Episode 31 – The Journey of Development from the 1st to the 7th Chakra

Amina once worked on one chakra a week, eating red vegetables for the root chakra and yellow ones for the third. Pål-Esben’s verdict is that no chakra really has a colour, since everything is vibration, although a pineapple eaten in a playful spirit may still do the third chakra good, if only through the placebo effect. And when it comes to the last leap, from the sixth to the seventh chakra, no amount of meditation will get you there on your own.

In this thirty-first episode, Amina and her teacher and guide, Pål-Esben Wanvig, talk about the journey of development from the 1st to the 7th chakra. They explore the 112 chakras and the lotus flower, the first chakra syndrome, manifestation, intuition versus fantasy and falling upwards, and why the 7 Golden Keys and the 9 Pillars work on all the chakras at once. It is part of “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a podcast about the bravest journey a human being can set out on: the journey home to yourself.

This episode is an English translation of our Norwegian original, voiced by the digital avatars of Pål-Esben and Amina.

In this episode

• The straitjacket, the first birth, and the emptiness that sends us searching until the Sahara feels more real than the grain of sand
• The 112 chakras, the lotus flower with its 16 petals and the divine spark at its core, and why no chakra really has a colour
• The first chakra syndrome of friend or enemy, hoarding and survival fear, the sleeping kundalini, and why manifestation only works when your vibration matches what you want
• The second chakra and the inner joyful child, and the third chakra, healthy boundaries and why energetic protection only makes you weaker
• The fourth chakra as the heart’s bridge, willingness as the real turning point, and the fifth chakra, communication and the almighty syndrome
• The sixth chakra as conductor and third eye, the fibromyalgia example, and how to tell real intuition from fantasy
• The seventh chakra, falling upwards and the guide’s push, and why meditation alone rarely leads to the Sahara
• How the 7 Golden Keys and the 9 Pillars work on all the chakras at once, real freedom, and where to begin without a full training

This podcast is for you if you:

• Seek real depth in your spiritual practice
• Want to understand yourself on a more fundamental level
• Are curious about shamanism but tired of superficial “new age” spirituality
• Have taken many alternative courses but still feel that something is missing
• Feel an inner longing for freedom, love and wholeness

In a time when so many get lost in external methods and promises of quick fixes, this podcast invites you back to the only place where true answers can be found: your own heart.

Listen above, or read the full conversation below.

Transcript

A warm welcome to the podcast “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a primordial shamanic journey of development back to your true nature. This podcast is a collaboration with our favourite magazine, the health and lifestyle magazine Medium, and is devoted to exploring the bravest journey a human being can set out on: the journey home to oneself. We follow Amina, a student at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School, as she goes through a deep primordial shamanic process of development together with her guide and teacher Pål-Esben. It is a raw, unpolished journey of discovery towards true joy in life, deeper meaning, and a life that truly feels good to live.

This episode is an English translation of our Norwegian original, voiced by the digital avatars of Pål-Esben and Amina.

Pål-Esben: Hi, and a warm welcome to a new episode, Amina.

Amina: Thank you so much. Likewise, Pål-Esben.

Pål-Esben: Thank you. And a warm welcome to you too, dear listener. Today we’re going to talk about a new, exciting and interesting topic, or at least we think so. Because we’re going to continue the process of discussing the path to real spiritual awakening, or, as we’ve talked about before, spiritual enlightenment or spiritual self-realization: it goes by many names. And if this, dear listener, is the first episode you’ve heard with us, we recommend that you go back to episode number 27, where we begin talking about the topic of enlightenment. There and in the episodes that follow, we define lots of expressions, such as the first birth, the second birth, twice born, shamanic death, Wu Wei and the dark night of the soul, and we don’t want to repeat all that. So we recommend going back to number 27, so you catch all these things.

The straitjacket and the first birth

Pål-Esben: Because what we thought we’d talk about today is how we break open the straitjacket. It sounds very simple to begin with, but it isn’t as simple as it sounds. In episode number 27 we began talking about the first birth: that we, our soul, come into this world. We pop out of our mother as this joyful child, in deep, deep contact with our soul. And then our upbringing happens, and the imprints, and we learn that this is good and that isn’t good. Somewhere between the ages of 7 and 14, the contact with our soul is cut off almost completely. By then the straitjacket has been created, the ego has been created, the self has been created. And it only gets stronger as the human being grows more and more adult. We went through that in quite a lot of detail in episode number 27.

Throughout life this straitjacket just gets stronger and stronger. We have this famous hamster wheel: we have to function, build a career, have good finances, have all these things the grain of sand wants. And then we come to a point in life where this emptiness often arises in a human being. It arose in me just after my burnout, or before I collapsed in 2003, and you felt it too, Amina, before you started this process: that something or other was missing in life. You really had everything, but something or other was missing.

Amina: Yes, and it’s a missing piece you go looking for, and you don’t find it in the physical world. So I was also very much searching for what was missing, but I didn’t find it until I started with you at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School.

The emptiness that sends us searching

Pål-Esben: Yes, and you look everywhere. You come to that point. Some experience it in their thirties, as I did, some even earlier, as you did, and many around midlife, between 45 and 55. But it can happen at any time. And when you start a process like the one you’ve been through, we look at how we can reverse this process, that is, reverse this disconnection from the soul and our divine nature, which happened in our first 7 to 15 years of life. The expression we use for it is that we try to dissolve the straitjacket. And the more we manage to dissolve this straitjacket, the easier it is for us to find our way back to what we are. Because no search is necessary. We just need to uncover what’s already there. Every human being has their full Sahara available, even if they believe the grain of sand is the only thing that exists: what you taste, smell, hear, see and feel kinaesthetically. That’s what most people experience as reality. But gradually you understand that reality is something very different from the grain of sand.

But you can’t imagine that until you begin to experience these things. You perhaps had ideas about this before you started, but it’s only when you begin to experience this Sahara that you really begin to understand what this is about. This lives in you, wild and unrestrained. Everything is there. You’re actually perfect.

Amina: Yes, and that’s also when you begin to realise what is reality and what isn’t. That’s when the other reality, for want of a better word, the Sahara reality, feels much more real than the human reality, the physical reality. That’s something I’ve found very, very interesting.

The Sahara reality feels more real

Pål-Esben: It’s very interesting, and of course a little challenging. Normally it’s no problem for a human being to relate to the grain of sand, since they believe the grain of sand is everything. But when you begin to experience more and more of your Sahara, when you begin to come into these real experiences of oneness, where you’re one with everything, which we call contact with our Sahara, the perspective changes on every level within us: cognitively, consciously and unconsciously, and in what lies beneath. When we bring that image and that experience with us into the grain of sand, it can be a challenge to come back at first. You come back in and see that what you thought was reality isn’t really reality. As a human being, I need to relate to the grain of sand too, because my soul has chosen to come in here. It has learned to come into this body, it wants to come into this body, and it’s here to learn and experience and develop. That’s the soul’s intention, as we talked about in earlier episodes.

So those are the challenges that someone going through this profound process of development comes across over time. How do I manage to stand with one foot in my free nature, that is, in my Sahara, in oneness, and at the same time stand with one foot in the grain of sand, in material existence, and live the two together, at the same time? That’s what we seek in the primordial shamanic process of development towards spiritual enlightenment, oneness, spiritual self-realization, or whatever you want to call it.

Chakras: a map for breaking open the straitjacket

Pål-Esben: And to be able to achieve this, we need a process. In the yogic tradition they work with what are called chakras. And chakras are interesting things that many, many people have heard of. So we thought we’d now discuss a simple form of process for breaking open the straitjacket, where we refer to the chakra system. And what were your ideas about chakras before you started on your path with me, Amina?

Amina: Oh yes, I’d picked that up. I’d picked up the chakra system, and for a while I worked with one chakra a week. I had one to two weeks with the root chakra, and then the hara chakra, and then I worked my way upwards. I focused on the individual themes. I ate red vegetables or yellow vegetables, all depending on which chakra I was working on. So it was a nice way to get to know the meaning of the chakra system. But what we’re doing is something completely different. So that’s how I worked with it before I met you.

112 chakras and the lotus flower

Pål-Esben: Very exciting. Most people who have heard of chakras have ideas about them. But what we’re going to talk about now is a little different. If we take the yogic tradition as our starting point, it claims that we have 114 chakras, two of which lie outside our energy body, which we often call the aura. So that leaves us 112 chakras we can work with. And each of our main chakras, that is, the seven main chakras, has 16 dimensions. Seven times 16 equals 112, so that’s why it comes to 112 chakras. So each main chakra, which is one of the more important energy centres in our body, has 16 dimensions. One of the dimensions is connected to the grain of sand of physical reality, and 15 of the dimensions are connected to the non-physical, according to the yogic tradition.

You can picture each chakra as a lotus flower. When the lotus flower opens up, it has 16 petals. When we’re going to work on integrating and healing our chakras, with the intention of breaking open and dissolving the straitjacket that binds us into the ego and the structures we’ve discussed, we need to be very observant about how we work with chakras. In the middle of the chakra you have what is called the chakra core, or the divine spark, which resonates with the eighth and ninth chakras, that is, the most divine aspects of your being.

When we work with the chakras, we want to integrate each of these petals, so they open up and become healthy. Because in a human being in this world, many of these petals and aspects of a chakra are a bit problematic. They’re full of fear and ignorance, which ultimately block the chakras, if we’re to use those words. So let’s take an example, Amina, with the first chakra. What colour does the first chakra have?

No chakra has colours: everything is vibration

Amina: Red.

Pål-Esben: Red? What did it smell like, what did you eat when you worked on it? Peppers?

Amina: It was probably peppers and apples. Isn’t it … it’s not fennel, but that round … I can’t remember what it’s called, but yes.

Pål-Esben: OK. And when we say that a chakra has the colour red, of course no chakra has any colours. And then perhaps you see …

Amina: No chakra has any colours?

Pål-Esben: No. Everything is vibration. Everything vibrates at a frequency, and all vibration has an energy. You are vibration, your chakras are vibration. It’s just that when we grew up in this world and saw a red apple, this red colour had a particular vibration in the apple, and our parents told us that it’s red. That’s how we learned that certain vibrations have certain colours. But in reality that’s just a grain-of-sand thing. So for simplicity’s sake we talk about the colours. And it’s the same idea with beings of light, angels, power animals, gods and so on. They have no form, but they also have a music or a vibration, a specific frequency. In different cultures we’re taught to interpret those vibrations in different ways. For example, we can say that the vibration of the god Balder, a very specific vibration we’ve come to know, is Balder. But in the Egyptian tradition we talk about Ra, who is connected to light and the sun, and that’s the same vibration. And in Japanese culture we talk about sun gods like Amaterasu and Dainichi Nyorai. They’re vibrations, but it’s what you’ve been taught: that vibration resembles what we call such and such.

It’s the same in our shamanic tradition with power animals. When we come across an elk in nature, the elk has a very specific vibration. And when we meet the elk power animal, certain parts of this vibration, the overtone or the undertone, will match the elk power animal. That’s how we, or our ancestors, say that it’s the elk power animal, the being of light. Very exciting, when you begin to understand what this is really about.

And for simplicity’s sake we talk about colours, so it doesn’t get so complex, and say that the main colour of the first chakra is red. In reality the chakra contains all colours, but we have certain main frequencies that are often there, and that’s why people often say the first chakra is red. The first chakra also has to do with earth, the earth element, and with the physical body: the bone structure, everything to do with blood flow and those things, which make up the fundamental structure in a human being, that is, the physical structure.

The first chakra syndrome: friend or enemy

Pål-Esben: And what’s problematic about the first chakra is what we call the first chakra syndrome. When we’re going to heal, if we use that word, heal and integrate the first chakra, we have to look at the problem aspects of the first chakra, which we need to go through a process to integrate and heal. And what is the first chakra syndrome, Amina?

Amina: Do you mean loving someone or hating someone?

Pål-Esben: Correct. Either you’re a friend, or you’re an enemy. And that’s something you’ve probably come across very often too: people in our world often categorise people as friend or enemy, depending on whether they like what they do or not.

Amina: Yes, yes, a lot of them. And I was like that myself. Not that I said it to the person, but I’d often think: “Either I like you, or I have completely different taste.” So perhaps there was something along those lines too. I can recognise it from earlier years in my life.

Pål-Esben: Yes, and many people experience this, either with themselves or with other people. Perhaps you have a good friend, and as long as you behave the way they like, they see you as a friend, and they like you. And the moment you say something they don’t like, you’re suddenly categorised as someone they don’t like, or as an enemy. People like that are very difficult to deal with, because you’re tiptoeing around them all the time. You dance around them and try to give them what they need, so that they’ll like you. And the moment you step out of that and say that perhaps it isn’t their partner’s fault that they feel this way or that, that perhaps they should take self-responsibility for what they do, they suddenly explode, and you’re in the enemy category, since you’ve said something they don’t like. Have you experienced that?

Amina: Yes. I’ve had my share of experience walking on eggshells.

Pål-Esben: Yes. And when we go through a spiritual process of development, wanting to set ourselves free, wanting to dissolve the straitjacket, so that the grain of sand doesn’t hold you captive, but you can gradually begin to slip into your real nature, we need to heal these things. If you have challenges with the first chakra syndrome, which is really a widespread affliction in our society today, you need to go through a process of healing. And it can’t be done with just some energy work. There’s also a psychological and behavioural process that has to be done here. A fairly extensive process, actually. Because it’s a difficult, slightly tricky topic, since the first chakra has to do with survival. That’s also the reason we put people in the friend or enemy box. We see those who agree with us all the time as safety and security, that is, people who are easy to survive with. Whereas those who challenge us, or who say things we don’t like, threaten our survival, psychologically and unconsciously. So that’s why we call it the first chakra syndrome, which is a tricky thing.

Hoarding and survival fear

Pål-Esben: Another problem, if you have a problem with the first chakra, is hoarding, for example. That is, you never have enough. You feel you never have enough. My wife has a friend whose husband hoards toilet paper. It’s completely extreme: his flat is full of toilet paper, because he’s afraid of running out. An example of hoarding. It may sound like a joke, but reality is very, very strange. But this feeling of never having enough, I can recognise that too. Because one of my first chakra fears, which I had a long time ago, was about financial survival. I was terrified of not surviving financially, of not having enough for food and rent and so on. And it’s probably something my mother passed on to me, since she grew up through the war, when the Nazis took the farm she lived on, and all those things. So for many, many years I had an intense fear of not having enough, financially, that is. Even though I earned more than enough to pay my expenses, I went around every day with anxiety about surviving tomorrow. That’s another example of a first chakra problem. But what about you, have you had anything like that going on, or is this one of the things you don’t have a problem with?

Amina: I started straight on the upper chakras, I didn’t have any need for that …

Pål-Esben: No, no, of course, absolutely.

Amina: No, that’s where it started. I don’t know how it is with you, Pål-Esben, but I started there, so …

Pål-Esben: No, I have …

Amina: Go ahead. Now I’m curious what you were going to say, Pål-Esben.

Kundalini: the sleeping potential

Pål-Esben: I had challenges when my mentor confronted me with these things 20 years ago. It probably wasn’t his intention, but it felt as if you were being confronted with it. It was about getting your kundalini to rise, because that’s the idea behind all this. Right at the very base of our spine there lies a tremendous potential of power, which is called the kundalini energy, according to the yogic tradition. In reality it isn’t energy, it’s a form of consciousness, and in a later episode we’ll talk about what consciousness really is. But for now we’ll simplify it as a kind of tremendous energy potential. When we’re born into this world and get a physical body, perhaps 10 percent of this potential is available. We need that for our body to be created, for cell division to happen and so on, for us to have an energy system that keeps us alive. But around 90 percent of the potential lies in a sleeping, dormant state, in this potential called kundalini, which is a form of serpent energy.

So the idea, when we work with these chakras, seen from the yogic tradition, is that this energy meets blockages in the first chakra, that is, we have the first chakra syndrome in one way or another. We have challenges with fear of not having enough to survive, aggressive and hostile behaviour, violent behaviour, chronic fatigue, birth traumas, a theme around fear of being abandoned. All of that has to do with the first chakra. Then you say that you have blockages in the first chakra. And this kundalini potential is supposed to be able to flow up towards the seventh chakra, because when it flows freely up there, you end up in what’s called enlightenment, which really isn’t real enlightenment. It’s called energetic enlightenment, but we’ll talk about that a bit later. The point is that when the chakras have blockages, the energy can’t flow up. And for us to be able to enter our real state, this energy needs to flow up and meet the seventh. That’s the theory behind the model.

And what felt uncomfortable when I started in the old days was when my mentor said: “Yes, you have problems with the first chakra, and we have to work on the first chakra so that the energy can flow up to the second chakra. And when you’re there, we have to work on that, and then we’ll work on the third chakra.” And that’s how we started in the old days. Then, once we’ve worked our way through the first chakra, through this friend-or-enemy syndrome, through the fear of being abandoned, if we have it, and have integrated all this, we can say that these petals of the first chakra, the petals of the lotus flower, each petal, are integrated and connected with the core, which represents the divine source and the divine spark. And what’s cool is that you don’t need to integrate all the petals. When you’ve integrated the lotus flower enough, the rest come together and connect. So that’s the idea behind it.

Amina: Yes, that’s my experience too. Also when I’ve worked on a specific theme, for example. I might imagine that I have ten themes concerning the first chakra. And often, when I’ve worked on one theme, like having a fear of being abandoned, or having had a lot of difficulty regulating my emotions, I’ve also seen, especially through the primordial shamanic process of development here, that the healing has often spilled over into other themes that I thought were something completely different, in a way.

Manifestation: you attract what you vibrate

Pål-Esben: Yes, and another important thing around this, since we’re talking about vibration, and let’s stick with the first chakra here now, is what many people call manifestation. People go on courses to manifest money, to manifest cars, to manifest whatever it may be. Well, there’s no technique you can do to manifest successfully. Because real manifestation happens the day you vibrate on the same plane as what you want to attract. Example: if you have a problem with the first chakra, and you have anxiety about not having enough, fear about surviving financially tomorrow, then you also have a great deal of dissonance in your vibration in the first chakra. Very much like heavy metal music, all roaring and screaming, with no rhythm to it. And then you learn some method or other for wishing to the universe that you’ll have lots of money. Well, money has its specific vibration. But when the vibration of money stands in strong contrast to the vibration you have, there’s nothing to attract the manifestation. So if you really want the ability to manifest, the real power of manifestation, you first need to make sure that your own music, your own frequency, your own vibration, matches what you want to manifest in your life. People sit there hunting for special, secret methods to manifest money, but of course it doesn’t work, because you aren’t what you need to be for it to be attracted.

Take another example, with a partner. You have a tremendous challenge in the first chakra, since we’re sticking with the first chakra now: you have friend or enemy, you have an extreme fear of being abandoned. Things like that fit very badly if you want to attract a loving partner. And your music, that is, the death metal music playing in the first chakra, radiates and vibrates around you. Then you go hunting for a partner, and win them over with a smile, or with how sexy you look. But it goes to hell, very quickly, since what you say you are doesn’t match your vibration, and then the partner disappears out of your life. Perhaps you’ve heard of this happening, theoretically, to someone?

Amina: Yes, or experienced it, rather.

I don’t want to be too direct about this now.

Pål-Esben: No, you have to be. Be direct; we’re live anyway.

Amina: Well, yes, yes. And I never learned; I got the same type of partner every time, because I hadn’t changed. But then I also began to see what kind of new partners and friends I actually began to attract in my process of change. We weren’t quite there yet, where it was quote unquote perfect and I attracted what was good for my life, but that was also because I wasn’t there either. But I’ve found it very interesting to see the gradual development too, and how I’m actually, to a great extent, master of my own life when it comes to what I attract. I’ve found that incredibly fascinating. And I remember when I wanted to attract the right partner, and we talked about it: “OK, I have a wish list of what I want, but what do I need to become, then, to attract it?”

Pål-Esben: Yes, exactly. And with what we talked about: which vibration do you need to come into, which music do you need to play in your body and your system, your psyche, your energy system, for that music to be in harmony with what you want to attract and bring into your life? These things aren’t terribly complex, but most people aren’t interested in doing the work it takes. They’d rather read the book The Secret, or learn whatever stuff it is, so they can manifest anything at all by doing a technique or a method. The reason it works badly is that you aren’t what you want to attract.

And when I started in the old days, a long time ago, more than 20, 30 years ago, I had a lot of resentment towards my ex-partners. I’ve experienced some unpleasant things, and I carried resentment towards my ex-partners, at least a couple of them. And then my mentor at the time says: “Yes, I understand that you want to attract a new, suitable partner, but you’ll never manage that unless you manage to let go of the resentment you have towards your exes, and forgive what needs to be forgiven, so you can start with a clean slate when you go out looking for a suitable partner.” And in the language we’ve been using now: how can you attract a suitable partner when you have so much death metal music in your system, with hatred and resentment towards former partners? You’re afraid they’ll leave you, you’re afraid they’ll be unfaithful, you have jealousy and all those things. “How in God’s name are you then going to find and attract a suitable partner who is full of what your heart longs for?” he says to me.

Amina: I wasn’t really all that … I really just wanted to do a shamanic ritual, so this partner would come along. Why should I do all this work? It’s much easier to do a bit of magic. So we just do a bit of magic, and then the prince or princess is standing there, just as we want. That would have been lovely.

Pål-Esben: Yes, try it, then; it doesn’t work. That’s why we’re talking about these things now, so you get an idea that there’s work we need to do, but the work doesn’t need to be full of suffering. It can be incredibly exciting and rewarding.

The second chakra: the joyful child

Pål-Esben: Then, once we’ve worked our way through the themes of the first chakra, and let’s say integrated them, we move on to the second chakra, which has its own challenging themes. The second chakra is connected to sexuality, sensuality, physical touch, intimacy, eroticism, joyfulness, the inner child, joy in life. And there are really very few people I come across in our society today who have a balanced second chakra. Especially those who come to me with burnout: I ask them to write a list of ten things they can do that make them joyful, which have nothing whatsoever to do with work. Nothing to do with producing anything, just something that makes you downright joyful. Very, very rarely do I come across people who can write one thing on this list. How is it for you, what’s your experience?

Amina: With myself, do you mean?

Pål-Esben: No, I mean with the people who come to you. We don’t need to get personal here.

Amina: Yes, what’s my experience with that? The same as yours. It’s often a bit difficult to work out what it is you actually like, what it is that actually makes you … I’ve held some women’s circles where we’ve worked on diving into the second chakra, going from using it as an energy centre for survival through the first chakra. And then it’s often been …

Pål-Esben: Did it freeze just now?

Amina: No, it’s fine. No, it’s going fine. And then it’s often been difficult to get in touch with this inner joyful child, the part that can delight and have fun just being. I’ve always had the part of me that loves to fool around and make up songs about things, when we’re standing in the kitchen or the living room and that kind of thing. It hasn’t always gone down equally well with the people around me, but I’ve always had that part with me, wherever I am. Not at the times when things have been pitch dark, of course, but I really have it very easily available, even though I’ve very often thought it was very far away. Those are the things I can recognise in myself too. And that’s what I’ve focused on in the last few years: how can I live more from the second chakra, how can I live more from the things I do, how can I make them more joyful, instead of all this must, must, must? Yes, there are things we have to do as grown-ups too, but how can I bring joyfulness in here, how can I bring in a little more joy, or make it a bit fun? Yes, doing the washing-up is boring, but you can make it fun too.

But yes, back to what you were talking about, about you not experiencing … it’s very rare that people can write ten keywords, not even one keyword, on what makes them joyful. Because many people think: “Huh, joyful, what’s that?” And grown-ups in particular think: “Can I be like that? But then I’d be childish. Then I’d be silly; I mean, we’re done with that now. Can I?” Of course you can: jump and dance and just do what you feel like. Let the inner joyful child come out. And then, especially at women’s circles and the like, I find it very … oh, it delights me when I see the inner joyful child come out. And in this sphere a great many people work with the inner child, the inner traumatised child. And I’m quite keen to talk about the inner joyful child, which I’ve inherited a little from you here.

Pål-Esben: Yes, exactly. And that’s really the image we often show: this child sitting out in the woods throwing these leaves, just squealing and shrieking with joyfulness without any reason for it. I just find that so exciting, that business with the leaves. Put a grown-up out in the woods and ask them to throw leaves, and they just sit there and say: “Oh, is this interesting? This is just boring. I have other things to spend my time on.” And that’s how society often is today. And it was the same when I started after my burnout. I was also told to write this list, and I couldn’t write a single thing that didn’t have to do with being productive. Joyful? I had no idea what joyful was, really. I’d forgotten what joyful is. It’s this feeling of happiness that’s just there for no reason, where you’re simply happy without there needing to be a reason why you’re happy. And that’s what we want to come back to.

So the second chakra is extremely important, since it has everything to do with joy in life, play, touch and sensuality. And the biggest problem chakras for most of the people I come across are the first and second chakras. Hugely so. Our society has drilled it into us so that these chakras are often very blocked, through our automatic behavioural programmes, the way we think, belief systems and so on. That was a little about the second chakra.

The third chakra: setting boundaries

Pål-Esben: And if we then go up to the third chakra, what colour does it have?

Amina: What did you say?

Pål-Esben: What colour does the third chakra have?

Amina: Yellow.

Pål-Esben: So yellow peppers, and other things that are yellow?

Amina: Oranges; I had a lot of orange juice. Yes, there wasn’t much more than that. Oh yes, pineapple is yellow, so a bit of that kind of fruit, exotic fruit salad. Then you’ll be healed in your third chakra. But it’s exciting, and now I feel encouraged to play with this.

Pål-Esben: This isn’t to say there’s anything wrong with eating pineapple because it’s the third chakra you’re working on. No, I encourage you to take a playful approach to a process of development. That’s the joyful thing, instead of it being a kind of discipline: “Now I’m going to work on the third chakra, because now it’s going to be good.” We prefer a much more playful way. And when you eat that pineapple, you can think: “This does the third chakra good, more yellow colour.” And you shouldn’t rule out that the placebo effect in this also has an effect on the energy system around the third chakra. So we shouldn’t just say this is nonsense.

Amina: This is something I think is really cool. I’ve never heard this before, so now I feel encouraged.

Pål-Esben: So the third chakra has to do with the fire element. And an important quality of the third chakra is setting boundaries. Setting boundaries is saying no, saying that this is mine, and this isn’t mine. In the esoteric world there are many people who have challenges with setting boundaries, both energetically and physically. You often see it in people who are hypersensitive. They have challenges when they sit on the bus among other people and get overwhelmed by what comes from those people’s energy systems, their thoughts, their feelings. You’ve probably come across that often too.

Amina: I very often come across people who struggle with that, where the third chakra is very, very weak. Yes, I’ve experienced it with perhaps eight or nine out of ten of the people I talk to, and I’ve experienced it a lot myself too, where I also got help from you to … Before, when I went into readings or guidance sessions and things like that, I could also very quickly … their energy or their challenges could stay with me through the day. And I had challenges being present and compassionate, and helping these people without being affected myself. But after I got an understanding of this and got help from you, I managed to turn it around. And it doesn’t take that much once you crack the code, because it doesn’t have to be like that. There are a lot of sensitive people out there, and it actually is possible to have these deep, compassionate interactions, or the healing many people do, without becoming a victim of negativity, in a way.

Your defences are trained, not wrapped up

Pål-Esben: Your normal, healthy defences, which are connected to the third chakra, are there precisely to set boundaries: both to say no, and also to set boundaries energetically and emotionally. When they’re down for the count, we’re an open book and take in absolutely everything. And the more gifted you are, the better your ESP antennae are, the more intense this is, and the more uncomfortable it can be. That’s a reality. But the good news is that the solution is really very uncomplicated. Because you need to understand this about the third chakra, and you need to understand how to strengthen the third chakra naturally, so that you naturally become able to set boundaries energetically and emotionally. What will make this worse is learning methods for protection and energy bubbles and all those things, which are typically what’s taught in the esoteric world. You’re told to put special energy bubbles around yourself, balls of energy, or whatever it is you learn, so that it goes quiet and you don’t have problems when you sit on the bus and so on. That will make everything worse. We’ve talked about it before, the cleanliness syndrome: when children grow up in a sterile home, they often have big problems with their immune system as adults. If they grow up on a farm, where it isn’t sterile, the immune system is trained continuously, so they have a much stronger immune system as adults.

We could talk about vaccines and so on here, which also cause some problems, but that’s a separate matter. The same thing works with energetic and emotional protection. You put an energy bubble around yourself, but that makes the third chakra and the energy system weaker and weaker, and less and less able to set healthy boundaries. So that’s something we absolutely don’t do in our tradition. Because here it’s about training our system, so the system begins to work in a healthy way again. And then this stops being a problem at all. So if you, dear listener, have challenges with what we’re talking about now, I encourage you to get in touch with Amina, who can take you through that process, so you don’t have to suffer with this. It’s unnecessary in my eyes.

So that’s an example of the third chakra. The third chakra has to do with identity, individuality, self-image and self-confidence. And challenges with the third chakra, besides setting healthy and clear boundaries and saying no, are of course the problem with the ego: the ego inflates. The ego’s fear. Negative belief systems, morals and dogma, which there are plenty of in our society, especially in the religious society we live in. Even if we’ve never set foot in a church, we’re still full of this in the unconscious, through our imprinting. Worry. Shame, which is also a belief system connected to the third chakra. Guilt. And victim mentality, which I come across very often in our society: you feel like a victim, and it’s other people’s fault that you have the problem you have. Victim mentality is directly connected to the third chakra, and in our setting it helps block the third chakra and the kundalini energy that could flow up.

Then we need to find a way to work with this, so we don’t suffer through it any more, but integrate it, so it becomes healthy. So we have a healthy ego, a healthy identity, a healthy self-image, where how we feel doesn’t depend on how the world around us is, and things like that.

Amina: Yes, very important.

The fourth chakra: the heart’s bridge

Pål-Esben: And that automatically leads to an often dramatically better quality of life. The point here is to find a systematic and healthy way to work with these things. And we’ll talk a bit about that later, our brilliant way of doing this, where we actually work with all the chakras in parallel, at the same time, which of course is much more fun than working with one at a time. So we’ll take that later, but let’s first go through the last chakras. The fourth chakra. Colour?

Amina: Green, or pink, often.

Pål-Esben: Green is often a very well-known colour. Salad? What are other things that are green?

Amina: Salad, cucumber, green peppers, spinach. Here you can really go on a detox cure to reach the heart chakra.

Pål-Esben: And again, I’d actually encourage this. If you sit down to work on the fourth chakra and its themes, why not use this as a trigger, as a stimulus for the work, so it becomes more interesting and joyful to work with? Totally brilliant. And the fourth chakra, what does it have to do with, Amina?

Amina: The heart chakra.

Pål-Esben: It’s usually seen as the chakra that binds the lower and upper chakras together, working as a bridge. And the typical themes to do with the fourth chakra are the ones to do with love. Sharing and experiencing love with other people, with animals, with nature and so on. Hope, empathy, compassion, tolerance, patience.

Amina: Forgiveness.

Pål-Esben: Forgiveness, definitely. Family, a family setting where you share with your family. Devoting yourself to another, devoting yourself to another human being. Inner peace, deeply connected to the fourth chakra. And a child’s innocence, that’s the fourth chakra. So when you have challenges with these things, you know it yourself. And typical negative aspects of the fourth chakra, when you have problems, are that you’re typically self-centred and egotistical. It has to do with unhealthy processing of grief, that is, carrying the grief around for years after the event happened. That’s also a blocking theme for the fourth chakra. Loneliness is definitely a challenge with the fourth chakra. And betrayal, if you experience betrayal or are afraid of being betrayed. And there’s also this business of being afraid of being abandoned, which also has to do with the first chakra, but in a slightly different way here. Because here being abandoned has to do with being left alone. In the first chakra, being abandoned has to do with survival. So when you have these challenges, you need to find out what you can do, so you don’t limit yourself or suffer around these things any more. And it isn’t so easy to get a self-centred, egotistical human being to develop this if they aren’t motivated themselves to work on these things. Because it takes a willingness to begin working with these things, a willingness to begin letting go of this straitjacket, a willingness to centre yourself more and more on your heart. You have to engage that willingness for this process of liberation to be able to happen at all. That’s often our challenge today: we aren’t willing to do these things, because we’re waiting for a method, technique or ritual that will make this happen for us.

Amina: That’s an important, important topic you’re raising there. Because when you meet other people, or talk with other people, many are very switched on, or quite aware of their stuff, and have become more self-aware. And that’s the first step towards changing anything at all. But then what you’re talking about comes into the picture, this willingness. Are you willing to …? Noticing patterns in yourself, or what you need to work on, is one thing, but are you willing to actually do something? Because that’s where it can stop for some people too.

Pål-Esben: That’s where it stops for most people. Because what you need to do isn’t very complicated in most cases. I mean, exactly what you need to do to heal your fear of betrayal, for example, is really very uncomplicated, especially if you use the shamanic processes we do; then this happens very quickly. And then there are some steps you have to take, practical steps, around these things. But if you don’t make the choice and say that this is something you want to engage in wholeheartedly to resolve, then nothing will happen either. Then you’ll stay in the limitation and the suffering, and that’s also a choice. So one of the most important principles, or mechanisms, for being able to do any kind of development of the calibre we’re talking about is choice: the willingness to make the necessary choices. Because as long as you’re willing to make the choices and have a competent mentor, teacher or guide who can help you, the technical side of what you need to do is often very uncomplicated, in most cases.

Amina: Yes, that’s actually my experience.

Pål-Esben: Sometimes you come across complex settings where someone has been chronically ill for 20 years, and then it isn’t technically very simple. Then it’s more complex. Or where someone has been through extreme traumas in their life, like violence and abuse and things like that. So it isn’t simply easy; it’s a process you go through. But in nine out of ten cases, the technical side of what you need to do is very uncomplicated, once you choose to make the choice and say: “I devote myself to what’s necessary to do.” That’s my experience.

Amina: Yes, yes, mine too. Mine too. Yes, absolutely.

The fifth chakra: blueberries and methylene blue

Pål-Esben: The fifth chakra, that’s … colour?

Amina: Blue. Blueberries.

Pål-Esben: Blueberries?

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: Blueberries, yes, perhaps we’ll stop there. Enjoy your blueberries during throat chakra time.

Amina: Blueberries, yes. Or blue Laban Seigmenn, those Norwegian jelly men.

Pål-Esben: No, we’re not allowed to say that here.

Amina: No, OK.

Pål-Esben: We’re allowed to enjoy them. But there are those artificial sugary lollipops you can suck on until your tongue turns blue and so on. I don’t know if we should recommend that either. Methylene blue?

Amina: Yes, yes, yes. Which I take every day. I make it myself.

Pål-Esben: I haven’t seen you with a blue tongue yet, though.

Amina: No, that’s because I put it in capsules and take it.

Pål-Esben: You’re a clever one, you know.

Amina: I am pretty clever, aren’t I?

Pål-Esben: Everything’s blue on the tongue. For those of you who don’t know what methylene blue is: it’s a dye that in the old days was used to dye jeans, for example. And when you take it, it has very, very exciting physiological effects, for example activating the mitochondria and things like that, at least if it’s pharmaceutical grade; otherwise it’s poison. If you’re interested in that, we’ll talk about it another time.

Amina: Yes, that would probably be exciting.

Communication and the almighty syndrome

Pål-Esben: Very exciting. So the fifth chakra is the throat chakra, connected to the throat. It’s connected to communication, to expressing yourself on every level: with language, with charisma, and also energetically, with beings of light, for example. And it has to do with creativity and artistic forms of expression. Those are the themes. And these are the problems with the fifth chakra: being a person who lies, who goes behind other people’s backs and gossips, toxic communication, that is, black communication, where you manipulate others to get the goodies yourself. It can have to do with being afraid to express yourself, afraid to speak and express your various thoughts, as many people are. They’re afraid of what people will say, and so on. But it also has to do with challenges with our ESP senses, which are connected to neuroses and psychoses. That is, we believe that what we experience is reality, when it’s really the subconscious. That also has to do with the fifth chakra. Another thing to do with the fifth chakra is the almighty syndrome. That is: “I know best about everything, everyone else is an idiot.”

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: In psychology you find this under the Dunning-Kruger effect; look up Dunning-Kruger and company, and you’ll see whether you have these challenges. It’s saying that I’m smart, even though I understand nothing, and the others haven’t got a clue about anything at all. We call it the almighty syndrome, and you find it everywhere in our society. Just turn on the TV and watch a debate between politicians, and you’ll see it in extreme quantity and quality. Those are examples of challenges with the fifth chakra.

The sixth chakra: the conductor and the third eye

Pål-Esben: Let’s jump on to the sixth chakra, which is the brow chakra, which you find between the eyebrows. And what colour does it have?

Amina: Indigo.

Pål-Esben: Indigo and violet, in that direction. What did you eat then?

Amina: You know what, to be honest, I think I perhaps stopped there, on the food front. But aubergine, then. We could perhaps do something with aubergine here, I think. It’s a bit purplish. Or we could go back to a bit of blueberry again, but … but aubergine.

Pål-Esben: Yes. And there are exotic fruits that are violet and indigo inside. I can’t remember what they’re called now, but I’ve eaten them. Anyway, the sixth chakra is an important, important part of the human energy system. For one thing, the sixth chakra is responsible for and connected to our pituitary gland, and it’s also connected to the pineal gland. But if we talk about the pituitary gland here now: the pituitary gland is also the conductor, that is, what we call the master gland in our body, which tells all the other glands how to release hormones, for example. So it governs hormone production in our body, and we can say that it’s the conductor of the symphony orchestra. It conducts our organs, and as long as our organs play to the music the conductor is trying to conduct, you have healthy organs. When the organs vibrate and play in dissonance with the conductor, or the conductor has had a couple of schnapps too many and is drunk and isn’t doing the job, we have a problem with our physiological body. So that’s the most important physical aspect of the sixth chakra. And the spiritual aspect has to do with what we often call the third eye. And what is the third eye?

Amina: Oh. Well, I want to say your inner upa-guru, your inner guide, so perhaps the translation mechanism we have when we go on inner journeys and things like that. Intuition?

The intuition that finds the way

Pål-Esben: Yes, it has a great deal to do with intuition, and then we’re talking about real intuition. Not what we call gut feeling, which most people think is intuition; that has nothing to do with this. Intuition is, for example, when you’re struggling with an illness, and if the sixth chakra is working as it should, you’ll intuitively be able to find the right doctor or therapist who can help you take the next steps in solving your problem. So when the sixth chakra and all the petals in the sixth chakra have been integrated with the chakra core, you’ll intuitively find what you need in life much more easily, that is, seen from the heart’s point of view and not the ego’s. Everything from a partner to a doctor to a place to live to a job and so on will often be very uncomplicated when the sixth chakra is doing its job. But today, because of the way we’ve grown up and been imprinted, very few people have a well-functioning sixth chakra, because there’s too much stress in the system, and people go around on autopilot too much.

Let me take an example where someone gets ill and is diagnosed with an illness such as fibromyalgia, which many people in today’s society have, where many have pain in their joints and so on. When you have a non-functioning sixth chakra, you’ll go to the doctor, and the doctor will say that this is fibromyalgia, and they’ll typically give you cortisone to dampen the pain. Very unnecessary. If you have a functioning sixth chakra, you’ll be drawn to something completely different. Then you’ll go to a holistic doctor who will tell you the following: “The reason you have fibromyalgia is that you have far too much active inflammation in your body. So what we need to do, dear patient, is make sure that the inflammation in your body goes down and is minimised, by identifying the causes of the inflammation in your body. So the first thing we’ll start with, dear patient, is changing your diet radically to an anti-inflammatory diet. The next thing we’ll start with, dear patient, is going through your gut and checking that there’s no leaky gut creating massive inflammation, and so on. We’ll go through other factors that create inflammation in your body.” And what happens then, in pretty much every case I know of, is that the pain goes away and the fibromyalgia disappears, without using what modern conventional medicine says you should use, for example cortisone or other anti-inflammatory drugs. There’s a difference between having a chakra that’s blind and a chakra that’s open and functioning. You can see clearly, instead of all the muddle.

And you sitting there now, dear listener, listening to us, have a much more open chakra, a more open sixth chakra, than most of the people around you. Because somehow you’ve been drawn to a podcast that can give you input on what you can do, which goes far beyond what’s traditionally done for certain challenges and problems you struggle with. And in this case, fibromyalgia, which a great many people struggle with, is unnecessary in our society. And another thing that the professional doctor, or therapist or mentor, will say is that we need to find out how to reduce the stress, because in most cases there’s massive chronic stress. And that’s one of the reasons why many people who get burnout also struggle with fibromyalgia. And the main cause is chronic stress, which leads to lots of stress hormones, which in turn produce inflammation, which in turn can create problems with the joints and all those things. I’d say that in many cases it’s very uncomplicated to solve things, if you have a well-functioning sixth chakra and find the resources that can help you solve the problem. When it comes to chronic illnesses, that’s very rarely your regular doctor.

Yes, so that’s a little about the third eye. The sixth chakra, the third eye. And it has to do with how we find and attract what we need. But it also has to do with being able to find our path in this incarnation. That is, it has to do with finding a profession you’ll be happy in, and with finding people who make your life good and exciting to live. But it also has to do with finding the soul’s process of development and path of development, what we call our spiritual path. That’s also what our upa-guru and the third eye, the sixth chakra, do, isn’t it?

When you have problems with the sixth chakra, that is, when it’s blocked in one way or another, you’ll first of all have challenges finding what you need in your life, for example to get well, to find the right partner, to find a job you can be happy in and so on. That’s one of the challenges. Another, which has to do with the sixth chakra in a blocked state, is depression and anxiety, which many people struggle with, and stress-related illness. Another challenge with the sixth chakra is denial of reality. I come across that very often. People won’t call a spade a spade. “No, I don’t want it to be like that,” and they deny that it is. Denial of reality, in other words. “I don’t have a problem with that, I don’t have a problem with myself, I don’t have a problem regulating myself with my children or my partner.” Then they scream and shout when they come home, because their partner doesn’t do what they want. “I don’t have a problem with that.” So that’s also a typical sixth chakra problem. Denial of reality. Feeling inadequate. Being confused, not seeing things clearly. Neuroses are connected to the sixth chakra. And believing that information is knowledge, that is, what I call academic spirituality. When I come across people who have read hundreds, if not thousands, of books, and heard and learned what all the gurus and everyone else say, they have lots of information, but none of it is lived out and transforms their life. That’s academic knowledge, then. That’s also a sixth chakra problem. So, yes, the sixth chakra is important.

Intuition or fantasy

Amina: I have a question here, because many of the people I talk to have had a question around … “I was on an inner journey, and I saw this and that, and it was so clear to me, so it must have come from my intuition. But I followed that intuition, and it wasn’t such a good thing to do.” And I see that with many people, including myself on my own journey. You begin to see with the inner eyes, and that’s lovely and good and so on, but the challenge is distinguishing between what’s real intuition and what’s fantasy.

Pål-Esben: Correct. Correct. And the only way you can find this out is to have a competent mentor who knows what it’s about, and who can help you separate the wheat from the chaff. It’s very difficult to work this out yourself, since you’re subjective about it. Because what you experience on a journey like that can feel so real. Example: you experience that the prince of your dreams is standing there waiting for you, and the experience says that you now have to let go of the partner you have, because then you’ll get the prince of your dreams any minute now. When you get something like that, I guarantee you that’s your own psychosis talking, and it has nothing to do with reality. But people act on the basis of this. They get rid of their partner, and then they go out and wait for the prince or princess of their dreams, and then it all goes wrong, so they realise they’ve made a mess of things.

Amina: It isn’t so easy in this sphere now either, because we’re told that everything lies within us, the answer lies within yourself, so it’s easy to end up there.

Pål-Esben: Correct. And it’s true, everything lies within you. But you have a mega, mega, mega layer, many metres thick, of ego and imprints and belief systems and whatever else, lying on the outside and, let’s say, protecting you or stopping you from diving into reality. And when you believe what you experience in the aspects of ego, intellect and karma, when you believe it’s reality, then things often go wrong quite radically. So the way through is to discuss these experiences with a competent mentor, as we did. Because you’ve had lots of experiences like that where you didn’t know what was what. “Is this reality or fantasy?” you asked me. Isn’t that how it was?

Amina: Yes, yes, yes. Are you kidding? Good grief. I also remember when my ESP antennae began to develop, and I began to see more too. All the negative belief systems stood right in front of my face, as beings; I could count the hairs on them. And then you come along and tell me that it isn’t there, it isn’t real, it isn’t true. But it’s been a hugely important part of my journey to go through all those things too, so that I can also help others recognise them. But it’s an important part of the process, yes.

Pål-Esben: It is, and it isn’t easy. But you get to discuss it, and you get a logical explanation of why it’s fantasy, and why it’s reality. Because a logical explanation has to be given; you can’t just say that’s how it is, and that’s how it is. That’s meaningless. We spent a long time on why it was like that, so you could understand: “Aha, these are typical signs of fantasy taking off, and these are typical signs of real intuition, or of when I’m in real contact with a being of light, or in real contact with my upa-guru. That’s how it feels.”

Amina: That’s how it feels, yes.

Pål-Esben: And it doesn’t take that long. When you’ve discussed perhaps 10, 15, 20 cases, you quickly learn to separate the wheat from the chaff. But it has to be learned. I had to learn this too, from my mentors at the time. And then there are these visions you get, which can be pretty extreme things. And then you go into this idea, for example that you have a vision: now you’ve been sent by the universe to save this world. “So now I’ve been told that I’m to activate all the places of power in the whole of Norway. And now I’m going to do it.” But that has very little to do with reality. It’s called a god complex: when that kicks in, and you believe you’ve been sent and have a special mission where you’re going to save things. Then you slide into the sixth chakra in an undeveloped state, and those things. And most of the people I come across who say things like this aren’t willing to discuss it either. They say that’s just how it is.

Then they ask me: “Can’t you help me build up these places of power too? Let’s activate the whole of Norway and all the spiritual people in Norway, and we’ll build up all these places of power.” They won’t be willing to discuss their vision. But thank goodness, Amina, that right from the start you were willing to discuss, even though it wasn’t always comfortable, because of course we want these things to be real. Everything we experience that’s wonderful and exciting, we want it to be real.

Amina: Yes, of course, and it also takes something. “Oh, good grief, I’ve met that being of light, and that message, and that healing thing and all that.” And then daring to raise it, and perhaps being told: “Well, perhaps not.” Daring that is part of it too, because it isn’t very nice for the ego, which is all excited about all this and then has to realise: “So it wasn’t like that after all?”

Pål-Esben: Yes. Then you need someone to discuss with who is willing, first of all, to have respect for you, and respect for what you experience, but who is also willing to discuss why things are the way they are. Not just say, “No, now you’re wrong, it isn’t like that,” because that doesn’t work. You have to explain exactly why this is a real experience, and why it isn’t a real experience. And there are many, many signs of what is a real experience and what isn’t. You learn that over time, but you have to be willing to discuss it. Because just making decisions because you had some vision or other can really mess up your life.

Amina: Yes.

The seventh chakra and falling upwards

Pål-Esben: Good. And the last thing we’ll look at is the seventh chakra. The seventh chakra isn’t part of our energy system, because it hovers just above our head. And the seventh chakra is a result of the state of the first six chakras. That is, we can’t work directly with the seventh chakra. It isn’t possible. The only way we can develop the seventh chakra is by developing the first to sixth chakras, and the themes there. And the more these lotus flowers, or the petals in the lotus flower of each chakra, are integrated and connected with the chakra core, the more contact there is with the seventh chakra, according to the yogic tradition. And so, for the last step, when you’ve broken open your straitjacket enough by working your way through these chakras, and the kundalini energy is ready to break through from the sixth to the seventh chakra, you need to go through a process that the yogic tradition calls falling upwards. And that’s nothing you can do by meditating. You can meditate five hours a day for 50 years without this happening. It’s a very special process for jumping from the sixth chakra to the seventh chakra. It’s a kind of push that needs to be given by the guide, who helps you jump from the sixth to the seventh chakra, into oneness.

A friend of mine who is a Tibetan monk and has lived in Tibet for several decades, an enlightened master, talks about what he calls a push. That push has to be given when the student is ready and prepared, when the straitjacket has loosened enough that it doesn’t bind you too tightly. Then it’s up to the guide to push you upwards, so this jump happens. And what’s difficult about this jump is that you have to be willing to fall into the unknown. It’s like standing at the top of a gigantic staircase with the abyss in front of you. It’s dark, and you can’t see anything, and you don’t know what’s in the abyss. And you’ve experienced this, Amina. In the next episode we’ll talk about how you experienced this jump upwards, and falling into the unknown, which takes courage, and which requires exceptional trust in the guide who is going to push you across. And that’s one of the important reasons why you need a spiritual teacher, guide, guru, whatever you want to call it, in that process on the path to oneness and to your Sahara. It’s specifically for the last part, this push. Before that, you need to build up trust between guide and student, so that the student eventually really trusts their guide. And for us to be able to trust someone, we must have been through both ups and downs together. You can’t trust someone if you’ve only had sunshine together and have no idea what happens the day the weather turns bad. So when you’ve been through what we’ve been through, where I’ve said things to you and you’ve been a bit huffy and irritated and didn’t like hearing it, and you’ve been through the ups and downs, the same as me, then you’ve built up strong enough trust in me to be willing to jump into the unknown.

Amina: Yes, it’s like you taking me to the top of a mountain and saying: “Go on, jump, it’ll be fine.” And then it’s like: “Yes, yes, but I’ve learned that if I jump off that mountain, then hello, gravity. I’m in time and space here.” And then doing it anyway, because the trust is there, strong enough. You know it’ll be fine, even though you don’t know it, in a way. Strange feeling, but yes.

The shock of the first jump

Pål-Esben: A quick preview of the next episode: how did you experience the first time you were thrown out into the unknown, when you experienced the push I gave you, which I call falling upwards, and you ended up, kaboom, in the unknown, in something you had no way of even imagining? How did you experience it, briefly?

Amina: Oh. Now I’m a bit unsure which … whether it’s the first time I was at … no, the second time. No. What’s freshest in my memory is coming to the point where you get the message to surrender: “Jump.” And the uncertainty, where the body doesn’t want to let go, or the ego doesn’t want to let go, and then doing it anyway, in a way. Oh, it’s a feeling that’s incredibly hard to describe, but it’s like plopping into something completely different. A completely different field, a completely different … I wouldn’t even call it a field, just something completely different. And yes, I don’t know how much further I should go with that, but it’s hard to explain.

Pål-Esben: Does it feel like a shock?

Amina: Yes, yes, at least afterwards. When you come out of all the experiences, it’s a tremendous shock.

Pål-Esben: Where the intellect and the ego and the whole thing are often in a chaotic state.

Amina: Yes, yes, I definitely experienced that. I was in shock. And it was something that was actually so lovely. It felt so much like home, so lovely.

Pål-Esben: Yes, of course, that’s how it is. But it becomes a shock because you haven’t experienced it before, at least not in this present time, in a way.

Amina: So yes, definitely.

Pål-Esben: When you’re pushed across, it doesn’t happen by someone saying, “Now you’re going to jump.” It’s an energetic thing that happens: when the student is ready, it really only takes the touch of a feather. So it’s an energetic push that happens, but it’s much more complex than just energetic. It’s just that the timing has to be exact for it to be done. But before that timing, the student has to be prepared. And when you then go into your Sahara and experience your Sahara for the first time, whether it’s for one second, or for a millisecond, or for one minute, or ten minutes, it doesn’t matter: what you experience there is utterly impossible to describe in words. Why? Because you experience a place where time and space don’t exist, where you’re one with everything, and no language that exists can describe it. Because the only thing we can describe with language is the grain of sand and what we experience in the grain of sand. That is, you’re a woman, I’m a man, and so on. In oneness there’s no woman and no man. And that’s the reason you experience your Sahara and experience being connected with everything that exists. When you come out of a state like that, you’re speechless, and you don’t know what you … you can’t express it.

I say that you can gurgle something or other, but those who haven’t experienced it have no basis for understanding what it’s about. Only those who have experienced it will understand what you’re gurgling about. We try to make some images. Describe what it’s like to be one with everything. I can give images and metaphors for it, but the intellect has no basis for calculating what it is. But once you’ve experienced it, you know. When someone who has had genuine experiences of oneness gurgles something or other, that is, metaphors around it, another person who has experienced oneness will know exactly what they’re talking about. In fact they’re the only ones who can know what they’re talking about. Or you may have read books, you may have read yogic books about enlightenment, and then you’ve learned intellectually what happens when you’re in these states. And then, when you meditate and meditate, you try to force yourself into this, and then you say: “I’m experiencing it, it’s that yogic book I read.” And in most cases, of course, that has nothing to do with it, because it’s impossible to describe what you experience. That is, the intellect brings you into some energetic room or other, and then it has nothing to do with the Sahara. It’s quite a challenge, isn’t it, when you go through these processes yourself?

Amina: Yes. Right, thanks. No, what I was going to say was … one of the most challenging things on this journey is actually being able to describe these things. Because that’s how it is: I use some words, and the reaction is just: “Huh?” It doesn’t fit, it isn’t even half a percent of what I actually want to express. So it can be a bit frustrating, but you just have to take it for what it is. We have the language we have.

Pål-Esben: Of course, you try to make images and metaphors around it, so you can have some idea or other. We’ll do that in the next episode. Because then you’ll try to make images of what these experiences of oneness of yours have been like, where you try as best you can to describe it. Very, very, very cool and exciting.

Amina: So that’s one episode I wouldn’t want to miss.

Why meditation alone isn’t enough

Pål-Esben: We’ll drill into that. And when it comes to this path up through the chakra system, and especially the path from the sixth to the seventh chakra, it also describes why meditation alone, for example, rarely leads to your Sahara. You learn a meditation technique for silence, for focus in the silence. You meditate an hour or two every day, year after year after year, and you never achieve what you, Amina, have begun to experience. The reason for that is very simple. First of all, the straitjacket needs to be dissolved, in parallel with learning meditation and silence. As long as the straitjacket is too hard, you can meditate until you’re blue in the face without beginning to experience these things. That’s the first thing. The next thing about meditation is that it’s very, very rare to be able to jump upwards from the sixth to the seventh chakra. Here you need a guide, a guru, teacher or mentor, who is already in that state and can push you across. It’s well known in the yogic tradition, and also in the Tibetan tradition, the Buddhist tradition and so on, this push, falling upwards. So I regularly come across people who have learned meditation for silence, and who have often meditated for several decades, and who wonder why they don’t experience their full nature and oneness after meditating for so long. And the answer is really very simple: they haven’t done the work that’s necessary. That’s why it’s so important, when we talk about working actively in a process, to dissolve these straitjackets. And you don’t need to do it by working with one chakra at a time. Doing it the way we’ve described in this episode is really a very slow process, a heavy and difficult process. Most people give up while they’re still working on the first chakra. They give up because they don’t manage to heal the challenge of the first chakra syndrome, survival fear and those things. So they stay stuck on the first chakra, and if they’re lucky enough to get on to the second chakra, they come across plenty of other challenges, and then they give up eventually.

The Golden Keys and the pillars: all the chakras at once

Pål-Esben: 23 years ago, when I started my shamanic process of development, I was offered this chakra method, and I also introduced my first students to it. What I saw at the start was that the process is very, very heavy, and unnecessarily heavy and difficult. So I developed a different methodology, which lets us work with all the chakras in parallel, in a much more joyful and fun way, which gives much better results. And that’s what we’ve done with you, Amina. We haven’t worked this way, but we’ve worked with all of them at the same time. And how have we done that? I’d say through the 7 Golden Keys, through the Path of the Heart, and many other things throughout the whole training. But I think we talked about it in the first episodes, when we went through the Path of the Heart: I had an insight that this is really the path through the chakra system.

Amina: Correct.

Pål-Esben: So the 9 Pillars for Finding the Path of the Heart, which we discussed in the first twelve episodes of this podcast, are the key. Because when we work with each of the pillars, like becoming a master of forgiveness or a master of gratitude, which we went through in the first episodes, you gradually begin to become a master of it. That means you no longer do forgiveness: you are forgiveness. You don’t do a method to be grateful; you’re grateful all the time. That’s what we mean when we talk about the 9 Pillars. And the 9 Pillars for Finding the Path of the Heart build on the 7 Golden Keys, which we’ve written up in my book, and which we haven’t really talked about in detail in the podcast, but which underlie everything. The book about the 7 Golden Keys describes it, because that’s where it all starts. The first Golden Key is understanding what consciousness is, and how I become a master of consciousness. The second is what self-responsibility is, and how I become a master of taking self-responsibility in my life. In the third Golden Key we begin to talk about what free will is, and how we exercise more and more free will instead of being on autopilot. So in our tradition the foundation for dissolving the straitjacket lies in the 7 Golden Keys and the 9 Pillars for Finding the Path of the Heart. And already in the first seminar of the basic training we begin to talk about these things. Right from the start of the basic training we begin to prepare a student for what you’re experiencing now, Amina. Even though we don’t talk about oneness in our basic training, that’s what I prepare all the students for, for those who want to walk this path.

Amina: Many people think: “Oh yes, but that sounds very practical, there isn’t much woo-woo, not many astral journeys and guides and angels and things like that. Is it really that spiritual, then?” But good grief, it’s one of the most spiritual things I’ve done on this journey: actually getting all of this down into practical action. Because that’s when you develop, that’s when you come closer to who you really are, and have any chance at all of getting in touch with your Sahara.

Pål-Esben: Correct. It isn’t possible to dissolve your straitjacket just by having a technique or method or ritual, or by dressing up in feathers and drawing signs and wafting smoke around and saying ho ho ho. It’s choice, action. And of course we have lots of woo-woo, too.

Amina: Yes, yes.

Pål-Esben: That’s to support this. Well, we’re joking a bit with woo-woo, but we also have very effective energetic methods and rituals, for example how we erase traumas from the past, karma, crystallised karma, how we reintegrate parts of our personality, and so on. Complex rituals with magic that reinforce all this, and that put this work on turbo, triple turbo, in fact. We use the shamanic field with energy work, with guides, with power animals, dragons and so on, which we have in our tradition, and that boosts this process when you work on freeing yourself from the straitjacket to become a healthier, happier, more joyful human being, with even more meaning and fulfilment in your life, which is the whole point here. And when I, in the old, old days, switched over from working in this heavy chakra way and went over to using what you were introduced to, I also saw that it goes radically faster for my students to get comprehensive results in their lives. So that’s the background. That’s why we talked so much about this in the first episodes, because it’s the foundation for everything. Why should we make it heavy and convoluted when we can make it light, easy and joyful?

Amina: Yes, I don’t have a good answer to that, because there isn’t a good answer to it.

Pål-Esben: So what I find interesting is using chakras and the yogic idea of the chakra system as a model that describes things in a cognitive way. So it’s helpful to have an idea about this, helpful to have an idea about these 16 dimensions of each chakra, with this lotus flower. It’s good to have an idea about what blocks this lotus flower, this petal that has contact with the divine spark, the divine core at the centre of every chakra. Because then you have a cognitive understanding of why, for example, you have to get started on becoming a master of forgiveness. Then you can say: “Aha, by master I don’t just mean forgiving, but really becoming a master of it, becoming forgiveness.” And then you understand: “Aha, this will affect absolutely all the chakras, all the lotus flowers in all the chakras.” The same when you take another pillar and become a master of gratitude: the day gratitude bubbles up by itself in your everyday life, without you doing anything, you’re a master. And it’s very easy to understand that this has massively to do with the first chakra, massively to do with healing the first chakra syndrome, and so on, and massively to do with the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth chakras. So that way you can understand how potent it is when you work the way you’ve gone through, compared with the traditional way of working with things. So my attitude is that this process has to be made exciting, fun, joyful and meaningful. And that’s how a process should be. And along the way you of course come across the ups and downs when the ego bares its teeth, but that’s OK, it’s just something we have to go through. But all in all, what we’ve described here is part of the foundation for the process itself of breaking free and dissolving the straitjacket. And in addition to that, of course, you need to learn basic methods such as focus. You need to learn how to hold focus for at least 30 to 60 seconds, so you need to practise focus. You need to learn how to relax your body and your mind. And you need to learn how to carry out a meditation process to create enough silence, enough calm, that you’ll be able to break out of the straitjacket, so you have to loosen up more and more and more. So there’s a craft to this that has to be in place. But just practising focus, and just learning to meditate, and just learning to relax the body and the mind and so on, won’t be enough to find the way to the Sahara, at least within one lifetime. Then you need these things we’re talking about too, which are actually incredibly exciting to work with, because when you work with them, life gets so much better. The relationship with your children gets better, the relationship with friends gets better, the relationship with your own life gets better. Isn’t that how it is?

Amina: Yes, yes, a hundred percent.

Freedom: feeling good no matter what

Pål-Esben: And that’s what real freedom is too: being able to feel good no matter who does what in life. Because as long as freedom, or feeling good, depends on what happens and what other people do, you’re stuck in a prison. So those are some of the best gifts on this journey: being a full and whole human being in yourself, for yourself. Because things, life, will still happen.

Amina: I had this idea that the closer I got to the Sahara, the longer I was on the spiritual journey of development, or the primordial shamanic journey of development, the more everything would just be good. Everything would just feel good from a human perspective, where things are only positive. But I’ve realised more and more that that’s not what it’s about, because life is life. We’re here to experience life with all its facets, with all these polarities, bringing love into every situation and really understanding what it means to integrate polarities, because that’s incredibly exciting. But I had an idea that then it would be love and light. But you can have that love-and-light feeling inside you, whatever love and light is, at the same time as having to face challenging situations. And you can do it from a completely different place than going down into suffering, and from a completely different place than thinking: “Now I have to think positively, because this is good, this is love and light.” You can live in the world in a completely different way.

Pål-Esben: Exactly, because you bring with you other perspectives to see and experience from. That’s one of the most important keys to a real, profound process of development: how you shift your perspective on things. A simple example of a perspective is seeing life as a glass half empty, or as a glass half full. That’s one example. But when you learn to bring yourself into particular perspectives, it no longer matters so much what happens around you or to you. The question is how you experience and perceive what happens around you and to you. Back to Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who was captured and put in a concentration camp by the Nazis, and who said: “They could take everything from me, they could torture me, they could kill my family and my friends in the concentration camp, but they could never take from me the power over what I think and feel about what happens to me, and how I act.” That was what made him survive in the concentration camp, together with others he talked to. Very interesting. That is: if he says that in such an extreme situation, what will it take for you and me and the people around us to be willing to see life from that perspective, for example? And that’s part of the muscle that comes as a bonus through this process of development we’re talking about. You don’t depend on whether it’s snowing outside, or raining, or stormy, or sunny. You don’t need it to be sunny to feel good. So you feel good when it’s raining and storming and the weather’s lousy. That’s what you’re talking about here. And it doesn’t take that long to develop this skill when you go through a process of development of this kind. So it’s part of the bonus and the side effects of this that we take with us into life, and that means we perceive and experience life very differently from how most people perceive and experience it. Even though the same things happen in our lives as in other people’s, we perceive and experience them in a very different way.

Amina: Yes, and that’s where I feel really moved now, because it’s so beautiful, and life can be so beautiful.

Pål-Esben: Yes, truly. It’s possible. And so we’ve also talked a little about the straitjacket, and we’ve talked about how important it is to open up the straitjacket. In the next episode we’ll begin talking about the experience of oneness. When you’ve begun to open and dissolve the straitjacket enough, and you have a suitable guide who can push you across, we go in and meet these states of oneness. We’ll sink our teeth into that, and I’m looking forward to it. Because then you’ll try to describe as well as you can what happens when you enter these states of oneness, and what happens afterwards. Because what happens afterwards, that is, in the weeks afterwards, is just as spectacular as what happens during the experience itself. Do you have any thoughts or bits of wisdom, or things we haven’t discussed today, that you’d like to finish with?

Starting points: the book, the online course and module 0

Amina: People often come up to me, especially if I’m at a fair or something like that, and say that they’ve listened to the podcast, that it’s really good, and that they really appreciate it. They say they’d love to do one of the trainings, but they can’t for various reasons, and they wonder: “Where do I start, then? I’d like to get started on some of what you’re doing, but I don’t have the chance to do a full training now. What do I do then?” First of all, we have something called module 0, which is a small part of the training, which you can start with. We also have the book “The 7 Golden Keys”, Pål-Esben’s book, which you can buy, and the 9 Pillars for Finding the Path of the Heart, which we’ve talked about in the first episodes of our podcast. Pål-Esben also has a free online course on shamanism on his website, which I’d also really recommend, if you want to make a start.

Pål-Esben: The course is also on my website, if you’d like to take it.

Amina: So it’s possible to start on this journey, even if you perhaps don’t have the chance to commit to a whole journey. You can get started working on lots of what we’ve talked about, to create a better life for yourself.

Pål-Esben: That’s also one of the reasons we discuss these things: to give tips and advice on what you can work on. Definitely, if you’re interested, I’d encourage you to go to the website and take this free online course to get an introduction to what this is about, to shamanism and runes and all that. Very exciting. Then you can read the book “The 7 Golden Keys”, and then you can work with the 9 Pillars for Finding the Path of the Heart, which we discuss in the first episodes. People can also book a session with you, for example, and get personal advice. They can do things; perhaps you’ll set up a little programme for them. And then there’s the option of going into module 0, for example, which is a gigantic thing, but which is just the start here. There you learn effective ways of forgiving, you learn effective ways of going back and erasing traumas, you learn effective ways of getting in touch with beings of light, you learn exceptional ways of doing healing and distance healing, and you learn spontaneous healing of the musculoskeletal system, which we talked about in the introductory course. That’s really a massive thing that you can easily work with for a year without getting bored. So there’s something for everyone who’s interested. But I’d encourage you to contact Amina directly, who can find a way for you; even if you don’t have money, you can get help to go through a process. That is, you pay for a guidance session, and then you get a tailor-made programme set up that you can start with.

Amina: Yes, you’d be most welcome.

Closing: silence at the end

Pål-Esben: Yes. Get in touch with Amina. And we’re running a little over time now; this is the longest episode we’ve had, so we’ll wrap up now. And if you have questions or topics you’d like us to take up in a coming episode, we’ll start on that now. When we’ve finished with the path to oneness, we’ll start going into the topics listeners want us to go into. So whenever you wonder what our view on something is, it doesn’t matter what you’re interested in. Whether it’s chakras, or dimensions, or ghosts or aliens or whatever it is you’re wondering about, get in touch with us on Instagram, or send an email to Amina, and we’ll put it on our list. We’re willing to discuss absolutely anything, and at least give our view on it.

Amina: Yes.

Pål-Esben: Good. Do you have any words of wisdom to finish with?

Amina: Um … silence.

Pål-Esben: Sometimes it goes quiet. That’s good, we love that too, silence. And I hope that one day we’ll get to meet in person, at an alternative fair or a talk or somewhere else. We’re doing a bit of planning here, about whether I’d like to come to Norway and do a few things. So I hope that one day we’ll get to meet, and perhaps even have a hug, because I love that. Yes, fun. And we look forward to taking you with us next time, when we’ll begin talking about what’s truly exciting, namely what it’s like to experience being one with everything that exists. It would be very boring sitting here on my own, Amina. Thank you so much for staying with us all the way, dear listener. We really appreciate your feedback, and a five-star rating on Spotify helps our podcast reach more listeners. And thank you so much for being here with me, Amina. I really appreciate it.

Amina: Likewise, Pål-Esben.

Pål-Esben: Thank you for being with us, dear listener. I hope you’ll join us again in the next episode. And until then: have a truly wonderful day, evening, night or morning, wherever you are listening from. Take care.

Outro

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of “The Journey to Self-Realization”, a primordial shamanic journey of development back to your true nature. We hope Amina’s story has inspired you to explore your own journey of self-discovery and development. Remember that the path from suffering to self-realization can be demanding, but with courage, patience and support from a competent guide, mentor, teacher or therapist, almost anything is possible. We wish you all the best on your journey, and we’ll talk again in the next episode.