minerals and stars. It is knowing death and life and seeing no difference. It is blending and melding, seeking solitude and seeking companionship to understand one's many levels. Unlike the more "modern" notions, in shamanic society health is not the absence of feeling; no more so is it the absence of pain. Health is seeking out all of the experiences of Creation and turning them over and over, feeling their texture and multiple meanings. Health is expanding beyond one's singular state of consciousness to experience the ripples and waves of the universe. ~ Jeanne Achterberg

I think of literature,' she wrote, 'as a vast country to the far borders of which I am journeying but will never reach. And I have started to late. I will never catch up. ~ Alan Bennett

WALLY: . . . That may be why I never understand what's going on at a party, and I'm always completely confused. I mean, we'll come home, and Debby will describe some incredible incident, and I won't have even noticed it. Everything passes in a kind of trance. You know, Debby once said after one of these New York evenings that she thought she'd traveled a greater distance just by journeying from her origins in the suburbs of Chicago to that New York evening than her grandmother had traveled in making her way from the steppes of Russia to the suburbs of Chicago. ~ Wallace Shawn

Open your heart to others. Never fear journeying long and far. Live with truth and humility." And ~ Beatrice Vine

It is an effort to descend down the hand-holds of memory to the plain beneath, to recall the lost future, the dusk hovering above the sunken cities, the dim western world of fallen light and broken skies. My life is here, where soon the larks will sing again, and there is a hawk above. One wishes only to go forward, deeper into the summer land, journeying from lark-song to lark-song, passing through the dark realm of the owls, the fox-holdings, the badger-shires, out into the brilliant winter dominion, the sea-bleak world of the hawks. ~ J.A. Baker

When journeying with God some of the best parts of any pilgrimage are the detours. ~ Margaret Feinberg

Was I not mad, after all, for journeying to this place, of my own free will? "And all for what? Original lust? Die before trying as a matter of trust, I see with staked hands a man before us, who fixes, and features and burrows a bribe, like a Pallas Athene, a winter-crossed bride. ~ Benjamin Robert Carrico

life. Wisteria had never felt so free since answering Lee's summons and journeying to White Mountain. Sadly, though, there hadn't been time for her and Ben to have ~ Deann Smallwood

There are chemical and other explanations for addictions, but speaking from my own observations (and I am a shamanic type), there is always some sort of disembodied spirit causing some of the addiction, riding your energy field, trying to impose their needs and addictions onto you. ~ Robert Moss

I have kept thee long in waiting, dear Romuald, and thou mayst well have thought that I had forgotten thee. But I have come from a long distance and from a place from which no one has ever before returned; there is neither moon nor sun in the country from which I come; there is naught but space and shadow; neither road nor path; no ground for the foot, no air for the wing; and yet here I am, for love is stronger than death, and it will end by vanquishing it. Ah! what gloomy faces and what terrible things I have seen in my journeying! What a world of trouble my soul, returned to this earth by the power of my will, has had in finding its body and reinstating itself therein! What mighty efforts I had to put forth before I could raise the stone with which they had covered me! See! the palms of my poor hands are all blistered from it. Kiss them to make them well, dear love! ~ Theophile Gautier

An integral approach is based on one basic idea: no human mind can be 100% wrong. Or, we might say, nobody is smart enough to be wrong all the time. And that means, when it comes to deciding which approaches, methodologies, epistemologies, or ways or knowing are "correct," the answer can only be, "All of them." That is, all of the numerous practices or paradigms of human inquiry - including physics, chemistry, hermeneutics, collaborative inquiry, meditation, neuroscience, vision quest, phenomenology, structuralism, subtle energy research, systems theory, shamanic voyaging, chaos theory, developmental psychology - all of those modes of inquiry have an important piece of the overall puzzle of a total existence that includes, among other many things, health and illness, doctors and patients, sickness and healing. ~ Ken Wilber

TEIRESIAS:
I tell you, king, this man, this murderer
(whom you have long declared you are in search of,
indicting him in threatening proclamation
as murderer of Laius)- he is here.
In name he is a stranger among citizens
but soon he will be shown to be a citizen
true native Theban, and he'll have no joy
of the discovery: blindness for sight
and beggary for riches his exchange,
he shall go journeying to a foreign country
tapping his way before him with a stick.
He shall be proved father and brother both
to his own children in his house; to her
that gave him birth, a son and husband both;
a fellow sower in his father's bed
with that same father that he murdered.
Go within, reckon that out, and if you find me
mistaken, say I have no skill in prophecy. ~ Sophocles

Some Indigenous Elders add lotus seed cakes to their diet in their final years, meditating on a branch continually blossoming, so that in their next reincarnation they'll have to deal with less opaque karmic mud. Thus we hope to gain a longer measure of time to bring our share of Heaven to bear on Earth. ~ Mary Trainor-Brigham

To my mind this is what shamanic training must really be, is mnemonic training. If you want to bring the stuff back you have to train yourself to bring it back. ~ Terence McKenna

The breaking wave and the muscle as it contracts obey the same law. Delicate line gathers the body's total strength in a bold balance. Shall my soul meet so severe a curve, journeying on its way to form? ~ Dag Hammarskjold

The canyons of our minds and hearts are so deep and so full of mystery that we try at all costs to avoid entering them deeply. We avoid journeying inward because we are too frightened: frightened because we must make that journey alone; frightened because we know it will involve solitude and perseverance; and frightened because we are entering the unknown. Aloneness, suffering, perseverance, the unknown: All these frighten us. Our own depths frighten us! And so we stall, distract ourselves, drug the pain, party and travel, stay busy, try this and that, cling to people and moments, junk up the surface of our lives, and find any and every excuse to avoid being alone and having to face ourselves. We are too frightened to travel inward. But we pay a price for that, a high one: superficiality and shallowness. So long as we avoid the painful journey inward, to the depth of our caverns, we live at the surface. ~ Ronald Rolheiser

Bright star of Eanna, forgive me the manner of this, but you are the harbor of my soul's journeying. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay

The particular province of the shaman is the province of soul, that which feeds our embodied life, or fails to feed it. From a shamanic point of view, the relationship with animal allies, or animals that show themselves in animal forms, is a vital part of living. We're fully embodied, with full access to our natural soul energy. ~ Robert Moss

We're journeying constantly, but there is always a machine and books, and your body is always close to me and the look in your eyes never changes. People are saying we will be miserable, we will regret, but we are happy, we are laughing always, we are singing. We are talking Spanish and French and ~ Anais Nin

I think this is truly the most wonderful experience we can have: to belong to a people walking, journeying through history together with our Lord, who walks among us! We are not alone; we do not walk alone. We are part of the one flock of Christ that walks together. ~ Pope Francis

For Wayfarers still journeying, for Wanderers at rest. ~ Lloyd Alexander

In shamanic cultures, sychronicities are recognized as signs that you are on the right path. ~ Daniel Pinchbeck

Let us fight for every woman and every man to have the opportunity to live healthy, secure lives, full of opportunity and love. We are all time travellers, journeying together into the future. But let us work together to make that future a place we want to visit. Be brave, be curious, be determined, overcome the odds. It can be done. ~ Stephen Hawking

There are two great mythological themes that weave throughout human history: the heroic and shamanic journeys. In the former, the hero journeys out of the ordinary world into a realm of primal forces, finding and facing monsters and allies in a quest for healing.

In the latter, the protagonist enters another order of reality, a landscape of mystery and power to be pulled apart and put back together in a new and more powerful way.

These great stories remind us that the soul is not accessible merely through the rational mind. The thinking intellect is a small part of the larger self. The soul makes its appearance known in dream and deep imagery, in feeling states (dark or light) that transcend the usual boundaries of the self, and in the sacred time and space accessed in ritual and ceremony.

The entrance to this vibrant territory lies in another way of seeing, a creative and active quality of perception that engages our full capacity, across the threshold where mind, body, and emotions merge within a path of heart. ~ Sparrow Hart

Everybody goes into different dimensional planes. You do it every night when you dream. You are journeying into other dimensional planes. Dreams are not just functions of the cerebral cortex. ~ Frederick Lenz

Skylark,Have you seen a valley green with SpringWhere my heart can go a-journeying,Over the shadows in the rainTo a blossom covered lane?And in your lonely flight,Haven't you heard the music in the night,Wonderful music,Faint as a will-o-the-wisp,Crazy as a loon,Sad as a gypsy serenading the moon. ~ Johnny Mercer

The sky puts on the darkening blue coat held for it by a row of ancient trees; you watch: and the lands grow distant in your sight, one journeying to heaven, one that falls; and leave you, not at home in either one, not quite so still and dark as the darkened houses, not calling to eternity with the passion of what becomes a star each night, and rises; and leave you (inexpressibly to unravel) your life, with its immensity and fear, so that, now bounded, now immeasurable, it is alternately stone in you and star. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke