Chapters 6-7

Question 1

Why is it important to do preparation regarding the ego structure?

Answer 1

Expanded states of consciousness have the effect of relaxing our psychological strategies and defenses and bringing us face-to-face with the content our ego structure normally keeps hidden.

Question 2

How do we prepare to encounter our ego’s protective structures (3 parts)?

Answer 2

1. Develop a familiarity with these protective structures beforehand.
2. Acknowledge the ways we have been able to survive
3. Bring awareness to the ways these survival strategies may be outdated or how they limit our current life.

Question 3

Why is it important to do emotional preparation (3 parts)?

Answer 3

1. The more in touch we are with the way emotional states arise within us, the more profoundly we can engage our core material in expanded states of consciousness.
2. Because expanded states of consciousness can loosen and liberate long-repressed emotions, memories, and fears, it is wise to familiarize oneself with what is apparent as well as what is lying below the surface.
3. We do not want to blast abruptly into tender memories and places of inner pain.

Question 4

How do we prepare on the level of mind and emotions (In general, and then 5 more specific ways)?

Answer 4

In general, bring mindfulness to our immediate experience. More specifically, we can:

1. Begin by noticing and naming our thoughts and how we are feeling in general.
2. Ask ourselves what ideas, anxieties, fears, or concerns are occupying our thinking and feeling body
3. Ask ourselves what personal material, memories, or emotions are we conscious of right now
4. Notice what are we feeling on a raw emotional level
5. Bring awareness to the habits, tendencies, or patterns that keep us at a distance from our raw experience

Question 5

How can a journeyer explore psychological content from an archetypal perspective?

Answer 5

1. Use the Enneagram
2. Use Astrology – what planetary transits are happening as we prepare to go into a journey and what does this mean?
3. Use divination techniques such as tarot cards, the I Ching or rune stones

Question 6

How can we work with the concern that a journeyer may not be able to bring the unconscious completely into consciousness before the journey?

Answer 6

By adopting Francoise’s understanding of the unconscious as an ongoing matrix of gestation where things need to develop before they are born into our conscious mind. There is much that we do not know about ourselves and that is okay. What is ready to appear will do so at just the right time.

Question 7

Beyond mindfulness, what other specific practices may be beneficial to help activate the unconscious so that themes may be explored (5 examples)?

Answer 7

1. Journaling or expressive writing
2. Making art
3. Playing music or singing
4. Record dreams and seek to understand what characters, relationships, disturbances or emotions show up
5. Practices that work on archetypal and mythic levels

Question 8

What are the 5 core elements of spiritual preparation?

Answer 8

1. Building an alliance with one’s ancestors and important spirits
2. Creation/recreation of altars
3. Cleansing and purification of the body
4. Making offerings
5. Silent periods of personal reflection

Question 9

What is an altar and what does it create energetically ?

Answer 9

An altar is a shrine, table, cabinet, shelf, or platform on which spiritual or religious objects and images are placed together in a way that invokes a sense of the sacred.

It creates unique field of energy that represents and reflects those who participate in its making.

Question 10

Why is it important to create/recreate an alter?

Answer 10

The ritual of making an altar begins to relax our inner state as the intentional act of creation itself opens our psyche into a vaster state of consciousness.

Question 11

What are 5 examples of energetic cleansing/purification?

Answer 11

1. Cleansing using smoke - burning sage, sweetgrass, palo santo, resins or tobacco or incense
2. Water - sprinkling, bathing, dunking, washing
3. Sound - ringing bells
4. Spraying body with scented water
5. Anointing with oil

Question 12

What is making offering about and 2 reasons why is it important?

Answer 12

It is about giving something symbolic or valuable to the land and spirits to ask for permission to conduct ceremony or to request support or healing.

1. It helps us recognize the generous abundance we receive from the earth and offering something back.
2. It helps bring about humility and generosity

Question 13

What parts of the spirit and sacred realms can we connect with?

Answer 13

1. Our ancestors
2. Spirits such as deities, devas, gods, local spirits, angels, archangels, the Great Spirit, God, or the Goddess.
3. The sacredness/divinity of the natural world

Question 14

4 places to look for spiritual rituals to tap into

Answer 14

1. Our own indigenous heritage, which can include the pre-Abrahamic spiritual traditions of our ancestors and history that involved traditional healers, sages, priestesses and oracles
2. Going to a church, temple, or mosque
3. Books on prayer and contemplation from different traditions.
4. Rituals/ceremonies from other cultures that we are drawn to

Question 15

What 3 things are important when we are incorporating practices from other cultures?

Answer 15

1. It is important to do so respectfully.
2. We do not want to dilute
3. We want to be inspired by and humbly borrow or adapt aspects of their ways.

Question 16

What is the point of spiritual preparation and 2 reasons why is it important?

Answer 16

The point of spiritual preparation is to engage with practices and customs that resonate with us so that we can make an alliance with the sacred and build a connection with the spiritual dimension.

1. We experience something larger than ourselves and discover how we are in relationship with the unseen realm.
2. Eventually, as we open ourselves to this realm, we begin to feel how it nourishes us.

Question 17

What are the 2 basic elements of creating an alter if you don’t have one?

Answer 17

1. Ensure it has special objects, flowers, crystals, photos and statues.
2. Spend time with each object, touch it, hold it, and place it down

Question 18

What can be done if you already have an altar (2 parts) and why is it important (2 parts)?

Answer 18

1. Undo it and make a new one by taking everything off and put everything back intentionally.
2. Spend time with each object, touch it, hold it, and place it back down again.
3. Even if you replace the same object in the same location, your attention refreshes the energy of your altar.
4. Opportunity to add objects that are more current and meaningful to you.

Question 19

What is the important underlying principle of the purification/cleansing process?

Answer 19

Setting an intention to be purified/cleansed and having a physical practice to follow it through with.

Question 20

Guidance for making an offering (3 parts)

Answer 20

1. Find a spot near your home or a local park that feels special or sacred
2. Make offerings to certain trees and plants, the creek, or the local mountain.
3. You can make offerings of rice, cocoa beans, coins, flowers, tobacco, water, or anything that feels significant.

Question 21

How to connect with the sacredness of nature

Answer 21

Sit alone in nature, in silence, and focus on your inner experience

Question 22

How to connect with ancestors (4 ways) and what to do if you don’t relate to your blood ancestors as a source of wisdom?

Answer 22

1. Talk to family members to find out their names and listen to or record their stories.
2. Perhaps you can get photos to place on your altar. If you do not have photos, you can write their names on a card and place that upon your altar.
3. Read up on the history of the countries where your ancestors came from
4. Reconnect with the culture that is in your blood and bones by means such as listening to your ancestor’s traditional music and exploring their food

If you do not relate with your blood ancestors as a source of wisdom, you can call upon other elders or wise people throughout history whose teachings or writings inspire you.

Question 23

2 reasons why is it important to connect with your ancestors

Answer 23

1. When you enter into rituals and ceremonies, you can call on your ancestors and their generations of wisdom that continue to live on through you to support you in your healing work
2. Because in a sense, we are doing this work for them. Studies on transgenerational trauma have shown that events that occurred up to three generations back have an effect on the living.