Sandra Ingerman Interview

Summary

Sandra Ingerman presents shamanism as a way of receiving direct spiritual guidance, living in relationship with nature, and helping restore balance. The discussion explores how to face suffering, transform destructive energy, and take responsibility for shaping a healthier future.

Questions This Interview Explores

• What is shamanism, and how can people receive spiritual guidance directly?
• How can we face suffering without becoming overwhelmed or spiritually bypassing it?
• How can nature help us heal and regain balance?
• What can individuals do to help heal environmental and social problems?

Key takeaways

• Shamanism encourages people to access spiritual wisdom without surrendering their power to others.
• Power is the ability to transform energy and contribute one's unique gifts.
• Nature teaches that dissolution can lead to rebirth, healing, and greater authenticity.
• Suffering can be transformed into love and light rather than denied or avoided.
• The future is shaped by how people live and act in the present.
• Communities become stronger when each person contributes to the shared field of life.

Transcript

Rick: Welcome to Buddha at the Gas Pump. My name is Rick Archer. Buddha at the Gas Pump is an ongoing series of interviews with spiritually awakening people. I’ve done many hundreds of them now. If this is new to you and you’d like to check out previous ones, please go to batgap.com—B-A-T-G-A-P—and look under the Past Interviews menu.

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My guest today is Sandra Ingerman. Welcome, Sandra.

Sandra: Thank you, Rick. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

Rick: Good to be with you. Sandra’s down in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a beautiful place. She says she’s lived there for 35 years. Sandra is an expert in shamanism. I haven’t done too many programs on shamanism in this series.

It’s funny, when I first started thinking about interviewing you, Sandra, I was thinking, “How am I going to do this? Will I do a good job? What do I know about shamanism? Ceremonies—how can I? I can’t really relate to the idea of ceremonies.”

And I thought, “I know it, dude. You were a TM teacher for decades. You performed a ceremony every time you initiated somebody into meditation, and that was really profound, powerful, and transformative. And then the drumming thing—I was a drummer. I can attest to how much drumming can change your consciousness when you’re really into it.”

So maybe I’m more attuned to shamanism than I realized.

Sandra: Absolutely. Shamanism is a way of life. There’s so much mystery around shamanism right now. Shamanism is a practice of direct revelation. With direct revelation, that just says we all have the ability to access our own spiritual information without having to give our power away to others.

Shamanism is a way of life. It’s about recognizing that we are nature. How do we speak to nature? How do we approach nature? How do we relate to nature so that we bring balance back into the world again?

Shamanism is about how we think and how we speak, the dreams that we put out into the world, and how we treat ourselves and other people. The practice of shamanism is about learning how to live on this planet from a place of harmony, peace, love, light, and beauty. That’s what the practice is about. It’s a lifelong practice that we all grow into over our lifetimes.

Shamanism and direct revelation

Rick: When you say it involves not giving our power away to others, do you mean that it doesn’t involve intermediaries as much as some other spiritual traditions might? And yet shamans play a special role in their communities. Do they try to empower people to become shamans themselves? Or is a shaman always going to have some special significance as an intermediary with subtle realms or something?

Sandra: The shaman will always have a special role as an intermediary to the spiritual world, but shamanism is a living, breathing practice that dates back tens of thousands of years. We’re moving into a different evolution of consciousness. How do we have one shaman who’s the intermediary for America or for Europe?

It’s a time when we all have to step into our willingness to also make contact with the spiritual realms. What I mean by taking power back is that power is the ability to transform energy. That’s all power is: the ability to work with energy and transform it.

Every person right now, in the world that we’re living in, needs to find the passion of their soul—the destiny of what they have to contribute—without having to look to others to save us. We’re all going to contribute, every one of us.

Community as a Shared Spiritual Organism

We all have to step into the role of intermediaries for what’s coming through our own soul and what’s coming through our own spiritual information—the guidance that we’re getting. That has always been part of shamanism: we all only hold a small piece. It’s the community that acts as an organism together to feed strength into the entire community, the entire organism of life.

Rick: That’s nice. Obviously—maybe not obviously, but I think you and I would agree—that we all have the innate capacity to experience deeper reality, or whatever we want to call it. You can’t really take somebody else’s experience of it in place of your own. You have to have it directly, just like you can’t expect to enjoy what an orange tastes like based on somebody else’s description.

But I think maybe we would also agree—and I think this is what you just said—that when that experience is shared by many, something greater than the sum of its parts gets created. There’s a potency to group realization that’s even greater than individual realization.

Sandra: Absolutely. It’s exponential. I’ve started using the definition that a shaman is a gardener of energy. We work with energy, we tend energy, and we tend the garden of life. What are we planting, and what do we need to remove?

A shaman is a gardener of energy.

When you’re in a community and growing a community garden, it’s important for everybody to contribute. The exponential energy of love, care, nurturance, and tending that goes into life by the global community is huge. It’s really huge.

People are craving that right now. They’re craving a sense of belonging. Where do they belong, and where do they contribute? We all want that.

Rick: We could just carry on here, and one thought leads to the next, but maybe we should just learn a little bit more about you first before we carry on.

Years ago, I heard that there was such a thing as a lightning shaman. I guess I was somehow associating this with South America, with people who had been struck by lightning, and that this trauma to the system somehow catapulted them into capabilities that define them as a shaman.

I was listening to a story about your life, and it turns out you’ve been struck by lightning—first at the age of seven. I think it actually happened more than once?

Sandra: No, I was only hit by lightning once, actually in Brooklyn, New York, of all places. I was pretty young. When I came back, I just kept saying, “Mommy, I died. Mommy, I died.” And she kept saying, “No, you didn’t.”

Then I had two other near-death experiences in my life involving drowning, where I did go down a tunnel to a beautiful garden. You can see why gardens are so important to me. I heard music that was unearthly. There’s nothing that compares to anything that we’ve heard.

In one near-death experience, I went to a great light that taught me about unconditional love: that there’s no judgment, and that I am not seen as being Sandra Ingerman. I am seen as a light by Source. There’s no individualization. I’m not seen as who other people see me as. That was very big. I was pretty young when I got that.

Rick: Was that your Thelma and Louise experience, where you drove a car off a cliff, I think?

Sandra: Yeah, unfortunately, with five other people. It was a miracle nobody got hurt. Triple A came. We rolled a few times, Triple A came, pulled the car out, and we all got back in and drove to our final destination.

Rick: Who was that actress who was in Thelma and Louise?

Sandra: My memory is not that good.

Rick: I forget. She came to town when Bernie Sanders was here, and I was really tempted to go up to her and say, “Now, if Bernie loses, don’t drive yourself off a cliff.” Anyway, corny joke.

Sandra: But, you know, Rick, I wanted to say that one of the shocks and reasons for my near-death experiences was that I didn’t want to be here. Life was too difficult.

When I was young, everything was joy and everything was beauty to me. Then I started seeing so much suffering, and I didn’t want to be here. Part of the lesson in my near-death experiences was that if you don’t want to be here, the universe will take you out. That was a big lesson for me to get.

It was also a big lesson in helping me cure my depression and suicidal tendencies. The spiritual realms helped me. I didn’t have elders to help me with this, but I had elder spirits who were able to say, “You need to make a choice. You need to make a choice whether you want to be here or not.”

Near-death experiences often sound very romantic to people, but they were also part of my healing. They taught me that I had to make a choice to be fully present in this lifetime.

Then my path became, “How do I do that? How do I live in a world where I see so much suffering? And how do I bring my original destiny—what I saw was possible—into the world that we live in?”

My history is many-layered because there were a lot of miracles, but there was a lot of healing that had to happen, too.

Choosing to be fully present

Rick: I’ve interviewed Anita Moorjani, and I’ve read a lot of books about near-death experiences—James Van Praagh, Betty J. Eadie, Dannion Brinkley, and others. They all end up saying something similar: “I’m really looking forward to dying because it’s so beautiful. But now I really appreciate life, so I’m in no hurry. It’s a joy to be here as well.”

Sandra: When we’re spirits, we don’t get to experience the senses. That’s what Planet Earth is really about.

The Earth is 4.6 billion years old, and it brings us so much beauty and nurturance. The wind, which is the most ancient being, brings us these fragrances. The ocean is the primordial ocean from which life was born. Think of all that water brings to our life, and the beauty of the stars, the moon, and the sun; what we get to eat; what we get to hear in nature; what we get to experience; and how we relate to other nature beings. Spirits don’t get to experience that.

Rick: Maharishi Mahesh Yogi used to say that the angels are envious of human beings because, as humans, we have such a tremendous opportunity for spiritual evolution.

Sandra: That’s true. I’ve heard that many times from many different traditions.

Rick: Okay, so you’re seven, you got zapped by lightning, and you went through various things. I guess you studied to be a marine biologist for a while, but then I think you decided that you liked people more than fish.

Sandra: No, actually, what happened was I started studying as a psychology major, but my issue has always been the same: I just saw too much suffering. And it was too hard for me. It was too hard on my body, my psyche, and my health. It wasn’t physically healthy. And so I felt I needed to make a change.

And so I studied marine biology, and I got into the world of algae, which is unbelievably fascinating. And again, my years in marine biology were so healing for me. I was in the ocean every day, speaking to the ocean and collecting for my research studies. And then, when I was ready to say, “I’m ready to learn how to set boundaries and how to do what I’m here to do,” that was when I was able to go back and get my master’s in counseling psychology.

My marine biology background really pushed me to look at how we can start to reverse environmental pollution. So I had these two tracks going at the same time as I entered into psychology and as I entered into the practice of shamanism: How do we heal ourselves? How do we learn how to live on the earth? How do we work spiritually to start to heal what has happened environmentally to our planet? And how do we work with that as humans on a spiritual level?

🎵 Healing the Earth from within

Rick: It’s a good time to hold up one of your books here, Medicine for the Earth. This one’s all about how to transform personal and environmental toxins. And I’m also very passionate about that whole issue because I think that the prospects for the earth are pretty dire. In fact, the government report just came out on Friday about how severe climate change is expected to be, and people are still denying it—a lot of people. But it’s like a slow-moving train wreck or something. Michael Dowd, whom I interviewed, referred to it as a sort of intergenerational genocide, because so many people stand to lose their lives as a result of it, and because of how immoral it is to obfuscate the issue. Anyway, I’m rambling a bit, but maybe you’d like to respond to some of that before we go on.

Sandra: The big issue for me is not just all the species and the adults, but that we’re bringing all these children, these beautiful spirits, into the world all over the world. And I am really behind all the political movements to protect women’s rights and the right to life. It’s time for us to start talking about the children. It’s time for us to start talking about the children.

We’re giving our children water that has poison in it. We’re giving children food that has poison in it. We’re giving our children air, letting them breathe air that has poison in it. Yet we say we love ourselves, and we love our children. What does that say about a species that brings children into the world and doesn’t care for them in the way that they deserve to be cared for?

And so that’s the bigger issue for me: We’re just not talking about the children and the illnesses that they’re being born into the world with. The emails and letters that I get are heartbreaking.

Rick: There are a couple of interesting issues here, and we’ll keep framing this in a spiritual context. It’s not merely a political thing. I don’t think anything is divorced ultimately from spirituality. But you allude a lot in your talks and writings to the state of the earth and what’s happening to it, how dire it is, and your desire to heal it. You also allude to the condition of the society we live in as a reflection of the condition of our inner life. What’s that phrase you have? “As without, so within,” or something of that famous phrase that you quote?

Sandra: “As within, so without?”

Rick: I can really relate to that. I mean, I really think that everything—all the technologies, all the good things, all the bad things, everything else—is obviously a product of human minds and human hearts. And if there’s a lot of stuff that’s really screwed up, as we see there is, then that must be symptomatic of widespread dysfunction in lots of human beings.

And so how do you solve it? Do you just tinker with the economics or the politics? I don’t think so. How is that going to change the dysfunction that gave rise to it in the first place? You have to make the change on the level of the inner person.

Sandra: Yes. And I think that one of the things that we can learn from shamanic cultures is about the importance of honoring our ancestors. And the reason I’m saying this is that in the modern-day world, we oftentimes look at it as though we’re just here now.

When we start to look at our ancestry and honor how long our ancestors have been here, and everything that they went through so that we may be here now, that helps us to understand that time is moving and that there’s a future. We also have to take care of ourselves in the present so that we leave a good future for our children and for the descendants of this earth.

A lot of it is about understanding that we have a responsibility. We’re not just here for this time. We came through a whole line of ancestors, with their stories, their joys, and all the lessons that they taught us—everything that they had to go through. And we’re here, and we carry that into the future.

So it’s not an end. We carry our energy into the future. What kind of energy do we want to carry into the future?

Rick: I mean, there’s so much short-term thinking in the world. Corporations are worried about the quarterly profits without regard to the impact that they might be having 20, 30, or 40 years down the line. That’s suicidal. I mean, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot in many cases with this stuff.

Sandra: The question that we’re all asking right now is, “When does the collective wake up?”

Rick: Good question.

Sandra: And I say, instead of continuing to talk about what we’re doing, what we’re doing, what we’re doing, when does the collective stand up and say, “Enough”? It is now actually time for us to stop talking about what’s going wrong.

How do we start to be gardeners of energy and start to work in the invisible realms? How do we stand up in our communities, honor all of life, honor ourselves, be authentic and share, and share our tools with others? Because people are really looking for tools right now. They don’t know how to navigate what’s happening.

Rick: Do you see signs that we are waking up, that the collective consciousness is sort of rousing itself from a slumber?

Sandra: I see some. I definitely see some, and that excites me.

Rick: The Me Too movement, for instance?

Sandra: Well, it’s more than that. People are starting to talk to the trees, and they’re starting to talk to the spirit of the whale and ask, “Whale, what do we need right now to help you?”

So people are starting to wake up to a greater responsibility: We share this planet with all of life. More people are waking up to the power of unity. But so much of the collective is still in separation and division, and that includes the spiritual community.

And so we get lost in the fighting over what needs to happen, instead of everybody understanding that we all have a destiny, that we all have something to contribute. Do your work now. Go in to meditate, perform shamanic journeys, sit in nature. Ask: What is the passion of your soul? What is your destiny? What do you have to contribute right now? And are you willing at this time? It’s so critical. Are you willing to stand up and contribute in your community?

🕊️ Holding suffering without spiritual bypass

Rick: You said that when you were younger, you couldn’t face the suffering in the world. It was hard for you to handle that, so you wanted to go into a profession where you didn’t have to face it. Do you see that now among people who come to you and so on—that people are having a hard time coping with being a human being and facing the suffering that they encounter?

Sandra: Yes, yes. One of the things that I did, which has its pros and cons, was that ever since I started teaching, I wanted to be really hands-on with all my students. And so, before the internet, I answered hundreds of letters a week. Then, with the internet, I answered hundreds and hundreds of emails, and I looked through Facebook just to see where people are at.

People don’t know how to deal with this. I’m hearing this every day. People don’t know how to hold the suffering. They don’t know how to watch the death and destruction, what’s happening to the children, what’s happening to the species of animals, or the living beings that are going extinct. People don’t have the capacity to hold that.

So I’ve been teaching more about how we also have the capacity to work with a spiritual heart. We are body, mind, and spirit. And so we have a spiritual heart.

On the realm of spirit, here we are living in a dualistic world—Planet Earth, the sun comes up, the sun goes down. But when we transcend to the transcendent realities, there’s only perfection. This is all lessons. We’re all learning. Everything is perfect. Whatever is happening is fine.

And we don’t want to do a spiritual bypass and just go to the transcendent realms and say, “Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. It’s all perfect. It’s all a lesson.” But we do want to start working with that spiritual part of ourselves that knows how to take that suffering and turn it into light and love—to transmute it, transform it.

Then let that energy be shared. Radiate that energy into the collective, because that heals. As we start to share a loving energy with the collective, it starts to transform the force of destruction that has entered into our collective at this time on the planet.

We do want to start working with that spiritual part of ourselves that knows how to take that suffering and turn it into light and love.

Rick: So do you feel like it would be fair to say that if a person is feeling overwhelmed by the suffering, maybe they don’t have sufficient access to the transcendent and need to enliven that? And on the other hand, if a person is apparently taking recourse to the transcendent but has a sort of devil-may-care attitude about the suffering of the world—“Oh, it’s not my business. It’s all an illusion”—then maybe they need more integration of the transcendent into their human experience?

Sandra: Yes, it’s all about balance. We’re learning as a human species that we are so out of balance. We have created illness—planetary illness—on every level: body, mind, and soul. And we need to come back into balance again.

I love to bring people into nature. Nature is a healing balm. Nature gives us another perspective about death and rebirth. Nature teaches us about what shamans have been going through, and what we’ve all been going through for tens of thousands of years of initiation.

We’re going through a planetary initiation right now. We’re going through a death: the death of what is inauthentic, the death of what is out of balance, the death of what does not work to be a healthy individual on this planet.

And in that death process, everything in nature dies. We die to what needs to be let go of, and then we’re resculpted back into spiritual beings who have a greater capacity to be in balance, to love, and to be authentic.

And so nature teaches us about death and rebirth, that there are no ends, and that we’re in a constant state of dissolution, which leads to a place of illumination. Right now, we’re in the place of dissolution. We’ve forgotten that nature teaches us constantly that that cycle leads us to a rebirth, illumination, and stepping into our authentic self.

A possible future for humanity

Rick: I have long felt and often said that there are a lot of things in the world—institutions and structures—that really wouldn’t fit in a more enlightened, more natural world. And you’re talking about dissolution. Do you feel like there will be a sort of transition in which the more natural thing co-arises as the other thing diminishes? Or do you feel like there’s going to be a kind of Hiroshima-like devastation—not literally, but in terms of the slate really being wiped clean? And then, to mix metaphors, a phoenix will arise from that, and a new birth, a new Earth will be born?

Well, that is the question, isn’t it? We don’t know which way it’s going to go. And what my spirits tell me is that the future is created from the present. So, if we want to know what the future is going to be, let’s look at the present. And if we want to change the future, we need to change our present.

Sandra: Well, that is the question, isn’t it? We don’t know which way it’s going to go. And what my spirits tell me is that the future is created from the present. So, if we want to know what the future is going to be, let’s look at the present. And if we want to change the future, we need to change our present.

I’m not so much into predictions, although my ego—Sandra Ingerman, the personality—does have its predictions. But spiritually, I do believe that we have an opportunity right now. We have an opportunity. And in shamanism, you can go outside of time; you can journey outside of time.

Since 2000, in my classes all over the world, I’ve had people journey way into the future, go past Armageddon, go past the destruction, and ask, where do we end up? All over the world, people have been seeing the same thing: people are living in harmony with nature, and there isn’t really illness. When we ask them how they heal illness, they’re confused by what we’re talking about.

But if somebody gets ill, the whole community comes together. They have come up with working with sound and light to heal that which needs to be healed. And so, we can look at this as the end, the destruction. But if we also say we’re at a critical point and we can make a change, I can tell you that what so many people, including myself, have seen is that there is a beautiful future, but not so much technology, cities, or corporations. It is about living with nature.

Rick: I was going to ask you about that, because it seems like technology is a mixed blessing. There have been some very good aspects of it, and there are some really exciting possibilities in terms of alternative energy and healing methodologies and all kinds of things. So, would the kind of natural society you envision necessarily be devoid of those things, or would they somehow be incorporated, but kept in proper balance and not destructive as they are now?

Sandra: Well, I think balance is always the key. Will technology continue? Again, I don’t know. But we can look at some shamanic cultures. There are cultures who don’t need technology because the plants tell them what their medicine is and what they can heal. The animals show up and tell them where food sources are.

Rick: But they don’t necessarily have indoor plumbing.

Sandra: To live in harmony with nature—what do you need when you have all that you need and you live in an abundant world, so connected and feeling at one with life? What do you want from technology? Yeah, we want heat; maybe we want refrigeration. Is there going to be a time when that isn’t going to be possible? I don’t know.

Rick: If we envision a world in which we don’t have technology, that would imply that there would be a real, devastating wiping of the slate clean, because we already know all this stuff. We know how to build computers, electric cars, solar panels, and so on. And if we actually don’t have those things anymore, then either we’ve decided they aren’t useful to us, or we’ve totally forgotten how to do it, which would mean a huge erasure of human knowledge. I don’t know what that would imply in terms of how that would happen.

Sandra: Yeah, it’s a question. I really can’t answer that question. I’m with everybody else. We’re all watching what’s happening and contributing as much as I can to help consciousness wake up.

We are too dependent on technology right now. We’re not understanding that we as humans are moving at a faster pace because of technology than is healthier for us. And so, as I shared, I’m so available to what is going on publicly, I am seeing illnesses and sicknesses that are just stress-related: too much technology, moving too fast. People can’t keep pace anymore. I can’t keep pace anymore.

So, when you ask me, as a human being who’s struggling to keep pace, I’m saying I’m not really sure I’m seeing all the benefits of technology right now. My body’s struggling to keep pace. And yes, I understand the positives of technology. But right now, my body is saying it’s too much.

Rick: Yeah. Well, that brings up the point we’ve kind of covered earlier: You talk about soul retrieval and restoring one’s inner strength and so on. Obviously, that needs to happen. But also, there’s an advantage to not squandering one’s energies.

You see these crazy things—we just had Black Friday yesterday, which is the day after Thanksgiving. There are all these stories in the news about mob scenes at Best Buy and Walmart. People are literally battling each other over the latest large-screen TV and camping on the sidewalk for three days to get in there.

So, there’s a sort of apparent craving for fulfillment from things like that, which we know are not ultimately going to provide it, but people seem to think they will. And so, they’re willing to go through all this nuttiness in order to get the latest gizmo.

Sandra: Yeah. Well, one of the biggest symptoms of soul loss is feeling empty.

Rick: Yeah.

Sandra: You have a need for relationships, food, substances, more cars, more computers, more devices, the next thing—and then you’re going to feel better if you can get that. And so, we’re looking at planetary soul loss right now.

To me, what really says we’re looking at planetary soul loss is how many people actually say the words, “I care more about making money than about saving life and saving the planet.” If you had your full soul in your body and you were fully present and fully embodied, those words would be impossible to say. Those words would be impossible to say.

Soul is our essence. It’s our life force. It’s that part of ourselves that keeps us alive. And in all shamanic cultures around the world, it’s understood that when a trauma happens to us, a piece of our soul leaves in order to survive the experience, because we can’t handle the full impact of the pain.

In shamanic cultures, soul loss was understood. So, when you suffered a trauma, the community came together to support the shaman in calling your soul back to you, so that you could be embodied and once again be a strong member of the community who contributed. Remember, the communities needed every member to be strong and share their unique gifts.

In our culture, we stopped looking at the illness of the soul. And so, people have gone through trauma after trauma after trauma. We’re looking at a culture that’s dissociated.

Rick: Yeah. What you just said reminds me of a current news story, which is that the Saudis killed that journalist in Turkey, but Trump didn’t want any repercussions from that because he values our arms deal with Saudi Arabia—billions and billions. We sell them billions and billions in arms.

And what are they doing with it? They’re conducting a proxy war in Yemen, where 80,000 children have starved to death so far. And there are millions of others in danger of starving. It’s the worst humanitarian disaster on Earth. That’s on our hands. We’re enabling the Saudis to do that. And what does that say about the soul of the leadership that is enabling that, and the soul of our country? That’s the role our country wishes to play in the world.

Sandra: Right, I agree with you completely. And so, the response that people give me from all over the world is, “Can’t we perform a planetary soul retrieval? Can we do a ceremony to perform a planetary soul retrieval?”

My response to that—and I’m still learning, I’m still evolving, I don’t have the answers—but I’ll tell you my response to that. I’m not sure anymore if it’s completely accurate. When you get your soul back from a soul retrieval, you now have a responsibility to take care of yourself.

If you lost a piece of your soul because you are in an abusive relationship, and you get that soul part back and go back into an abusive relationship, what have you done? What have you done to yourself?

And so, if we bring the soul of the planet back to people who aren’t willing to tend to the souls of the children, the adults, the nature beings, and the Earth to which we return the soul, is that enough?

Rick: It will just be lost again.

Sandra: It’ll just be lost again. So, for me, what we need to do is go out and start speaking the truth. We need to start talking about how water gives us life, air gives us life, the Earth gives us life, and the sun gives us life. We need to tend this Earth garden in the way that we’re called to speak to our communities.

We need to start talking about how hate—the energy of hate—just feeds the energy of hate, so that it grows to the place that we’re seeing right now. We’re seeing that the energy of hate has grown to a place where people are now electing leaders who will control and kill.

So, that one feels safe, we need to start speaking the truth and sharing in our communities. That’s everybody’s responsibility right now. And if that doesn’t feel comfortable, then we need to do our spiritual work so that we continue to feed the collective with loving and light-filled energies to transform the current energy that we’re experiencing right now.

Rick: Yeah. And I think that brings us back around to a point you were making earlier, which is that a lot of people feel despair over the suffering in the world and a kind of impotence in terms of being able to do anything about it.

But you just said a minute ago that maybe there could be some ceremony that would restore the soul on a global level. I think it has to be more grassroots. I mean, there’s nothing we could do as some handful of us, in terms of some ceremony that’s going to serve the world. The world is going to wake up the next day and say, “Oh, boy, my soul is restored.”

Sandra: Absolutely.

Rick: But there’s no reason for despair or discouragement, because one can work wonders within one’s own life and one’s own sphere of influence, and it’ll spread, keep spreading.

Sandra: Absolutely. And one of the things I really teach around this issue of people looking at suffering is that we’re projecting a lot onto others. When we pity people, because that’s what we’re doing, as millions and millions of people around the world see what’s happening, we start to pity. And pity is such a heavy energy for anybody to bear. I know so many people who will not share publicly that they’re ill because they don’t want to be pitied. It’s a very heavy energy to share.

So, from a shamanic perspective, from a spiritual perspective, we are body, mind, and spirit. Our spirit is eternal, our spirit is always flowing, and our spirit is always light. So, we can look and see the spirit of these people that our egos are labeling as suffering, and we can see their strength. We can feed that strength. Instead of saying, “You poor human beings,” or, “You poor animals,” or, “You poor plants,” what we can do is see the strength and start to feed that, so that we can start to bring healing back to the world community.

The evolution of shamanism

Rick: Yeah. Good, I won’t even come in like this. You made the point. I think one thing that comes to my mind sometimes, and maybe I suspect that it might come to others, is that you spoke of honoring the ancestors, and shamanism as being tens of thousands of years old and so on. It kind of has a reputation, perhaps, as being primitive. You know what I mean? The cultures in which it was practiced knew so much less than our current culture, even about good things like a cure for smallpox or ways to grow food so that people have enough, and things like that.

So, I guess the question is, and we’ve kind of touched on this when we talk about shamanism becoming much more prevalent in the world, are we talking about a regression, in a sense, to a more primitive society? Or is there a way that it could be incorporated into our modern world? Friends, here’s a question from Karen, who came in from Arizona. She asks, “How do you see the evolution of shamanism into the 21st century? What shifts or changes do you perceive?”

Sandra: Well, thank you, Karen. It’s a wonderful question. I just want to start with this: There is no shaman on the planet today who is practicing shamanism as it was practiced tens of thousands of years ago. Again, it’s an evolving system. There are no methods in shamanism. It’s all about working with energy.

So now, we are moving into a place of understanding unity. We’re moving into a place of understanding that we are spiritual light. And so, the evolution of shamanism is about how we can use light to transform the illnesses and the ills of the soul and the ills of the planet today.

The evolution of shamanism is about how we approach power and how we approach each other, bringing back honor and respect, and how we carry power. Because in shamanic cultures, they didn’t just connect with spirits as intermediaries who took care of them. They carried their power into the world. That’s the next evolution: We are learning how to carry spiritual power right now.

And we’re learning how our thoughts affect everything that happens in the world, that our words are incantations, and how we shift the chant and the language of our words so that we’re feeding health. The evolution of shamanism is about standing strong in spirit and remembering what spiritual principles are about.

Rick: So, it sounds like you’re saying that although there may be many time-honored aspects of shamanism that would still be relevant, and that you would still practice and so on, it’s not a static thing. It is an ever-evolving thing. So, each new generation might have its own fresh expression of shamanism, perhaps appropriate to the culture and time in which it lives?

Sandra: Well, yes. Ceremonies have always been a key to shamanism. I love performing ceremonies. Ceremonies are my passion. And we can’t perform the same ceremonies that were done in shamanic cultures, because the ceremonies were done for the issues that that particular culture was dealing with at that time.

Even shamanic cultures that are still strong, the shamans are changing their ceremonies and changing their chants because the times of the planet have changed. So, our ceremonies for how we take care of children and how we honor the birth of children, how they come into the world, how we honor the transitions that we’re going through, and the ceremonies to give thanks and honor all that gives us life and helps us to thrive, and on and on and on—these are ceremonies that are all being changed to speak to the communities that we live in and to speak to the times that we live in.

That’s why shamanism has been able to survive. You have to understand that shamanism was a result-oriented practice. If the shaman couldn’t heal the people, if the shaman could not find food for people, if the shaman could not maintain balance between nature and the people, the people died. So, it wasn’t a romantic system. It was, “Does it work?” And it’s always been, “Does it work?” for tens of thousands of years. And so, we’re in that place now. What changes do we make to our ceremonies so that they work?

Rick: That’s good. It’s kind of a scientific attitude, really—pragmatic, empirical. You need results. It’s not something that hinges on belief.

Sandra: Yes, absolutely. It’s all about what’s happening. But at the same time, there’s a shadow part of that that we have to look at in Western culture. In Western culture, we see time as a very short period. So, we perform a ceremony, and we want it to have results today or tomorrow. We want it in the time that our personality wants it.

But the Earth has been around for billions of years. So, we don’t know when the great result of our ceremony is going to come to fruition. We don’t know how long that seed needs to be tended to, germinated, and nurtured until it actually grows into its full beauty. In ceremony, we’re planting a seed that we have to attend to. And we have to understand that growth happens in its own time.

But the Earth has been around for billions of years. So, we don’t know when the great result of our ceremony is going to come to fruition. We don’t know how long that seed needs to be tended to, germinated, and nurtured until it actually grows into its full beauty. In ceremony, we’re planting a seed that we have to attend to. And we have to understand that growth happens in its own time.

Rick: Yeah, sure. You mentioned spirits a lot. I’ve interviewed one of the founders of Findhorn, and we’ve often gotten into discussions about subtle perception and what may reside in the subtle realms and so on. I think this is something that a lot of people have a sense of, very few people have direct experience of, and some people may be skeptical of. So, what are you alluding to when you refer to spirits?

Sandra: Well, I do fully embrace the world of shamanism. It is understood that there’s Source, there’s the Creator. And all shamanic cultures have their creation stories of how humans and all of life were created into being.

Then it’s believed that there were beings that once lived on this Earth in the form of animals, insects, plants, trees, gods and goddesses, and ancestral spirits that volunteered themselves to help the human condition, because the spirits are looking from a different perspective.

We’re spirits; we are spirit. We have the same power as these intermediary spirits do, but we’re in the game of life. We have these egos and personalities, and we have a very limited viewpoint around us.

The helping spirits—we call them helping spirits, compassionate spirits, what people would think of as guardian angels—have a perspective. They can say, “You need to heal this old wound in order to be healthy and to live a joyful life,” or, “Here’s the ceremony that will bring more balance into your life,” or, “Here’s the ceremony to honor the birth of your baby.”

And so, the helping, compassionate spirits can give us guidance on how we can heal, how we can grow up and evolve into who we were born to be, help us discover our passion, and also help us deal with all the issues that are happening in the world right now.

Rick: Okay, so you’re saying that there’s a subtle realm in which beings reside that don’t have physical, human, gross bodies, but which are just as real as we are. They just have subtler bodies, and some of them are concerned with our welfare and intercede or get involved in helping us in various ways, especially perhaps if we, from our side, attune to them and are desirous of their help. Would that be a good little summary there?

Sandra: Yes, absolutely. And if we’re in relationship with them—if we’re in good relationship with them. The land has a spirit, and we can speak to the spirit of the land and become in relationship with the land. Then we get more help because we’re living in harmony.

Where we get into trouble is when we step out of harmony. The land, the spirit of the plants, the animals, the trees, everything that’s alive, and the ancestral spirits teach us how to be in harmony.

Rick: In a lot of traditions, as I’m sure you’re aware, there’s a sort of polarity. There are good spirits and bad spirits. In the subtle realms, for instance, in the Vedic tradition, you have the Devas, but then you also have the Asuras and the Rakshasas, and these sorts of beings that are dark or evil.

Do you acknowledge that that’s the way it is? And how do you deal with the possibility that, when you’re teaching people to journey, to go deep and roam around in subtle realms, they might encounter some unsavory characters?

Sandra: Well, what I teach is that when you look in all shamanic cultures around the world, it’s really fascinating because you see different worlds that are talked about. There’s the Lower World, which has lots of realms to it and spirits of all different forms that live there. Then there’s the Middle World, and this is Earth, where we live now. And then there’s the Upper World, where there’s also a whole variety of spirits.

The Lower World and the Upper World are what are considered the transcendent realities. And so, it’s not really understood that there would be good or bad spirits. When you go to unity, oneness, you’re in Source.

In the Middle World, what is understood to happen is that when we die, we transcend to the Upper World. In shamanic cultures, you might transcend to the Lower World. The Lower World is a good place to be, but not from a Judeo-Christian point of view. So, we all want to transcend to the Upper World, but things happen. And sometimes people get stuck here.

We think of ghosts and some poltergeists. They got shocked when they died. They don’t know they’re dead, or they didn’t want to leave this plane. They liked the material realm. And so, those are ghosts, poltergeists, spirits that can make trouble in our lives.

When I teach people about shamanic journeying, number one, I get them out of this realm into the transcendent realms to meet up with a compassionate spirit. And once you meet up with a compassionate spirit, then you’re safe.

So, let me tell a little anecdotal story about that. I moved to Santa Fe in the 1980s, or very early in the 1980s, when I was still new to the practice of shamanism. I had such a strong community in San Francisco, in the Bay Area, that I had a hard time integrating into Santa Fe life. I missed my community.

And so, I journeyed once and said, “What do I need to integrate into Santa Fe?” I heard a message from a spirit. I don’t know who this spirit was. It said, “You need to embrace all spirits.”

And so, I did. And I got sick. A shaman helped me, and then I journeyed to my main compassionate spirit, whom I’ve been working with since 1980. He said to me, “When that spirit said to you to let all spirits into your body, who told you that?” He said, “I didn’t.”

Rick: Ah, so some mischief-maker.

Sandra: So, what I tried to teach people is, first, we find our compassionate spiritual allies, who can help us identify, especially in the beginning. We learn over time. Shamanism is a life practice. It’s not something you do for a weekend or a day; it’s something you do for your life. In the beginning, we need our compassionate spirits to help us navigate the spiritual realms. And I teach people how to do that.

Rick: Nice. I remember a story about Amma when she first came to Santa Fe, which I think might have been 1987 or something. She was staying up at the Schmitz house, who you and I know. The next morning, they asked her, “How was your night?” She said, “Well, I was up most of the night giving Darshan to these really unusual beings.”

There was some discussion about what these beings were. Then someone showed her a Kachina doll, and she said, “Yeah, it was like those.” There were a whole bunch of those around here.

Sandra: Yeah, well, you know, that’s really interesting that Amma said that, because I had the opportunity to work with a shaman from the Ulchi tradition, which is part of Siberia. He was about 94 years old when he came over to America, and I hosted him at a retreat center in California. He was blind and in very ill health, but he wanted to introduce himself to every tree, because in Siberia, trees are seen as the most sacred beings.

In the invocations that he did before every ceremony, he always said, “Please excuse me. I don’t know your ways. I come from a different land. I don’t mean to insult you. I am bringing my knowledge to these people.”

Amma and Grandfather, and people who are tuned in, know that there are spirits that are guardian spirits for the land where we live and for our local communities. We honor them. We first say, “Do I have permission to be here?” and “Do I have permission to do my work? My work might be a little bit different from yours.”

I love that Amma tuned into the amazing spirits of the land here, because they’re so strong.

Rick: Yeah. Maharishi used to talk about the laws of nature and how, in different parts of the world, there are different laws of nature. He was referring to these subtle impulses, or these subtle beings. He just tried to put it in scientific terms, but he said it can be quite distinct from one place to another.

Sandra: Absolutely, because there are different spirits, different cultures, and different climates. People always ask me, “How do you call in the directions?” And I say, “I don’t know,” because in every culture, directions were called in in a different way. It depended on where the wind came in from, what the land was like, and the territory and the landscape.

Different places have different landscapes and different spiritual powers. I really love teaching people in some of my workshops how to merge with water and experience water. What I noticed is that when I taught people how to merge with water, in Santa Fe, you have to go so deep to find water. If you visit Santa Fe and meet the original residents—people whose ancestors were born here—they’re very deep, quiet people.

But when you go to places where the water is right on the surface—like New York, where I grew up, or California, where I lived—the water is bubbly, and everybody’s bubbly and extroverted. We don’t understand how much our own personality is actually sculpted and influenced by the land where we live.

Rick: That’s a very interesting point. I don’t mean to keep referencing Maharishi all the time, but since I was his student for many years, that’s one thing he often said: You realign with the laws of nature in different places, and it has a powerful effect on the way we are oriented, or the way we experience things.

I’m just going to throw in one more point when we’re talking about spirits. Although I presume that most people listening to this might believe it, or might think it kind of makes sense, or that it’s a possibility, there are people I know—and some of them are friends—for whom the experience of these things is commonplace throughout the day.

It’s not that they have to go into some special state of consciousness to experience them. They’ll experience them in Walmart or whatever, and they’re not crazy. There are just these subtle intelligences everywhere, and very often they are seen clustering around people, attending to them in some way. There’s that whole world. Just because we don’t experience something doesn’t mean it’s not real.

Sandra: Absolutely. One of my challenges has been that shamanism is a discipline. Yes, I also experience spiritual information. I rarely have to use my drum anymore. I hear messages, I get omens in nature, and I bring through beautiful messages during the day that I like to write down.

But as a culture, we also need to learn the discipline of knowing when we need to be here and when it’s okay to speak to spirits. A lot of people, as they start to embrace spiritual methods, start to meditate or do shamanic journeying while they’re driving down the freeway.

Before we learn that we can see spirits in Walmart, first we need to learn how to be here when we need to be here. First, we get the discipline, and then we start to open up to the fact that spiritual information is always available at every second that we need it.

Rick: Yeah. What you’re pointing to here is integration. There are certain spiritual experiences which, when we first have them, mean we couldn’t really be doing anything else. We wouldn’t be able to function properly in Walmart or drive a car. But eventually, certain things can get integrated so that you can be doing anything, and yet that’s your normal reality.

Sandra: Yes, absolutely. Everything is about learning. When we step into spiritual practice, we also need to understand that there’s an evolutionary part to stepping into spiritual practice, too. We have to honor our own personal needs and what we need to heal before we step into spiritual practice, and what we need to know so that we step into spiritual practice from a place of honor and respect.

There’s a lot of shadow side to what’s happening today. Spiritual practice is becoming almost like a form of entertainment. The evolution of shamanism, and what the planet needs right now, is for us to learn how to approach spiritual practice with honor and respect and understand the sacredness of it.

Rick: Yeah. What you say, for some reason, reminds me of a point I’d like to get your comments on. There’s a verse in the Vedas someplace which says, “The riches seek out him who is awake.” The riches are meant to be the riches of intelligence involved in the orchestration of creation. Probably, you know, some of the spirits you mentioned. But they seek out him who is awake.

There was another experience I had with a friend. He revealed to me that he was seeing this kind of stuff routinely. I was in an elevator with him in the San Francisco airport, and I said, “They’re here in the elevator?” I was curious. He just kind of smiled. Then we got out of the elevator, and he said, “Well, they just said to me, ‘Don’t point us out to people. If they’re meant to see us, they’ll see us.’”

I think the point there is, worry more about your readiness, your own ability, or your own development. Then certain things will come along when necessary. Don’t seek out things prematurely.

Sandra: Yes. It’s really interesting to me, because I am starting to see the shadow side of shamanism becoming popular. We all know the shadow side of spirituality becoming popular.

Rick: So, what’s the shadow side of shamanism?

Sandra: The shadow side is not always understanding the power of the work and that it’s sacred. We can’t go into it just because our ego feels good. Seeing spirits and being able to say, “Oh, I saw a spirit at Walmart”—this is really sacred work. This is really sacred work.

We find time out of our day to do our prayers and to approach the spirits in a really good way, out of a place of honor and respect, and learn how to be in constant relationship with them.

On the positive side, I’m starting to teach people how to journey who are stepping into spiritual energies that they’re ready for. It was their first association; it was their first stepping into this experience. But they did their personal work. They evolved to a place where they stepped in in a big way. I’m reading their experiences, and I’m going, “Wow, this was your first experience?”

Rick: We know, when you mention the shadow side, that in India there are dark magicians who cast spells on people and so on. I don’t know how genuine they are, but presumably some of them are, and they could be real troublemakers.

Then, of course, in popular culture, we have Star Wars, Harry Potter, and The Lord of the Rings—stories of people who became powerful but then became corrupted by their power and went over to the dark side, so to speak. Is that the kind of thing you’re alluding to when you speak of the shadow side of shamanism?

Everyday Sorcery Through Thoughts and Words

Sandra: No, actually, I’m not. But I’d like to address what you just shared, because this is very important. Every human being, unless they have a strong spiritual foundation and are aware of their words and thoughts, is doing sorcery every day.

Words are seen as powerful in shamanism. You can bless people with your words, and you can curse people with your words. That’s how much power they have. Again, remember, shamans only work with energy. Words have a vibration behind them that is energy. Every time we speak a word, we are putting out an incantation; we are creating form in the world.

Let’s reflect on the vocabulary we use during the day. In shamanism, it’s taught that thoughts are things. When I say, “I hate,” I have the right to feel that, and I have the right to express that. But am I sending the energy of hate like a psychic dart to another individual, to the planet, to the collective, or to myself?

If you go to a shaman, a very typical diagnosis that a shaman will give you in an indigenous culture is, “Somebody sent you anger.” We don’t know the difference between expressing and sending. We’re sending psychic darts and psychic arrows to ourselves, to our loved ones, and to the beings we love most.

Then let’s look at our daydreams. We’re always daydreaming throughout the day, and a lot of us are feeding the nightmare of what we’re experiencing on the planet through our daydreams.

Children in shamanic cultures were taught how to use their words, how to transform the energy behind their thoughts so that they were sharing love and light, and how to work with their dreams so that they were dreaming a good world into being.

Let’s look at our collective today. What are the words we’re using? What are we thinking? What are we dreaming? Are we blessing, or are we cursing? Let’s stop blaming shamans for doing sorcery.

Rick: Because everybody does.

Sandra: We’re all doing it.

Rick: I’ll tell you an interesting story. I have a dear friend who, many years ago, was teaching meditation down in Louisiana. Unbeknownst to him, an article came out in the paper that was very negative about what he was doing, saying it was the work of the devil and opposed to Jesus, and all this kind of stuff. He didn’t know the article had come out. So, early the next morning, he was sitting in meditation, and all these really weird visions were coming to him—all this unpleasant, scary stuff. Later on, he found that this article had come out. So, obviously, there were a lot of people in his area who were zooming, shooting out thoughtforms to him. He was picking them up.

Absolutely. And so, I have to teach people. Number one, we want to teach people how to behave in an ethical way so that we’re not shooting psychic darts at others. We also shoot a lot of psychic darts at ourselves, because we judge ourselves pretty heavily.

Sandra: Absolutely. And so, I have to teach people. Number one, we want to teach people how to behave in an ethical way so that we’re not shooting psychic darts at others. We also shoot a lot of psychic darts at ourselves, because we judge ourselves pretty heavily.

So, number one is education. But until we can educate, a lot of my work is teaching people how to protect themselves in a world that is ignorant of how we’re using energy.

I teach people different ways. One I learned from a Chumash medicine woman back in the early ’80s: to see oneself in a beautiful, translucent blue egg that allows you to fully participate in the world, but keeps energies from coming into you that might harm you.

Or we can take the high road and see ourselves as beings of spiritual light. As our light flows through us, as all spiritual masters have been teaching for thousands of years, there is nothing that can harm you when you’re in touch with your spiritual light.

There are ways to work on a personality and egoic level that make us feel safe, asking our helping spirits to fill us up with power so that we’re not impacted by the world. Or we can also step into our full evolution of spiritual power and understand that, as beings of light, everything gets transformed.

Rick: Nice. I want to take a few minutes to ask you some questions that have come in. If people listening to the live interview want to ask a question, there’s a question submission form on the upcoming interviews page on batgap.com. It’s down at the bottom of the page.

Anyway, here’s one that has come in, and it would be a little bit random because they’re on different topics. We’ll jump around a little bit for a few minutes. The first one is from Mark Peters in Santa Clara, California. He asks, “Can you share some of the soul-healing practices in nature you found beneficial? For myself, I found barefoot running and tree touching to have a powerful grounding effect.”

Sandra: You know what was so healing for me personally, and I like to teach it to other people, is working with omens. Omens are about walking through nature and watching for signs.

You’re holding a question, a question about making a choice in life. You’re holding that question, thinking about your choice, and all of a sudden, a rainbow shows itself in the sky. Or the clouds start to part, or a dragonfly appears, or a butterfly sits on your shoulder.

What that did for me, as I discovered the power of working with omens in the late 1980s, was show me that I’m not alone. I’m not here alone. The universe actually responds every moment of my life. Every step that I take, if I look, there’s an omen being shown to me that shows me where to put my next step in life.

If I were going to say what, to me, was the most healing thing that has actually happened to me in my life, it’s knowing that I’m not alone.

Nature is healing balm, because when we can lie on the earth, our heartbeat starts to connect to the heartbeat of the earth, and we start to connect back to the rhythm of life. Technology takes us out of the rhythm of life. When we can connect back to the rhythm of life again, health is going to come back into our lives.

Being out in nature, whether you walk barefoot, sit on a hill and gaze out into space, or sit by the water and hear the beauty of the song of the water—that singing to you—is going to bring you back into balance. Again, that’s going to teach you about the beauty of life and what it means to be human.

Rick: Nice. Thanks. Here’s another question from Karen in Arizona: Can you talk a bit about the concept of gardeners of energy?

Sandra: Everything that is form, that has manifested as form, was first energy in the invisible realms. Out of that, form was called into being on this planet: the trees, the mountains, beings, and everything that we manifest in life.

When we look behind form, we see that there’s only energy, and that means energy can be transformed. With the energy of hate that we’re seeing in the collective right now, what if we allow our energy of love, unconditional love, and our spiritual light to move up into the collective? Does that transform the energy of hate? I say, “Yes, it does.” Shamans say, “Yes, it does.”

That’s a place where we can start to learn how to work with energy. We are gardeners because we plant seeds with the energy behind our words, our thoughts, and our dreams. What seeds do we want to plant? What seeds do we want to nurture? What seeds do we need to remove?

Finding passion and choosing life

Rick: This last question is very sensitive, but I think it’s worth asking, because I think it’s something that people need to hear. I won’t comment. I’ll just read the question and let you come in. Maybe I’ll have something more to say.

This is from Patrice in Council Bluffs, Iowa: “As you mentioned earlier, ‘If you don’t want to be here, life will take you out.’ I have the opposite experience. I’ve often attempted suicide, and three times I nearly died but didn’t. It’s like the universe is saying, ‘You can’t leave no matter how much you want to.’ This has been frustrating. I know there’s work to do. Yet every time I try, it doesn’t work out, or it gets subverted by different people. What are your thoughts?”

Sandra: My thoughts are that it’s our soul that decides whether we want to live or die. That’s the tricky part for people coming to see a spiritual healer—the person who is ill and saying, “Am I going to live, or am I going to die?” Because it’s only our soul that knows that.

So, Patrice, what I want to say to you is that your soul is not letting you leave because it still wants to be here. That is my response, and that is what I know inside of myself. The universe does not try to keep us here. It’s our soul that knows the next step of our journey.

Rick: Well, you remember we were talking earlier about how, in some cultures, it’s said that the angels are envious of human beings because they have such a precious opportunity for evolution, and it’s actually kind of hard to come by.

I’ve spoken with people who attempted suicide, had a near-death experience, and came back and realized that it would have been a big mistake. They’re glad they didn’t succeed, because, again, human life is such a precious opportunity, and we’re here for a reason, or else we wouldn’t be here.

I don’t know; I just feel kind of strongly about that point. Find out—well, you were saying earlier, find out what your purpose is. Find out what lights your fire. You know that you were born for a reason. Find out what it is.

It may not be an intellectual thing, what it is. You don’t have some great big, famous mission or something. But tremendous progress can be made in a human body. Why squander it?

Sandra: Absolutely. I just want to add to that point, Rick. What happens when we start talking about the destiny of your soul, what you’re passionate about, and the cure—the cure?

I worked with a woman who died of AIDS. The message that I received in the journey was that the cause of her illness was apathy, and that her cure was passion.

What happens when another life form in your body has more passion for life than you do? It survives.

We’re living in a culture where we don’t really understand the passion of our soul. When we look into people’s eyes, there’s no light, there’s no joy. We have to find what that passion is.

But then, when you start to ask people, first they go, “I have no clue. I don’t even know where to start.” Then, all of a sudden, they’re creating something so big. I do this all the time. “What do you want to do?” “I want to create something.” There’s no way to get from step A to step B.

What I ask people to do is look at something simple. What is something simple? Buying a new plant, taking a dance course, learning another language, or reading a book that would bring you joy. Find something simple and work step by step by step.

Then you start to think, “Oh, I like doing this. This is something that feels passionate for me. I would like to learn how to sing and then go out in my community and sing love songs into the collective.” It’s a step-by-step process.

Rick: I had a couple of realizations when I was 18 that turned my life around. One was: Yes, life is rough. It’s difficult, but the only way out is up. You’re not going to blot it out by taking drugs, which I was doing, because it’s like pushing a beach ball underwater. You have to keep struggling to do it, and it’s just going to pop up again.

Maybe you need to deflate the beach ball, to use this metaphor. Spiritual evolution is the escape from some kind of suppression of our consciousness. I wish I could convey that to all the people suffering from the opioid epidemic.

The second realization—what was this? I forget it. Go ahead and respond to this.

Sandra: I went through—oh, my God—I went through a terrible initiation back in the 1990s. I wanted to die. I just couldn’t live; I just couldn’t live.

I went to one of my helping spirits, one of my compassionate spirits, and I said to her, “What’s happening?” She said, “Well, you’re going through an initiation.” I said, “I don’t think I’m going to live through it.”

She said to me, “If you thought you were going to live through it, it wouldn’t be an initiation.”

What I learned was that the only way out is through. The only way out is through. There is no escape. There is no easy way. The only way out is through.

The only way out is through.

Rick: And if you try to escape, you’re going to have to retrace your steps and go through territory you have already traversed, which can set you back.

Sandra: Right, exactly.

Rick: I remember what my other realization was, which was that you’re stuck in this body, so to speak. It’s like your vehicle that you’re riding in, and if you damage this body, you’re going to be stuck in a damaged vehicle. The journey isn’t going to go as smoothly.

I was doing things that were damaging my body. So that’s it: Clean it up, clean up your act, and take better care of yourself. You’re in this for the long haul, and you want to be in a healthy body.

If someone is committed to attempting suicide, I imagine they’re damaging their body in the process. So, it’s really self-defeating.

Sandra: Well, I think it’s taking care of the body. In my case, I have really focused a lot on having a vehicle that could carry spirit. And so, I focused a lot on diet and exercise, and spending time in nature.

But I wasn’t focusing on how much I was overextending myself to contribute in the world and how much pain I was taking on. And so, my challenge has been to learn spiritual hygiene.

And I think that a lot of people who are feeling suicidal, it’s not only because of diet and how we’re taking care of our bodies. Yes, that really affects our moods and what we’re experiencing, but how we’re doing self-care, how we take care of ourselves emotionally in the world that we’re living in right now, is a very big piece for all of us. Because sensitive people are feeling deeper states of depression, deeper states of suicidal tendencies, and deeper states of illness.

Rick: It’s an interesting thing. I mean, some very spiritual teachers whom I respect a lot are so sensitive that they can’t be anywhere near electrical fields, Wi-Fi, or anything like that. And they’re really suffering. They are allergic to everything.

So, I guess—I don’t know the answer—but somehow or other, one has to toughen up and be sensitive at the same time, cultivate both.

Sandra: I know. I always tease that my health started going downhill when I started eating a healthy diet because I started becoming too sensitive. When I wasn’t taking as much care of myself, I had a denser field and I wasn’t as sensitive, and I could actually do more work.

Rick: Yeah, it’s amazing when you see what some people do to their bodies, and yet they seem to be functional in the world. It’s like if I did that for a day, I’d have to recuperate for a week.

🛤️ Journeying and subtle perception

Here’s one from Nika in Queens, not far from your old birthplace. She said—I think it’s a she:

“I have heard it’s wrong to journey on other people’s behalf without their permission or knowledge. I have frequently prayed or meditated for healings on others’ behalf without their awareness. Is this wrong?”

Sandra: Well, I’ll share with you my perspective, because there are a lot of gray areas in talking about ethics. But I teach a lot of ethics in shamanic work, and not all shamans would agree with me. So, I’m just going to say that how I learned was that you don’t perform a healing without permission, because you want to know that a person wants help.

Or, if you start looking into a person’s life, asking a question like, “What’s wrong with my boss?” it’s like peeping into people’s windows.

Rick: That’s voyeurism, or something.

Sandra: It’s voyeurism. And so, I like to teach ethics about that.

I had a friend, one of my best friends, who died a very long time ago. And when I asked him if I could perform a healing on him, he said, “No, this is my illness. And I don’t want this. This is mine, and I want everybody to give me my space.”

And so, when we start performing healings on people, and when we start looking into people’s lives, are we doing that without their permission? Are we stepping into their destiny? Are we stepping into their right to say that they don’t want this particular healing right now?

Rick: Yeah. And if we are meddling with their karma without their permission, does that have some influence on our karma? If we understand the issue of karma, and we’re sort of taking something on in some way, perhaps.

Sandra: Yeah. And so, I think in our culture, we want to help a little bit too much sometimes. And we don’t always respect choices, and that’s something that we do need to respect at this time.

Rick: Yeah. Here’s an interesting one again from Patrice in Council Bluffs. She said:

“I had a very profound, deep journey over 20 years ago. These days I think about it almost daily. I asked spirit what it means, how to interpret it, but I never get a clear answer. I know it is a future-event vision. Am I not getting an answer because I’m not ready for it? Because the interpretation is up to me? Because I’m asking the wrong questions? I’m feeling extremely frustrated. “Many times, I’ve had visions that came through later, or that I finally understood years later, but this one has me confounded. What is your experience or advice on this matter?”

Sandra: Well, I think that’s true for all of us who work spiritually: We start getting information that we don’t always know how to interpret, and sometimes we’re not ready for it.

Sometimes we just need to spend time with it—spending time in nature, doing some journaling, asking, “In my wildest dreams, what could this possibly mean?” And sometimes, we’re just not ready for the information yet. We have to accept that.

Rick: Okay, good. Here’s one from Scott in Fort Collins, Colorado. He says:

“I am new to journeying.”

You and I have used the term journeying a few times here, but I don’t think you’ve ever really defined it. So, define it when you answer this question.

“I’m new to journeying and have been having difficulty visualizing the common methods of entering the lower world, such as climbing down a ladder, entering through a cave, or going through a hole in the earth. Do you actually see the ladder or other entrances like a movie? Or do you just put the thought in your mind that it is happening?”

Sandra: Everything with journeying is about intention. Shamanic journeying, when you look at the definition of a shaman cross-culturally and look at the anthropological literature, involves a man or woman who, through some form of percussion, goes into an altered state of consciousness and takes soul flight into the nonordinary realms, where the shaman has access to helping spirits.

And so, we’re talking about the evolution of consciousness that we’re in, where we can all be shamanic practitioners, and we can all travel into the unseen realms and meet up with helping and compassionate spirits.

So, back to the question: When we journey, we go through a transition. Here we are in the ordinary world, and we want to enter into the unseen realms; we want to step into the unseen realms.

Usually, there’s a transition—a tunnel going to the lower world, or shamans climbed up branches of trees to the upper world, or they climbed up ladders into the upper world. That was their transition from ordinary reality into the unseen realms.

But what I find in today’s world is that a lot of people are a little bit nervous about those transitional states, or there hasn’t been enough practice yet to understand how to get through those transitions.

It’s really like walking through nature. It’s really seeing yourself climbing up the ladder. And when I teach shamanic journeying, I have people drumming and rattling, and physically singing and dancing, because shamans actually climbed physical ladders as they were journeying up into the upper world. They actually moved as if they were going through a tunnel into the lower world.

And so, I find that where people get stuck is in their mind. Allow your body to just stand when you journey, and start to move and experience yourself moving through that transition, and sing it. Speak it. Imagine it. Just allow that to happen. Don’t get stuck.

Or, if you really find yourself stuck, use your intention and just will yourself to be in the transcendent realms. Intention is everything.

Rick: Yeah. I don’t know if this is a fair comparison. I shift into a transcendent realm when I meditate, but there’s never been anything visual or metaphorical about it. I just shift into it, and there are no ladders or holes or anything like that.

So maybe some people—and maybe we’re comparing apples and oranges, since what you’re talking about is a different thing—but maybe some people just aren’t that visually oriented. And even if they’re doing a shamanic practice, they might not have such vivid visual images as some others might. And yet, they might be able to just as readily shift into a higher realm.

Sandra: Yeah, I’m not visual at all. I actually don’t see in my journeys.

Rick: Okay.

Sandra: I’m clairaudient. I hear. And I’m clairsentient, and I feel.

Shamans, when they journey—and a friend of mine who is Hopi taught me this—take their bodies with them.

Rick: Their subtle bodies?

Sandra: Yes. And so, in shamanism, we’re actually stepping into—it’s as if we’re in a world that we have senses in.

But in our culture, I find that our psychic senses are different. Some people have developed, or have an innate psychic sense, of being able to see—clairvoyance. Some people are more auditory, and some people feel in their body. That’s clairsentience.

And we live in a visual culture. So, what’s happening is that everybody’s trying to be visual, when we have other psychic senses that are available to us. And when we tap into those, we learn how to live our lives better.

So, I wonder: Why is it that when the tsunami happened in Thailand—I’m not trying to go off track, and I’m not trying not to answer your question—only humans didn’t know that a tsunami was coming? Why? It’s because we’re so focused on just what we can see with our ordinary eyes. We’re not developing our subtle senses.

And that’s what shamanic cultures developed: their subtle senses, which picked up information physically, through hearing, and through their nonordinary eyes—information that helped them to thrive.

Rick: Yeah, Rupert Sheldrake brought that up in my interview with him last week. He discusses in his book how dogs know when their owners are coming home. I meant to say that, but he mentioned the thing about the tsunami and how all the animals head for the hills because they sense that it’s coming. And there are so many examples of that. Anyway, I got that screwed up?

Sandra: You did great. We all make errors, don’t we?

Rick: What was I going to say there? Oh, yeah, I think there’s an interesting point you’re making here. Sometimes people think of spiritual development as just taking recourse to the transcendent, or recognizing that the world is illusory, or shifting into a state of Self-Realization, all of which is fine.

But what you’re alluding to is a more holistic development in which we may not only have come to know our true nature, but our sensory faculties are becoming much more refined and developing to encompass a much broader range of perception.

And I think that’s definitely a legitimate part of it. And it’s a part that is ignored by some spiritual people.

Sandra: Well, what’s happening is that in shamanism, it’s so important to learn what your soul song is. And when I try to teach that, people don’t know what I mean, because the only songs they listen to are around their devices. They don’t hear their spirits singing.

When I say that all trees, everything in life sings, people go, “Wow!” But that’s actually true. If your senses are developed, if your subtle senses are developed, you actually hear those songs.

We’re fed through the media, through television, through movies, everything, so we don’t know how to bring up visuals. When I tell people, “See, hear, feel, taste, and smell the world that you want to live in. What would it look like?” people can’t see that because they’re used to being fed images.

So, we don’t know how to bring up images, songs, or feelings that are coming from within us, because we’re used to being fed by the outer world. And so, that’s a real challenge that we’re seeing as people are stepping into waking up to the spiritual realms right now: How do we also wake up our nonordinary-reality senses?

Rick: Okay, a bit of a segue here. I took away six pages of notes from your books that I thought were interesting. But here’s one that kind of jumps out at me at the moment:

“Today, people want new material without repeating spiritual practices again and again, to match the feeling of solidity that comes from deepening our work during these times that are so destabilizing. Always going to the next new practice keeps us riding the surface waves, which just lead to feeling more destabilized. The key is to grow the deepest roots possible in the ancient ways that hold so much healing wisdom for us.”

So, do you run into many sorts of spiritual dilettantes in your work, who are coming to your thing, and next week they go on to something else, and the following week they’re going to something else? And what do you say to people to encourage them to go deep? You know, that old saying about, “Don’t dig ten shallow wells; dig one deep well to hit water.” But there may also be some validity to the notion of using ten tools to dig one deep well.

Sandra: Right? Yeah. What I’m referring to is that we’re addicted to methods. In our culture, we’re addicted to methods. And so, “Okay, Sandra Ingerman teaches this practice of healing. Well, I got that. I worked with her and I did it. Oh, but I heard about another teacher who has an even more powerful method. I wonder if I should go there.” Because we’re looking at a method.

Methods have never healed anybody. Methods have never healed anybody. Shamans and spiritual teachers talk about love healing, light healing, and presence healing—not a method. And so, we’re missing the point.

If you do the same ceremony, or work with the same way of healing, or work with the same spirit every day, or visit the same tree outside every single day for a year and speak to it, something happens that doesn’t happen when you wave to the tree and then just keep walking and looking at new places and new territories to visit.

Methods have never healed anybody.

And so, it’s repeating the ceremonies, repeating the healing, repeating the communication and the relationship, and building relationships. What happened for me is that I was actually doing an interview, and all of a sudden I started talking about how old the Earth was—being billions of years old. I felt my body on an Earth that was billions of years old.

So, I started to continue to work with that, to continue to feel the ancientness: the first living being of air brushing my skin, going through my hair, and playing in my hair; and drinking water that comes from the sea, that’s billions of years old.

That brought me a sense of centeredness that I haven’t been able to feel in these changing times. And so, our practices are like that. It’s like being on solid ground instead of always going to a new territory. It’s being on solid ground, and then we can go deep within ourselves. We can grow deep roots within ourselves.

Rick: Yeah, I’ve heard you talking about neuroplasticity. I’ve interviewed Rick Hanson, who is one of the main scientists in that area. The brain actually can change significantly over time by doing a certain thing repeatedly. But it doesn’t just change overnight, and I think we all know this from experience.

Let’s say we want to become a musician. We don’t sit down, take a piano lesson, and the next day think, “Well, I think I’ll try violin.” We do that for a day and think, “Maybe I’ll be a trumpet player,” because we’re never going to get good at anything. You have to dedicate yourself to something.

Of course, you can shop around a bit until you find the thing that really turns you on. But then it takes sustained practice to really master it.

Sandra: Yeah, and that’s the key. The shopping around can be very positive, because all paths lead to the same place. So, find a path and stick to it. Find a practice and stick to it.

Once you find that “this brings me passion; I really feel good when I’m doing this practice,” it’s going to take you where you need to go. There isn’t another one that’s more powerful.

Rick: Yeah. And when we speak of neuroplasticity, there has been research using fMRI to show that the brains of people who’ve been doing meditation or other practices for a long period of time are very completely different from the brains of ordinary people. So, it really does change the instrument.

Sandra: Absolutely. And that’s one of the things where we can really work with our words and our thoughts and our daydreams, again, to create new neural pathways in the brain instead of saying, “It’s gone too far, it’s gone too far, it’s gone too far, it’s gone too far,” because that’s the path that we’re creating.

What if we create another path? “Yes, things are not looking so good right now, but we have an opportunity to show up and contribute to the change. I have the opportunity. I have something to contribute.” And that’s what’s repeated over and over again, which leads us to a whole different train station than the one where most of us are going.

Rick: Yeah. And in terms of something to contribute, just to emphasize the point, if you really look at yourself, you’ve been doing shamanism for decades now, and you’ve become a real authority in it through your extended practice, application, and attention. That to which we give our attention grows stronger in our life.

There are a thousand other ways that people could contribute, but you found a way that works for you, and you’ve focused on it and kind of become good at it. So, we don’t all have to be like you, but find something that works for you and stick with it.

Sandra: Yeah, and I’m a real introvert. I actually—this is not natural for me. And so, for my students and friends who say, “I don’t want to do what you’re doing,” again, we have to find what feels good to us and what our destiny is.

If it’s being at home and working on beautiful drawings, or putting more attention into how you cook food and putting love into your food, you are making a huge, huge contribution to the planet.

If you’re treating your children with love, if you’re thanking the Earth for the bounty that we receive, you are doing a huge service. And so, we have this blown-up idea of what it means to contribute.

Contributing is putting love and light into everything that you’re doing, and working on becoming a presence of love in the world. And it doesn’t mean what you do. The key is who you become. That’s the key to creating the healing that we’re looking for in ourselves and on the planet.

The key is who you become.

Rick: Yeah, we were talking earlier about grassroots, and how this planetary transformation, if it is happening, is happening from the bottom up, so to speak—from the roots.

It’s not necessarily going to be making the six o’clock news anytime soon, because it’s subtle, but it is worldwide. It’s the result of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands or even millions, of people realizing that there’s something more and hopping on the bandwagon of development, each in their own way.

Sandra: In their own way. And that’s the key: We all have a very unique way that is going to feed us, and a unique way in which we can be a presence in the world that creates change.

Rick: Yeah. Here’s a question. For some reason, you’re talking about staying at home and doing your own thing, and I was really drawn again to this question because it’s from someone in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I thought of Georgia O’Keeffe, sitting in silence, making beautiful paintings.

This is from Anastasia from Abiquiu, and you’re talking about omens earlier. She wonders, “Ravens and crows are often seen as bad omens in many cultures, yet I find them fascinating, intelligent, wonderful animals, and have derived much joy from feeding them. How does one develop one’s own lexicon for omens?”

Sandra: Well, first of all, one doesn’t go look up the meaning. Because every single being on this planet holds power. We all carry a power into the world. And the mistake that we’re making is that we’re looking at other people’s interpretations.

I’ve actually never heard that ravens and crows are not seen in a good…

Rick: In some cultures. Yeah, in India, I think they are sometimes seen as a bad omen.

Although the Yoga Vasistha has a story about a divine crow named Bhusundi, who’s supposed to be immortal and has outlived all the cycles of creation over and over again. So, anyway…

Sandra: Yeah. So, for me, it’s about learning how to be in relationship with the being that we’re speaking to, not learning other people’s interpretations.

As you start to develop a relationship and notice when Raven and Crow show up, then you start to develop that understanding: “When I need a good omen, I’m actually seeing Raven and Crow.” And you start to learn over time that a rainbow feels good, and that when a drizzle comes down, that means you’re actually being blessed. And so, you start to learn your own interpretations.

🩺 Shamanism as medicine for our times

Rick: Okay, good. Here’s a question that we might use as a sort of wrap-up question, because it can send us off on a high note. This is from Katie in Santa Fe; you probably know her.

“What purpose do you see shamanism serving at this time, when some say we’re entering into the Golden Age or Aquarian Age? How can it be used to bring about the shift in the Earth’s energies for the highest good possible for Mother Earth and her inhabitants?”

Sandra: Shamanism carries medicine. Shamanism is the medicine for our times, because shamanism teaches us how to be harmonious inside of ourselves, how to become beings that radiate a beautiful healing presence in the world.

Shamanism teaches us how we can care for the Earth, be tenders of the Earth, and care for everything that is alive. Shamanism teaches us that life is a gift. It’s a gift and a huge opportunity, and we’re not to waste this gift.

As we learn how to be in relationship with our own spirit, with the spirits that live in everything, with the spirit that lives in all things, harmony returns to the planet. And that’s the medicine that we need right now. That’s the medicine that shamanism carries.

Shamanism is the medicine for our times.

Rick: Excellent. You’re a fun person to interview because you speak very eloquently, and you speak in a sort of nice little package of an idea. Then you pause, and I can ask a question. We could do it again, but I feel a perfect balance in terms of interviewing you. I don’t know if you’ve always been that way or if that’s the result of shamanism.

Sandra: Well, can I say something about that? I actually didn’t speak until I was four.

Rick: At all?

Sandra: Yes. And I never really learned how to speak. All my friends were people who were very intuitive and right-brained, and they always knew what I meant. If you listen to any of my sentences, I didn’t know how to string words together in a way that made sense. But people who were with me knew what I meant.

Then I taught my very first workshop on shamanism in about 1982 or 1983. I had doctors and lawyers in my workshops, and they would raise their hands and say, “Do you know that nothing coming out of your mouth is making any sense?”

And Rick, this has been a 30-year journey for me of learning how to put words together so that I can bring through the spirit of shamanism. It’s been a challenge. It’s been a difficult journey. And so, thank you for what you just said to me.

Rick: Yeah, I’ve interviewed over 400 people, and I think that you’re one of the more fluent and articulate people I’ve interviewed. You have a real knack for it. You have a gift for gab, as they say.

Sandra: It’s a work in progress, actually, because I’m bringing through new information right now, and I’m trying to find the right language for it. I’m learning the language of the Earth. And thank you.

Rick: Well, not only are you an eloquent speaker, but I’m really buttering you up here. You’re also quite a writer. You’ve written a lot of books. Here’s one. I’ll just hold them up one by one: The Hidden Worlds, The Book of Ceremony. We’ve been talking about ceremony a lot. Walking in Light: The Everyday Empowerment of a Shamanic Life, and Soul Retrieval: Mending the Fragmented Self.

And there’s probably a few more, and there are all kinds of articles on your website and whatnot. So, I’ll be linking to these from your page on batgap.com, and people can click through and get them. Some of them exist as audiobooks, as well as printed books, from Sounds True. So, if you prefer listening rather than reading, that’s available.

Anything else you want to say in conclusion, or have we pretty much covered it?

Sandra: Well, we have. I just want to say that I’m still planting seeds of hope, and I ask that you be gardeners with me, planting seeds of hope, too, and planting seeds of love.

I’m still planting seeds of hope, and I ask that you be gardeners with me.

Rick, this has just been a real honor. I haven’t watched a show, but I can’t tell you how much I’ve heard about you. Thank you for what you are doing. Thank you for raising consciousness. Thank you for introducing people to so much wisdom and so many tools to work with. And I just send everybody blessings. I want to thank everybody for listening, and thank you for your patience, also, as I’m learning about some new technology I haven’t worked with.

Rick: Oh, even on that scale, you did pretty well. I mean, we’ve had people whom we had to spend two or three hours getting set up in terms of their webcam and their microphone, and then they’ll disassemble it all. They’ll be ready to start the interview, holding up bits and saying, “What’s this thing?” So, you did okay.

Sandra: Thanks. Thank you.

Rick: All right, thanks. And thanks to those who’ve been listening or watching.

Well, this is an ongoing series, as most of you know. If you’d like to be notified of new ones, you can subscribe on YouTube. You can also sign up on batgap.com to receive an email each time a new one is released.

Over the coming month, I’ll be releasing ones that have already been recorded, mostly out at the SAND Conference, the Science and Nonduality Conference, out in California.

Anyway, there’s a page on BatGap called the upcoming interviews page. In fact, so many people have liked it on Facebook that if you do a search in Google for “upcoming interviews,” that page comes up number one. So, that’ll show you what we’ve got planned. There’s also a guest suggestion page if you want to suggest a guest.

Thanks for listening or watching, and we’ll see you next week. Thank you, Sandra.