The 3 Skills on the Path to Oneness

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At an alternative fair, a man who called himself an enlightened master and offered satsang came over to Amina and asked her to draw a rune for him, to find out which rune could help him let in more light. Pål-Esben gives burned-out clients an exercise in sitting still and doing absolutely nothing, and so far every one of them has come back frustrated, irritated or furious with him.

In this thirty-ninth episode, Amina and her teacher and guide, Pål-Esben Wanvig, talk about the three skills a seeker needs to start practising right at the beginning of the path to oneness. They explore why there are no shortcuts, how to get out of goldfish mode, how to bring the body into deep calm, and how nature can make the meditation process more joyful. 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

Spiritual bypassing, the grudge no mantra can simply wish away, and why psychedelic substances can’t wake you up from the dream for good
What one foot in the Sahara and one foot in the grain of sand really means, and why it has nothing to do with energies or the esoteric
Healthy scepticism, weekend gurus, and why everything stands or falls with a competent guide
Skill 1: getting out of goldfish mode, brain rot, and 30 days without social media and news
Amina’s battle with scrolling, and the burned-out workaholics who rage at the chill-out exercise
Skill 2: bringing the body into yin with yin yoga, the breath and progressive muscle relaxation
Skill 3: the meditation process with nature as a helper, and the inner states trained through rituals in nature
Separating from thoughts and feelings, and Pål-Esben’s depression, which he now observes instead of experiencing

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: A warm welcome to a new episode, Amina.

Amina: Thank you so much, and likewise, Pål-Esben.

Spiritual bypassing: the temptation of shortcuts

Pål-Esben: Thank you, and a warm welcome to you too, dear listener. Today we’re going to talk about the three practical methods a seeker has to learn, and gradually learn to master. Let’s sum up a little, Amina. When we set out to find the way home, to our Sahara, to wake up from the dream, it isn’t enough just to learn a few methods and techniques. That may be what many people are looking for: a simple path to the results they’re after. But in what we’re doing here, there is no simple path where you can skip steps. There are certain steps we have to learn, master and grow through, and if you try to skip them, you may spend years going astray and never get there. In the esoteric world there’s an exciting name for this, which you taught me: esoteric spiritual bypassing. Can you say a little about that, Amina?

Amina: Yes, spiritual bypassing was a term I learned many years ago. It means using so-called esoteric, spiritual, alternative techniques and methods to reach a goal as quickly as possible. And very often you don’t see it yourself either, that that’s what you’re doing. It can be anything from positive thinking to skipping very important steps in a process of development. So you can see spiritual bypassing in everything from its mildest to its most extreme forms.

The grudge and the mantra: the foundations can’t be skipped

Pål-Esben: Yes. Here’s an example: you go around bearing a grudge against people, as many do in today’s society. Some are so hurt that they want to hold a grudge, and some perhaps even hate people. And then you believe that a simple technique will make everything fine: you’re going to learn a mantra, say it three times in the evening and three times in the morning, and after a month there’s no grudge or hatred left. To be able to let go of something you bear a grudge about, at least if people have really hurt you, a process is needed. It’s a process where you learn the foundations of forgiveness, where you decide that the only right thing is to let go, where you understand that carrying the grudge really only harms yourself. There’s a certain amount of psychology that has to be understood around it, and then you have to make a choice, and only then can you get started with a method or technique. When you try to skip the foundations, you’re really bypassing the most important thing that can help you get the result you’re looking for.

Another example, closer to what we’re about to talk about, is believing that psychedelic substances will help us find the way to oneness. You can use as much DMT or psilocybin or ayahuasca or mescaline as you like, and I’ve come across many people who use a lot of these things, but I have yet to meet a human being who has reached the point where they’ve woken up from the dream permanently. People believe that substances will let them skip all the steps that all the great spiritual traditions, over thousands of years, have described in detail as steps that must be gone through for a human being to be able to shed the straitjacket. That’s what we call going through real shamanic death, so that the second birth can begin, where falling upwards can begin. That isn’t done by taking a pill. It’s an example of spiritual bypassing that many people fall into the trap of, in connection with what we’ve discussed over the last 12 or 13 episodes about the path to oneness.

And the challenge here, as we’ve mentioned before, is that there are many positive aspects to hallucinogens, for healing anxiety, depression and addiction. They definitely have therapeutic effects, if they’re used correctly. But now we’re talking specifically about waking up from the dream. We’re talking about a process of development where you stand with one foot in your Sahara and one foot in the grain of sand, both at once, and deal with the dream while you’re awake. That’s the fundamental thing we focus on in our tradition, and in pretty much every other great, old tradition: the Hindu, yogic tradition, Zen, the esoteric, Buddhist traditions. There you’ll find pretty much exactly the same thing.

One foot in each world: what it doesn’t mean

Pål-Esben: Then it’s important to make a distinction here, which I think many people might misunderstand. Those who have listened to the earlier episodes, at least the last few about the path to oneness, and ideally our whole series, may recognise this. We do recommend listening to those first, before this episode and the ones that follow. When we talk about having one foot in each world, it’s easy to think: “Oh yes, I’ve got one foot in the physical world and one foot in the spiritual sphere; we’re talking about energy work and healing and those things.” But we’re talking about something completely different, because what we’re talking about has nothing to do with energies or the metaphysical and the esoteric. It isn’t about whether you’ve learned to channel or talk to angels, or about being a shaman doing your rituals in the shamanic dream world. It has nothing to do with the Sahara. Everything taught in the esoteric world is connected to what is manifested. Energy is also manifested. Light is manifested, subatomic particles are manifested, atoms are manifested. Everything taught in the esoteric world is part of what we call the grain of sand: the material world, not only the physical world we experience with our five senses, but also every form of energy and vibration that exists in our multiverse, which is manifested in one way or another.

When we talk about our Sahara, we’re talking about one foot in the timeless and spaceless, in the potential that is not manifested. That means one foot in Brahman, which we discussed in the previous episode. That’s something completely different from the metaphysical. It means that you’re in a fully awakened state while you deal with the grain of sand and with all the people who are dreaming their dream and believe the dream is reality. Then you stand with one foot in your Sahara, in a dissolved state, in the timeless and spaceless, and one foot in the manifested world. That’s where we at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School want to accompany seekers, and there we have a very effective structure for leading a human being to exactly your state, and you’re one of the proofs of that. In the next episode we can bring in some of your fellow students, who have walked the path together with you, and who will talk about their experiences of exactly this: beginning to touch the Sahara with one foot and the grain of sand with the other.

The false self and why there are no shortcuts

Pål-Esben: And getting to the point you’re at today isn’t possible through spiritual bypassing or by skipping the fundamental steps we’ve discussed in the two previous episodes. It’s a process that needs to be gone through. On the one hand, everything lives in us. Your Sahara lives in you, in every human being. But the straitjacket is so strong. The imprints are so strong. The false self is so strong that people believe the false self is them. We discussed that in the previous episode, about Atman and Brahman, the observer and the inner commentator: this construct, which is artificially imprinted from our childhood until we’re adults. Most people believe that this is who they are. But it’s a false version of them, made and generated so that our soul can deal with the manifested world. And if you have the idea that, oh, you can just fix that with a mantra, or some hocus-pocus with feathers and smoke, or by casting a rune, or by taking a bit of psilocybin or LSD, that’s one of the biggest misunderstandings modern people have. There’s no shortcut to this. It doesn’t have to take 10, 20, 30, 40 years, as it perhaps does in the yogic tradition if you go into an ashram. It can also be done in two years, as in your case, where you go through each part of the process we’ve discussed throughout our whole podcast. Then you can come permanently into this state, without artificial means such as psychiatric medication and psychedelic substances.

So when we now talk about these methods, which in our tradition are taught right from the start of the process of development, when you step onto the primordial shamanic path to oneness and spiritual enlightenment, the condition is that you go through the rest of the process together with a guide. That way, the straitjacket, which keeps you in the circus, in the grain of sand, is loosened more and more, and you can gradually slip out of the straitjacket and into the timeless and spaceless, into what you really are, seen from the soul’s perspective. So now we’ve said it, so that nobody misunderstands and thinks: “Now I’ll practise these methods, and then I’ll wake up.” That won’t work. Then you’d be better off spending your time on other things. So do you have any thoughts on this, Amina, since you’ve come a long way in the esoteric world, about this temptation to look for shortcuts and quick fixes?

Amina’s path: healthy scepticism and common sense

Amina: Yes, I suppose I’ve had maybe a year or a year and a half in the esoteric world. Before that I worked with tarot cards for seven or eight years, but that was the extent of what I did in what you might call the esoteric and alternative world. So I haven’t been in it all that long. But with all the things I’ve been through, various ceremonies, plant medicine, shadow work, various methods and techniques, I didn’t know any better. I accepted what came my way, and I probably wasn’t very sceptical either, because I thought I was getting closer and closer to the truth, to reality. And speaking of plant medicine, which I’ve shared many times: I really thought I’d understood what the whole thing was about, whereas now, in hindsight, I can see that it’s something completely different. So I can understand how easy it is to give in to those temptations of shortcuts. I think a lot of people in this world are fond of shortcuts, and then there are some who simply don’t know any better. That’s perhaps where a bit of healthy scepticism comes in: where do I want to go with this, what am I longing for, what do I want to use what I’m learning for? Because I talk to many people who ask me for advice: “Should I take that course or that course, what’s right for me?” And then it’s important to talk about what you want to achieve, and what you want to use this course or this path for.

Especially if you’re new to the alternative world or the esoteric world, have a bit of healthy scepticism, even though you do become a bit like a joyful child when you discover that there’s more between heaven and earth. You feel more at home than you have before, so of course you think: “Oh, this is all such a treat.” And then there’s shadow work, which can get pretty heavy at times, and there’s a lot of bypassing mixed in there too. But you can still use your analytical side and common sense in a search like this. Perhaps you’ve been someone who has lived very much in the analytical and in your intellect, in the academic world, and then it’s very easy to think: “No, now I’m going to put that aside, and now my heart and my soul will just pull me here and there.” Not that I’ve been very much in the academic world, but I remember that I felt a fair bit of that: now everything that comes to me is meant for me. And a lot of it I could have done without. I learned from it too, of course; we learn something from most things, we just don’t need to make the same mistake ten times. I’ve done that too, so I’ve tried that as well. But take common sense with you when you begin that search, so that you don’t sell your house, car, boat and home, and get divorced, and think: now I’m just going to follow my heart and soul. A great many of those who do that, at least the ones I’ve talked to, have ended up in a place where it’s like: “What am I doing? This was supposed to be the beautiful, big, wonderful thing. I’ve found my soul and my heart, but it doesn’t feel so good right now, because all the choices I’ve made have hurt both me and everyone around me.”

A competent guide: everything stands or falls with it

Pål-Esben: Yes, and it isn’t easy. That’s why one of the most important things you do as a seeker is to find yourself a competent guide. Everything stands or falls with that. If you find a guide who isn’t competent, there’s a good chance you’ll lose your bearings completely. If you find a competent guide who relates to the real reality, the chances are dramatically higher that you’ll find what you’re looking for: a better life, a more meaningful life, better relationships, feeling more joyful in everyday life. It can be something as simple as that, which to begin with isn’t as simple as it sounds. Because it takes a process to go from suffering, stress and chaos to the point where you become a master of forgiveness, a master of gratitude, a master of seeing the glass as half full, which are some of the 9 Pillars for Finding the Path of the Heart, which we talked about in the first episodes.

And what shows whether you’ve learned to master things isn’t the number of words you’ve read or rituals you’ve done. It’s how you interact with the world around you. Is it in a loving way? Are you fine with others having different opinions from yours, or do you feel threatened by it? Are you identified with your ego, or have you reached the point where you understand that your opinions, your ego and all the rest of it are tools? It shows when you talk to people. Just through a conversation you can see where they stand. If it’s a genuine path of development they’ve walked, it shows in how they interact with the world around them, including you. That’s what shows the truth about a human being: whether what you’ve done is genuine, or whether it’s just bypassing and surface stuff, where you feel better but no objective, measurable results show up in your daily life.

Amina: Yes, over the years I’ve witnessed enough alternative Facebook groups where people argue about who lives most in love, and tell each other that if you really lived in love, you wouldn’t say things like that. And not least how much people identify with their spiritual ego, as we’ve talked about before.

The tiny fraction who reach the goal

Pål-Esben: So when we come back to the path to real spiritual awakening, the path to our Sahara, it’s probably one of the most complex and difficult processes of development a human being can set out on. Perhaps only a tiny fraction of a percent of those who set out on this path reach the goal. And that means that if you have this longing to find the way home, you can also understand with your intelligence that you can’t take shortcuts on this. When so few of those who really go through a process of development find the way home, how can I draw the conclusion that a tablet or a pill will get me there? This is something that has been described for 5000 years in Vedic and Hindu and yogic philosophy as a complex process. They don’t describe it like that to be difficult, or to hide the secrets. They’re describing reality, the way things really are.

When we’re born into this world, we’re free of all this stuff. Then we’re just joyful children, as long as our basic needs are met. But then we’re imprinted, over and over, and our false construct is created, which we operate from. It’s a false identity, steered by intellect, ego and karmic memory, which we discussed in the previous episode. Then you believe that’s you. You believe the dream you’re dreaming is reality. When you believe that 100 percent, in every cell, in every atom of you, how can you have the idea that it’s simple to wake up from it?

Yes, there is one easy way: you wake up from the dream when you die. Then you go in via the Bardo, you’re briefly back with your soul again, and then your soul spins out a new dream, which you again believe is reality. Because that’s where our soul learns to experience. So how can all the great spiritual traditions over thousands of years describe this as a complex process with certain steps that take time, while people believe it should be child’s play? Well, at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School we’ve boiled this process down to somewhere between two and three years, and it’s a miracle in itself that it can happen. You’re one of the examples of it, and many of your fellow students are examples of it, and we’ll be talking with them in one of the coming episodes.

Weekend gurus and the right to use your intelligence

Pål-Esben: And so, OK, you understand that you need to go through a process, which we’ve tried to describe through this podcast, from episode 1 to episode 39, which we’re in now, through somewhere between 70 and 80 topics. It happens through your own individual lens, through your own antennae, and everyone expresses this process in their own individual way, but it is a process. When the seeker acknowledges that, it becomes so much easier to find a suitable guide. Because if you find a guide who says, “Oh, come to me, I’ll show you how it’s done in a weekend,” then it’s possible to work it out intellectually: how is this person going to show me this in a weekend, when every tradition through thousands of years describes that it definitely can’t be done in a weekend? Then it’s perfectly fine to use your intelligence and be sceptical.

Amina: Yes. That’s how I see it today, at least, and I know it’s difficult when you’re inside the esoteric world and perhaps don’t have that much experience and knowledge about it. It’s incredibly difficult to navigate the esoteric world, because so much of it glitters. There are gurus and teachers standing there with thousands of followers, who are celebrities and write books, and it’s incredibly difficult to see past these glittering celebrities to whether it’s reality they’re describing. It isn’t easy.

Pål-Esben: No, it really isn’t.

The rune man at the alternative fair

Amina: It’s quite a jungle to find your way through, and then it comes back again to finding a competent guide on this journey. At an alternative fair a while back there was an enlightened man, a master, as he called himself, who offers satsang, and many people go to it. And then the same man came over to me a bit later and asked if I could draw a rune for him, to find which rune could help him let in more light. And it’s things like that which make you begin to wonder a bit, not to make fun of anyone: what do these guides, teachers and gurus say and do and stand for, and how do they act? I think there’ll be more and more of it in the time ahead. It’s a gigantic problem in the world we live in, in every area of life.

Pål-Esben: And especially in the esoteric world now. As there’s more and more chaos in the world, more and more people are looking for more light, more peace, more ways to cope in this chaotic world, where it looks as if World War Three has broken out. So there are many more people turning to the esoteric world. And then you come across what I call false gurus, very often, unfortunately. Being able to tell what’s what requires, first of all, that you’re incredibly sceptical and don’t take anything at all that people say at face value. That’s the first thing I say in module 0, the first course in the basic shamanic training at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School: no student should simply believe what is said. Because believing in something means that you don’t know. Swallowing something whole is something you’re drilled not to do in our tradition. The only thing that can decide whether it’s true or not is to move into experience and see: does this have the practical, objective impact on my life that’s being described? Only then can you experience whether it’s bullshit, or whether what’s being said is something real.

Amina: Yes, a few days ago I got a message from a woman who was interested in the basic shamanic training. And she said: “I’m very drawn to the Yggdrasil Shamanic School, but I’m also very sceptical. Do I fit in there, then?” We’re fans of healthy scepticism. And it’s about moving into your own experience, not believing everything you’re served or taught. I think that’s a healthy gateway into the esoteric world. Perhaps you can acknowledge that you should be very sceptical about most of it, and then you’ll find the 10 percent out there that is really connected to reality.

Pål-Esben: And sometimes people say they follow their gut feeling, but do you know whether it’s your gut feeling, or whether it’s a gut feeling coming from the ego? Is it your fear? But we won’t talk about that now; that would take us into a whole different topic. The point is that when we begin to show the first concrete methods, which are taught right at the start, both at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School and in the other great, older spiritual traditions, there are a couple of things that need to be part of the fundamental craft. It’s like the electrician: he learns to use a screwdriver and wire cutters and a meter to check for current and phases. There are certain fundamental techniques and tools you need to master, in addition to what we’ve talked about before. So let’s jump straight into it. The first thing you need to practise is cultivating your way out of goldfish mode.

Amina: Goldfish mode, yes.

Skill 1: out of goldfish mode

Pål-Esben: Modern human beings have an attention span on the level of a goldfish. They manage to hold their focus on one thing for somewhere around one to three seconds. Those who are good at it manage perhaps five seconds before they shift their attention to something else. And this isn’t people’s fault. It’s something people have been trained into through the society we live in, and especially through social media, short videos and so on, which make our attention span shorter and shorter. We focus on one thing, then it gets boring, and then we move on to something else. For a modern human being who spends an hour or two on social media, it’s almost impossible to sit down and read a whole book in peace and quiet, however exciting the book is. Because the brain is trained, both psychologically and biochemically, to look for those hits of dopamine all the time. Through the expectation that things will be exciting, a hit of dopamine is released in the brain, and you look for it all the time. You’re a dopamine addict. That means the attention span of most people today is extremely short.

And when you’re so distracted by your own head that you move your attention all the time, it creates enormous stress in the nervous system. The autonomic nervous system is in sympathetic mode deluxe; you’re on high alert all the time. You can’t sit and have a discussion with a human being without it getting boring. We see it in restaurants today, and I’m almost shocked every time: everyone around the table is on their phone, scrolling while they eat dinner. And I think: what on earth is going on? And when I hear what goes on around dinner tables in people’s homes, it’s the same: the kids and the parents sit there scrolling, and the parents are the worst. It’s completely crazy. We’ve talked about this before, how harmful it is for the brain. We’ve talked about brain rot, how the brain literally rots. It isn’t some esoteric thing; it’s described in detail in modern psychology. Search for brain rot, watch a couple of videos about it on YouTube, and you’ll be shocked at how social media literally destroys your brain. And when we add AI, with people uncritically using AI to answer everything, you have the perfect storm.

The guardian angel who can’t get through the noise

Pål-Esben: If we’re going to break out of the straitjacket, we have to calm down everything that binds us into it. Part of that is increasing our focus span and attention span, so that we can gradually learn to be present in the stillness. Because the truth is ultimately found only through stillness, not through noise. At the start, when you begin your esoteric journey, you often hear the following, at least I heard it 25 years ago when I started with this: how can you expect your guardian angel to communicate with you, for you to hear your guardian angel, as long as there’s nothing but noise on your line, as long as you can’t sit still and just be quiet, without thinking, just observing? How can you expect your guides, and there are often hundreds of them around every human being, to get through your chaos? They’re shouting and screaming, trying to say hello: “Maybe you should do that, so you don’t have to suffer here.” But you’re deaf to it, since there’s chaos in your head, with thoughts and feelings, and you shift your attention all the time. So what I learned back in the old days was: “OK, now we’ll settle your mind.” You learned a bit of the meditation process, you learned to use nature, you learned various forms of focus exercises to increase your attention span, so as to be more and more present in the now.

Then there’s the biggest obstacle a human being faces in uncovering their own Sahara. The Sahara isn’t something you search for: if you’re searching for something, that means you’re in the grain of sand. To uncover what’s already in you, to tune your frequency in to your Sahara frequency, like on a radio, and experience the timeless and spaceless that already lives in you, we need this state of stillness without thoughts. And the obstacle is this: unless a person has been trained to reverse the social media stuff that has imprinted the brain and destroyed the attention span, they have no chance of finding a permanent state in their Sahara. Because every thought will bring you out of your Sahara. Every shift of attention will bring you out. If you shift your attention every other second, you don’t stand a chance from the start. That’s why training to expand your attention span needs to start in earnest, right at the beginning of a process of development like this. Before I get to how you can do it in practice: what was your attention span like when we started talking together?

Amina: Oh my, oh my, oh my. Nothing much to brag about, I can tell you. But probably no better than the average person in the street. Looking at a point on the wall, or looking into the flame, or just focusing on the breath, and not least nature, just being present with nature, finding a still point of focus: it was really hard. So I have every compassion for those who think: this is completely impossible for me. And to leave myself out of it for a moment: I’ve also talked to several people who, when we get onto focus and a still mind, will say: “No, but my soul doesn’t want stillness. My soul is very eccentric, it’s very active.” And then I think: OK, but then I won’t say anything more about it in that setting. So that’s also a way for the ego to wriggle out of it. And some have got very irritated about those things: “No, now suddenly everyone’s supposed to find stillness and find calm, but my soul isn’t like that, it isn’t centred, it doesn’t want calm, it loves to party.”

The chill-out exercise

Pål-Esben: I have to make a note of that. That was a brilliant explanation for not wanting to do the work of settling your mind. Brilliant, brilliant. “My soul doesn’t want this”: that excuse is so good that nobody can trump it. If you get stuck in an argument like that, you never get any further. You stay stuck at the same point whatever you do. That’s also a consequence of the choices you make, and every human being has to take the consequences of that choice. Nobody has to do anything at all. Some people want to say: “Yes, my soul is very active, my soul isn’t the kind that wants to sit down, it wants to be active all the time, it wants to be on social media all the time, because that does my soul good.” If that’s your argument, then be my guest. I know what comes of it. You’re describing exactly what happens in your brain, how you’re destroying your neurons. But as long as people take the consequences of their choices and own the consequences, that’s fine.

This thing with stillness is a real pain for most people, and I get many people coming to me who are burned out. It’s one of my areas of expertise, where I’ve helped many people over the last two decades, and one of the exercises I give burned-out people is the chill-out exercise. Many of those who come to me are workaholics who have to be active all the time, which is one of the reasons they burn out. And then they’re told to start with ten minutes, ideally it would be half an hour, but I know how that goes, and to simply sit down and do absolutely nothing. They mustn’t plan, mustn’t read; they’re just to sit and stare at the wall and do nothing for 30 minutes. I call it the chill-out exercise, and teenagers are often experts at it. Those who know teenagers can only sit there wondering what’s going on inside their heads, but it’s absolutely nothing. That’s an example of chilling out.

What happens? So far I haven’t met a single one who doesn’t come back to me at the next session either frustrated, irritated or furious with me: “That was awful! How can you give me an exercise that wastes my time? I was frustrated after just a couple of minutes.” I’ve met people who have flown into a complete rage over being given an exercise like that. And then you see how unwell people have become. As long as they’re working with me, they’ll be indirectly forced to practise this. Because how are you going to take back power over your life, and not go into a new burnout, unless you take back power over these things? It’s frightening to see how aggressive a human being can become when told to sit down and do nothing at all for half an hour a day. It shows where the world is heading. You can have ten thousand reasons why you’re just like that, but all those reasons are complete bullshit. Because if you have a passion for finding the way home to what you really are, you have to change the parts of you that have to do with your false construct, your false identity and your false belief systems, which bind you into the straitjacket. And this is compulsory in every tradition I know of that has several hundred or several thousand years of experience, like the yogic tradition. One of the advantages of going into an ashram is that they often don’t have internet there, so you can’t use your phone, and you’re forced away from all this input.

30 days without social media

Pål-Esben: Then the challenge, when I’m going to train a student to find this focus, is that you have to be able to be in the stillness and keep your attention on the stillness, not just for five seconds, but for several minutes, without a thought. Then you can ask yourself whether you want to do this the hard way or the easy way. I’m a practical person, so I prefer the easy way. What’s the hard way? The hard way is to carry on as you are: spending an hour or two scrolling on social media and getting your dopamine hits, taking in input from the news three, four, five times a day, which stresses your whole nervous system with fear and war and all of that, and feeding the chaos in you. Then you have an endlessly long road ahead of you. Or you can say: “It’s more important to me to find the way home than to scroll on social media and watch the news every day.”

So for those who want to make this as easy as possible for themselves, I recommend this: uninstall the social media apps on your phone, at least for 30 days. Literally. You don’t need to delete the accounts, but uninstall the apps, uninstall the news apps, and don’t be active on social media or the news for 30 days. Do it just as an exercise, to see how this stresses you, and how much easier it becomes to find focus when you don’t have that drastic, negative influence creating chaos in you. Those who are willing to do it find this radically easier than those who say: “I don’t want to.” I gave you this challenge too. I’m not saying you should be without social media for the rest of your life, but a healthy use of social media, and an understanding of how destructive it is to scroll uncritically through your feed, is something you need to master. To my students who have gone through a 90-day trial period with this, where they’ve seen what happens in the brain, the body, the nervous system, their energy level and their feeling of happiness when they cut this out, I say afterwards: “Now you can choose how you want to go on from here.” And I recommend that you scroll on social media for 15 to 30 minutes a day at most. Ten minutes should really be the upper limit for mindless scrolling. I’m not talking about stopping contact with your friends, but about this meaningless scrolling through the feed. What was it like for you at the start? Were you frustrated when I talked about this? Because you’re one of those who are really active on social media.

Amina’s battle with scrolling

Amina: Of course it isn’t an easy task to be given. Actually it is, but right at the start, when I was going to be less active with the scrolling, I noticed how many times during the day I just picked up my phone to scroll. Sometimes I didn’t notice until I was doing it. Then I began to notice that autopilot in a completely different way. I saw: “Whoa, this runs deep in me, so now I’m turning off all notifications.” I don’t have notifications on things, apart from messages, and that’s because of the children and things like that. I go in deliberately when I go in to do what I need to do. But what I noticed at the beginning was that I’d start picking up my phone and going into my email. Have I got any emails? Should I scroll through pictures? I saw how hooked I was, that something in me really wanted to scroll.

And not only that. There’s so much focus now on scrolling not being good for children, and I’ve been concerned with how I can help my children with this, because it’s a really difficult subject. Then I heard a man in a podcast episode who was asked about children and phones. And he said: “I’m completely uninterested in talking about children and their screen use before we talk about adults and their screen use.” It was a really good episode that put things in perspective. Because we adults sit there scrolling, and then we say: “No, now you have to put your phone down.” We don’t even look the children in the eye. So that was a little digression, but I have to say it’s been difficult.

What has perhaps been the thing for me is this: I have no need for Instagram and Facebook. I could easily have been the person who popped in once a month. But I’m there because it’s my platform for marketing and for inspiring others, where I also get in touch with those who want to train at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School. So for me it’s been about finding the balance: “OK, now I’m going in here deliberately to do this.” And then I’m only human, so I’ve caught myself thinking: “Whoa, now I’ve been on here ten minutes too long.” It’s like an alcoholic who still has alcohol in the cupboard but is supposed to drink in moderation. My favourite times are the winter and summer holidays, when I can actually withdraw completely, because there’s nothing I need to follow up or market. It isn’t easy, but it’s possible. You have to make up your mind, and then put other good routines in place in your life that also bring calm to the nervous system. It’s as you say: once you’ve had a taste of what it really does, you don’t want to go back. And then it’s easy to stumble, because you suddenly become unconscious and stop doing all the good things that made you feel good. I’ve done that one too. But when you feel that before-and-after feeling, it really does something to you.

Pål-Esben: Of course. And that’s why I say to those who seek advice from me: try it for 30 days, and see how this will change your life. By that I mean cutting social media for 30 days, cutting the news, which is just as bad, and cutting mindless use of AI, this thing of having to have an answer to everything all the time, which is also a kind of dopamine hit. My experience is that people come back and say: “Oh, I feel so much more balanced, I have more energy, I sleep better, I can communicate with my kids in a much better way than before, when I was irritated and frustrated.” It’s very rare that I meet a human being who doesn’t have radical improvements in their life just from cutting this out for 30 days. For that reason alone I recommend it. But with what we’re doing here, we depend on getting to the point where you can sit in the stillness without thoughts for a period, and that’s very difficult if you don’t do something about the input that stresses your brain all the time. My students choose for themselves, but what I see is that after a year or so they split into two groups. You have those who really do these things, who begin to touch their Sahara, with exploration and deep experiences of oneness. And then you have those who don’t want to do this, who lag a long way behind. That’s also a choice, but each person has to make their own. My recommendation to people starting this kind of process of development is, at the very least, to be very aware of what you feed your brain. And healthy use of social media is an important issue for young people, of course, and unless adults are willing to do this, the young have no chance. When we see how this destroys a child’s brain, every parent ought to be very, very frightened at how they’re setting their children up for lots of problems in adulthood.

The focus exercises: the dot, the flame, the stone

Pål-Esben: So how do we do this in practice? If you’re willing to do the work of calming down your input, we come to the point: how do we cultivate access to this focus? Because that’s the first thing we need: to manage to focus on one thing for longer than two, three, four, five seconds. You can do many different exercises for that. One is, for five minutes a day, to have a dot on the wall that you focus on, constantly directing your attention to the dot. You can light a candle and focus exactly where the flame meets the wick, where it’s completely still. Not at the top of the flame, where it moves, but exactly where it meets the wick. Practise having your attention on one thing, fully and completely, for a period. Five minutes is a good length. Or just take a stone or a crystal, put it in your hand or on the table, and practise holding your attention and being a hundred percent present with that stone, or pine cone, or whatever it is you have. You can be creative there, but you have to be willing to practise on a daily basis for this to develop, so that you’re not just marking time. And you know how difficult this is at the start: you get a thought every five seconds, and then you move your attention to the thought, and then you have to move it back to the focal point, the dot or the stone. Wasn’t it like that for you at the start?

Amina: Pure torture. I remember the feeling I had, and it makes you want to give up, but don’t give up. What I remember doing at the beginning was being in nature, because it was easier for me there, if for example I held a pine cone or looked at something on a tree, because then you also have nature’s energy field in and around you. But yes, it’s difficult at the beginning.

Pål-Esben: At the start this is very frustrating, and I have yet to see anyone who isn’t frustrated at the start. But gradually, practice makes perfect. That’s why I say five minutes at most; don’t keep slogging away at this for too long at the start. Try to hold your focus and practise for a few minutes, just bringing your focus back to what you’re focusing on: if a thought comes, then back to the focal point, back to the exercise. But you can’t do this for too long at the start, because if you try with discipline, you’ll never manage it. Just try to work with yourself rather than against yourself, so that this becomes something interesting to work with, and not a torture where you keep slogging away for half an hour. That won’t work at the start.

Amina: Yes, one thing that has helped me, and that’s helped with several other things too: the times it didn’t work, I’ve laughed about it instead. Goodness, imagine that.

Pål-Esben: That’s how we try to make it a bit of fun, instead of it being so deadly serious. “OK, today it didn’t work, see you tomorrow.” That’s part of our philosophy: we laugh a bit at the circus and the madness instead of taking it so seriously. We flow with Wu Wei, flow with Laguz, flow with the river of life, instead of making everything so heavy. We play with it a bit, instead of it being, as you say, dead serious. But it’s definitely something that needs to be cultivated over time. Gradually you learn other forms of focus exercises, and you can vary them, but it’s about practising focus and calming the monkey mind. And of course it’s much easier when you don’t have all this massive input constantly coming from the internet and social media. Normally it takes a few weeks before you begin to get a bit of a grip on it, but after 90 to 180 days you gradually begin to get into longer focus spans. That’s number one, so that’s something we need to start on right away.

Skill 2: bringing the body into deep calm

Pål-Esben: Number two is that we need to find ways to bring our body into deep calm. It’s a preparation for the meditation process, which we talked about in the previous episode. We need to learn how to bring our physiological, psychological body into a yin state, a parasympathetic state, before we start a meditation process where we practise stillness for longer periods. Normally, when I meet people in the modern world, their body is wound up like a coiled spring. They’re super-stressed. They have problems just lying down; the body is tense and restless. That has to be practised too: how we bring the body into deep relaxation before we even think about going into a deep meditation process. If you’re going to practise the meditation process with a stressed mind and a stressed body, it’s unbearable. You’ll probably never manage it, however many hours and years and decades you keep at it. We need to take a couple of steps before the meditation process, which I call preparing for it. And when you’re going to find your way into your Sahara, if your body can’t be completely calm and completely still, you drop straight out of your Sahara. Because then the grain of sand takes over, the straitjacket takes over, the physical takes over your attention.

So what do we do to calm the body down and bring it into a yin state? The simplest form is yin yoga, for those who are used to doing yoga: medical yoga, yin yoga. We stretch the largest muscle groups in the body and hold the stretch for one to two minutes, a long stretch. What does that do to the body? It triggers the vagus nerve, the parasympathetic part of our body. Say you stretch your back muscles and lie with your arms stretched out in front of you; I can’t remember what the pose is called. I used it before, many years ago, when I was getting back power over my body. That’s when I learned yin yoga, and I’ve learned several forms of yoga from various gurus, but yin yoga was definitely my favourite. When you stretch a large muscle group for a long time, the muscles automatically let go and relax. When the large muscle groups relax, you trigger a parasympathetic response, the vagus nerve, which is the most important nerve in the body for bringing our system into relaxation and regeneration. You can do five to ten minutes of stretches that bring the body into a very balanced state.

Breath, acupuncture points and progressive muscle relaxation

Pål-Esben: Another way is to use the breath. You sit on a chair, or lie on the floor, and breathe out a little longer than you breathe in. You breathe down into your belly and diaphragm at the same time. So you breathe in for perhaps five seconds and out for eight seconds. As you practise, you’ll notice that you get down to one breathing cycle a minute, perhaps 20 seconds in and 40 seconds out. The day you’re there, your body is almost immediately in a deep yin state. But it takes practice. Other things that can help are acupuncture points that trigger the vagus nerve, on the neck and in the ear. You can use aromatherapy oil, if you like that, with a diffuser that spreads lavender or another calming oil. You can light an incense stick. The main thing is to find a way that suits you, that brings the body into relaxed mode.

For those who are a little more advanced, it’s very effective to learn progressive muscle relaxation, which is one of my favourites. You go consciously into each part of your body and relax it. First put your focus on your toes, then your foot, then your ankle, then your calf. Then you work your way up with your focus in each muscle group, with the intention that the muscle group relaxes. The exercise itself takes perhaps five minutes. When you’ve done it for 90 days, just the first thought of it will make your whole body relax, because it’s an automatic pattern that has been trained in. Another option is autogenic training, for example, which works very much along the same lines. The point is that each person needs to find their own way into how the body finds this calm, this yin state.

So now we’ve worked with focus, focusing on a point without our thoughts and attention running off, which calms our mind, the monkey mind. The second thing we need to become experts at is bringing the body into a yin state. Then we have a very good basis for succeeding with the meditation process, without having to slog away for years and never get deep enough, to where we manage to separate the observer from the one who chatters all the time, the commentator. If you’re a yogi, you may have learned alternate nostril breathing, which activates and cleanses the nadi system, and balances ida and pingala, yin and yang in the spine, and the rest of the nervous system if you do it the right way. There you have one cycle a minute, one breath in and one breath out that take a minute or longer. Once you’ve practised this, it happens on the very first round of breathing: it takes one minute, and then you’re there, because the body has been trained into it. Then you understand why this is so important right from when you start a path to oneness. In our tradition we start practising these things right at the beginning, because it’s absolutely necessary for the processes that come later. Otherwise everything becomes so difficult, since your body and your psyche are in chaos, and we need the opposite of chaos to find the way to the Sahara. What’s your favourite, Amina, for calming your body down?

Amina’s favourites: breath, nature and The Microcosmic Orbit

Amina: I like working with the breath. At the same time I also like listening to nature sounds on my headphones if I’m indoors, and imagining that I’m sitting in nature, which has become easier and easier for me. It still doesn’t beat being out in nature, but I do it anyway. So I use the breath a lot to become present in my body, present in myself. And the heart too: at the beginning I spent quite a bit of time connecting with my heart, but now I don’t need to, because it’s there all the time, so that’s really lovely. So I connect with my heart, let go of the day, and simply connect with myself. One of my favourites, which we’ve learned from you, is The Microcosmic Orbit, which is very good for me. I use it actively in periods; I try to vary things a bit. It also brings me into deep relaxation. This is a topic that has been very important for me, because I have a very sensitive nervous system, illness in my body, things that hurt, things that I notice very clearly when I’m still. As the day goes on, my attention isn’t so much on it, but when I’m still, it can feel very intense, more in some periods than others. So for me it’s been the be-all and end-all not to go straight into the meditation process, because then I tend to bring everything with me. And I like mantras too. AUM, for example: what happens in my body, and the state I get into when I’ve done it, is something really special. I also have a diffuser with essential oils, and I have an oil that’s very good, called Balance, which also has a very natural feel.

Pål-Esben: Is that Young Living, then?

Amina: No, it’s doTERRA.

Pål-Esben: doTERRA. But that’s perhaps in the same league. High-quality aromatherapy, yes. doTERRA and Young Living are very good quality. They’re both therapeutic grade.

Amina: Yes, and that’s important. I can very quickly smell the difference between oils that are therapeutic grade and oils that aren’t, because with the wrong ones I don’t settle into calm as easily. So it’s important to use therapeutic oils, not the kind you buy at the petrol station, which often have toxins in them. Another thing I notice is that if I spend a bit of time with my cat before the meditation process and cuddle my cat, I also get very relaxed. And it’s just so lovely, so that’s also a gateway if you find everything else difficult.

Skill 3: the meditation process, with nature as a helper

Pål-Esben: Very good. In our first semester you learn many of these methods, many different methods you can vary. Some work more effectively, since they happen through different uses of mantra and different forms of shamanic energy work, which are done in parallel to speed up the processes. But whatever the case, you need to learn to master these things, and that takes practice over time. A little every day. And the third method, which you need to start practising right at the beginning, is the meditation process itself. We won’t go through all the details, since we did that in the previous episode, but we need to begin a meditation process that’s suited to the purpose. And what are we after? Well, separating ourselves from our karma. We want to separate our Atman from the inner commentator, which is our karma. In that process you start by finding a suitable meditation process.

You can start as simply as going out into the forest, which is my favourite. Find yourself a spot in the forest, or by the sea, or by a stream, or by a tree. It doesn’t matter, as long as it’s reasonably quiet out there, without much traffic noise and shouting and screaming, so that it’s the sounds of nature you hear. You can bring a sleeping mat, or a camping chair if you’re afraid of ticks. You don’t need to sit on the ground, but it has to be comfortable where you’re sitting. And then you do the following simple exercise: you close your eyes, focus on your breath, notice how it goes comfortably in and out, and make sure it goes out a little longer than it goes in. We activate our vagus nerve when we breathe out longer than we breathe in. When you feel that you’re in contact with your body, with what you’re sitting on, with where you are, you move your attention to the sounds you hear. You hear perhaps the wind, the birds, the leaves rustling, the stream gurgling, and you’re simply one with the sounds and let them wash over you. You feel that you’re connected with yourself, with the ground beneath you, with the trees, with the sounds, with the elements. You sit in that state, and your task is simply to be aware of what you’re in contact with.

It’s a good start. Anyone who does this simple exercise will gradually notice that the contact with the forces of nature, with Mother Earth, with the trees, feels almost like a magnetic field. And when you’re present in this magnetic field, or gravitational field, it gets harder and harder to think a thought. It feels strange, but gradually you’ll notice: “Wow, I didn’t think a single thought for a minute.” What happens is almost uncanny. It’s a very simple gateway, where you use nature and nature’s healthy rhythms to help you find this focus, find the way to this stillness, to the here and now.

Let’s say you’ve done this for half an hour a day for 90 days, together with the focus exercise and the work of getting your body into a relaxed state. Then it’s almost impossible not to be shocked at yourself and at how far you’ve come compared with where you started 90 days ago. After just 30 days you’ll begin to notice a difference. Then your teacher will show you the real meditation process, where you use this state you’ve found access to through the forest. By putting yourself into that state while you do the meditation process, the meditation process becomes much more joyful and easy than if you have to sit and discipline yourself into it. That’s the way you’re taught in ordinary meditation teaching, where you’re handed a method and have to slog away at it until you begin to manage it, which can take decades. I know people who have been stuck in the same rut with TM meditation for several decades, an hour every day, without being anywhere near beginning to touch what we’ve discussed in these episodes. When the meditation process becomes a discipline, or stalls at a certain level, the question is: why not actively use nature, which shows us the way home to ourselves, to ease the rest of the process? That’s what’s so cool when you do this in a shamanic setting, as at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School, where we use nature and nature’s forces, cycles and rhythms very actively when we guide the student or the shaman to their Sahara. It makes this even more joyful, much easier than it would be if, for example, you were to take the yogic route in an ashram. Nature is brutally effective, if we just let it help us in a way that’s meaningful. Wouldn’t you say so?

Amina: Oh yes, yes. A hundred percent. My journey with nature has been really special, and I wish every human being that contact, that field and that presence you can find in nature. And again, it’s free. You don’t have to pay to get in. The only thing you have to pay with is your own willingness. With people who do it wholeheartedly, you see how much it actually does. And if you perhaps don’t feel like it straight away, that longing will come automatically over time, because it’s simply what you want to do. You want to come back to that state, to that feeling, a feeling of being even more at home in yourself. So yes, I love it.

Pål-Esben: But you also have experience of the opposite: what it’s like to ignore nature and just sit at home slogging your way through a meditation process, and how exhausting that is.

Amina: Yes, I have. Because I’ve wandered off on my own too, and forgotten nature. Does it even exist? Oh yes, OK, right, we’re on a shamanic process of development here. And then I’ve had to be reminded: “What about nature, then?” “Oh yes, it’s been a few busy weeks.” So that’s where I learned it the very painful and uncomfortable way, because I simply felt completely disconnected from all the beautiful, wonderful, divine things I’ve been in contact with, once I stopped being with nature. So for me those have also been important experiences, but I don’t want that again. But again, life can happen, and if I should become more distant from myself, I know the recipe, because I’ve felt it, and I know how quickly I can get back into balance.

Inner states and the rituals in nature

Pål-Esben: And you’ve found a unique way of making the meditation process pick up speed. We’re talking about the meditation process where you’re gradually in the stillness, and where you begin to observe your thoughts and your feelings without thinking the thoughts and feeling the feelings. It sounds a bit schizophrenic, that you can observe a thought you have without thinking the thought, that you can observe a feeling without feeling the feeling. It’s as if your thoughts and feelings become like seagulls flying behind a boat at sea. Then we begin to separate our real self, our Atman, from this inner commentator, which is connected to our construct and our feelings and thoughts and belief systems. As you do the meditation process, you come to the point where this gets separated, where you’re completely in the stillness. And then, from that point, you gradually learn to break through into your Sahara.

One of the things we do at the Yggdrasil Shamanic School is to train certain inner states in nature. By inner state I mean the state you’re in, for example deep inner calm, contact with the deeper parts of the subtle gravitational forces. It’s dramatically easier to train these inner states in nature than at home on a chair or on the sofa. We use very active rituals that you learn to go through, and you learn to go into certain inner states, which have a physiological, emotional, mental and energetic structure in them. Then you learn to activate these inner states when you’re in the meditation process, which makes it go radically deeper and faster than if you hadn’t learned this craft. That’s one of the reasons why a student with us, like you, trains for somewhere between six months and two years before beginning to break through and get the very first real experiences in their Sahara, and gradually begins to drop into the Sahara on their own, whenever they see fit. It would have been very complicated without understanding these inner states: how to use different forms of ritual, and nature, to train in these inner states, so that you simply activate them when you’re deep in the meditation process. That makes this a much more joyful process than it could have been, if you’d been handed a type of meditation to do until it gets good. That’s a very hard way, in my eyes.

So that’s the key here. When we go through a process of development like this on the way to our Sahara, to the timeless and spaceless aspect of reality, it can be done in a joyful way, where you see your progress all the time, or in a brutally hard and frustrating way. I prefer the joyful one. I like the picture of the child throwing leaves in nature, which I have on my website. That’s how I try to inspire you and your fellow students: this should be a joyful and incredibly rewarding and exciting process of development, which will of course change how you interact with and experience your material life, on every level, for the better: the deluxe version. And you’re a living example of that.

Amina: Yes, yes, a hundred percent. It might sound too good to be true, but it actually isn’t. It’s actually possible.

Separation: observing without thinking

Pål-Esben: It is, and it sounds completely crazy. I think I said it in episode 27, the first episode where we talk about oneness: the day you have this state, where you’ve separated your karma from yourself, where you observe your thoughts and feelings but aren’t your thoughts and feelings, that day you no longer experience anxiety. You can’t experience depression any more. You can’t experience frustration any more. It’s as if you observe the thoughts and feelings about the depression, but you don’t experience it. It’s utterly spectacular. And not a single soul believes it’s possible when I introduce it at the start of the training. How could anyone believe it? It sounds like someone who’s been smoking something, telling you that you can bring yourself into a state where you separate yourself from your thoughts, your feelings and your karma, where you’re in the stillness, where you observe the thoughts but don’t think them, and where you observe your feelings, whether it’s anxiety, pain or frustration, but don’t feel them. It’s totally insane. But when you begin to walk the process, as you have, you notice that this state of separation, which you experience roughly in the middle of the meditation process, really is the way it’s described. Because in that moment you can’t be depressed, you can’t have anxiety, you can’t feel pain, because it isn’t possible. Did you believe me the first time I said it, Amina, if you’re going to be honest with me?

Amina: Well, I’ve probably been the one who’s had pretty boundless trust from day one, but of course I’ve had difficulty picturing it. But then I got to experience it myself, being in the meditation process and coming to a point where, and this isn’t something you think at the time, it’s something you register afterwards, you go: “Whoa, the pains I have in my stomach, they weren’t there.” I was so present, so deep inside it, and yet the pain and the discomfort weren’t there at the same time. So separated, yet at the same time so whole. Yes, that’s the best word I have for it.

The depression I no longer am

Pål-Esben: It’s a very schizophrenic feeling when we experience this for the first time. And gradually we practise how to bring this in and become meditative in our daily life, which is an important stage on the path when we talk about one foot in the Sahara and one foot in the grain of sand. Gradually, through your daily life, while you’re doing things, you can choose to be separated from your thoughts and observe them instead of thinking them. And gradually you have the problem that there aren’t any thoughts any more. When I sit on my own, there are no thoughts there. How is it possible that you don’t think for 15 to 30 minutes, that there isn’t a thought there? It actually is possible, but it comes with practice. You’re present with everything, you’re in observation mode, you’re in Atman, as we talked about last time, but there are no thoughts there any more. It’s totally crazy, when you think about where you come from as a human being. And you don’t need to be super-talented to do it. Everyone is super-talented at it, since the divine lives in each one of us, and the Sahara lives in each one of us. The question is whether you’re willing to do the work, whether you’re willing to do this training process every day over a period. Because the day you come to this state, there’s no fear, whatever’s going on in the world, whether Putin goes bananas or whatever it is. There’s no fear or anxiety to feel. You can’t experience depression, you can’t experience being low and weighed down. You can choose to associate yourself with your thoughts and feelings, of course, but you have a choice.

I myself have one of the worst diagnoses you can get in psychology for depression: major depressive disorder, bipolar type 2, with an irregular cycle. I have three diagnostic codes for it from my psychiatrist. I didn’t understand it, nobody understood it, since it cycled in and out without a trigger. Without anything happening, I could suddenly go down into this hole and stay there for anything from a few months up to a year, and then suddenly come out of it, without any trigger. I’d suddenly wake up, kaboom, and be in top form, nothing depressive, for anything from a few days to a few weeks, and then, out of nowhere, kaboom, I disappeared down into the hole again. Nobody understood why. So I know what it’s like to be very, very depressed. And today I no longer experience this. I can observe depression, if it’s there, but I’m not my depression. It’s totally beyond words. And then imagine what can be done for people who have challenges with their psyche. Say you bring a person like that, who believes they are their illness, into a state where they’re dissociated from their illness, observing it at a distance and understanding that the illness isn’t them. That alone can be revolutionary on a path towards becoming what you might call well. So what we’ve talked about in these episodes about oneness isn’t just some stuff you do as a hobby. It’s something that literally revolutionises how you perceive, experience and interact with your physical life, to a remarkable degree. So that can be a motivation for doing a process like this properly, instead of trying to find bypass methods where it’s supposed to be quick and easy.

In summary: focus, body, mind

Pål-Esben: So, in summary: the first things we practise are focus, calming the body, calming the mind, and the meditation process. What we’re talking about now is how you can begin to train a skill that’s very helpful the day you learn a real meditation process, where you learn the method for going into the stillness. And in our tradition all this is done through energetic and shamanic initiations, which make everything go radically faster for the student. You don’t need to practise so much, because it works from day one. Why not? Why should we make it so hard? Do you have any comments or thoughts as we wrap up, Amina?

Amina: Yes, so that was that. I hope this episode has inspired you to take a bit of a look at your own focus, and to try out that kind of meditation process, contact with nature, which Pål-Esben went through here a moment ago. Simply be present with nature, take in the sounds and the smells, and feel what it can do for you. And perhaps also get a bit curious: how are things with my own focus, my own relaxation, my own nervous system? Because it can be something you think is under control, and then you notice, in the moments when you try for calm, stillness and presence, that perhaps it isn’t under control after all. So I’m hoping for openness and curiosity about the topics we brought up today.

Pål-Esben: The good news is that you can reverse every form of chaos in your life. Everything can be reversed, and it doesn’t need to take particularly long, if you choose to do it wholeheartedly. The challenge is that if you only choose to do a little here and a little there, it often takes a very long time. But why not give it a proper go? Why not try for 30 days to disconnect from the news and social media and see what happens to you, to your psyche, your energy, your sleep and your relationships? Just try experimenting with it. That’s what I’d like to inspire you to do, dear listener: try to see what impact this has on your life. Because it doesn’t help much to do some esoteric stuff if it doesn’t have a practical impact on our lives. It doesn’t help much to have learned to talk to angels if they can’t help you in your life. That’s my pragmatic way of looking at things, at least. So try going out into nature, and do this simple exercise. Take 30 minutes and do it in the way described here. What happens when you’ve done it 10 to 15 times? How do you experience it when you’ve done it 30 times? It’s spectacular how something so simple can change things in us.

And I’d also like to give a tip here: document the good experiences, so you have them for a rainy day. In our tradition we have something called the Book of Shadows, where we document our experiences and insights and see how things develop, especially when you do the 30-day test project. Write a few lines every day about how it feels. Start with how you’re doing today, before you start the exercise, how things are with stress and so on. And then you write a couple of lines every day while you practise this, cutting out social media and news and going for a walk in the forest instead. Use that half hour to walk in the forest. And then you see how things are after 30 days, and sum up your state over those 30 days. Then you have facts about how you react to this. Then you can ask yourself: shall I carry on, or do I want to go back to how things were before? That’s each person’s own choice.

The truth lives in each of us

Pål-Esben: All in all, what we’re talking about is really very uncomplicated, since the truth lives in each of us. But finding it and uncovering it is an art. It takes a form of structure, step by step, where you get the chance to let go of what’s necessary for the truth to be uncovered in yourself. It’s something every human being has the opportunity to do, but only those who choose to do it wholeheartedly will find the way home. And the good news is that your soul dreams into infinity: when this dream is over and you die, you go back to your soul, and then it peeks out into a new dream, and you get to experience for as long as your soul wants to experience. So you could say that nothing has to happen in this life. There are many more opportunities to practise. But I say: if you have the chance, why not? That was my pragmatic approach when I got the chance: why not? In my eyes, there can’t be anything more exciting a human being can engage in than finding the way to the real reality, the real truth, and being able to wake up from the dream you believe today is reality. But then again, I may have a rather narrow view of things. That’s why I’m so enthusiastic about getting to guide you and your fellow students, so that you experience the same as I experience. For me there couldn’t be anything more exciting to do on this earth.

Amina: No, I couldn’t agree more. And when you see the energy in the eyes of all the people who experience that kind of homecoming, it’s something utterly priceless. Finding the way home is the most profound thing you can really engage in. You feel that longing, and it’s there for a reason: the longing that can’t be filled by anything else. I was in the alternative world myself, the esoteric world, but nothing I filled myself up with there has given me what I have today. This is something completely different.

Pål-Esben: So you’ve found something that’s real?

Amina: Yes, something that’s real, something that has to do with reality, that’s connected to the natural rhythms in yourself and in what’s around us. So it’s very, very exciting.

Coming up: fellow students, and the doors not to go through

Pål-Esben: And next time, in the next episode, we’re going to have interviews with several of your fellow students, to hear how they experience this. That’ll be cool. And after that we’re going to talk about another topic, which has to do with the biggest challenges, where most people go wrong. When you understand the most important factors that make people go wrong, you can say in advance: “It isn’t smart to go through that door, and it isn’t smart to go through that one either.” Then it becomes easier to walk down the corridor, instead of having this explained to you after one, or three, or five years, after you’ve been into all the rooms in the corridor, which definitely don’t lead anywhere.

Amina: Yes, I’m so looking forward to that, because it’s… well, I’m just really looking forward to it.

Pål-Esben: I hope that we’ve inspired you, because that’s really our intention: to inspire you to see that there’s something more, and that there’s a path to something real. 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.