Opening the Channels
Excerpted from "Awakening the Below" by Oholomo, available now from Aeon Press!
Whatever psychedelic practices you are using, if you wish to enhance and deepen your experiences of the Below, my advice is to work on opening up as many of your sensory channels to it as you can. For whatever reason, different people seem to have natural aptitudes for engaging with certain kinds of sensory stimuli while others remain relatively underdeveloped. In my case, my sense of vision and body sensations were naturally my strongest channels. For me, that meant that the whole range of imaginal experiences, energy flows, spirit visitations, and other aspects of the Below manifested most clearly as visionary and tactile experiences.
My visions began spontaneously. As I lay in bed before sleep one night, I started to have what I can only describe as a dream-like experience while I was still awake. The imagery was extremely vivid: I saw my body surrounded by an energetic egg of white light, which in turn was lying in the coils of a black snake. I could see the eyes of the snake, and the details of the coils quite clearly with eyes closed, although it would disappear if I opened my eyelids. From this initial event, I went on to have a great number of vividly real and profoundly meaningful visions — several per day — throughout the rest of my sojourn in the Below.
Almost all of these visions were accompanied by body sensations. These could be subtle, such as a general feeling of warmth or safety, or quite strong, such as a rush of fear or sexual energy. Over time, I realized that certain configurations of body sensations were associated with certain spirits, guides, or other imaginal entities I was seeing in my visions. For example, there was the spirit of an old indigenous South American woman that appeared to me visually, always accompanied by a feeling of weight on my back like I was carrying a backpack. There was the black jaguar spirit that felt like a rush of fear up the left back side of my body that sprang out in front of me from my left shoulder. There was a blonde angelic feminine figure whose presence I could feel walking alongside my right side, and whose hair sometimes would glance my cheek.
What I didn’t experience with any clarity was auditory signals. Only twice did I hear a voice clearly saying something to me. But other people are different, reporting frequent auditory communications in words or celestial music or other sounds. Here is how Jack, for example, talks about his interactions with his guides:
In terms of connecting with guides or spiritual beings, it started when I was asking myself questions, and I noticed that my head was either nodding or shaking in response to those questions. And then I realized that my body was being used by higher beings to answer the questions of my mind. I asked, “Are these my guides?” And then my head starts nodding. My mind was blown.
And then I asked a question, “What is the purpose of my life?” And the answer came through. I would say it was the auditory sense, but I wouldn’t even describe it as words. It was a felt sense, which could be interpreted into words. And the words were “You are to be a teacher and leader of man. You’re here to save humanity.” And it came from this place of utter peace, and truth and sincerity. There was no hint of ego or anything; it was just pure.
As time went on, I developed these auditory connections with spiritual beings where I would hear their voice inside my mind. You know, people talk about their mind’s eye; it was like my mind’s ear. Sometimes they’ll send me images, or I’ll close my eyes. And it’s like I’m watching a movie; I’ll just be experiencing all this stuff. And they’ll just explain things to me through that.
And on rare occasions, maybe only two or three times, I’ve heard an actual auditory sound in the room. And every time it’s the Morrigan. And there’ll be her talking to me, you know, I’ll hear her saying my name in the room.
But it’s mostly a feeling sense that could be interpreted into words. And that’s a fascinating form of communication. It’s almost like it’s 10 times the speed of speaking. So it’s like these waves of energy moving back and forth. And so you can have these like massive resolutions and insights and all sorts of stuff, in a super short period of time.
The main advice I want to share here is to start with the sensory channels that naturally seem to be the most open, and take steps to enhance those. If you naturally start to see visions, then perhaps you should move your practice time into a darkened environment where you can more readily see them. (I moved my morning practice from the back deck to my dark basement for exactly this reason.) If you naturally are prone to bodily sensations, then perhaps do some kind of practice that will enhance your receptivity to them. (For me, I discovered that repetitive movement practice such as qigong or ecstatic dancing was most effective.) If you are receiving auditory messages, then maybe you need to work more with sound. (That may perhaps mean moving to a totally silent practice space, or chanting out loud, or singing bowls, or some other kind of sound-based practice.)
Once you have figured out how to maximize the channels that come to you naturally, you can then turn to developing the ones that don’t. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to how to enhance sensory channels. For me, I found that I could enhance my auditory channel by ringing a bell and listening to shamanic drumming as part of my daily practice. I also found that the smell of burning tobacco, perfume, and other aromatic offerings had an evocative sensory effect. I am not telling you what to do specifically, but rather suggesting that you consciously pay attention to how the practices you are engaged in affect the sensory channels, and see if you can find a combination of set, setting, and technique that enhances the clarity and quality of the messages you are receiving. Whatever the specific details, the goal is to create imaginal experiences that you tangibly see, feel, hear, smell, and taste. Immersive multi-sensory experiences that are manifesting across as many sensory dimensions as you can manage will have a notable effect on strengthening and deepening your experience of the Below.
Over time you’ll create strong associations between certain sensory cues and certain experiences of the Below. Here’s Misha talking about the benefits of a multisensory immersive practice:
My primary, low hanging fruit sense modes are tactile — which is the whole body, not just surface — and I tend to get a lot of visuals. And then there’s felt sense stuff, which I’m not sure if that’s exactly just body or energy or what. Into that, I have introduced scent. I have medicine objects like specific stones, little bear fetishes, a twig from my ash tree outside. Of course, there is music, instrumentals, songs, and chants. On the more tactile end, a teddy bear that’s soft, so my system is like, “Ohhh… soothing… soft…” and that’s combined with my image of Bear as protector. And then darkness and posture.
And, if I’m wanting to enrich things, I also pay attention to multi-modality: using thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations, desires, and actions. The more immersive my experiences, the more richness. When processes show up spontaneously at a low level of intensity, it can be much easier for me to just disregard them and not actively engage. However, more active engagement enriches the experiences. And the more full and intense they are, and the more any particular element is repeatedly included, then there’s this wonderful byproduct or associated effect of cueing the nervous system to a pay attention to that kind of information in the future. Even if there’s not conscious attention being paid, the nervous system is paying attention to things in the environment.
The more you enrich it and the longer it lasts, the more it installs, the more deeply the system is sinking into the experience. The nervous system learns this, and then these specific sensory elements can later act as cues to prep the system to say, “I’m going into this state, or I’m doing this kind of work, or I’m going to engage in whatever.”