Guidance for deep inner journeys
General guidelines for inner journeys
There are most likely several reasons why you feel the call to embark on an inner journey. It may be pure curiosity to learn more about yourself and the Universe. Perhaps you are looking for more ecstasy in your life. It may be that you carry a pain, a loss, a longing for meaning in life, that you are in a crisis, or something else entirely.
Joseph Campbell describes this call as “the call to adventure”. Once you have received the call to travel into your own psyche, there are several important things to be aware of. Embarking on inner journeys and being the hero or heroine of your own adventure of self-discovery is probably the most exciting and rewarding thing one can do in life. At the same time, it requires great courage, trust in the process and self-discipline.
Many eminent books have been written about this journey (there is a short reading list at the bottom), and I strongly recommend that you read and study some of them. I have described my own inner journey, which stretched over 16 years, in detail in my book Land of the Nocturnal Butterfly – An Inner Journey. It contains detailed travel guidance and inspiration. As a traveller in The Magic Garden, I recommend it to give you insight into both the adventure of self-discovery and the whole background of our “space station”.
To help you get the most out of inner journeys, here are some general and, in my view, essential guidelines:
The individuation process
Firstly, it is important to realise that the individuation process – as Jung called the inner journey and the process of self-clarification – often extends over many, many years. Occasionally you hear of people who have rapid breakthroughs after just one or two ceremonies. But then it is often because the individuation process has long been under way on other levels. They have done a lot of “homework” and just need the crucial push. So be patient, and enjoy the process. At some point you will discover that the goal is the process itself.
Daily practice
Most fundamentally, ceremonies go hand in hand with a daily spiritual practice, exercise and a healthy diet. Whether it is meditation, yoga, a martial art (aikido, karate and so on), Sufi dance, tai chi or something else is up to you. Combine it with running, cycling, swimming or whatever appeals to you, and eat healthy food.
We recommend keeping body and mind in as good a shape as possible, as this helps towards a positive outcome of the whole course and of the individuation process in general.
Dreams
It is always a good idea to pay attention to your dreams. Freud called dreams the royal road to the unconscious. So keep a dream book next to your bed. If you have a fixed daily rhythm, set your alarm a little earlier than your duties require, so that you have time to write your dreams down. With the right techniques, practice and experience, you will come to know your dream language. You will be able to decode and understand the wisdom your dreams contain, and use the guidance they give you.
An inner journey in a ceremony has three phases: preparation, the journey itself and integration.
Preparation
In the week leading up to the ceremonies, we recommend a light vegetarian or vegan diet. Plant-based food makes the system more open to deep, transforming experiences.
During this period there is often extra activity in your dreams. Notice it, and give yourself time to look inwards. Take long walks in nature, meditate, keep a diary, give yourself time and be loving towards yourself. Turn off the phone, the television and the computer, and seek as much peace as you can. If you have children, give them some extra attention and play with them. In our often stressful daily lives we cannot hear our inner voice. Listen, listen carefully, and let pictures, feelings, memories and fantasies come to you.
All of this helps the door to your inner world open further, and gives you easier access to strong and deep experiences.
Getting ready for a ceremony need not take hours each day. When work, family and children call for your attention, look for small moments during the day when you can do a few of the things above.
Once you have decided to set out on an inner journey and transform your life, it is perfectly natural that such a big decision sets various inner processes in motion. Your system begins to go through changes. Sometimes this means you may have days when you can't sleep. This is perfectly normal. If it happens to you, know that everything is all right.
Specific guidelines for the ceremony
Landing
The ceremony lasts about 6–8 hours. During the landing phase we encourage you to paint and draw mandalas. Expressing yourself visually is a wonderful way to integrate the experiences from your journey. When everyone has landed, we form a circle and share our experiences and insights. This is an important part of the process: it is very rewarding to share your own experiences, get feedback on them and hear about the experiences of others.
Integration
Ideally, take the day after a journey off. You are in an afterglow, still open and extra sensitive, and your experiences are very close to you. The integration phase is as important as the journey itself – perhaps even more important.
Write your experiences down
Start writing down what you experienced. As you write, several things will happen. You will probably remember more details, feel the moods and feelings again and see your visions once more – and you may have breakthroughs and other insights.
Integrate your experiences with the help of music
During the ceremony we play live channelled music. The music is professionally recorded. After the retreat you can join our online tribe on our membership platform, where you can listen to the music and use it for integration. The music is very powerful, and many people have told us of experiencing deeply rooted contact, safety, presence and peace when they use it in their daily lives. Try it and see how it works for you.
Interpreting your experiences
Sometimes on inner journeys we receive very clear messages about what to do. It may be a message about which career to follow. It may also be a clear, well-defined creative idea waiting to be carried out – a picture to be painted, or precise architectural drawings for a house to be built. The creative field is a very exciting area of the medicine.
It is important to be aware, however, that the unconscious and the superconscious often speak to us through metaphors and symbols. If you are a woman, you may have seen that you are to marry a certain man. You may feel the impulse to contact him straight afterwards and propose. When you then paint the vision and write the experience down, you may realise that this man has qualities you are looking for in yourself – qualities and gifts that have been hidden deep down and are calling to you. Your unconscious has projected your inner man – your Animus, as Jung called it – onto that man. The marriage you saw was an invitation to the “sacred marriage” – the Hieros Gamos – an invitation to become a whole human being.
So always wait until the day after a journey, or preferably longer, before making final decisions, and do nothing rash.
Action
The medicine helps you gain insight into what to do to make the most of your life, but you still have to act on it yourself and carry out what you have been told from within. We live on planet Earth, on a dualistic plane, and it is of the utmost importance to bring your experiences down to earth and integrate them into your everyday life.
On the adventure of self-discovery, you are the hero or heroine of your own life
As I wrote at the beginning, the adventure of self-discovery is a journey that takes time. You are the heroine or hero of your own film – your own life. All great films, myths and fairy tales are variations of the hero's journey, as Joseph Campbell described it in his book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”. This journey holds a wide range of experiences and states that give life colour, meaning and substance. It is a journey that takes you down into the Underworld, where you will meet your shadow sides and reclaim your hidden potential. Along the way you will probably go through periods of more or less chaotic states, as your old ego dissolves so that your new, true self can be born. These are natural states. There is nothing to be afraid of.
When you are ready and go deep enough, you will have experiences of death and rebirth. All pre-industrial cultures have had rites of passage meant to bring about these death-rebirth experiences. They lead on to mystical experiences, which have been shown to be extremely healing and transformative. You will experience cosmic ecstasy when your old body armour has melted away, and gain access to spontaneous everyday ecstasy.
So be prepared for your life to become more exciting, and trust the process and the Universe. Think of all the times the hero or heroine finds a way out at the last minute, or is rescued, often with the help of supernatural beings.
The goal
The goal is to get “high” on a glass of water. To live life fully and be completely present in the now, enjoying and being in what you do. To bring Heaven down to Earth.
It is this individuation process that Ecaterina, I and our guides here at The Magic Garden look forward to and feel called to support you in.
The integration evening – how we help you afterwards
In short
- On the Tuesday after your retreat, from 6 to 9 pm, you meet the others from your group again in the Roundhall.
- You tell us how your first days at home have been – and what is still moving inside you.
- If something is still stuck, Jacob or Ecaterina works with you on a mattress on the floor, sometimes with the whole group supporting you.
- If you need more support in the weeks that follow, you can have psychotherapy with Jacob or Ecaterina – in the garden or online.
The importance of integration after deep inner journeys
After each of our plant medicine ceremonies, catalysed by sacred technologies and our deeply transformative sound technology, we hold a follow-up integration evening on the Tuesday after. It is Ecaterina's and my deep passion and joy to support seekers and psychonauts like you on the Journey of Self-Discovery, and to guide you through the Ocean of Consciousness – in calm and in turbulent waters. I began my own inner journey in 1984 with two questions: Who am I, and why am I here? That is why we created The Magic Garden: so that you can be supported in getting to know yourself, coming into contact with your heart and finding more joy in your life.
The experiences catalysed on our retreats are often repressed traumas that have sat in your psychophysical system since childhood, birth or the time in the womb – and sometimes even from earlier incarnations. The pent-up, repressed and suppressed energy – anger, hatred, aggression, tears, bitterness, fear, grief or something else – locked in the body's armour may have shown itself throughout your life in many ways: an unexplained fear of what life will bring next, a fear of loving fully, an inability to enjoy life and receive the gifts of the Universe, aggression that suddenly takes over in everyday life, a knot of sadness in the stomach – to name just a few.
You meet the other participants from the ceremony again at The Magic Garden. If you come from far away, you can join online. But if you have unfinished processes that need to be worked through, it is a great advantage to be here in person.
Ecaterina and I give individual sessions during the evening, drawing on a wide range of psychotherapeutic and shamanic techniques and methods. Now and then our students – or even the whole group – are brought in to support the processes.
If you need it, I ask you to lie down on the floor in front of me, blindfolded, on mattresses where you are safe, and with just a few simple techniques deep experiences are released – often just as powerful as at the retreat, or even more so. The range of experiences is vast. Some are intense cathartic releases of pent-up aggression, anger and hatred, with all kinds of body movements, trembling, kundalini energy or other expressions.
An example from an integration evening
Often one or more participants need follow-up integration work. On one of these evenings I work with Eliza and her childhood. An effective way to heal a traumatic childhood, with unmet needs for a mother and a father, is to help the traveller “tune in” to the Cosmic Mother and Father. The Universe holds all archetypes, and in the Cosmic Ocean the Cosmic Mother and Father are always present, ready to give care, support and love.
With active imagination, positive affirmations, visualisation and follow-up experiential psychotherapy sessions, it is possible to “recreate a positive childhood”, so that the traveller reclaims the childhood she lost and with it her trust in the Universe.
When we have worked through the feelings and memories that carried a charge, and the session is well under way, I ask her whether she is up for a “game” – an experiment. She says yes, and I ask her to visualise the childhood she would have liked to have had. I ask her to tell me, as if it were happening here and now, how her mother and father take care of her, and how she feels nourished and supported as a small child. After retelling the scene several times, she glows more and more. I ask her to paint the whole scene when she gets home and hang the painting on her wall, to anchor the new state: being a Cosmic Child, nourished and supported by the Cosmic Mother and Father of the Universe.
6 books I recommend you read
- Psychology of the FutureStanislav Grof
- Memories, Dreams, ReflectionsC.G. Jung
- Man and His SymbolsC.G. Jung
- LifecyclesChristopher Bache
- The Rebirth of the HeroKeiron Le Grice
- Land of the Nocturnal Butterfly Jacob Moth
Light, love, magic and blessings
Jacob Moth