Experimentation and Innovation
Excerpted from "Awakening the Below" by Oholomo, available now from Aeon Press!
In general, the approach to the Below I am advocating is experimental and innovative. You pay attention to opening your sensory channels. You follow your guides and trust where they lead you. You search through books and existing spiritual teachings for ideas about specific techniques to try. When you find something that interests you, you take it up, implementing some version of the practice for a few weeks or months, in order to see what effect it has on the quality, intensity, and impact of your experience of the Below. If you notice something working, you tweak it further to enhance the effects. You discard whatever doesn’t work, and you keep experimenting with adding new practices you think might be promising. You might start clustering certain practices that work well together into “modules” that can be done in a particular sequence at a particular time of day. You maintain a regular, rhythmic structure to your practice while also allowing for plenty of flexibility and innovation. All along, you pay attention to grounding and integration with daily life.
In my case, when I began my Descent, I already had a morning routine in place where I sat in meditation out on my back deck for about an hour and then practiced qigong for half an hour. Additionally, I did an hour of walking meditation at the end of my work day and did yoga in the evening before bed. Once I started the Descent in earnest, I realized that it was during my qigong practice that I experienced an enhanced receptivity to visions. So, I started to experiment with that portion of my routine to see how I could maximize those effects. Little by little, as a result of these experiments, my qigong session started to transform.
By the time my Descent culminated three years later, that half hour of qigong had become a completely different module. It had moved to my basement and had gradually morphed into a 40-45 minute session, the first half involving shamanic drumming and vigorous spontaneous movements where I allowed spirits and energies to arise and move through my body, and the second half involving sitting in the center of a visualized mandala surrounded by ancestors and protective goddesses on all sides. Often, those spirits took me on a journey to far-away spirit worlds where I met teachers and other beneficial beings.
Over time, I also developed a small altar that I used for 15-20 minutes or so to initiate and complete the morning module. Some of the things I incorporated into these rituals that opened and closed my morning module included ringing a bell to invoke beneficial deities; my surrender prayer; offerings of food, drink, and tobacco for my ancestors; offering of fire, light, and perfume to my spirit guides; consulting an oracle card for divination.
For me, it happened to be the morning module where I incorporated most of my Below-centered practices, and I fit a whole range of different practices into that time. I kept the things that worked for me, but I let go of many of the ones I tried — such as dream journaling, chanting mantras, a martial-arts type exercise routine, high-heat sauna, and making art, among others — when I saw that they didn’t enhance my experience of the Below in any kind of predictable way.
As I keep saying, I am not giving you these details to suggest that my style of practice is the right way for you to do things. Experiment and do what works for you. I just want to give an example of how rituals might be incorporated, adapted, and stitched together as a part of a process of creative innovation. The main idea here is that nothing should be fixed in stone. Spiritual teachings — no matter how authoritative they may be — are merely suggestions, rough guidelines that you can feel free to tweak or ignore as you see fit. All of your practices should be flexible, adjustable, modifiable, and you are the one who is in the drivers’ seat.
Your best guide in the design of your own personalized suite of ritual practices is always going to be your own inner guidance. That may come as a gut feeling, or a felt sense of alignment and purpose, or an energetic pull toward something, or even in the form of a seemingly external spirit protector, guide, or higher power. (Note that inner guidance doesn’t come from thinking, emotions, or other egoic activity.) Whatever form your guidance comes in, if it’s authentic, it will always lead you to make innovations in your practice that are beneficial.
When you are familiar with what practices work for you and help you to connect with the Below, and you are communicating well with your inner guidance, you will feel confident to spontaneously modify or invent rituals on the fly, knowing that they will be effective and meaningful. I have been called upon to do this many times in a variety of circumstances over the years, but I still remember one of the first times as particularly meaningful.
I was staying in a cottage beside a small private lake, and one day found myself alone for several hours around sunset. I had been feeling a certain draw toward the lake, and took the opportunity to try to connect with its elemental spirits in a more intentional way than I had done up to that point. I didn’t know what I was going to do to connect, but I knew I wanted to go into the water to do so.
Stripping down to bare skin, I entered the lake up to my waist and looked out over the water, watching the ripples of orange and pink sunlight dancing across its surface. I noticed that, because I was moving, these ripples were traveling from me outward, emanating out toward the center of the lake. So, I imagined that these ripples were carrying my good intentions and energies out to the water spirits, bringing them messages of joy and wellbeing. As I stilled my body and relaxed my breathing, I watched as the ripple patterns slowly changed across the quiet surface of the lake. After a while, they were no longer emanating outwards, but were instead coming from the center of the lake towards me. I thanked the spirits for returning my message, and I felt a subtle sense of pleasure on my skin as the ripples lapped gently at my torso.
I was moved to make an offering to the lake spirits to embody my gratitude and respect for them, but here I was, naked, waist-deep in water, with nothing to give them. Just then, I remembered that my body is itself about 70% water. In other words, the water spirits that I was communicating with out there in the lake were also here within my own body! Having had this realization, the offering I should make suddenly became clear. I urinated, visualizing the waters of my body intermingling with the waters of the lake. Then, I dunked my head under the surface so that the waters of the lake washed over the waters of my body. The intention was a commingling, or unification, of the water spirits of my body with those of the lake.
As I stood back up after this exchange of elements, I noticed that I was now surrounded by dozens of flower-like plants. My movements as I dunked myself must have disturbed the underwater foliage of the lake, causing these to float up to the surface. Given the context, it was clear to me that this was a positive response from the water spirits, a confirmation that my invented ritual and offering was well-received as a celebration of our unity.
Now, if I just had told you, out of context, that I urinated in a lake to connect with the water spirits that inhabited it, you might think I was disrespectful, or crazy, or both. But, in context, I hope you see how this made total sense. Anyway, the point of my story is not to prescribe the best way for you to communicate with water spirits. It’s to give you an example of how ritual innovation can take shape spontaneously. In that moment, standing in the lake, I was deeply immersed in the imaginal world and had a sincere intention to connect. I had given offerings and exchanged energies with many types of spirits in the past, and was confident about my ability to feel into the situation at hand and to respond appropriately in the moment. With those things in place, the connection could unfold naturally and I could respond spontaneously in an authentic way with actions that felt right and were meaningful in the moment.
Notice that I didn’t consult a guidebook on how to construct a ritual for the water element. I didn’t need to pull out my phone and Google what kind of gift to offer to a lake spirit. I didn’t even reach into my own repertoire of rituals I had cultivated and perfected over the years. The key is not figuring out “the right thing to do.” It’s about creating your own authentic relationship with the Below, and then taking guidance from the energies that emerge through that connection.
Here’s another story with a similar point, this time about how Jack sought and followed the advice of his dragon guides when he was in need of financial assistance:
When I first was starting my business, and was having financial problems, I reached out to the golden dragon, and I was like, “Okay, please help me. I really, really need your help.” And she was like, “Of course.” So I said, ”Okay, what do we need to do? Do we need to do a ritual or something?” And she’s like, “Yeah, we can do a ritual.” And I’m like, “Okay, so do I need to offer you money? Like, do you want all the rest of my money?” And she’s like, “No, you don’t need to think like that. I just love really shiny coins. I don’t care about the value, I just like that it’s shiny. So, take a few pennies that are super shiny, take them down to the water by the sea. Place them on a stone that feels right for you. Ask me to provide you wealth. And it’s done.”
And so I go down to the sea. And there’s a huge storm, and the waves are enormous. I go down to the water and there were a couple of stones that were already on top of each other. It looked like a little altar. So I walk over to that, and I place my coins on it. I state my wish. And then I look up and there’s this huge wave coming towards me. So I run out of the way so that I don’t get wet.
And as I turn around, I see the wave coming in and it goes over my offering and then pulls it back into the sea. This was pretty mind-blowing to see. And then I look out over the ocean and I could just feel the dragon’s spirit all throughout the ocean. Like she’s just this huge, vast being. It felt amazing. I felt really uplifted by it.
And, within about two days, I had a sale for my most expensive long-term program that brought in more money than I had ever brought in a single sale. And it completely wrote off my debts and provided for me for the next three months.