19,99 €
Mehr erfahren.
- Herausgeber: tredition
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
It is one thing to understand theoretically how we build our reality (Part 1 of the trilogy), but something very different to step out of "consensus reality," stop the world and enter a completely different one. The eye of a lizard sees what is unimaginable to us – and yet it can be learned and experienced. We are introduced to the "Nagual-abilities," seeing, stalking, dreaming, shape-shifting and intending on the basis of personal experience reports, and the author reveals as a Nagual of a dreamer-line of Toltec shamanism the art of collectively intended dreaming. He also reveals very intimate, personal experiences in other realities – in completely different ones. -
Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:
Seitenzahl: 250
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022
Ähnliche
For Barbara, Robert and Loon – as well as all the co-dreamers in the “Spiral” and all “Life-Dancers”
Günther Gold
Dimensions of Reality Part 2
Practicing Nagual Shamanism
learning, experiencing, teaching, applying
© Günther Gold
First English edition: 2022
First German edition: 2017
Dimensionen der Wirklichkeit – Teil 2
Second German edition: 2022
Author:
Günther Gold
Cover design:
Günther Gold
Cover photo:
Yaxchilan; Chiapas; Mexiko; 1987 photographed by the author
Printing and distribution on behalf of the Author:
tredition GmbH, Heinz-Beusen-Stiege 5; 22926 Ahrensburg, Germany
ISBN:
978-3-347-74952-8
Softcover
978-3-347-74955-9
Hardcover
978-3-347-74960-3
E-Book
© All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the author.
Table of Contents
Cover
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
1. The Discovery of the Collectively Intended Dreaming
1.1 The 13th Life Dance
1.2 The lizard
1.3 The serpent of the eyes
1.4 The black light energy
1.5 Collectively Intended Dreaming
1.6 Phenomena in higher dimensions of consciousness
2. The Nagual – and the Beginnings
3. The Life Dance and Its Vision
4. The 14Th Life Dance 2006
4.1 The bubble berry
4.2 The shuffling tree sap amoeba
4.3 Eye to eye with recoil in the heart
4.4 Weather making
4.5 The sniffing lizards
5. Yaxchilan – 1987
6. Wheel Workings – 1995
6.1 Chichen Itza
6.2 Uxmal and Oxcintok – The Battle Kachina Dance
6.3 The Four-day-hole-in-the-ground ceremony
6.4 Coba – Jaguar-Priest and Eagle-Warrior
7. The Wheels of Power
7.1 Paradigm shift - old and new Naguals
7.3 Female / male – inside / outside – nature / technology
8. Collectively Intended Dreaming
8.1 The pipes (with a clarification)
8.1.1 The use of the pipe – in general
8.1.2 The pipes at the altar
8.1.3 The morning pipes
8.2 The stone beings
8.2.1 The journey into the stone structure
9. The Spiral
10. Collectively Intended Dreaming at Further Life Dances
10.1 The Serpent-Semen-Worm
10.2 The cradle of life
10.3 Experiencing the Life Dance Being
11. The Intending of Realities
11.1 The wings of the dragonfly
12. Healing in the Spiral
12.1 Experiments with “healing“
12.2 White and black light
13. The Spiral – 2013
13.1 Brushing up Nagual-abilities
13.2 The multi-dimensional encounter with an ally from the plant world.
13.3 Neutral witnessing – perception and dimensions
13.4 Second encounter with an ally
13.5 Pandora
13.7 Initiation to become an agent of evolution
14. The Elders Depart
14.1 Wakan / Sasquan – and us “aliens”
14.2 The mysterious temple room – and the finding of the “dreamscape”
Epilogue
Dimensions of Reality - Part 2
Cover
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright
Foreword
Foreword
Epilogue
Epilogue:
Dimensions of Reality - Part 2
Cover
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
This second part of the trilogy “Dimensions of Reality” consists mainly of experience reports from my learning and working in my small Nagual group with Barbara, Robert and Loon, primarily at the “Life Dance,” a large, annual ceremony, and from the “work” with my training- and research-group of brave advanced practitioners in the “Spiral.” These reports of experiences are supplemented by some flashbacks to the early days of my “training.”
I thereby hope to inspire as many people as possible and to motivate them to join with other like-minded people and dare, with bold heart, joyfully and creatively, to trace the secrets of life in order to find a deeper meaning for their existence here and now. And with this awareness, to actually be such a “shaman,” as shamans have always been and are; - for themselves and for others, mediators both between mankind and the mysteries of nature, and mankind and the higher-dimensional possibilities of “being human.”
Foreword
Dimensions of Reality – part 2
Practicing Nagual Shamanism
learning, experiencing, teaching, applying
How does a Central European come to know, learn, practice and finally impart to others something like Nagual Shamanism – an ancient worldview that traces back to Toltec traditions with a corresponding attitude towards life? This probably requires several factors that do not come together every day, foremost the willingness to get involved in something completely new and different, the longing for satisfactory answers to the question of the “meaning of it all” and the conviction that life must be about something more than the world views, theories of knowledge and employment possibilities that we have come to know so far indicate. Moreover, you’ve probably have to have been in the right place at the right time. What certainly played a role in my case is that already as a child and adolescent I had a particularly intimate relationship to nature, trees, and animals. Every child has this, most likely, until it is unlearned and driven out. In any case, I have always been convinced that all of nature, from the smallest building blocks to the giant celestial bodies out there, is animated and ensouled, and this stance is at the heart of every kind of shamanism.
Considering that this trilogy has become to a large extent a work about “shamanism” – even if it concerns a special form, namely Nagual Shamanism – I find it necessary to address a frequently asked question right at the beginning.
Is shamanism at all valid today?
There is a very widespread view that shamanism is merely superstition and charlatanry from long outdated, archaic, animistic ways of thinking and that it represents an artificially revived relic from the past that no longer fits into our “enlightened” present and is at best of folkloristic interest. Perhaps that's why a few clarifying sentences are needed here after all.
Throughout the millennia of their influence, shamans were most likely the first to penetrate into transpersonal levels of consciousness. They may not have done so permanently, but certainly many succeeded in doing so while in their “states of consciousness.” The shaman, who can not only connect with plants, with animals and with ancestral spirits, but can also become one with them if necessary, who penetrates, softens and relativizes the consensual reality of the respective current culture with his excursions into the “other world,” must inevitably transcend the ego and experience his self as the Self of the All and Everything.
In his “dreams,” “trances” and perhaps also “ecstatic states,” the shaman experiences himself and the world as one. He “knows” that his body is composed of millions of minerals, plants and animals, which all live inside of him and with him, that in this respect he is a home-planet – for the ancestor-beings as well, who continue to live through him. He experiences himself in resonance with “Grandmother Earth” and at the same time as a child of hers. He has at least reached the transpersonal level of consciousness of “nature mysticism.” (See also part 3, chapter 19. 3). He is aware that through his breathing, his heartbeat, and his circulatory system he is inseparably connected with the great cycles of life, nature, planet earth, the moon, the sun, and the entire universe and is thus an integral part of the entire breathing, pulsating, living overall fabric of nature and the cosmos. He is very aware of being connected with all beings in a multi-layered way, for example, by breathing in the oxygen that trees exhale and in turn gifting them with his exhalation. He may think that since trees have probably been around much longer than humans, it could well be that they dreamed us up as their nonrooted complementary being. In any case, he does not feel superior to other fellow beings and appreciates each one for its talents and gifts and for its special way of mastering life.
This attitude and the depth of consciousness of the shaman are the preconditions for his shamanic activity.
When a shaman uses a feather fan, from a raven for example, to perhaps analyze and energize the stagnant energy pathway of a “patient,” an outsider might think that the action being performed is based on superstition, is backward, strange, and completely ineffective. But if you know that in his past this shaman has made a raven his power animal – and that means that he has dreamed himself into such an animal through the abilities of “shape-shifting,” has stalked it in many ways and has “become” it by intensively studying the behavior of this animal and possibly even raised one himself and had it as a friend, then you can perhaps better imagine that something completely different is actually happening.
For the shaman, this raven wing or feather is not a feather at this moment. For him, this feather, “frozen” in time and space, transforms due to his access through the “channel” into higher dimensions and deeper levels of being, into the holistic, archetypal shape “raven.” The shaman “unleashes” and “unfolds” the energy of this animal and it becomes “alive,” it flutters, flies, pecks and shrieks and the shaman is one with it and the feathered wing has become his own. And he feels the air drag and the buoyancy, and the ability of the raven to recognize and distinguish living, sick or dying energies awakens within him. Thus, the actions of the shaman appear completely different for someone who is not an outsider, but is an “initiate.”
Seen in this light, it is of course quite astonishing to see how many people are on a “shamanic” path, armed with drums, rattles, feathers and other tools. Their longing for the connection, for the primordial, for the archaic beingness, which probably attracts and drives them and of which they will surely get an inkling through their doing, is honorable. Naturally, it is not enough for the shamanic enthusiast, no matter how dedicated he may be, to just imitate these actions without having acquired the corresponding abilities and without having gained access to the necessary states of being and consciousness, because the actions will of course then be completely ineffective.
To believe that the feather or wing alone produces the desired effect is then really superstition, charlatanry and stupidity.
So, is shamanism still valid today?
If you consider the development of human consciousness and the corresponding world views throughout the millennia, (part 3; chapter 19), you could indeed conclude that the preoccupation with shamanism probably means a relapse into one of the very “old,” indeed fundamental, but also “most primitive” and “archaic” levels of consciousness and world views, when considering the further development of consciousness. After all, development moves from archaic, onto magical, mythical, rational and global, all the way to the transpersonal levels of consciousness.
While this is certainly quite true, it is important to keep in mind that a development to the next level means that the previous ones have been integrated and overtaken (transcended). The emphasis here is on “integrated” and that of course does not mean excised, denied and suppressed, but that they are experienced as part of the conscious self and are taken along to the next level. And since most people’s lives have undeniably become increasingly sober, technocratic, unsensuous, isolated and devoid of meaning, the re-incorporation of aspects that have been “overtaken” in the rational development of consciousness, that is, split off but not transcended and integrated, becomes urgently necessary. Only then will our lives become closer to nature again, sensually experienceable, touchable, more humble, more connected, in short, more colorful and richer and in this sense “magical.”
It is about reclaiming one's essential nature and the beauty of being one with nature, and to experience oneself again as a holistic co-being in a deeply connected and unitedly vibrating web of being.
At that point, a sweat lodge ceremony, for instance, can be archaic in very many ways and to a high degree. The play of the elements – fire, the red-hot stones, water, steam, hissing, smells, sweat, hot air, naked bodies, sitting on damp earth, steaming out into a creek or into the snow – then back to the fading fire, the starry sky of night and the experience of community – belonging together – being at one with everything, magic.
Of course this is not a backslide to an archaic-magical level of consciousness, but a re-experiencing and re-integration and resensing of connectedness with the elemental nature of being human and the effects of the physical and non-physical realities high up into the transpersonal levels.
I am convinced that shamanism – at least as I experience it, live it, and practice it in my groups – is highly contemporary and perhaps even necessary for humanity to survive. In this trilogy I will give sufficient evidence to back this opinion.
But what exactly is Nagual Shamanism all about?
By and large, Nagual Shamanism and of course the work in my training groups and especially my work in the Spiral – my “magician's workshop” – is about exploring and experiencing the multi-dimensionality of being human. (See also Dimensions of Reality – Part 1)
Everything that I experienced here, the teachings, the exercises, the adventures, and the research over all these years, always takes place at the interfaces between the dimensions. Initially in the realm of the (nagual-shamanic) 4th dimension – the subtle experiential realms of feelings and emotions as well as thoughts, convictions and beliefs – oriented “downward” to the 3rd dimension – our physically manifested reality – and in the advanced proceeding oriented “upward,” toward the 5th and 6th dimensions – the realms of potential possibilities and unlimited imagination.
And it is not only the work done in the Spiral and in Nagual Shamanism – you can see your whole life, indeed, our earthly existence, as a play at the intersection of the 3rd and the 5th dimension, in the ambit of the 4th dimension.
At the beginning of our personality development, we struggle to somehow find meaning, value, and happiness with major and minor emotional hurts, lots of inherited beliefs and convictions, a self-image that matches, and the worldview that results from all of this. We try not to drown in the maelstrom and swells between the 3rd and the 4th dimension, where our physicality, emotions, and thought processes intersect. We hope for calmer waters, struggle for a bit of overview and sometimes maybe even shout “land in sight!”
Our personality development consists initially of the following:
• Exploring and healing our emotions – and learning and practicing to experience them as life-enriching and gratifying.
• Reinventing our attitude toward ourselves, others, and life in a way that avoids more hurt and abuse towards ourselves, others, and life itself.
• Developing a healthy approach to our physicality and a satisfactory professional and financial basis for survival.
• Having a sense of meaning in life and a kind of vision and personal mission.
• Coping with the violent storms and tremors of our sexuality and possibly even to achieving something like relationship aptitude.
Many people will spend their entire lives working through these points and something beyond will always remain out of reach for them. Throughout their existence, their life struggle takes place at the intersection between the 3rd and the 4th dimension, again, between the physical, the emotional, and the thought processes. However, if one has completed the above tasks in a satisfying way and can enjoy the being in the 3rd and 4th dimensions and the mutual fertilization and harmony, then the orientation “upwards” can begin. The next stage is the exploration of the higher dimensions. Now it’s about what from the realm of unlimited possibilities, what from these infinite personal and collective fields of dreams and consciousness can be felt, thought, dreamed, intended, determined, and realized 3rd dimensionally.
So development goes from a “finding one's way” in the given to a “creating anew” of the possible.
This will probably first involve the intersection between the 5th and the 6th dimension. That is, the hardly conceivable field of imagination of everything that can be dreamt. And further from the dreaming up the unknown, all the way to the sensing of the 7th dimension’s not-to-be-known. (A detailed breakdown and presentation of this dimension model can also be found in part 3).
To approach these higher-dimensional realms, however, requires deep ego transcendence and expansion into transpersonal states of consciousness. The “five steps of awakening” described in the theoretical part of the book as well as practicing and perfecting the “Nagual-abilities” are useful, indeed practical, tools for this.
As an eternal source of power and attraction for the "upward" orientation, the Oneness with Everything, the all-embracing consciousness and awareness attracts and invites us. It is an inherent, tranquil, comprehensive bliss, often also called "enlightenment".
This second part of the book covers practice and is very personal and autobiographical. In some chapters I describe my initiation, my learning and my experiences. In others, I try to describe my experiences of and insights into what happens in other states of consciousness and other dimensions of reality in a generally understandable way. It is difficult enough to translate such experiences into understandable symbolism and language; and that has to be done if several persons involved in an experience wish to communicate about it. However, to describe this in a comprehensible manner for anyone who has not participated in the experience is quite a challenge that is hardly achievable.
And so, with a heavy heart, I decided to recount only a few of the dozens of highly exciting experiences in these dimensions, and only those that seemed to me to be explainable at least somehow in “generally understandable symbolism.”
Some to whom I gave manuscript excerpts to read assumed that much, perhaps even most, of what is described is pure fiction; – especially those parts of the book where experiences in other dimensions are reported. They were all the more astonished when I assured them unambiguously that everything described here is neither fictitious, nor invented, nor even exaggerated stories, but actually true events – insofar as truth is extant when events involving several people are described by only one person. So everything described here is, of course, like every perception, subjective and yet was experienced by me in this way.
Since I was asked about this, I would also like to clarify that all of the experiences described were, without exception, made without mind-altering drugs and substances.
I was also warned that people who are not familiar with such states of consciousness might not understand especially this part 2 with the reports and narratives of my experiences “in other dimensions,” and so they might not have be able to conceive it.
But even if it were so in some cases, I think this part 2 is an integral part of the whole trilogy.
Because it is one thing to report theoretically about a training and apprenticeship, however unusual and interesting, and to reflect on reality and life – just as it may also be fascinating to speculate about different dimension concepts and to think about the possibilities of creating reality. But it is another thing to get involved concretely and practically with these dimensions and possibilities, to plunge into experiences of which one does not yet have any preconceived notions or even prior experience.
The interested, attentive reader will also notice that the theoretical findings of the first part and the practical experiences of the second part often complement each other in a mutually enriching and fruitful way.
And one more perhaps not insignificant remark. As already mentioned, I have selected only some of the experiences in other dimensions and described them as well as I could, but there were also those that are nearly impossible to depict. It seems that in still higher dimensions of consciousness the experiences appear practically beyond “pictorial, archetypal, comparable with something familiar” and thus describable. Most likely one experiences multidimensional geometric forms, and “participates” in light and sound phenomena merging into each other, funnel-, spiraland space-twists connected with all-awareness, floating and blissful “sensations.”
To make the non-fictional aspect of this book even more evident, I have decided to refer to the main protagonists with their real names – those who have agreed and those who I assume have no objection. For those I wasn't sure of, or with whom I haven't had contact for a long time, or who are also deceased, I use only the initials and abbreviations.
My fifteen years of nagual-shamanic training and more than twenty years of intensive engagement and activity in this field were chock full of challenging ceremonial experiences and exciting occurrences worth reporting on.
However, if I would try to describe everything that seems interesting to me or to somebody else, this would by far exceed the capacity of several “normal” books. So I decided to follow, by and large, a thread of events and insights from the 2005-2013 time period, and to combine these with recollections and explanations for developments in learning and experience starting in 1983.
With that said, let me cordially invite you to take a headlong plunge into the middle of a story that actually began well over twenty years prior.
1.
THE DISCOVERY OF THE COLLECTIVELY INTENDED DREAMING
1.1 The 13th Life Dance
THE CONNECTING LINK TO INTENT
It is Tuesday evening, August 2nd, 2005 in Lavaldieu, France. We are sitting in the final preparatory sweat lodges before entering the dance space. We – my small “nagual group” and I – are the so-called “Elders” of the Life Dance collective.
…
In the 80s and 90s, during our long and extremely intensive “Nagual Shamanism” training in the United States, Mexico and Guatemala, we had participated in several North American Dreamer Sun Dances. In the process, we envisioned organizing similar Sun Dances in Europe. During the first three to four Dances in Lavaldieu, a beautiful piece of land near Carcassonne in the south of France, we learned a lot about the alchemy, the energetics, and the choreography of such a Dance. At the same time, we also realized that in many ways we really wanted and needed to create “our” European Dance differently from what we had learned from our teacher.
Since the changes we wanted were not possible in cooperation with him, we decided to separate from the Nagual Tehaeste in 1998 and began an exciting and challenging period in which we carefully but steadily made alchemical and choreographic changes to the ceremony. Our intention was, on the one hand, to preserve and even strengthen the magic and the undoubtedly effective power of the ceremony, and, on the other hand, adapt the Dance, which from then on we called “Life Dance,” as best as possible to the requirements and the degree of consciousness development of the European Life Dance collective.
In 2012, we have danced the 20th Dance. This collective is composed of anywhere between 200 and 300 people from all over Europe.
…
In the above-mentioned sweat lodge, I served as the "Dance Chief" (the person responsible conducting a ceremony) and on impulse, I suggest that we all change into our “Doubles.”
…
To change into a Double, or to slip into a “Glove-Double,” means that you no longer let your three- and four-dimensional personality parts function as the sole “reality-determining” filters. These parts are the generally predominant physical, emotional and mental personality aspects used in everyday life. Instead, you have to make sure that these parts are acting as the most neutral possible “symbol-translators” to allow experiences of higher-dimensional personality parts.
Figuratively speaking, this is done by energetically turning oneself inside out so that the inner side is above the outer. It is like taking off a tight glove so that the inside is turned inside out afterwards.
This is one of the techniques of the “somersault of thought,” the energetic inversion or reversal that always happens when one changes dimensions of experience. This eversion probably has to do with the fact that the different aura layers are grouped and weighted differently and thus a different energetic “filter effect” enables the experiencing of another “reality.” (For more details about the Double, the higher dimensional personality parts, as well as the nagual-shamanic dimension model, see part 1, chapter 1.3.6 and part 3).
…
After we all got into the Glove-Double, I announced the intention of our ceremony, which we had previously agreed upon. We wanted to learn more about the essence of the Life Dance and to open ourselves up to all that we do not know in relation to the Life Dance and our function as elders. – We wanted insight into the “nagual game” of the Life Dance.
We planned to do that in a kind of vision- or dream-ceremony – how exactly we didn't know. After having articulated the intention out loud, we went completely empty inside and silent – in a state of perceptual awareness. We had no idea what was going to happen. Although it is around noon, it is completely dark in the lodge, which is covered with blankets and a parachute. Sounds could be occasionally heard from time to time. They came from the other three sweat lodges being held simultaneously, in which the participants of the Life Dance were preparing for the entrance ceremony. We could hear the scraping of the shovels with which the glowing stones were being brought into the lodges, fragments of prayers and the muffled sound of songs.
The sweatlodge site – with Bugarach mountain in the background
After what felt like quite a long period of silence, we noticed that our bodies wanted to assume a different posture. After a time of sensing our way into it, intuiting and trying out, we all found ourselves propped up on our knees and forearms in a kind of lion’s pose. We formed a circle with our heads facing the center. Out of the darkness in the center appeared a kind of sigil, a star-shaped gateway, but for the time being it was shut. It was reminiscent of a pomegranate, but it turned out to be the beaklike mouth of an octopus. After a short hesitation, I realized that our journey had to go through the mouth of the octopus. Memories of other shamanic experiences came back. They often began with a “shamanic dismemberment” – a kind of mangling and detachment from the bones, a dissolution into the smallest components. I had survived them, too, so I let myself fall into the beak with confidence. The others also dove in and we found ourselves on the other side in a large underground room. Soon it became clear from the exchange of experiences that we were actually lions looking like those stony Assyrian/Egyptian lion guardian figures. We looked around the room and experienced its walls as net-like, organic, pulsating. I had the impulse to enter into this net and “knew” that one could travel within it in a “dissolved” state, by pure intention. Robert didn’t think it was a good idea for all of us to do this and suggested that someone stay outside as a kind of guardian, so we could be brought back if necessary. Barbara agreed to do this and the rest of us dissolved into the organic pulsating web.
