The purpose of this Shamanic Journey is to travel to the Upper World to the Spirit realm and ask the Spirits for guidance around the topic of how can humans most take care of their mental health.

This was an easy topic to come up with for the shamanic journey for today’s show, as it’s so clear, that the mental health of our country and probably of the entire planet, of humans, is not optimum. And that it’s important that we do something for our mental health, our mental fitness, robustness, resilience, etc.
This is urgent as deteriorating mental health will have dire consequences for humanity, for the planet. So I’m traveling upwards alongside my energy beam, going up and up and up, as always sticking close to the beam and giving myself gentle little tugs, where I’m not actually climbing, like climbing a rope, but just using it as a guide, and as a boost that takes me up.
I’m seeing pink marble steps at the Upper World which I’ve seen many times before, and I understand these are an entryway to the Upper World. I climb up them and I’m calling in my Spirit teachers of the Upper World. I go through their identities as, as is usual, I want to have a full team of Spirit support with me. I go through their identities in my silent mind. And I also call in my benevolent Spirit Ancestors, the Spirits of my ancestors to bring their benevolence and compassion and wisdom and perspective. I’m shown immediately an old time water well, like one might see in children’s story books, it’s got a circular low brick or stone wall around it, and a little canopy above, and a reel for lowering a bucket to get the water below.
I’m not sure why I’m being shown this at this at the moment. I do get an immediate message that to get goodness, to get the goodness, one has to go down deep.
So the water, the desirable water, is deep below, and one has to lower the container deep down to get the water. I will have to think more about the meaning of this.
I’m being told that mental health – that’s just the short phrase that is being used – mental wellness, mental fitness, is absolutely essential, just as water is essential for human life, animal life, and plant life. Mental health, is essential for all life on our planet. It’s absolutely essential. Without it life withers and eventually dies.


In ancient times, water would simply be drunk from rivers or from pools, but now we can’t do that as our society has evolved to such complexity that we have to very very deliberately access water and get it to humans and animals and plants, and make sure that it’s safe water. There is a great deliberateness about it.
In ancient times, the minds and consciousness and social structures etc of people were way, way, way more simple. Mental health in the very earliest stages of humanity, was something that was much more intrinsic, and didn’t have to be in a sense deliberately cultivated. But now our society has evolved to such complexity, that mental health has to be very deliberately cultivated.

We’ve got to make an effort. The Spirits are placing a very strong emphasis on the importance of being deliberate, about nurturing, developing, safeguarding, our mental health.


And now of course the question is what can we do, or should we do?
When I was first thinking of this topic, as a topic for today’s journey, I was immediately flooded with all kinds of information, which often happens when I anticipate a journey.
I know that some of that information is coming to me directly from the Spirit Realm even though I haven’t yet actually started the shamanic journey, but the Spirits are already, out of compassion and benevolence, plying me with relevant information.
But of course I do have to be careful as well, to discriminate between information that I am just thinking up myself, versus information that comes directly from the Spirit World.
But I was told that very broadly speaking, there is what we should do, to develop and safeguard our mental health, and how we should do what we should do.
There is what we should not do, to safeguard and nurture our mental health, and how we should not do. There is doing, and there is not doing, and the manner in which we do, and the manner in which we do not do, is very important.

And one of the pieces of information that came to me when I was just briefly thinking about doing this journey, is that we are riddled with tension, anxiety, worry, fear, despair, uncertainty, trauma – and those are direct antagonists for mental health.

The Spirit say that Spirituality is crucial, and that the essence of Spirituality can be described as an understanding, or a faith, or a belief, or a conviction, that the true nature of Reality is Divine.
This is something that I personally have been speaking to myself about recently – the true nature of Reality is Divine.
This has the basic meaning or implication, that existence is meaningful, and that the essence of that meaningfulness, is Divine. We may not be able to say what Divine really means, but I think we all have a feeling when we say Divine, of something, maybe “transcendental” is the word, or “there is more to reality than meets the eye”.
And that “more”, is Divine. It’s absolutely essential to our mental health, to have that understanding, that faith, that belief, or even that hope.

The Spirits also say that we need to be much more careful about the, call it the toxins that we put in our bodies.
They say mental health is closely aligned with, and influenced by physical health, and certainly if we are smoking, drinking, drugging, that’s not beneficial to mental health. There is a Latin phrase – “Mens sana in corpore sano “ – that translates as “a sound mind in a sound body”, and that that is applicable.
We should not do the things that toxify, and pollute our systems, our physical systems. The Spirits say that at the same time the manner in which one does not do, is important, and to be absolutely rigid and rigorous and judgmental and punitive, is not at all aligned with mental health either.
They are not saying one can never have a glass of wine, or enjoy foods and drinks which could be regarded as toxic, or pollutants.
One should certainly minimize them, but it’s no good having a rigorous judgmental, harsh attitude towards it either.
They say that the very act of looking after our health as best we can, not only looks after our health from the point of view of “a sound mind in a sound body”, but the actual intentionality to look after our health, and the actual effort that we put into looking after our health, again without obsessiveness (they stress that), but the actual act of looking after our health with intention and deliberateness, promotes mental health. Wanting to be kind to ourselves, wanting to be helpful to ourselves, is in itself, a nurturing of our mental health.

They also say we need to be discriminating in so many spheres.
One is, who we associate with, who our friends are, and to spend more time in relationships that are mutually constructive.

And less time in relationships that are mutually problematic.

They also show me an outside scene – I’m sitting in a green grassy field, with a landscape view that extends way out to a horizon, its very spacious and open. They say that exposure to nature, to the outdoors, just being in the outdoors, again in and of itself, promotes mental health.

And they say what they have said to me on previous journeys, that what we expose our consciousness to in terms of the media, what we read, what we see on TV, what we hear in music, et cetera, all the input that we’re exposed to, that’s really important to monitor. We must be very discriminating, and know that what we might call “entertaining” or “amusing”, is very often not helpful to our mental health.
Discrimination is really important.

They also say that some that form of meditation practice – and they describe this very broadly as of quieting the mind, and of allowing the true nature of our awareness, to see the light of day – that’s how they put it, is really important.
Any kind of meditation which promotes a quieting of the mind, and an emerging of, there is this phrase I think from the Hindu, “Sat Chit Ananda” or “Pure Bliss Awareness. (which would be the ideal of course), but anything which takes us in that consciousness direction, would be good.

All the while tickling me in the back of my mind, has been a vague image of a cart, like an old fashioned cart with large round wooden wheels with spokes, wooden spokes, going along a sort of like a farm track.
I understand that there is a worker, a laborer, going home at the end of the day, and looking forward to being “home”, and that it’s beneficial to our mental health to be able to look forward to being “home”.
The Spirits say that there is the literal home, the literal dwelling, the room, the house, the apartment, the shack, and that it promotes mental health to be able to look forward to arriving home at the end of the day.
They also say, they use the old phrase “home is where the heart is”, and that for our mental health, we need heart in our lives.
Heart at its broadest is love, and compassion, and benevolence.
We ideally would be experiencing being loved, and being the recipients of compassion, and benevolence.
However, and they give me another phrase here, of saying “you get what you give” – that we can promote heart, and the consequent mental health, by giving love, giving compassion, giving benevolence.
No matter what scale it’s on like even if it’s just being pleasant and patient and kind to somebody in the grocery store, or in line in the post office, whatever seemingly mundane level it might be on, if our interactions (and it’s not just with people, it’s with animals as well, and actually they say the plant Kingdom too), have an element of love, an element of benevolence, and element of compassion, that connects us with heart.

We need to be more “at home” in ourselves. Mental health is being “at home” in oneself, and we can be more at home in ourselves, and more at home in the World, to the extent that we are connected to heart.
The Spirits say this is really fundamentally helpful – to be deliberate about connecting to Heart.

And on that note, excellent timing, the drums have changed to call me back.
I thank the Spirits for this very potent journey, and I leave the well where I’ve been around, and I go back down the pink marble steps to the thread, and I’m going down and down and down and down and back to the middle World.
Back to ordinary everyday reality, and the journey is over.
The final drum call-back sounds. and I’m back in ordinary reality.