Journeying
Going on a shamanic journey is an adventure. It’s an adventure that will take you to places you may never have imagined. Over the weekend, you’ll get to meet a power animal who will guide you while you’re journeying. You’ll go to places, and meet other animals, guides or ancestors ready to get to know you and help you with whatever it is you’re seeking. Many people who attend for the first time, and who don’t have any or much experience with meditation or journeying are worried that they won’t be able to do it. Yet, everyone has and can journey. The environment I create, the use of my voice, the sound and the rhythm of the drum, and the magic of what’s already been set up for you will lift you up and out of ordinary reality and into the dream-like place of journeying.
Each person is going on an individual journey. Even so, others in your group may come back with pieces of information meant for you, and you for them. Our power animals and extraordinary reality have a way of giving us just what we need for collective support and growth. During a retreat weekend a few years ago in Chesterfield, NH, three participants all saw an elephant that was roughly the same color and size. Each person received a different piece of information in this journey that turned out to be important for all of them.
Elephants archetypally represent strength and protection, as well as loyalty and devotion. Elephants are drawn to travel the same path’s their ancestors did for thousands of years. They’re well known for protecting their young, and for their devotion to each other in times of crises. There are other archetypal meanings for elephant, and each resource you read has variations of these words. The messages the three people received in their journey’s represented these qualities of elephants. Qualities they each needed to find with the people in their own lives. The fact that all three of them saw an elephant that came with a message they needed validated for them (and others in the group listening) that journey’s are “real”.
No matter what the animal’s archetypal meaning is, what matters most is what they mean to you. Perhaps an elephant represents a moment in time during your childhood when you went to the circus? Or is a symbol of flying because of how much you loved the cartoon Dumbo when you were young. The messages come to us as images, symbols, colors, sounds, places, people, animals, art, among others. They have layers of meaning for us to decipher. I ask participants to write their journey’s down because there may be a meaning that springs forward for them now, but in two months or two years time, they can go back and see there’s more treasure to be found.
Beyond the weekend, I offer monthly journey circles so you can continue journeying within the support and guidance of the Power Retrieval Retreat community. Many people find this incredibly valuable, and that the monthly journey circles create big awakenings and transformation for them too.
To be eligible to attend Power Retrieval Journey Circles, attend an upcoming Power Retrieval
retreat. Click here to find out more and to register. If you can’t find one near you, be a Power
Retrieval Retreat host. Click here to ask us how.