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What's on the menu at Lucid Cafe? Stories of transformation; healing journeys; thought-provoking conversations about consciousness, shamanism, psychology, ethics. Hosted by Wendy Halley of Lucid Path Wellness & Healing Arts.
This is Wendy Halley, and you're listening to Lucid Cafe. Hey. How's it going? Today's episode is all about exploring consciousness. So given that, it makes sense to ask you, are you ready to journey beyond the ordinary?
Wendy:To unlock the hidden layers of your inner world and tap into the unseen realms? Become Your own Shaman is a self paced experiential course designed to give you everything you need to begin your own personal shamanic practice. Rooted in the indigenous Hawaiian spiritual teachings that were shared with me during my early apprenticeship, this course offers a profound yet accessible entry point into shamanic work. We'll explore the nature of reality, consciousness, and the self. You'll learn to safely enter shamanic trance through sound and connect with two of your personal helping spirits.
Wendy:Designed to be affordable and user friendly, this course is the culmination of my twenty years teaching shamanic workshops, complete with tools to help you move past the common stumbling blocks that many new practitioners face. So take the first step toward deepening your connection to the unseen and to your own spirit. If I didn't have my own personal shamanic practice during this chaotic time, I suspect I'd be, well, shit. I don't know what I'd be. Super anxious probably.
Wendy:What my shamanic adventures have helped me to understand is that reality is complicated. Meaning that there's a lot more to our existence than this physical reality we find ourselves in. There's nothing like getting an outside of physical reality perspective to calm the old nervous system. So visit lucidpathwellness.com or tap the link in the show notes to enroll and become your own shaman today. Your journey begins now.
Wendy:So continuing in that vein, I'm excited to introduce you to today's guests. In this episode, I speak with an amazing mother and daughter team, Norma and Nisha Burton, who coauthored the book navigating liminal realms, psycho navigation skills for lucid dreaming, trance journeys, and altered states, which blends ancient psychonaut wisdom with cutting edge neuroscience to teach you the lost art of psycho navigation. The skill of consciously entering and exploring dreamscapes, trance worlds, and psychedelic visions without losing your way. In this rich conversation, we tap into how Norma and Nisha have used their different but complementary consciousness altering skills to help others find a path inward, to explore the terrain of their own consciousness and beyond. So Norma j Burton is a counselor with a degree in comparative religion focusing on Buddhist and shamanic traditions, specializing in trauma healing, shadow work, and dream analysis.
Wendy:Having apprenticed with indigenous elders for over thirty years, she founded the Institute of Ancient Healing Arts and the Circle of Trust Healing Center. Nisha Burton is a dream worker, award winning filmmaker, and branding consultant for Fortune Fortune 100 companies. She's a speaker and teacher at universities. Please enjoy my conversation with Norma and Nisha Burton. Norma, Nisha, thank you so much for coming on the show, chatting with me.
Nisha:Thank you for having us. Yeah.
Norma:We're excited to be here with you.
Wendy:Great. I am excited to talk to you because I I don't know if you could tell by the name of my podcast. It's Lucid Cafe. I am quite interested in conversations about consciousness, especially altered states of consciousness. So I was really intrigued by your book and was really psyched to get the invitation to talk to you both.
Wendy:The book is called Navigating Psycho Navigation Skills for Lucid Dreaming, Trans Journeys, and Psychedelic Experiences. Okay. So that is a hell of a subtitle. So you cover a ton of ground in this book. And it's really cool, I think, because most people separate out psychedelic experiences from nighttime dreaming experiences, lucid dreams, and then also shamanic type explorations of those realms.
Wendy:Meaning, using sound, drumming. Okay. So let's see where to start. I think it would be cool to first talk about the fact that you are a mother daughter team. Yes.
Wendy:Which is really freaking amazing. And I would love to hear just a little backstory of how because, you know, typically kids will rebel against their parents. You apparently did not do that, at least with your mom. And I'd love to hear a little bit about how I mean, you talk about it in the book, but I'd love to hear a little bit just about this origin story of how you got to the point where you're co authoring this book.
Nisha:Yeah. Definitely. So it's so wonderful to get to work together as a family, and we talk a lot about the lineage that we hold. Right? And how, really, it started with working on our first book together called Lucid Dreaming, Lucid Living, and that's an oracle deck and book that teaches about how to lucid dream in a nonlinear way.
Nisha:And I say that I grew up in the lineage of dreamers because my great grandmother, she was very much a dreamer for the town and the community. People would come to her with their dreams to talk about, to interpret, and she had very strong and prophetic dreams as well. And then my mom, being my mom and all that she is, really encouraged me in my dream time from the time I was a little kid rather than getting any messaging about, oh, that was just a dream or don't worry about it, pay attention to the real world. I grew up in this way that I feel like many indigenous cultures all around the world historically did of having the dream time and ordinary reality equally valued. And so then you have an awareness that travels through all of the various dimensions of reality in a more lucid way naturally.
Nisha:So I really am appreciative of that upbringing. And from there, because I had that foundation, then I was really able to take off in lucid dreaming and it became a really strong part of my life and what I do as a practice. Then integrating that with all of my mom's teachings around the dream time as well as shadow work, trauma healing, the Jungian side of things, we came together to do this first book and now the second book. And it's been such a joy because we really do have both the familial lineage of all that we know together and hold together, as well as our complementary sides of things that we bring to the table when we're talking about how to navigate your psyche with lucidity.
Wendy:Very cool. Norma, do you want to add anything?
Norma:I was blessed as a child to have my family be, as Nisha's saying, one that valued the supernatural and the dream time. And so my grandmother was really my tutor and believed in me, and so I didn't have to feel odd or crazy having a lot of visions and dreams as a child. So I grew up always knowing that I wanted to be some kind of spiritual leader, like in our times it was called a minister, you know. So I did go to seminary and all of that type of thing to to fit into the world, but I always knew it was something slightly different than that. So when I found out about shamanism, I determined to go and be in the countries of South America and Central America in the seventies and eighties to find out what that was all about.
Wendy:I think that's a little bit little bit
Norma:Ahead of the curve.
Wendy:Yeah. Well, also just different from ministry, I'd say. Yes. Said a little bit, but I'd say it's actually maybe a lot a bit!
Norma:Well, what drove me to that too was that I discovered that I was a LGBTQ person in the seventies, which was not
Wendy:you're making breaking all kinds of boundaries.
Norma:Well, I think I was an Aquarian age person still in the Piscean age, you know, like, ahead of my times, and that really moved me to explore things out of the box, you know, and to to look for some messages or guidance from elders in other cultures around the world. So Nisha, in her little life in the nineteen nineties, went with me everywhere around the world too. So she grew up being immersed in these multicultural explorations of consciousness, and that that evolved into her having a deep inner life herself at a young age. I remember when she was just two, she woke up one morning and said, mom, where's the hole? And she was going through the sheets and pushing them aside.
Norma:And I said, what? What are you looking for, honey? And another parent might have said, what do you mean? That's crazy. Let's get ready for school.
Norma:Something get ready. But I said, what are you looking for? And she said, there was a hole I went through and I found a tiger there. And I said, Wow, that's amazing. That must be your power animal.
Norma:And she said, Yes, I got on its back and I rode with it and it was my friend. And so that was the first shamanic journey that I remember.
Wendy:Wow, that's wicked cool. Tiger woman, huh Nisha?
Nisha:Yes.
Nisha:She's the power animal that's been with me through my life.
Wendy:That is so cool. Okay, I'm sorry to interrupt. Yeah.
Norma:So, from a young age, she was right there in the altered states, and we worked a lot with her dreams all through her childhood, and she was an amazing dreamer, as a lot of kids are, you know? And so she always had the dreams validated, though. So by the time she was in her teens, she was already getting into lucid dreaming and getting pretty advanced and studying the Tibetan ways of lucid dreaming and so forth. And so she's really gone way beyond me and the lucid dreaming. So it's fun to see how the lineage can evolve too, you know, and the next generation takes it to the next level.
Norma:It's a wonderful camaraderie that we have and, I was afraid maybe she'd rebel like you mentioned, you know, and go a whole different direction when she was little. But, no, that's never happened. She's always been, you know, a mature person on her own path, but then we could blend our paths equally and be respectful of each other, too.
Wendy:Well, it kind of makes sense then if, Nisha, if those doors opened up for you so young that you'd be tuned in in that way. Like, I guess the need for rebellion wouldn't be relevant because you connected to what you needed to connect to, which is what rebellion is about. It's like trying to find out what you need to connect with that's separate from what you were told and
Nisha:Yeah. Totally. I feel lucky to to have grown up, like my mom was talking about, very cross culturally and getting exposed to we went to Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, China, Turkey. We went all over the world and to sacred sites and to study with the shamans and the wisdom keepers in these various sites. So growing up that way, like you're saying, there wasn't so much a need for rebellion, and my mom always exposed me to all world religions too, and so rather than rebellion, it was more like seeking which ones resonated with me, which ones were my strongest path, and being raised in that way provided me the opportunity to choose my own paths, to choose the things that were most resonant for me while not needing to go against some dogma because I wasn't being fed just one pathway to take.
Nisha:I had many opportunities to see what was the best for me.
Wendy:How cool is that? What a gift, Norma.... that you gave your child. Really, seriously. I mean, if you think about it, we we don't for those of us who end up having unusual experiences in the liminal spaces, there's no cultural context for it other than insanity, unfortunately, medication for some folks.
Norma:Western culture became so afraid of the altered states, the mystical states, right? And it's always been having to be subjugated as subculture, as was the feminine, right, western culture where the powers that be were not wanting people to acknowledge their power and have access to those realms because to have access to our whole selves, our multidimensional selves, right, is very empowering. Even beyond this bodily timeline life, you know, to realize that we are bigger than the bodies too, that we have eternality, you know, that we may be these very amazing beings that have tremendous powers of imagination and creation. Right? There's been a lot of need to recover that and to help people understand that it's important to have access to the dream time.
Wendy:Yes, please.
Nisha:That's a lot what we talk about in our book, because like my mom is saying, you know, empowering people, there's so many ways that we get disempowered, we look to external authority to guide us and to shape us. And really a core of psycho navigation, which you can hear in the word is about navigating your psyche, navigating your inner worlds, is about reconnecting to your personal empowerment because you reattune to your inner guidance system and you learn how to trust yourself going into those realms that are the unconscious, the less consciously acknowledged, right? And then when you see, Oh, wait a minute, I can bring lucidity into these realms, I can understand and work with my shadows that arise in this space, I am so much more powerful than I give myself credit for than in ordinary reality and waking reality that carries over too because you really have attuned yourself to what lies beneath the surface.
Wendy:Yeah. Well, and once you've had direct experiences like that, I imagine you can't help but be changed in response. So that's not something you can read in a book or be Right. Taught or told. I mean, it's it's a very intimate personal experience.
Norma:Yeah. I like that you used the word direct experience. I often use the Greek word for that gnosis, to know directly through direct experience. And that's what we're talking about. Right?
Norma:Going through the drumming journey into this direct, lucid experience with another being that guides you or going into the dream time in a lucid state where you have such a direct sensorial experience. You can't deny it. Once you have those experiences, like you're saying, they're memorable, they're real, they affect your life.
Wendy:Yeah. If you think about the times in your life, maybe not for the two of you, but the times in your in in maybe someone who's listening, your life where you've had a big dream, one of those really what you've called what I call a big dream that stays with you and you just you can recall it forever. There's something so potent about that. And what is that about? And what is that why does it stay with you?
Wendy:Right? And so what you've done with your book is you've kind of written a guide, a really well thought out and descriptive guide on how to access these realms from from, different perspectives so that the big dream experience be can become more of a regular sort of thing? It's just like the norm. Is that the hope?
Norma:Yes. Like you're saying, there are different kinds of dreams. There are ones that are very striking that might relate to your whole life plan unfolding. And then there are ones that are more about your daily life. So there's different types of dreams, and all of them are important.
Norma:But our book is to help people validate and value whatever kind of dreams they're having and start to write them down and keep track of them, right, to give value to them, and then to also learn these ancient methods that have been in all cultures around the planet for a long, long time, six thousand years, you know, pre the dominant religions that we have nowadays. There's this way of spirituality that is ancient that has to do with the integration of the dream time and psycho navigating. So that's what we're hearkening back to in our book, that there are these ancient teachings for humans in how to navigate our consciousness that we need to learn, that need not to be forgotten, right, that are wonderfully still available to us. And so we felt it was really important to bring forth these teachings about psycho navigating through drumming journey and through dream work as precursors to people using psychedelics because I'm watching people jump right into psychedelics, like jumping into the deep water without really knowing how to navigate.
Wendy:Thank you.
Norma:Yes. They don't know how to come back properly. They don't know how to integrate it properly. Some people get so overwhelmed they can even have psychotic breaks. So this book really was compelling to write because we really wanted to tell people, hey, there's a lot of things to do before you jump into that deep water.
Nisha:And just to add to that a tiny bit, yeah, we talk about how when you take psychedelics, you're interacting with the especially if it's a plant medicine, you're interacting with the plant's consciousness, and so rather than it just being your own internal journey, you're having a journey with this other element. Right? And people can get then overly dependent or have a form a strange relationship with that because, again, it's looking to this external source for access to non ordinary reality, which is not a bad thing. Psychedelics are great to be able to lift the veil, to be able to give people a shift in perspective, but it can become a dependent relationship because they say, This is my source to non ordinary reality. This is the only way that I can access those expanded states of consciousness, rather than realizing through lucid dreaming and through the drumming journeys that actually we have access to that within ourselves, which is so amazing.
Nisha:Every time you go to sleep, you can access those states. Every time you go on the powerful drumming journey like my mom leads, you can go into those spaces. So when you realize you can get to it through your own volition, through your own will, then it builds this pathway that is beautifully complementary to accessing it through plant medicines, through this other consciousness that you're engaging with.
Wendy:I love that you're saying that. I think it's really a vital message because, as we know, psychedelic assisted therapies have become this sort of the next thing that people are doing to have a miraculous shift in their healing. And and I get the calls from the people who are who got stuck afterwards, are really struggling with the integration process, and there's not enough follow-up with the people, and or some people going into psychosis, like you mentioned, and it's heartbreaking. But one of the things I wanted I wanted to sort of get back to, which is which you cover early in your book, which I think is so important and you touched on a little bit, is this it almost struck me I don't know if you used this language or not as accessing these realms is like a birthright. And if we go back far enough in our ancestry, anyone, that we will bump up against ancestors who were embedded in a shamanic like tradition, where this was the norm.
Wendy:That's kind
Norma:of such an important thing to emphasize. Right? Because that's another thing that has happened in our Western cultures, seeking after guidance from Native American indigenous people or indigenous people all over the world, and that is wonderful to value the indigenous wisdom. It's a great thing to do. And yet there's a lot of appropriation that goes on and a lot of grabbing of things and trying to use them right away to make money from them and all of that.
Norma:Whereas we direct people, like you're saying, to your own lineage. Track your own lineage back and back because in every lineage, the people were on the land. They were pagan of the earth, and they were in touch with nature and the earth spirits and the multidimension. So in our our own lineages, we need to be responsible to find out what happened, right? Because a lot of times there's a lot of trauma involved with being cut off from those lineages.
Norma:And so who in your family, you know, was a seer, was a dreamer, and then maybe got punished for it, even put in a mental hospital for it or, you know, disrespected in some way? It became very traumatic through the Middle Ages in Europe, you know, to be a spiritual seer. And a lot of them were women, you know, so the witchcraft trials, all that's happened in Western history that has brought a lot of trauma associated with this. So it's important that we track back in our own lineages and find our own mystical roots and honor them and not be trying to grab other people's, you know, like really go into your own roots because you've got to heal your own trauma wounds in your lineage. Right?
Norma:I think each one of us, if we take it on, we're here to heal seven generations backwards and seven generations forwards.
Wendy:No pressure.
Norma:Got work to do, though, in our psyches, in our lineage, right, to be able to say the buck stops here from from all of the trauma that's shaped things, and we're trying to heal our lineages.
Nisha:And also, you know, in like you were just saying, in the tracing back, in the realizing that it is our birthright to exist consciously in both ordinary reality and the dream time, I think a lot of the reasons that there has been a targeted disconnection from that is because that really is where your power lies and where you connect both to your inner knowing as well as the greater knowing. It's amazing when you do start writing down your dreams, when you do start giving importance to your dreams, you'll find that there's a lot of insight in there, right? About Rich. Yeah. Happening on the mundane levels as well as precognitive insights.
Nisha:So many times, I've had dreams that I've thought initially when writing down like, Oh, this is kind of a weird whatever dream, just like kind of discredited at first. And then you look back a week later and you're like, Wait a minute, that was exactly what's happening right now in my life. And had I just forgotten that dream or written it off, I wouldn't see how my mind is connected to so much more insight and knowing. And so that's why when you trace back to all cultures, you'll see that before, many people were much more integrated with the dream time and ordinary reality, and honoring both because they realized it's all one interwoven web that our human psyche, our human consciousness is traveling through.
Wendy:Well said, both of you. Yeah. I want to acknowledge the many, many people who have been drawn to shamanic practice and have been studying other indigenous teachings, like myself, who, I think it I don't I mean, I don't know if you wanna say something to that to those of us who, like, might be feeling guilty for doing that. In my case, I I was drawn to Hank Wesselman back in the late nineties. Started studying with him in 2001, and the Hawaiian elder that took him under his wing, I got to meet him.
Wendy:And he said to us, share this information with the world. But the way I was taught was that it's like we're giving you a foundation to kind of give you a context for this this realm and kind of through this Hawaiian, which it's like some of the the brilliant teaching points. I mean, they're brilliant cosmologies. It was super helpful. But then once you have those, your teachings will take over in the the dream time.
Wendy:So it's like, just use them as a jumping off point rather than an anchor, rather. Does that make sense?
Norma:Yes. Well, I'm so glad you're bringing us back to this point because, yes, we don't want anybody to feel bad about having had the wonderful experiences of studying with indigenous elders. We're so blessed that we're living in an era when we can know of people all over the world and go and be with them and have that rich experience of that training from other perspectives. And I was so blessed too, like you, to study with amazing people. I got to study with Guadalupe de los Rios, who's Owisho, Marikame, Shaman, and and others, Angela in Brazil, etcetera.
Norma:And I'm so thankful. They it changed my life so deeply. So nowadays, people are traveling all over and having wonderful interactions with native elders. And I loved what you said about that that opens a door, creates a change in perspective and information available to us that then ignites our own psyche and our own deep connection with our own dream time, and everything can take off into a, deeper exploration through the igniting by the ancestors and these indigenous traditions. So, yes, we really honor that in our book, and we're trying to help people name their lineages.
Norma:So like you named Hank Besselman, it's good to name our lineages, right, and to always acknowledge them when we're talking to other people or training them to not act like we created it out of nowhere ourselves, you know, but to say, no. I'm interested. This this person. Right? Right?
Norma:We've got to acknowledge the lineages, and then it does away with the fear of appropriation. They say if you acknowledge the lineage and have permission, like you also talked about the Hawaiian shaman giving permission and saying, share this widely. Yes. That's He
Wendy:said, you're making my job easier.
Norma:Right? Because that permission means everything. And sometimes somebody might tell you, share this, and then lied by that too. You know? But yes.
Norma:So having permission and naming the lineage is so important to not be appropriating. And
Nisha:yeah. And I feel like part of that naming too, because we are a multicultural world now, right, where we do have access to so many cultures and learning from one another, then it shows the tapestry that you're weaving and where you're pulling from. And for myself, like my mom mentioned earlier, I was really drawn into Tibetan practices, dream yoga practices, as well as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, and then Taoist lineage as well. And so there as we're talking about cultures that have had more continuous access to and knowledge around working with non ordinary states of reality, whereas in our Western culture, there was a separation, there was an intentional cutting people off. And so learning from these lineages that have had a more continuous line is super valuable because then that knowledge was not suppressed as much, knowledge in was the same ways, and it's awakening these knowings in ourselves that are innately true to us as humans, right?
Nisha:And it's showing us, Oh, wait a minute, I remember this. It's almost like a remembering. Like when I came across those lineages, as I was just talking about, it didn't feel like I'm learning this very new foreign thing. It was like, Oh, this resonates so deeply because I remember this as a true path and practice of how to access these realms, how
Wendy:to work with these realms. I remember saying, I feel like I'm home.
Norma:Yes. Yes. Yeah. Very true. You know, in the book, we talk about that you will meet a guide, and the guide will show you a map.
Norma:And you'll recognize the map like your oldest, truest pathway that you've always known. So there are these ancient maps of consciousness that we should be shown by elders and our teachers. And then that map that we follow opens up into exploring our own inner maps. So that's the pathway we describe in here. You know, we we talk about in my journey to completion, which I formulated after my years of working with the Huichol and the Brazilian shamans.
Norma:It's a it's a pathway that is ancient, and you can see it similarly in cultures all over the world. It was after I developed that map in reflection upon all of my studies with the elders, a few years later, I read the book that had just come out then, which was Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey, the Hero with Many Faces, and it was amazing to see that he had been all over the world with indigenous cultures and discovered the map that was very similar to what I'd been taught. So that was so validating I bet. To realize, wow. This is a codex.
Norma:This is
Wendy:An a archetype. Yeah.
Norma:Archetype on planet Earth for humans to follow. That you have a calling, and that calling is drawing you into the underworld. To go into the underworld first where we have to encounter our shadow and the places where we've been damaged. So our perspective has been distorted and we have to heal that so that we're not misusing power. And then we do that transmutation work and then we come back up out and we start practicing that change in perspective.
Norma:And then we come all the way out and share this story of our discovery and our healing with our tribe. And then we live in a new, better, more whole identity until we have to do that path again. Right? So that's the ancient pathway of our human healing and transform transformation of our misperceptions. And you see it in every tradition, really, and in every indigenous lineage, there's a similar map.
Norma:So I call it the initiatory pathway, the pathway of initiation, right, that is there all over the planet. So our book is reminding people of this wonderful pathway that exists. It's pretty clear and pretty simple, really, to follow. So it it helps you not be mixed up, but to realize what the pathway is that you have to follow to your change and that you humbly have to do it over and over and over again. You walk the same into the underworld, back about each time that you have a shadow pattern that you have to heal.
Nisha:Yeah. And we also, you know, with this map, we talk about that when you are psycho navigating, when you are venturing into the underworld of your unconscious, there are three important things that you can see across cultures are really important to venture into those spaces, which are a map, like we're just talking about, a guide, which, you know, our book serves at that as that, working with teachers serves as that, and then a clear intent, and that's another really important one where knowing why you're going in there very clearly and hearkening back to that intent is so important. I find that to be very true for lucid dreaming. And in the beginning, the intent can just be, I wanna become lucid. But then once you get to that stage, then you have to think of the next one of, okay.
Nisha:What do I wanna do next in this space? What do I wanna do next in this amazing world? And so having that to propel your progress forward is so important. And then with psychedelics, obviously, too, having a clear intent because a lot of people can do them in a more haphazard way, and that's where fragmentation happens oftentimes. It's like, oh, I'm just gonna gonna do this thing, not realizing how powerful and profound it can be and then getting lost in those worlds.
Nisha:So having the intent is really what you can continue to anchor yourself back to in those moments that are frightful, in those moments that are intense, being like, okay. Well, why did I come into this space? Why did I alter my consciousness to get some kind of gift, to get some kind of revelation, to, you know, build some kind of skill? So let me come back to that as I'm journeying in these liminal spaces.
Wendy:Beautiful. Yes. And you are talking about the hero's journey. Like, each of us is invited if we cross that threshold into this territory. We're invited on our own hero's journey.
Wendy:And, Norma, what you're saying is that the hero's journey cycles. That just because you do it one time doesn't necessarily mean that you nailed it. Right. Because we have we have lots of different woundings and or maybe layered woundings. Like, you can handle a topmost layer of a certain type of wound, and then you ride that for a while, and then maybe maybe your symptoms start emerging, and then you have to go back into that territory and see what else is there for me to learn or to heal from or to get my power back from.
Norma:Yeah. It's like layers of the onion, isn't it?
Wendy:It seems to be. Yes.
Norma:And there's one that's ripe for now. That's what working with the intent helps people identify, okay, this area of your life is acting up now and it's showing you the wound in this area and so this is the time to go after healing that pattern. And then later on, another one will arise, you know. So there's a there's an order to it. And I think that's a lot of what we're getting across in the book too, that there's an order to exploring, to psycho navigating that we should follow because then things get accomplished, and you're building a structure in yourself, you know, of and well, like, for example, Martin Frechtel said that we're walking through the jungle and the macaw calls out and says, put together the puzzle pieces of your life.
Norma:So that's our task, right, that we have a piece by piece by piece of the puzzle of our life that we're trying to put together, and we have to go on these journeys in an orderly way to be guided to find the next puzzle piece that we need to find next.
Nisha:Yeah. And building off of that, you know, one of my other careers that I have is as a filmmaker. So it's very much about the hero's journey and storytelling and understanding how to reflect that to people, those transformative journeys that one takes in a film, right, so they can see. They go along on that journey too. And off of that, what as my mom is talking about, what is important for the mind is meaning making.
Nisha:And a lot of times we can see our lives in these chunks or in these pieces and not understand how the puzzle pieces work together, but with the intent and with these different elements, you start to make meaning of, Oh, this, you know, childhood trauma, Oh, this particular thing that happened here relates to how I'm operating now in my adult life, relates to how I need to have this clear intent around wanting to heal this particular pattern. So as you make meaning, you give the psyche the opportunity to then organize itself in a clear way and then move forward with that clear, lucid perception of, okay, this is why I'm walking this particular path at this time in my life, this is how I can navigate it with consciousness, with awareness, and this is how I can get the gift out of these challenges that are presenting themselves to me.
Norma:Right. Because, you know, a lot of times what stops people from going into the dream time is they get scared. They have a dream that scares them for
Wendy:the night.
Norma:Yeah. Right? And then they shut down. I've talked to so many people, you probably have too, who that has happened to, you know. They encounter something scary in the dream time, it seems overwhelming.
Norma:They can't handle it, and they don't want to dream anymore, and they literally shut off their dream time for years at a time or shut off their psychic abilities, you know? So, approaching the dream time, knowing these patterns and knowing how to work with the scary things that come up is really important. So it's like in doing the dream work with people and the shamanic healing work, we're we're trying to carefully teach them how to encounter the scary things and do the gradual work involved of finding out why it's scary, like what is behind there. Right? I believe that our unconscious will give us in an orderly way if we give it a chance.
Norma:But sometimes, you know, you haven't paid attention to it, and then you get blasted with something because it's like it's pulling on your shirt, pulling on you, pulling, pay attention, pay attention, and you don't pay attention, and then something bigger happens so that you have to pay attention. But then when you turn toward it, right, and try to begin to carefully understand it, our unconscious wants to give it to us in a gradual, orderly, organic way that we can handle. So don't don't back off from the dream time, people out there, you know, like if you need help, seek out a good therapist guide to help you understand why the things are scary. Your unconscious is there to help you and to be your ally in helping you heal. Absolutely.
Wendy:Yeah. What a great message. Yes. I, I I'm I'd love to throw this question out to the both of you because this is something I bump up against a lot with the folks I encounter is if they have a really cool dream experience, waking or asleep, they don't know what to do with it. In other words, one of the things I think we've unfortunately lost, and maybe you disagree with this, is our ability to know the language of symbolism or understand it.
Wendy:And it is, to me, it's like a language. I mean, you have to become familiar with it. Like, what do these particular symbols mean to me? And then there's the more archetypal meanings that you can lean on to help you along the way. It's such an intimate journey, as you've both been pointing out.
Wendy:It's such a personal journey. Do you do you run into that? What when people are stuck with, like, I don't I have this information. I just don't know what to do with it.
Norma:Yes. It's such a good question. What I do is slow it all down and really value every tiny thing that's come out in the dream. Like, what color was the you can only remember the floor in this room. Okay.
Norma:What did it look like? What color was it? Did it have any marks on it? Can you see any more of the room? Was there a color of a floor like that anywhere in your childhood?
Norma:So you value every little thing, and then it unlocks the right information. So that was the floor in the kitchen of my grandmother. And, oh, that's where this man came to visit that day, and something difficult happened, you know.
Wendy:Every little
Norma:thing, so be curious, be very curious and don't discount anything. We tend to discount things so quickly, you know, or think that we don't know anything, but every little image that comes in the dream is valuable and means something. So be curious. And then another thing, though, that I wanted Nisha to talk about is dream signs. We all have things that repeat in our dreams, our dream signs, and tell them what dream signs noting the dream signs does for you.
Nisha:Totally. So like you're talking about, the dream time speaks in the language of symbols. And a lot of times we can, in our culture, again, being more disconnected from our own dreams, look to dream dictionaries, which is not a bad thing, but those are more general interpretations. And the work of lucid dreaming and delving deeply into your own dream work is to learn the personal language that your dream is speaking in. And so a key part of lucid dreaming, which I'll just say a definition of it, I'm sure a lot of people know what it is, but some might not, a lucid dream is one in which you become aware beyond a doubt that you're dreaming while still in the dream.
Nisha:So rather than waking up and being like, oh, I kinda knew I was dreaming, with a lucid dream within the dream material, you're like, I know I'm dreaming, and now I can interact with the dream in a way I could not before. And everything kind of comes online and becomes very vivid and very real. So what you're doing to build up to being able to have lucid dreams is tracking what your personal dream signs are. And there are collective ones or ones that are familiar to many people, but some examples are being by a large body of water, presenting in a classroom or in some kind of setting or a work setting where you're presenting. Being in an elevator is another one some people have.
Nisha:There are elements that you encounter often in your dreams. There are things that you are often doing. They might even be objects that you often encounter in your dreams or particular people. So when you're looking back on your dreams and starting to write them down more and more, you will find what your personal dream signs are, and then you can start highlighting those and using them to be able to have a lucid dream because what you do is you cross over the dream time and ordinary reality and you recognize, okay, this is something I encounter in my dreams often, and this is something that I encounter in waking reality often. And by noting that, then in waking reality, you perform what's called a reality check or a state check to see, okay, am I dreaming or am I awake?
Nisha:And by doing that, when you encounter a dream sign in waking reality, then you're training your mind to also do it when you encounter a dream sign in your dream time. And when you do that, when you perform a state check encountering a dream sign within your dream, then you become lucid. So that's a really quick lucid dreaming one zero one, but it's also coming back to the importance of understanding your personal dream symbolism and being able to work with that in a really conscious way.
Wendy:That's such a cool technique. Yeah. And it almost like ends up serving as an anchor between the realities. Yeah. Like like almost like taking a highlighter over a symbol.
Wendy:Yeah. So cool. Very cool. There's like 7,000,000 directions I could go in right now. Okay.
Wendy:If we don't if you don't mind geeking out with me for just a second, I'm curious just this is a little off the beaten path, but what you're I'd love to hear from both of you if it's possible to articulate this, because it's kind of a it's just a small question. But I'm I'm curious what your take is on the nature of reality based on your physical and your non physical experiences. What kinds of conclusions may you have have you possibly come to?
Norma:We are multidimensional beings. I've had experiences where this is this is kind of far out, okay, but where I've experienced myself in whole lifetimes in simultaneous realities. Wow. That was pretty amazing.
Wendy:I can't even imagine. Yes.
Norma:And then I, you know, I tried to research it and look it up in Buddhist texts and so forth and and found that other humans have had those type of experiences of realizing that we might be alive in other lifetimes simultaneously.
Wendy:Oversoul experience.
Norma:Yeah? Or multi soul. Mhmm. So right? I mean, the nature of reality is, woah, much vaster, much more complex and simultaneous.
Norma:So, you know, as they're talking about in physics research, oh, there's a universe. Oh, there are millions of universes. Oh, there are parallel universes. Yep. Everything in time is different than we know.
Norma:So there's so much going on in exploration of the multidimensionality of everything.
Wendy:So Norma, then are you suggesting that you had a visionary experience that showed you yourself as incarnated as Norma in many different experiences at the same time or different versions of different identities simultaneously?
Norma:Yes. I was awake, and it was in the night, but I was wide awake.
Wendy:Okay.
Norma:And I was taken on an experience of being shown that I was at first in one other lifetime and shown it in great detail of me being there. They were showing me this Norma. Yeah. Okay. How to remember that one and this one and keep conscious in both.
Norma:And then I was taken into another one, conscious in three, conscious in four, conscious in five. This experience went on for about four hours, and I was taken to another
Nisha:and another and another.
Norma:Holy shit. 100, 1,000, and being shown how to stay conscious. It sounds unbelievable, but it was an incredible experience of being shown conscious existence in other realities. And and then during it, I was texting Nisha in the middle of the night, you know, she was in another state, and I was saying, don't worry about me. If I don't come back into this one, this reality, I'm seeing that I exist in many realities.
Norma:And so Oh, man. But, you know, and so Nisha said, I am so glad I didn't see those texts.
Nisha:I was asleep. But so I saw them in the morning, and then, you know, she had texted me more of how she came back and whatnot. And so, like, yeah. I'm glad I wasn't reading those in real time.
Wendy:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I was just gonna ask, I mean, if there was a more appealing version of you, like and and, like, I think
Norma:I'll collapse into this one.
Nisha:It's kind of like that movie, which it's so amazing that it was made in our time, but everything everywhere all at once.
Norma:Yeah. Right. Right. When I had that that experience years before that movie was made and when so I said, mom, you've gotta see this movie. It's about your life.
Norma:Yeah.
Wendy:Or all of us.
Norma:Idea of of everything everywhere all at once, I think, is what we're evolving towards. Right? Realizing our interbeingness, not just with human consciousness either, but with plant, animal, and other consciousnesses in this universe. I mean, there must be millions and many kinds of consciousnesses too. So I gave a talk last week on AI and spirituality.
Nisha:Okay.
Norma:AI is a type of consciousness that we're developing and encountering. To not be so anthropocentric in our holding on to, well, it's not human consciousness, so it's no good. To be open to many kinds of consciousness, that's radical. And I think it's where we're going in the Aquarian age.
Wendy:So that means just before, Nisha, before you go into your your your take on reality, you're saying AI suggesting that AI could I mean, has its own form of consciousness.
Norma:Yes. That we should befriend it.
Wendy:Rather than be afraid of it.
Norma:Yes. We're going into a time rapidly when AI consciousness is something we're gonna all be interacting with, and so many people are afraid of that and afraid that it will take over, afraid it will dominate us, afraid it will hurt us. Well, we are in a universe of many kinds of consciousnesses, and we can't be afraid of that. We have to be open and interacting and then, of course, trying to influence it and be with our values, our values for the good, our values for the highest good of all as we interact with AI consciousness and other kinds of consciousness. It's very important that we come to it with a value system.
Norma:I think that's what people really are afraid of is that others will influence with value systems that are dominating and controlling rather than for the highest good of all. Harkening back to my indigenous teachings, the Wicho would always talk to me about, you're you're gathering your power so that you can use power for the highest good of all. Right? So that's the value of the path of heart that we have in us and that we are trying to develop more and more, that we would be acting for the highest good of all and clearing away our competitiveness and our fear so that we can be in these co creative relationships for the highest good.
Wendy:Have any talks scheduled with the tech bros in the near future?
Norma:We just talked with Google X last weekend.
Nisha:Okay. Computer. Alright.
Wendy:So, Nisha, I'd love to pick up with your take on the nature of reality.
Nisha:Definitely. Yeah. It's a great question. Well, following on the thread of AI, I another career path that I have is I've been an emerging technologist for many years working with virtual reality, augmented reality, and AI. And so I very much agree with my mom in that it is another emergent consciousness that is coming to us.
Nisha:And there's different models. There's different stages that it's at. And as humans, you know, we like to think of consciousness meeting these particular benchmarks that relate to how our consciousness works, but that's led us in the past to really discredit animal consciousness or plant consciousness. Anything that's not a way of human perception is devalued. So I do think it is important to realize we are constantly interrelating with various forms of awareness.
Nisha:And then going over to the lucid dreaming side of things and the nature of reality, you really realize how, again, our culture, our Western culture has a very, very narrow view of what reality is. And we look at ordinary waking reality as what is real. And then everything else is, oh, it's just a dream. It's an it's your imagination, thus putting it opposite opposition and making it not real, discrediting it. When you become lucid within a dream, as I mentioned earlier, the quality of the dream changes.
Nisha:It really comes online in a new way, and it feels as visceral and real as this waking reality. If you touch a table, you feel the weight and the the form you know, the formed nature of the table. If you eat something, you taste it fully. If you fly through the air, which is an amazing thing to do while lucid dreaming, you can feel the wind moving through your hair. You can feel your embodied sense of reality within the dream time.
Nisha:And so then bringing that level of lucidity into that space that we often discredit is not, you know, it's not real. You realize reality is so much more than we often give it credit for. And again, with psychedelics too, a lot of times, if people haven't done them before or they're just thinking about them, it's like, oh, that's not really real. That's my mind hallucinating in these ways, all of this. But when you're in an experience, it's as real as this waking ordinary reality, and you're just transported into this slightly different perception of reality.
Nisha:The eternal now is a lot of times what it feels like. And so realizing that reality is so much more than we give credit for in our Western view of things, then you can see how your consciousness is more than just your physical body in this incarnation, which also often goes hand in hand with how we define reality, and it can be then very scary to think about leaving this particular physical body. And that's one thing that really drew me to lucid dreaming was that I was driving along in the car, I was talking to my mom, and I was like, oh, and when I die but rather than it just being an offhanded comment like it often is, it really hit me, and it was almost like I went through this veil and felt the the weight of that, of at some point, my consciousness is not gonna be in this body, and what does that mean? And it gave me a little bit of an existential crisis of like Big bit. A big bit.
Nisha:Yeah.
Wendy:One thing that's human mass. Yeah.
Nisha:Before I went to bed every night thinking about it thinking about it. And then, eventually, I, again, got really into reading the Tibetan book of the dead, which is all about teaching souls how to move through the bardos, the liminal spaces of after death process. And I came to dreaming, and I thought, okay. Wait a minute. Every night, I'm my consciousness is going somewhere else that is not this formed, ordinary, linear reality.
Nisha:So what if I bring more awareness into that space? Maybe I won't need to be as afraid of leaving this formed, linear, ordinary reality when I ultimately die and pass on from this body. And when you do that, you really do see how much more reality there is than just this singular point.
Wendy:It's complicated. Yeah.
Norma:Yeah. Yeah. Complex. Jung said the shadow is a complex. People get afraid that they can't understand the complexity of their consciousness.
Norma:Right? But my work as a therapist, you know, I I think you're a therapist too, it sounds like Yeah. Is to help people what I call unthread the complex knots that their psyche has gotten into. You know, we gradually unthread the knots so that it gets clearer and clearer what really happened or is happening. So at the same time that everything's complex, I think there there's also we have the ability to slow it down and track it so that we can come to understand reality.
Norma:Right? So it's really important I try to emphasize to people, we can know realities, reality such as it is. And I think that's why planet Earth is such an amazing experiment of going through linear time. Right? Because we can slow it all down and say, this happened here and in this place and this time, yes, did and this happened next and this happened.
Wendy:Such a great point, yeah, that we can do that. Yeah.
Norma:Yeah. So we can slow it down and come to what the Buddhists call Tathagata, which is suchness or reality such as it is. It takes a lot of work in our minds to unthread things and slow it all down and become present so you're really, really present in the present moment with reality such as it is. So that's an important part of our work here, don't you think, on planet Earth, that we are meant to be present, very, very present?
Wendy:Yeah. Yes. And I and we've gotten a bit far afield. Yeah. Right?
Wendy:I call it the noise. Like, we have a lot of internal noise, mental and emotional noise.
Norma:Inundation by our cell phones all the time.
Wendy:And then there's the external noise. And if you're sensitive, you're hearing all of it.
Norma:So it's important, I think, we emphasize to get off into nature Yes. As much as you can. Right? Because in nature, you're away from all of the media and screens and everything, and you're calming down your mind. And you can be with an attunement to the spiritual presence in creation on Earth, don't you think that's a big healing for people to get off into nature?
Wendy:I can't think of better healing Yeah. Or better medicine than that.
Norma:That always need to.
Wendy:Yeah. Right?
Norma:In a good way.
Wendy:We are nature. Why wouldn't we wanna submerge ourselves with our cousins?
Norma:Yeah. Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you are feeling stuck and you go hang out by a tree or by some water or sit on a rock, you probably won't feel as stuck in five minutes if you just sit there quietly. Right?
Norma:Yeah. It's like, please go to nature.
Wendy:It's free if if you have access to it. Yeah. That's a tough part in a metropolitan area. Unless you go to a park, I guess. So you have created a map to find your map Yes.
Wendy:In your book? Yes. So besides the books you've written together, do you work with people in other ways?
Norma:Yes. Thanks for asking that because my life work is as a therapist, Jungian and depth psychologist and somatic healing psychologist. So I work with people on a daily basis and also in groups. And Anisha and I are creating a whole online mystery school that people can come into it and do self paced learning in these realms of lucid dreaming and the shamanic healing work so that that will be available soon. And I also have a whole ministry life, you know, so I I run ritual experiences and can be brought to different I go all over the country, all over the world, meeting with groups of people to take them into the deep dream work and ritual space.
Norma:Nisha and I are going on a European tour this summer of speaking at many different groups and bookstores and at festivals and conferences. That's great. Yeah. So we're gonna be in person trying to spread this good work.
Nisha:Yeah. And just building off that too, as you're hearing, we're doing more retreats, more public opportunities, going to workshops, going to conferences to speak there. And then, also, we have all of the online classes. And right now, even if people go on our website, which is luciddreaming, lucidliving.com, There's a freebie there of a way to get started working with us, which is a morning and evening sleep hygiene routine to start your lucid dreaming journey or to come back to it because it's so important. Like, you're hearing what you do in waking reality to really honor the dream time and to really reconnect with your dream time.
Nisha:So that's a really good way to start. And then from there, very soon, we're launching so many courses, which we're really excited about, but, like, a lucid dreaming one zero one to help people learn how to begin lucid dreaming, one that relates to my mom's work with the drumming journeys and teaching people how to go into lucid consciousness from waking reality through Called animal instincts. Called animal instincts, and then many more. So definitely keep following us and keep knowing about us as we launch these courses because we're excited, again, to be able to have ways for people to learn at their own pace and to really engage with these teachings both that way and then with us in person in our retreats.
Norma:And then drawing people together in groups, large and small, so they can get to know each other too and have community around this. I've taught my Journey to Completion shamanic yearlong training program to thousands of people over the last thirty years. So there's a large community all over the world of people who have done this deep work, and they want to know each other. So this year, we're forming an alumni group too.
Wendy:All right.
Norma:It's good to join the the consortium of people that are doing this together and be able to have that kind of a feeling of community. Right? We need that sense of community so much right now to give us courage and faith in where we're going. It's how we're designed. Yeah.
Norma:To be in community with each Yeah.
Wendy:Yeah. And it also makes the work more powerful, I think.
Norma:Yes. So much so. To get to know each other in our interbeingness and to see that we're not that different. I mean, yes, we have our diversities, but we're so similar in so many ways Mhmm. Really builds the sense of hope.
Norma:And another thing that Nisha does a lot is that we have a Instagram, and she puts out a lot of good short clips of information about dreaming and lucid dreaming in the Instagram site. So that's under lucid dreaming, lucid living too. So check out the Instagram.
Nisha:Handle and yes. The different ways depending on how you like to consume media. There's the bite size. There's the YouTube channel with a little bit longer, and then there's the courses, which are fuller course. So it's it's there's lots of opportunity
Norma:to gain. Dreaming, lucid living.
Wendy:That and you're you're doing it. You're both doing the lucid living while you're lucid dreaming. That's awesome.
Norma:I'm really thrilled to find out about your podcast too, about lucidity, you know. And you've Yeah. It's just so great to talk with you in these deep ways.
Wendy:I've thoroughly enjoyed it. I mean, passion is talking about this stuff.
Norma:You're on the tip of the iceberg together too. We could go to so many places.
Wendy:I was thinking, we've already gone over, and I could go another couple hours.
Norma:Maybe we could do it again sometime.
Wendy:I would love to have you come back and talk some more about some of the places we didn't get to go to. So I really encourage people to pick up your book and to explore these territories, because you can. I mean, if you you need a guide, if you need a guide, could find a guide. But you you do have an ethereal guide who Yeah. If you can connect with them, will will also help you.
Wendy:So it's soon as you wanna start, the invitation is there. And you have this lovely guidebook to help you along the way. And I love the fact that there's a progression that you're pointing out through your experiences, that it's important to follow before you dive into really heavy psychedelic experiences. You don't want to do it unprepared. Not to incite fear in anyone, but it's just just for staying balanced.
Norma:Yes. Exactly. And getting more out of it. Yeah. Learning the pathway.
Norma:Navigating Liminal Realms is available through Amazon and all of the All the places, I imagine. Right? And bookstores soon. And so Well, you
Wendy:you're one of the inner traditions of Imprints. Imprints. Thank you. I couldn't think of the words.
Norma:Thrilled to be printed by Inner Traditions, Fentor and Bear and Company Press. It's a lifelong dream of mine to be published by them, so we're good to meet them.
Wendy:Well, thank you both very much.
Norma:It's been great being with you. Thank you for all the great questions. It was very exciting to talk with you.
Wendy:Imagine having a spiritual kinship with your mom. What a great thing. If you'd like to explore Nisha and Norma's work and their offerings, please visit their website luciddreaminglucidliving.com. And if you're interested in starting your own personal shamanic practice, you can find out more about my self paced online course, become your own shaman, using the link in the show notes. And we're gonna keep the dream theme alive in the next episode where we'll be exploring the magic hidden in our dreams.
Wendy:Until next time.