Welcome to Destiny. Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning.
Well, hello, how are you? How are you doing? This is Cliff, your host of Destiny, and I do hope you're doing well. Today we have a I think an important program today. It has to do with vision questing, working with trauma, and working with shamanic techniques that release trauma in a more natural sense of the term. And when I say that, we have had we've had people on the program talking about working with psychedelics. That's another
word for plant medicine. And when we look at the indigenous use of plant medicines, and we'll learn more about this today, that they were typically not introduced until other types of vision quester journeying was completed. And one of the areas that I have learned and known about for years and participated in is drumming drum circles, because what happens when you are in a drum circle or you're focusing on your own drumming, you go into an altered state.
And in those altered states, you can begin working with what they call the shadow, bringing out the shadow, working with traumatic incidents, working with ancestral trauma, which is a big theme right now, and I think, and I'm not a big advocate of psychedelics, although we've had people on the program talking about ayahuasca, dmt LSD, even in microdoses, which is the favorite focus for a lot of people, younger people, I guess, but it's not necessarily the way
for a lot of people, including myself. And today we're gonna hear from two people that I would consider shamans in their own right. In fact, one of my guests actually has worked with Shamantic tribes or native tribes in the United States. And again, they don't really advocate using
plant medicines until after a period of time. In fact, sometimes it's a couple of years to do journeying work with so you know, it might be the quick need for or the need for quick gratification that a lot of us in the western side of the world are interested in. And I have friends that are using, you know, ayahuasca. They talk about their journey. What if I were using plant medicines too soon? What if we're advocating the use
of this rather than doing the homework. And I have been wondering about this for a while, and this is why we have our guests today to talk about the importance of using a system of therapeutic approaches from a shamanistic indigenous point of view, and then opening to a plant medicine journey using mushroom, psilocybin, ayahuasca or DMT. The thought of using ayahuasca is one of that you really have to prepare for. And you know, when we have Graham Hancock on the program, he's done. I think it's
seventy different journeys with ayahuasca. In some cases he's gone all the way down to Peru, and he actually talks about a couple of different elders, shamatic elders that he is he has used for his journeying. But everybody is different, everybody is in a different process. If you are new to the consideration of using plant medicines, I think this will be a good program for you today because the
approach is a little bit different. And again, according to my guest today, indigenous cultures did not introduce plant medicines until a good deal of prep work was done identifying the problem areas working with drumming, working with dreaming. We're gonna talk about lucid dreaming. We haven't talked a great deal recently about lucid dreaming, which is a very, very
powerful aspect of dreaming. But actually you have to get into the repetition of remember your your dreams, having regular dreams before you go to bed, closing your eyes, and having an intention to have a good, solid dream on a topic. I want to dream that defines the relationship that I currently have. I want to dream that helps me understand my work situation. I want to dream about you know, this work that I am doing, and so
forth and so on. So these dreams are a part of our consciousness that we don't really I mean, dream work, dream journaling is really sacred. And I'm one of these people that go to bed and I'm gone, and I probably remember my dream I probably have dreams, but I just don't wake up. And so I'm the worst person right now to be remembering my dreams, promoting my dreams, and intending that have good therapeutic dreams. Now, I don't
remember ever having a lucid dream. But over the years I've I've featured people who are experts on lucid dreaming, and from the sound from the sound of it, it's just in what I've read, it sounds it's just amazing. It's like a form of a different reality. It's so real, and there's techniques to understand that you are in a
lucid state of consciousness and lucid dream. So and so I think you're gonna enjoy today's program, you know, because it is a prep for the potential of using plant medicines or in many many cases, the journey, the healing, the vision quest that takes place outside of using plant medicines, powerful plant medicines, so that you in some cases don't
even have to worry about using plant medicines. And as you'll hear today, there's a lot of our population that doesn't need to use psychedelics and other powerful plant medicines to induce other states of consciousness. So today's program is navigating liminal realms. And my guests are Norma and Nisha Burton, mother and daughter authors. This is a great segue into our tours. We have a Guatemala tour coming up. It's
the Sacred Temples of Guatemala, December first, the twelfth. I'll tell you what's beautiful about this tour is that we will be working with shaman. We will be working with people who are sensitive to energy, and we have hands on access to climb some of the largest and most important pyramids and temples in all of Central America. This is a wonderful tour, not only because it is great for enhancing your consciousness and also healing trauma, but we'll
also have a chance to do sessions together. We'll also have a chance to be with people who are sensitive to energy, who understand the energy that it's emitting from these various temples and pyramids. Again, this is not to
be missed. We have some special additions for you. The price is going to be increasing in August, so if you can get on board before the last part of the month, and also those who sign up between now and the first part of November will receive the full program, tapes and audios of the Atlantis Summit that just happened last month, and you get a bonus program of Lydia Di Leong and Arturo Di Leong, Sacred Geometry, Sacred Building
Mechanisms and Sacred Energy. Finally, those who sign up before the end of the month get an Earth Ancient's T shirt complete with the latest logo designs that we have been working on. The Sacred Pyramid tour of Guatemala December first, the twelfth. For all the details and all the information, go to earthacients dot com forward slash tours, look for
the banner, click it and register. I'm always looking for interesting books on not only working with psychedelics, but also dealing with trauma and dealing with trauma in a way where you can identify it, which I think a lot of us have a problem with. I admit to that. I'll raise my hands with that. Where is my trauma?
What is my trauma? But moving beyond that into therapeutic approaches that are beneficial and not so much painful, And I think sometimes people get into situations where they're having some problems. My guests today are a mother and daughter team, Norma Burton and Nisha Burton, who've written a book called Navigating Liminal Realms, and I have to tell you I liked it a lot because we're talking about working with
psychedelics but also identifying trauma through more traditional means. Norma is a counselor with a degree in comparative religion, focusing on Buddhism or Buddhist and Shamanic traditions. She specializes in trauma healing, shadow work, and dream analysis. A Nisha is a skilled dream worker and we're going to talk a lot about lucid dreaming today as well. Trained in the art of journeying and the deep subconscious from a young age.
So those are great. So, guys, welcome to Destiny. Great to have you on the program, Thanks.
For having us.
Excited to be here.
Norma, I want to talk really with you first. One of the things I really like about the book is the kind of Indigenous background that you have, and you kind of carry that through the book as a foundation and little bit about how you have been impressed by Indigenous therapeutic approaches, how they as a people, as different tribes or whatever go about working with trauma.
Well, first of all, we all have a deep indigeneity, which means connection to the earth in our lineages, right, but many of the Western lineages have been so cut off from our earth based roots. But it's a creation centered spirituality, so that means going to nature, to valuing being with plants, animals and other consciousnesses that can help
us and guide us. And we really think and must do many things to be thankful for and help indigenous peoples on the Earth who have held these traditions alive all through the centuries and have gone through a lot of suffering to try to do that. So I grew up on a Native American reservation where my grandparents were adopted into the tribe, and then that created in me a deep desire to study with and be with indigenous
Native people in many places. So I traveled around the United States in Mexico and Central America and South America through my twenties and thirties and forties to be immersed in these cultures and learned from amazing teachers that had not lost touch and were the bearers of this information.
So in regard to what is unique about it beautiful about indigenous teachings, like I've just said, being in touch with nature, but then also navigating one's inner cosmos, that we have a birthright that we must explore our deep unconscious. So the first thing that you do in shamanic or a ritual that is it's based on nature like this, is you dig into the earth, and it also is symbolizing digging into your own deep unconscious. So we go
down and in first, not up and out. And so many of the patriarchal oriented religions, whatever we want to say about the disconnect from the earth, they teach you to go up and out and to flee from what they call hell or the darkness or the body, to flee from that as if that is evil. But no, indigenous teachings will always tell you to go down and in into your body, into the earth, into your deep unconscious. So stop talking there for a minute. But that's one distinctive part about is.
There something about the actual act of digging that triggers the mind? And I'm thinking they're drumming as as somebody is doing this digging, because you're there's a portion of your book that's very focused on drumming. But is there something happened to the person who is beginning this therapeutic journey that they're digging and triggering, like releasing trauma or something.
Yes, in the shamanic drumming, you know, the shaman, the leader is drumming just a steady beat, and that is actually it's been proven scientifically, and we speak about this in the book. That's aligning your brain waves with a certain energy that's called the earth energy. So it's bringing your brain waves down into concentration that enables you to be receptive, to be hearing, the feeling, hearing, sensing in
all ways, the energies of the earth. And so the digging process is the ancient method of getting your brain to focus, because our brains are so easily distracted and you know, monkey mind led in all directions, and so the digging is, in this meditative practice, the way to get your mind to focus. But it's very symbolic to the right of going down into the earth and getting your fingernails dirty and getting down in there, but down into your own deeper unconscious too.
Yeah, Nisha, what do you feel about this native tradition that your mom is bringing forward. I mean, obviously you're living that and you're around that all the time, but as a younger person, how do you adapt that information.
Yeah, it's been so wonderful to grow up in the way I have, and I really am grateful to my
mom for raising me in this very multicultural way. From the time I was a child, she was leading tours to sacred sites around the world and working with indigenous teachers and healers and shawmans, and so I joined her on all of those trips and I really got to see how various cultures approach reality and the dream time and ordinary reality, and how it can be so different from our Western world where the two are very cut off from one another and waking reality is held as
the pinnacle of what we should all be focused on, and the dream time is diminished or disregarded, And so traveling and seeing and being immersed in these other cultures where the dream time and waking reality are much more integrated helped me in my foundational self to value the
dream time along with my mom's encouragement. And then on my dad's side of the family too, we are Native American as well as African Americans, and so the indigenity and being raised in that in all ways feels very powerful because it is and then kind of being a bridge person right living in this Western world too and being able to have a foot in both worlds, so to speak, and understand that there is a craving right now, in this current time in our culture for that reconnection
with the dream time and for the reconnection with these non ordinary states of consciousness, which I think is a lot of why people are very excited and seeking out psychedelics too, is to be able to experience firsthand what it's like to cross over into the dream time while awake. Still, so yeah, very grateful for how I was raised and that I can have all of these parts in me that now are being really like welcomed by the world because everybody wants to know about all these things.
Yeah, I love it. Before we started, I mentioned that I've after reading the book, I felt that you both were what you could considered present day shaman. And you know, I don't neither one of you've balked at all, because you're kind of like, well, maybe that's a definition of what we do. Well, when I say that to you, Norma, what does that imply? How do you feel about that?
Yes, well, I was saying to you that the word shaman has been perhaps appropriated and overused some and so now people are tending to shy away from it. But when I was younger, I was called together by my whole community tribe, the elders, when I was seventeen, and they said, we've watched you grow up and we know you have a spiritual calling.
Hmmm.
So I was seen as having some you know, special psychic abilities I guess, and energy of healing, and so the only direction I knew to go was toward seminary and getting educated to be a minister, right, which I did, But all along I knew it wasn't really quite a minister in the Christian sense, although I deeply value who Christ really was, of course, which I think is one of the greatest shamans that's lived.
That's a good term. I never thought about Christ he as a shaman.
Yeah, So that I kept seeking out though, well, what are other models in the world for being a spiritual healer? And Michael Harner in the late seventies brought back the term shaman from the Amazon, but really it originated in Mongolia, right, So this word to name a spiritual healer leader in the tribe became very resonant with me, and I felt like, wow, I think this is what I felt in my soul and was called to. So I value what that concept is.
You know.
And it's different than a priest too, you know. It's a shaman is someone who lives more on the edge of town, on the edge of society, and it's not there to just uphold the societal norms. But people come to you when they're ready to deconstruct how they have identified in the world and go into this deep deconstruction of self so that they can become more whole and more integrated. And that may be challenging to society's constructs. So that's a difference between a shaman and a priest.
Working with indigenous people in some ways getting educated and mentoring. Now that you've been in practice for many years, do you think that we are missing something in our therapeutic approach the general psychological evaluation and therapy. I mean, you must be shocked at some of the stuff that is recommended, But just quick, can you give us a sense of why the path that you've chosen is more comfortable than perhaps traditional therapy.
That's a great question. As I was trying to into it and be carefully crafting and being informed by spirit about my career path, I made several key choices because I saw the psychoelmic world is going in a direction of more and more clinical rigidity and uprating the healer from the people, putting oneself on a pedestal and being not affected by and I always knew that wasn't true.
I always felt a deep inter beingness and yet you know to have good boundaries, but at the same time, know that we are not so separate from the ones that were healing. So a book then later came out that validated it, called Present and there's ay done by a psychiatrists in New York that showed that no, the therapist is not an unaffected observer, that we are a part of the community.
So I.
Veered away from being a clinical psychologist and went toward pastoral counseling, which you still get a deep training in all aspects of abnormal psychology and psychology, but you're moved into a communal role. So that's one part of it. The communal role where you're in the position of being with the people not so separated off. You have to learn really good boundaries and confidentiality. But at the same time you are an anamkara, a friend to the soul
of people in the community. That's one thing. A second thing that's different is animism. That we are living in an animistic world and we are part of it. We are animals too, so to speak, you know, we are part of the spirituality of the natural environment and that can't be cut off. So early on I went towards trans personal psychology as it was developed in my youth right, that we don't separate ourselves from the spiritual dimensions. That's
a very important part of counseling. And so we accept that we are greater than these bodies that were not just limited to ordinary reality. So that's another part of it. And then another part of it is that we are ritual oriented. So ritual is very important to humans, you know, doing things that connect us to the spiritual realm. So my counseling process involves various rituals that I've been taught by the Weechul and others to bring people into contact. Hey,
we're not just two humans doing this together. We are in connection with things greater than ourselves, with great spirit, and we're being met and guided. So those are some ways that I think the shamanic type counseling is different.
You know, I was thinking, we just came out of this pandemic, and if you guys are doing the therapy work on Zoom, they imagine that my imagination was going to a drumming circle on Zoom. Did you guys do that?
Oh?
Yes, yes, that's kind right. I mean, you don't get the same effect because the vibration isn't the same because you're being passed through the little speakers, but maybe the visual of everybody beating their drums still has the same effect.
I guess definitely do it all on zoom, And yet in my counseling process, like I have several weeks and sessions that we can do it all on zoom, but then I say, now we have to be together in person. There's certain junctures in the deep journey to completion process where I bring everybody together in person, because you're so right that the energetic presence, in vibrational reality of being in person is different than being a zoom.
Fantastic nishe Your book covers the topic of the shadow, and a lot of people don't understand what the shadow is. What is the shadow and why is it so important to identify the various aspects.
Yeah, so it's true that a lot of people talk about the shadow nowadays and invoke it and then don't necessarily know what to do with it or how to
handle it. And I again feel really grateful to be raised by my mom and her modality of shadow work that she teaches, which is called the Journey to Completion, because it feels like it is one of the most accurate systems out there for identifying the shadow and understanding how to work with it and then how to actually bring it all the way through to healing so that you can get the gift out of it. So I'll begin talking about the shadow, and then my mom can
also talk about it. But the shadow she always talks about is when somebody experiences trauma, then there's a split that happens, and one part of you goes into the persona, which is who you present to the world, and then the other part goes down into the shadow, and that's the part that you might have had to suppress or to silence your voice, to put things down in there.
And we're always seeking to come back into wholeness. But if we're operating from this place of being split, then a lot of times we're working with projections and seeing the shadow externally. And she has a really amazing way of framing the shadow too, that's very unique. Where there's inner shadow, which is how you are reacting to situations, and there's the outer shadow, which is the people that are triggering you or the situations that you're currently seeing
appear in your life. These patterns and these people that are personifying these energies that are irritating to you and are triggering to you, but it's because it's part of the shadow pattern that exists together within yourself. So with her work, what she does is she helps people to really name those things, to trace the traumas as they've occurred related to a particular shadow pattern, and then to
do the work of be integrating the shadow. And a lot of what I talk about too is with the dream time, you will see the shadow appear in the form of nightmares, in the form of recurrent dreams. This is your psyche trying to work through these shadow patterns
and work through these past traumas. But if people don't have the right skills or tools to work through them, then a lot of times that can be something that turns them off from the dream time too, because maybe they're having a lot of nightmares and are like, I
don't want to remember my dreams. I don't want to be in touch with my dream time because it's a horrible, scary place, right But really understanding, no, that is your inner world, your psyche letting you know, hey, there's something that I want to work through, and I'm going to present this to you over and over again and in stronger ways until you start to listen to it and then seek out and waking reality, the shadow work help, and then in the dream time, the lucid dreaming work
that you can do with nightmares and the shadow and the dream time is really powerful. So we can talk more about that.
Yeah, I want to talk more about lucid dreaming, which is kind of your sweet spot. But norma you use a term called psycho navigation as a theme in the therapeutic work that you do. Can you define that a little bit and how you and this is this theme runs through the book. How this is the important aspect of identifying problematic trauma and how to resolve it. This is the beginning of it. And we're going to talk
about the three key elements in a minute. But if we could just get the psycho navigation to find I really appreciate that, right.
That's the theme of our book, psycho meaning the psyche, the conscious and unconscious navigation. Like you're navigating a ship, you know, you have to have a map and orient yourself so that you know where you're going and where you want to get to. So we have the premise in this book that in ancient cultures that are like we've been talking about, shamanic nature based people were taught from the time they were children to learn how to navigate in their own psyche through the dream time. They
were taught navigation skills. And this came about all over the world in a similar way of valuing dreams and learning from them, and of going into the altered state by being let in there by a drum. And then in that altered state there are geographies to explore. And I've done this work with people all over the world and it's amazing how humans in Japan, South America, Europe all go to similar geographies in the dream time. Now what does that mean? We humans have these places that
actually exist in altered states that we go to. So I've learned these maps, you know, for over forty years, these maps of the inner terrain, and then I discovered that just a few years ago that there are shamanic drums being discovered from ancient times in different cultures like the Sami and Norway all tie way down in Lower Russia, in all these different places where shamans made the maps on their drumhead of the places that they were exploring, and they were very similar to the maps that I've
journeyed on myself and watched people exploring. So psycho navigating implies there are maps to follow, there are large general maps, and then you have to discover the map of your own inner pathways in your psyche. So this is the work that people are jumping into, kind of into the deep end when they take psychedelics, because you're going to be going into these altered space zones but quite unaware of what the patterns are and how to navigate there.
So that's why in our book, we're really trying to let people know, hey, there are precursor methods that you can develop that you can learn how to gradually, step by step navigate well and purposefully and accurately in your inner domains.
Yeah, I just want to.
Add something to that too.
In our book, we talk a lot about this concept of monophasic versus polyphasic awareness, and what those terms mean is monophasic is when you're aware of one phase of consciousness of reality, and polyphasic, as you can hear in the word, means many phases. And so our culture is
very monophasicly oriented, meaning we're aware of waking reality. That's what we put the importance on like I said earlier, and that's all we regard really and are told to forget our dream time, forget these other realms that we're venturing into. But polyphasic cultures really appreciate and value all
the phases we go through. And why I bring it up in relation to what my mom's talking about is to be aware of the subtle because I feel like in our culture we get so oriented towards extremes, and so that's why psychedelics too, can be really alluring because there's an extreme experience of an altered state of consciousness. But truly we are constantly being altered, and we drink caffeine and then we're altered that way, or we have a charged experience with somebody, we're altered that way. In
the dream time, we're in another state of consciousness. And so what we're teaching people, as you can hear, is to be very present and aware continuously of what state of reality they're in and what state of reality their consciousness is in, because when you track that, when you learn the maps of that, then you can live and dream with more lucidity, which is what we talk about, because you're really taking note of where your consciousness is in every moment.
I like that. We're going to take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we will return shortly with my guests today, authors Norma and Nisha Burton, discussing their new book, Navigating Liminal Realms, will be right back. My guests today are Norma and Nisha Burton, a mother and daughter team who've written a new book on shamanic journeying called Navigating Liminal Realms. The premise of the book, I feel, is that you need to do
the work before you take the psychedelics. And I like that because I think a nishe you phrase it beautifully. I think people want to quick fix and they want to take LSD or ayahuasca because everyone else is doing it and they're missing out on the fact that our Native elders were doing work and at the very end of a ceremony or whatever, after perhaps weeks or maybe
even months, then a piote experience was delivered. Talk a little bit about that, Norma, and this is I think the fundamental basis of your book is that drumming dream work prior to doing the psychedelic journeying is really critical, isn't it.
Yes, that is exactly the premise of our book and why we felt it was crucial timing to get the book out there because there's so much seeking of altered states through psychedelics going on, like we know, and there's done also a lot of exploitation and danger that is developing right and people are lots of times not having very good experiences because they're not taking it more slowly.
So the book shows that there are ways to have amazing altered state experiences naturally without them being induced by any substance. Because that's who we are. We have an inner cosmos that we are meant to explore. And as Niche was saying, there are subtle ways that we as humans were taught by our shaman guides from the time that you're a child to be aware of subtleties so that you grow in your ability. It's like growing your neurons, you know, growing your brain power to be much more
aware of subtleties and energy. It's all about energy right in our energetic exchange. So when you slow it all down and then teach people to walk this path of inner awareness with more subtlety. You become more masterful in ordinary reality dealing with energetic exchanges, as well as more masterful in the dream time. And so there's the word impeccable.
I use that word a lot that we're heading toward wanting to be more impeccable with energy, in other words, doing the right thing in any particular moment with the energies that are present. So you've got to be aware of what the energies are, be aware of your own energy system and your own abilities and skills so that
you do the right thing in the moment. And I think that's what shamans have been trying to train people, and with the use of psychedelics too, that you then get big revelations about ways that you haven't been impeccable, or ways that energy has been misused around you and you've been traumatized by it. You get to be very aware of that in an extreme way on a psychedelic journey. So, like you're saying, the messages of the psychedelic journey were
meant to punctuate a lot of inner work. So when I worked with the Weichow for many years, for example, we did a lot of slow in our work with them over a long period of time, and then we would be given the peyote. It was a huge revelation that brought together all that we'd been learning about ourselves. And then they would tell us go slowly afterwards, and we weren't allowed to take the peyote again for maybe two years.
Wow, a lot of.
You needed to integrate it and go very slowly in the integration of it. So, yeah, I think indigenous cultures didn't just use it over and over and over again in such close repetition, you know.
Uh, yeah, I was going to ask you, how quickly did they introduce psychedelics in the indigenous tradition for you? Was it like after a month, a year, or at the end of a cycle of learning or what.
Yes, at the end of a cycle of learning. So for me, it was several years of being with them, and.
That seems more natural to me. You know, I think people are jumping into ayahuasca right now, you know, I mean, that's just that's just Western culture. You know. We don't want to sit still and we don't want to do the work.
Well quick fixes. And I feel like that is something that the movement has kind of capitalized on. In some ways where it's like selling the miracle drugs of the next thing. You're going to do one mushroom journey and you're going to be healed from all your depression, and like we're talking about, yes, they can be really powerful punctuation tools to give you that insight and to create
the neuroplasticity. But then it's nice now because more people are talking about integration, and that's the true change happens, the preparation and the integration. And so really with many plant medicines, the integration is going to be unfolding in you.
For like my mom was saying many years and especially right after going on a plant medicine journey, the dreams that you're having, the mess that you're receiving, the synchronicities that you're seeing in your waking reality and your dream time, all of this is the medicine still speaking to you and still working with you. But then if you rush to the next journey, if you rush to the next thing, Oh I heard that this, you know, psychedelic is really great.
I'm going to do this next weekend, then you're probably missing a lot of the messages, and that change doesn't have an opportunity to actually take hold because you're just running to the next thing, the next thing.
No, I really like that definition nische, because opening neural pathways is not a small deal. It's a big deal, and you should let it unfold before taking on another journey. And as your mom was mentioning, that can take years. Yeah, because these are powerful stimulants to the brain. You know, so perhaps the whole idea of continually microdosiness and such a great idea after all, you know, because you're not allowing the journey to unfold.
Well, I'll address the microdosing in a second, but I just wanted to say to what you're both saying. I talk about unmetabolized shadow unmetabolized you know, so you're bringing up the shadow material. But then if you just go right on to the next alter experience and next, you can see how you're not taking the time to metabolize what's been given to you. So I've counseled a lot of people that are under a shadow, so to speak.
You know that they're more blocked from themselves than they were before because they have so much they haven't metabolized. And then, you know, I ran a drug and alcohol Recovery Center, but used altered state induction through the Drumming journey to help people realize that you can still access altered states without drugs and that there's a lot of
integration work to be done. So as we're all saying, we're not at all against the amazing and wonderful effects of psychedelics and these plant medicines that have been given to us. It's an extremely valuable thing that humans have. But in Western culture we do tend to grasp after,
you know, these quick fixes. And for example, living in Japan for several years, they were amazed at how someone would come to Japan and study Aikdo for three weeks and then go back to the United States and say they're an Aikdo teacher.
You know.
So it's kind of similar to that, right, like wanting to despond to something and not taking the time to really learn it yourself and in yourself.
Let's talk about drumming for a minute. This is another important part of the book once and tell me a little bit about how you go about working with it. Does the individual identify a shadow and then use drumming as a way to release it or identify in a better manner so that it's more tactile or what. How does the drumming work to integrate the healing.
Yeah, it's perhaps not what people think when they first hear it, because it's not that you're just sitting there and everyone's drumming, or that you're in a drumming vibe. Although that's a wonderful thing to do.
I've done a few drumming circles. They're kind of cool, you.
Know, very cool because you do go into a wonderful stage being this with each other in the drumming. But no, this is the person receiving the journey lays down and is instructed about a pathway, how to take the pathway into the deep unconscious, and the guide person is doing the drumming, and it's a certain style of drumming that has to be at a certain rate that takes the
person's consciousness into this deep zone. So you're instructed in a certain way, which I can just say what that is briefly, you know, but you have to go into a portal that's actually a place that exists in ordinary reality that you've been, that you're very familiar with, that's a place in nature that is a portal for you into the underworld, so you don't just pop into altered states from anywhere, which is a big mistake that people make.
They don't know where they've gone from and where they're coming back to. So that portal anchor in nature is really important. And then you're instructed to put your mind to work digging down from there, digging for perhaps a long time before you learn how to get there. But in that digging process, you're learning how to train your mind, so you're training your mind into cooperating with getting there. And then you arrive in an underworld place which you're
not supposed to go around exploring it by yourself. You just wait there and the first thing that you do is call out to a being to come and meet you, the power animal, because they are your guide in the underworld zone. You're not alone there, and you're not supposed to be alone. You're not supposed to go around on your own. You're supposed to learn how to follow after power. The power and that being is real. It's not just this wou woo you know thing that the modern culture
has come up with. Now. It's an ancient truth and cultures all over the world that the animals are there to guide us. Even Rudolph Steiner said, the animals are a little lower than the angels, and they're here to help us.
Right.
So you form this relationship that's a real relationship of intimacy with this being, and we call it the I Thou relationship ship is Martin Bueber talked about that, I'm with someone in our consciousness and then you explore your inner terrain and there are many places to explore and experiences to have that train you step by step by
step in how to navigate. So I've watched people, you know, thousands of people go on these exact steps, and even if I don't tell them, I don't tell them the step ahead of time, and spirit guides them to the next step and the next step. So there's like a whole school system within the deep unconscious and the dream time that you're taken in to be trained in how to navigate by being guided by the power animal.
Yeah. I didn't even ask you, guys, do you work together as counselors when you see people or having you like a team approach? How do you guys work?
It's really fun nowadays to be on this ship pathway together you know, I have my whole other career of being a filmmaker and an emerging technologist, but now being able to again bring this lineage forth. The way that we're working together is by co teaching together. And my mom is a therapist as you're hearing, so she has her clients too that she works with in the profound
system of the journey to completion. But then together we've been doing more retreats and co teaching what we're and gather these two modalities of the drumming journeys, the shadow work and then the lucid dreaming and dream time work. And it's really beautiful. And as my mom was talking, I was thinking about how really being raised doing drumming journeys from a young age to be able to have to take off in the skill of lucid dreaming very
quickly because I was encouraged in my dream time. I always shared my dreams with my mom and she would,
you know, beautifully work with them with me. And also, the drumming journey and the state that you're going into is similar to the journey you take if you're taking your waking consciousness and bringing it directly through into a lucid dream which is a bit of a more advanced technique, but it's training you in this pathway like you're hearing about of how to maintain lucidity, meaning how to maintain awareness as you enter into the dream time or a
non ordinary state of consciousness. And so then once you start doing the practices of lucid dreaming, which are waking reality practices, there are things you do while you're awake to constantly be questioning what phase of awareness am I in? Am I actually awake? Or am I dreaming? And when you do that during the day again, you're creating these neural pathways that are constantly questioning could I be dreaming?
Which is a big thing that we don't do. It's like biologically we don't do it because part of our prefrontal cortex is turned off where when we're in rem sleep. And so by being able to question that, what you're doing is you're training your mind to turn that part of your brain back on while in rem sleep. And once you do that, that's when you switch into a lucid dream, which is what a lot of scientists recently have studied what's actually happening in your brain when you
switch into the lucid state. So by like you're hearing, By constantly questioning and working with these daytime practices, you are training in the skill of lucidity and to question
when you're in a dream, could I be dreaming? And when you do that, that's when I call it the light switch of lucidity flips on and you have that aha moment of realizing I'm dreaming within the dream, which is the definition of a lucid dream, when you realize beyond doubt that you're dreaming while still immersed in the dream.
I think it was you that mentioned that you had studied the work of Stephen Leberge, who I knew personally here and is a stanform and I used to be the program director for Whole Life Exponent. He spoke regularly, and when he was talking about lucid dreaming, it was like, I want to do that. I want to do that, but it takes work. It takes consistent dreaming, and I just don't have consistent dreaming. But it's important to consider lucid dreaming for real healing, isn't it.
It is because you are really able to go into
your unconscious, into your deep inner worlds. And bring this lucidity where then you're able to do things that you couldn't otherwise, because once you have that realization that you're dreaming within the dream, you have this level of agency that turns on because you're like, oh, this is a dream, so I could And then having a clear intention of what you want to do once you become lucid, So say you're wanting to do more psychological work within yourself
and have a dialogue with your inner child, you can have the intention before you go to sleep. I'd like to become lucid tonight, and when I do, I'd like to call upon, summon my inner child to talk through this issue that I'm having, or this trauma that I had in my childhood. And whereas with active imagination or guided visualization it can be powerful to do something similar, but then to dream, it's as real as waking reality.
It really like your sensorial factors turn fully on. You feel like you're their taste touch, You can fly through the air and feel the wind rushing through your hair. So as you can imagine, it's not like you're just imagining that you're talking to your inner child. You're actually there, present with them. And having this dialogue. And that's just one example of what you can do once you become lucid for your deeper psychological work and spiritual work.
You can hear the different state of kind consciousness than just talk therapy. You're going into the state of consciousness where things are coming at you. You're interrelating in a way that's different than just thinking about it. So that's what we're trying to get across about lucidity and being in these realms of energy. You're actually in the moment interrelating with it.
Yeah, I've had people on the program talking about dreaming. I'm one of these people that just doesn't remember my dreams simply because probably either too exhausted or I've had so many scary dreams of my brain shuts down. But you do present an important aspect of your writing, which is to bring dreams in as a form of therapy. And how do how does that work?
Normal?
How does that work where we're I guess we want to intend before we begin, right, intend on having a dream that's healing or brings us information we need and so forth.
Yeah, it's a big part of the therapy work because I have people we do a ritual I went through with the Wheechole about committing to enter into the dream time. So that means that you're being willing to begin to really pay attention to your dreams. And if you don't remember them, there are techniques that we can give you
to help you remember them, because everybody is dreaming. It's been scientifically proven that everybody is dreaming at night, and there are ways to remember your dreams better, like, for example, just lay there when you first wake up and don't move your head at all, because it's like an etchy sketch.
It erases the dream if you move your head, so things like that, just you know, be very still when you first wake up, and then try to record your dreams, even if it's just one little tiny piece that you remember, write it down and that shows your dream time that you're willing to receive, and it starts to open up rather quickly after that. So yes, remembering your dreams is key to it, and we can help you to be able to do that. And then the dreams start really
wanting to communicate information to you. So I call that getting to the point where you're syncing up with your dream time and ordinary reality. The dreams start presenting you things that you've got to know about your ordinary reality, and so we do a whole you know, integration learning process between the dreams and ordinary reality in therapy. How could we leave out our dreams? You know, it's such a huge part of what we have access to and our birthright to be able to pay attention to them.
And one thing I want to add to that too is that as you're working with your dreams, you're learning
your personal dream symbolism and your dream signs. And a lot of times again we can get in our Western culture the way we're oriented to externalizing authority, and so we'll look to like dream dictionaries or different people to interpret our dreams for us, and that could be helpful, but really the work that we're doing with people is teaching them how to track their dreams, how to learn and map what their dreams are telling them, and then
really being able to interpret them for themselves and look at their dreams through these different frameworks and modalities so that then they can make meaning of what the dream was presenting and what they're dealing with in their waking reality.
And it's really powerful because you can take a dream that seems quite simple on the surface, or like, oh that was, you know, just a weird, mundane dream, and a lot of people will disregard those dreams, will be like, I don't even really want to write that down because that was nothing. But then as you start to pull the threads of it and you start to see, oh, well, in that dream, I was driving my car and it was kind of out of control, and hey, that's something
that actually happens in my dreams often. And what is happening in my life when I'm driving this car, which can you know, symbolize your autonomy or your mobility, or your your ability to move in the world. And then it's malfunctioning. Okay, what's that relating to? So you can see that's just a small taste of how you start working with the symbolism that your dreams are speaking to you in and then understanding what they're revealing to you.
And one other thing I'll just note too, is that it's amazing but a lot of times dreams are very precognitive, and if you don't write them down, you miss that. But so many times I've had dreams where, again it seemed like a very mundane one and I was like, ugh, do I even need to write this down? But then I did, And then the next day, or the next week or the next month, I was dealing with the exact issue that was appearing in my dream, or a symbol from my dream then appeared in ordinary reality in
this way that I could have never expected. So our dreams are constantly communicating to us and transmitting this deep amount of knowledge that we don't have access to in our waking consciousness.
I like that. We're going to take a short commercial break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we will return with authors Norma and Nisha Burton discussing their newly released book Navigating Liminal Realms. Will rejoin you shortly. Norma and Niche's new book on Navigating Liminal Realms is an excellent opportunity to work with indigenous shamantic techniques for releasing trauma without using plant medicine. Some people believe that
dreams are our higher self or the soul. It's this only chance or a soul gets a chance to communicate with us. What do you think of that? Is that something you consider?
Yeah? Absolutely well, when you think about what is our soul? You know it's like the wonderful about care of the soul. You know, we need to pay attention to these souls ish things that it may be uncomfortable, because the soul is drawing us to the depths, you know, to be with the things that are difficult that happen, so that we can really feel into what they're all about, which is what you can hear and what Niche is saying.
We tend to want to just get away from the difficult things and have you know, easier time, but the difficult things are there to help us heal and integrate us. So Nishe, you were talking about dream signs, you know, and there's so many tools that we through studying Stephen Leburgh and others and our own dreams, tools that you can grow gradually, step by step in working with your dreams.
And we wrote a previous book that's called Lucid Dreaming Lucid Living and oh yeah, Yisha created a whole wonderful oracle deck that it's a book and this oracle deck of images that are a systematic approach to learning how to lucid dream. So we just draw people's attention to that this will manual for how to learn to lucid dream.
Yeah, and it's a fun nonlinear way to learn it, because that's something as I was starting to teach people about lucid dreaming, they would say, oh, yeah, I got really into it for a couple of weeks and I read this book, but then I just fell off the practice of doing what I needed to do to have regular and sustained lucid dreams. And that can be very common where it's exciting at first, but then life can
take your focus other places. So by being able to just pull a card each day and have one lesson delivered to you, it's a really fun nonlinear way to learn lucid dreaming and to continue your lucid dreaming practice. And as you can hear, it is a skill like anything else. Some people also think, oh, I can't lucid dream because I never have before, and some people are
just naturally gifted in it and I'm not. But really, I believe that anybody can learn to lucid dream if they take on the daytime practices of questioning if you could be dreaming, and then tracking your dream signs, which are things that regularly occur or appear in your dreams. Objects, people experiences like being by a large body of water, or being in an elevator or traveling on a plane. These are things that are very common that a lot of people have in their dream time and also experience
an ordinary reality. And then what you do with those dream signs is anytime you notice one while you're in waking reality, you ask the question could I be dreaming? And when you do that, you perform This is the third part, which is a really key element to having a lucid dream, is you perform what's called a state check or a reality check, where you do an action to verify if you could be dreaming or not. So one a lot of people know is looking at your
hands and flipping them back and forth. And if you do that in waking reality, they'll stay your hands as you're used to seeing. If do it in a dream, what will happen is you'll grow an extra finger, or they'll glow a different color, or they'll change into something else entirely. And then, because that's so different than waking reality, you then know, beyond a doubt that you are dreaming,
and that's when you can fully flip into lucidity. So you hear how there's these fundamental things that you do during the day. You're performing state checks regularly throughout the day and questioning could I be dreaming? And that's again training your mind to do that same action in the dream, because whatever we do while we're awake regularly comes into our dream time. So that's the pathway that you're creating.
Are you suggesting that where someone is doing a normal type of dream, that you can click into to lucid lucidity within the dream exactly?
Yeah, that's hard.
You're looking at the hands, and then are you asking or is the subconscious or the higher self saying, Okay, she's this far, We're going to click into another realm.
Yeah, let me give an example of a lucid dream that I had, because that can sometimes help to ground the concept. So I one of my dream signs that happens, It's kind of funny, is that oftentimes in my dreams I'll be going into a public bathroom and it'll be really gross, and that to deal with that, I'm like, I don't like this. So this is something that regularly happens in my dreams, and I go to public restrooms
all the time in waking reality. So that's a really good dream sign because it's both present often in your dreams and in waking reality. So I was getting up from bed at night, and I thought I was awake and walked into the bathroom, and because I had trained myself, every time I go into a bathroom, I perform a state check. Even though in this state, I was sure I wasn't dreaming, I was like, no, I'm just going to the bathroom. This is what I do in the
middle of the night. I stopped and I said, okay, but could I be dreaming? And I looked around and it seemed so normal. It seemed just like my regular waking life bathroom. But because again I've been practicing, okay, but I always do a state check, I always do a state check, I flipped my hands back and forth, and sure enough I had an extra finger. And so then I said, aha, okay, my god, I mean, oh my god, I can't believe this is a dream, but
it is. And then from there, because I was lucid, I was able to then decide, Okay, now I'm going to fly up out of my bathroom into the cosmos, and I'm going to go have this experience with my higher self and ask them these questions that I had
intended to ask when I became lucid. So that's an example of how when you're constantly doing the state checks in waking reality, then even though in a dream it might seem like, oh, this isn't a dream, by doing that action, you can verify wait a minute, this actually is a dream and flip into lucidity.
Amazing is it's.
Hard to wake up, you know, like that we're talking about waking up and being aware, and so many things are happening in our culture to deaden us and to keep us from waking up. So it's kind of an effort to wake up, and that's what Niche is talking about, taking it on as a practice. But we can, and we need to write, especially nowadays with all the crises that we're facing, we need to wake up so that we have as much lucid agency available to us individ rellectively fantastic.
The books called Navigating Liminal Realms. My guests have been Norma Initia Burden, who is this book for? Who would you suggest We haven't even talked about people who are in crises, people who have an inkling that they're just not feeling right and they don't know what's going on, but they're not physically ill. Something else is going on. Who is the book for.
Books for anybody who wants to explore their inner self and heal anybody. It's written in an accessible way. I think people of any age or level of psychological insight can read it and understand it and value it. But we also hoped that it would be used by people wanting to be psychedelic facilitators or go into a psychedelic experience, because it's a good training, a precursor training for people who want to experience psychedelics. What do you say about it?
Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, my mom and I are very much in the space of the psychedelic renaissance as they're calling it, and so many people recently as they've seen this book have talked about how it is a missing link of what's out they're in the training around how to properly facilitate psychedelics, And really, what you need to know first is how to work with your own self, but your own psyche, your own inner realms, before you then assume that you can lead somebody else
in that experience. So really it is a training ground in that way, but also for people who are not interested in using psychedelics, it's a pathway to enter altered states of consciousness like we've been talking about all along, without the use of psychedelics and showing people that you have a birthright you have access to these non ordinary states of consciousness right within yourself. And I think that's
really empowering to realize that. And so anybody that's interested in wanting to seek this deeper guidance within themselves and experience what it's like to step beyond this waking, mundane reality, really this book is for them too.
Do you think there are and are an Oregon? And I had to mention to our listeners that organ has passed laws that allow for therapeutic psychedelics. I forget what type of so cybon primarily, right, Yeah, And that's that's pretty that's an amazing But are there some people that are that don't need to go to the psychedelic realm, that can get the basic program without having to do the what I call the tripping.
Well, that's what the book is saying, that anybody can have very lucid and important experiences without psychedelics. So we're trying to promote people getting in touch with capabilities that we have in our own psyche and that we're much vaster than we realized. You know, we only use such a small percentage of our brain capacity. So yes, you don't need to take psychedelics, and there are these things that we want people to explore within their own capacities.
And what I'd add to that too is, yeah, many people, you know, like psychedelics do provide a very heightened experience, But when you do lucid dreaming or the drumming journeys, what's beautiful about it is that it's coming in your own inner pacing and you are working with your inner journey and so a lot of times it can unfold in a way that's a lot more comfortable for people and really provides this deep level of meaning making that I think is what people are also seeking when they
do psychedelics, is they're wanting to make meaning out of what is happening in their lives. They're wanting to understand why do you have these habitual patterns or ruts that they can't get out of. And by accessing these realms within yourself and at a pace that's appropriate for how you're naturally unfolding. Then you really do have this beautiful
integration that happens constantly and that unfolds within you. So yeah, somebody is not interested in doing psychedelics, but we all, like my mom said earlier, want access to non ordinary reality. It's a part of who we are as humans. Every night we're going to sleep, That's like a essential part of being alive, right, what's built into our very code of our bodies, and so it's important and being able to know how to access those realms of lucidity is
incredibly valuable. And a lot of times when people start lucid dreaming or having drumming journeys orre like, oh, actually what I thought I was seeking over here in the psychedelics is actually this, This is what I was seeking to be experience this.
Yeah, I love that. I think a lot of people are just disconnected and what you guys are present is a way to connect with nature, connect with earth, Gaia, and I love what you're presenting, and I think a nice way to begin considering the healing work. You know, and rather than all these technical terms that psychoanalysis presents to us, it's like, what the hell's they're talking about I mean, I just want to be healed. You know, you're presenting it in a much more palatable way. So hey,
thank you both for joining me. The book just came out. How can people get a hold of you? What's your website and talk about some of your seminars.
Absolutely, so, we have a whole mystery school launching right now around the dream time psycho Navigation, and our website is Lucid Dreaming Lucid Living dot com and that has everything there. It has links to both of our books as well as we're launching several online courses that were really excited about around Lucid Dreaming, the drumming journeys and the shadow work that my mom does, the journey to Completion.
And so within this month, the first course is going to be launched, and then many more will be rolling out over the fall. And there's a space on our website to sign up for the newsletter to find out when those are live. But we also have a free course on the website right now that is about sleep hygiene and starting to work with your dreams so you can remember your dreams, which is a huge part of what a lot.
Of people say sleep hygiene. Yeah, Yeah, isn't that What does that mean? It means you're no alcohol or drugs before you go to sleep.
That's good, that's good sleep hygiene. Yeah, it's all.
About I don't know. I'm joking, I don't know what you were.
I think that is part of it, being aware of what conditions you were entering the dream time in and what the space that you're carving out before you go to sleep is. And then also there's another part of that course that's in the morning, a morning routine that helps you to remember and capture your dreams. And that's kind of the beginning of all of this stream work is those two pieces and working with those so that
you can start to connect to your dream time. And then briefly, we also have an Instagram that's the same thing, Lucid Dreaming Lucid Living. That's our handle where we post bite sized content around all of these things, and a YouTube channel that is the same name, Lucid Dreaming Lucidliving dot com. And then for my mom's work, the Journey
to Completion, her website is Norman Burton dot com. And we love hearing from people, hearing questions, things that they're running into challenges, So you can contact us just through our website and we will love to get back to you.
I'd love to see a dreaming circle where you guys were online on zoom and everybody had their drum, you know, like one hundred photographs of everybody was a little drums. So cool.
Yeah, we're really building out community right now, which feels very exciting and powerful to have this community of dreamers of psycho navigators that can talk with one another about these things, because I think that's another thing everyone is really craving in these times.
Yeah, I think you guys have a compelling message message. I really appreciate your work. All right, hey, continue success and thanks for joining me.
They really appreciate your questions. Great to talk with you. Thank you so much.
The book contains chapters on a wide variety of the topics that we presented today, but it also has case studies of people who are using these techniques and getting profound results. The very last part of the book is integrating plant medicine like psilocybin or ayahuasca or you know, even cannabis. There's a number of types of cannabis now that are very very strong and can duplicate a psychedelic experience. But as I've met many times, it's not necessary. And
this is a great example. This book Navigating Liminal Realms is a great example of working in an indigenous fashion. And I think that we're forgetting that the indigenous people, the people who are listening to Gaya, the planet, the Earth, use plant medicines very sparingly, very sparingly. And if you actually read the book, normally provides an example of working with a shamanic group and after two years then they introduced some mushrooms to kind of conclude a stage of growth.
But it's not used every week every month as a form of therapeutic approach. And I think again, and I think we're you know, taking it, the use of plant medicines out of context and try to speed up the results when the body very likely needs to have time to adjust to absorb the healing wisdom of the plant medicine. And then you process it, you probably go through you go through stages of awareness following the use of it. So and this is great, This is the kind of
thing I'm looking for. If you're like me, you're not jumping into working with plant medicines, right away, And I've mentioned this many times. I don't know if I'll ever use ayahuasca. I don't know if I mean, I don't have a great appeal. I think for me it's going to be more like doing DMT, but microdosing so that I'm I'm not traveling in space untethered. Anyhow, I hope
you enjoyed that. Again. The book is Navigating Liminal Realms, Psycho Navigating Skills for Lucid Dreaming, Trance Journey and Altered States. And the guests and the authors are Norma and Nisha n I s h A. Burton. If you're enjoying Earth Ancients Destiny and Earth Ancients Special Edition the Archives, please consider it becoming a subscriber For as little as five dollars a month, you can support the work we do here on these podcasts, and it's really appreciated. To become
a subscriber. Go to Patreon dot com, forward slash Earth Ancients and subscribe. We have a ton of really cool gifts for you, including a complete digital library that you can look through and download at your leisure. We have some unpublished interviews as well as some photo galleries, and it's always great to check in with you as a subscriber again. To become a subscriber, go to Patreon dot com, Forward Slash Earth Ancients. All right, that's it for this program.
I want to think my guests, Norma A, Nisha Burton coming to us from Oregon. As always, the team of Guil tour, Mark Foster and Faisal Parvet. You guys rock all right, take care of you well and we will talk to you next time.