This journey is to travel to the spirit realm for The Schapera Show recording and to explore the topic of managing our emotions especially the anxiety that so many of us are feeling these days.

After the first journey that I did on this topic the understanding came to me that what it’s about in essence is how to manage fear – we call it anxiety, but anxiety is fear and that made more sense to me or it brought it into starker relief – that what we’re talking about, is how to manage fear.

So, for this journey I’m going to go to the Lower World. I go into the tree, I see the portal, I go through it and there’s a thread that I follow that helps me go down
I’m traveling down alongside the thread. It’s dark the – darkness of space and I’m going down alongside this thread. In this case it’s very thin – it’s maybe about 2 inches or 3 inches across and I’m traveling down along it.

I restate my intention that the purpose of this journey is to travel to the lower world and meet my spirit helpers in the Lower World and ask them for guidance and information to present on The Schapera Show about dealing with fear.

And I’m going down and down and it’s getting darker and I’m approaching an inky blackness, which becomes an even greater blackness that I go into, and I know I must stick right next to this beam, as this beam is my guide – it’s my pathway to the Spiritual. So, I actually encircle it with my arms and with my legs, so I’m right by it as we go down through this deep blackness.

I must not get lost in this blackness – I go down and down through it and it is like a dark cloud but a very, very black dark cloud and I come out the other side and now it’s like coming out of the clouds into daylight, and I see a beautiful green world below me which is how I often experience coming to the Lower World and I’m interested to see where I actually land.

And even though I haven’t landed yet I’m calling in my Spirit Helpers of the Lower world – please be with me and support me and help me. I request that they give me this information about managing fear and I suddenly understand that I’ve actually just had information on the way down here without realizing. What I was being shown or told when I went through this inky blackness – and it did have a scary or fearful aspect to it – I didn’t really understand what there was to be fearful about, but it felt like something that I was fearful about.

What I suddenly understood was that I managed to go through the fear by staying totally connected to the path to the Spirit realm. I let myself stay firmly connected to what connects me to the Spirit Realm of the Lower World and that was my safety. That had me manage the fear and have me know that I wasn’t going to be pulled into anything – I wasn’t going to get lost in the uncertainty of fear because I was connected to the Spirit Realm. I’ve already heard similar information before, and it’s a re-emphasis of what has been told to me numerous times in different ways – that it’s crucial for us to stay connected to the Spirit Realm.

I’m still not really experiencing being definitely landed in the Lower World yet, but now I see more clearly that I’m over a very green area covered in trees. I come down and I land, and it’s not even a clearing, it’s just a small space surrounded by trees. All the while I’ve been calling in my Spirit Helpers and one of them arrives. I call him “BP” by his initials, and he is very adept at managing closed spaces and going through the thick undergrowth and trees. He is there and, as I have often done before, I’m going to get onto his back but I first just want to greet him. I want to say I’m very glad that he’s come; and again it feels much safer and more comfortable to have this protector, to have this guide – I’m not alone and this is the lesson that my own shamanic teacher, Michael Harner, emphasized so many times – that one of the huge benefits of doing Shamanic Journeying, and being connected to the Spirit Realm, is knowing that we are not alone, and we are with a Source of Healing and Helping and Comforting and Wisdom and Love and Protection.

And I’m on the back of the Spirit Helper in animal form, and we go to an area by the edge of the trees where the trees come to an edge of a very large pond. BP drinks the water. I’m not on his back anymore and he’s drinking the water and again the understanding I have here, is that this is the Spirit Realm and here we can absorb spiritual nourishment with all its benefits. The Spirit Helper is sitting on his haunches and he looks up at me expectantly. And I say, because it’s important to put these things into words, even if there is an understanding, I say, I’ve come to the Lower world, the Spirit realm of the lower world, to get guidance to present on The Schapera Show about how to deal with and manage our fear.

And he said it’s a huge spiritual topic because things do happen to us which we could find very painful, and we have fear about pain – physical pain. We have fear about suffering, we have fear about grief, and we have fear about death – and all these things do happen.

And then I’m being told by my Spirit Helper that there is no oblivion. There is no obliteration of our lives and he reminds me of what I have read or heard in recordings of the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle, saying there isn’t life and death – that yes, there is birth and death – but there is no such thing as death in terms of life. There isn’t a death of life.

Usually we fear death as this seems like obliteration, like annihilation. The notion that we can cease to be is an outrageous notion. The spirits say there is no ceasing to be! What being is, is “isness.” That could be the name of a book “What is Isness?” It’s a bit amusing: “What is Isness?”

And that is one of the spiritual questions that we can ask, if there is a spiritual question: What is Isness? But more to the point: There can be no obliteration of Isness! So one of the big points is for us not to fear our own death because we have the incredible eternal security, if we want to call it that, of eternal isness. And there’s an isness beyond what we usually experience. We usually experience a very watered-down form of isness. The experience that we have of our own lives of course feels very strong, but that experience of “I”, of personal identity, is a very pale shadow of what isness is.

Our spiritual evolution, is to experience more and more vividly, what isness truly is.

Also, there is the fear of things changing in a way that we would feel is less desirable or even very undesirable. For example, fear of changes in health, changes in circumstances, changes in comfort – the fear around “what’s going to happen to me?”

The spirits say that one of the heights of spiritual development in this incarnation, is again something that Eckhart Tolle talked about in reference to another spiritual teacher named Krishnamurti. Tolle talks about Krishnamurti telling an audience that his “secret” is that “he doesn’t really mind what happens” and that to evolve or to have the realization that puts one in a place of “I don’t really mind what happens” is the height of spiritual development as an incarnated being.

I say that well, in our world, we can contemplate, especially now, some terrible things happening – like war, nuclear attack, famine, epidemics, social breakdown – there’s no limit to what horrible, or seemingly horrible things we can imagine, that can and do occur, and affect ourselves, and people we know, and people we love.

The spirits say that as long as we mind what happens, we will have fear. The only real way of not having fear is to evolve to a place of not really minding what happens, which if one’s not in that place, seems impossible and even undesirable.
And I ask: Is there a way of managing fear if one hasn’t gotten to that point of spiritual evolution of not really minding what happens?

And the spirits say yes, being again the point that they’ve made again and again and again: Be strongly connected to the Spirit World. Then you are not alone, and you are able to access power, and protection, and comfort, and meaning from the Spirit Realm.

Managing fear requires developing one’s own spirituality. They tell me what they’ve said so many times before, that of course there’s the work of developing being a kind person, a loving and generous person, and releasing one’s defensiveness and closedness.

Being on earth is actually a spiritual path – this is the irony of incarnation – and the physicality of it, and the sensory aspect of it, which brings both joy and fear. There are “good” sensory experiences and “bad” sensory experiences and yet the true purpose of being … and I’ll stop right there as they are stopping me. When I was going to say the true purpose of being on earth is spiritual evolution, they said: “Well you don’t even have to put in the proviso, or the phrase “on earth,” the true purpose, a true understanding of existence, of isness, is spiritual.

The spirits say to think of the hymn “Oh God our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home” – we need to fully know, and experience that we have and are part of an eternal home.

That is actually the way of managing fear: “our shelter from the stormy blast and our eternal home.” That’s the way to manage fear! And they say: “Smell the roses – enjoy what can be enjoyed,” and that’s the perfect place to end this wonderful Shamanic Journey.

The drums change at that point with perfect timing, to call me back. This was a very enlightening journey, and I thank the spirits. I’m still at this lake, looking out over the water with BP next to me, and I hug him and I say thank you, and he gives a big smile.

This is a big development in our intimacy and a major connection. I return to the middle world, traveling up and up the energy beam, back up and up and up, going through that black cloud which had become very wispy indicating the dissolving of fear. I come back through the portal into the tree, and I arrive back in the middle world, and everyday, ordinary reality. This was a wonderful journey. Thank you, Spirits, thank you.

And thank you! You have been listening to Neil of The Schapera Show. We have to go on break now, and when we come back, Vivien will continue with messages from crystals.