Destiny: Norma and Nisha Burton, Navigating Liminal Realms

Safely explore inner worlds through altered states of consciousness

• Investigates drumming-induced trance states through shamanic journeying

• Provides advanced lucid dreaming training, sharing techniques for inducing lucidity and skillfully navigating our inner cosmos

• Explores the mindful use of psychedelics, offering guidance on setting intention, navigating the experience, and integrating insights

OFFERING TECHNIQUES from psychonauts ancient and modern, this profound guide helps you navigate consciously into the depths of the human psyche. Psychonavigation is the art of mindfully exploring the liminal realms of consciousness. This requires a map, a guide, and a clear intent, so one does not emerge overwhelmed and struggling with unexpected shadow material.

Norma and Nisha Burton map the important connection between three gateways into the psyche’s depths: lucid dreaming, shamanic drumming trance journeys, and ceremonial plant medicine journeys. With drumming-induced trance journeys, they explore the scientific effect on brainwave frequencies alongside consciousness teachings from indigenous cultures like the Sami of Norway and Huichol of Mexico. Their masterful approach to lucid dreaming transcends basic instruction, offering sophisticated techniques to not only summon but sustain lucidity and integrate suppressed parts of oneself. They explain how a mindful engagement with entheogens can be profoundly enhanced through these precursory mystical practices, creating a safe container for integration and meaning-making that honors the gravity of such experiences.

With these skillful methodologies, ancient psycho-spiritual techniques meet ultra-current science to enable seekers to process and integrate profound encounters with expanded consciousness.

Norma J. Burton is a counselor and theologian with academic degrees in Buddhist psychology and shamanic traditions. She specializes in trauma healing, shadow work, and Jungian dream analysis. Having apprenticed with indigenous elders for more than 30 years, she founded the Journey to Completion methodology and the Circle of Trust Healing Center.

Nisha Burton has been a skilled dream worker and lucid dreaming practitioner for more than a decade. She’s an award-winning filmmaker and a sought-after consultant on branding and emerging technologies for Fortune 100 companies. A specialist in visual storytelling and film-AI integration, she speaks at conferences and universities worldwide.

www.thejourneytocompletion.con

Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/earth-ancients--2790919/support.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:12):
Welcome to Destiny. Now here's your host, Cliff Dunning.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Well, hello, how are you? How are you doing? This
is Cliff, your host of Destiny, and I do hope
you're doing well. Today we have a I think an
important program today. It has to do with vision questing,
working with trauma, and working with shamanic techniques that release
trauma in a more natural sense of the term. And

(00:44):
when I say that, we have had we've had people
on the program talking about working with psychedelics. That's another
word for plant medicine. And when we look at the
indigenous use of plant medicines, and we'll learn more about
this today, that they were typically not introduced until other

(01:06):
types of vision quester journeying was completed. And one of
the areas that I have learned and known about for
years and participated in is drumming drum circles, because what
happens when you are in a drum circle or you're
focusing on your own drumming, you go into an altered state.

(01:27):
And in those altered states, you can begin working with
what they call the shadow, bringing out the shadow, working
with traumatic incidents, working with ancestral trauma, which is a
big theme right now, and I think, and I'm not
a big advocate of psychedelics, although we've had people on

(01:49):
the program talking about ayahuasca, dmt LSD, even in microdoses,
which is the favorite focus for a lot of people,
younger people, I guess, but it's not necessarily the way
for a lot of people, including myself. And today we're

(02:11):
gonna hear from two people that I would consider shamans
in their own right. In fact, one of my guests
actually has worked with Shamantic tribes or native tribes in
the United States. And again, they don't really advocate using

(02:34):
plant medicines until after a period of time. In fact,
sometimes it's a couple of years to do journeying work
with so you know, it might be the quick need
for or the need for quick gratification that a lot
of us in the western side of the world are
interested in. And I have friends that are using, you know, ayahuasca.

(02:58):
They talk about their journey. What if I were using
plant medicines too soon? What if we're advocating the use
of this rather than doing the homework. And I have
been wondering about this for a while, and this is
why we have our guests today to talk about the
importance of using a system of therapeutic approaches from a

(03:22):
shamanistic indigenous point of view, and then opening to a
plant medicine journey using mushroom, psilocybin, ayahuasca or DMT. The
thought of using ayahuasca is one of that you really
have to prepare for. And you know, when we have

(03:45):
Graham Hancock on the program, he's done. I think it's
seventy different journeys with ayahuasca. In some cases he's gone
all the way down to Peru, and he actually talks
about a couple of different elders, shamatic elders that he
is he has used for his journeying. But everybody is different,

(04:09):
everybody is in a different process. If you are new
to the consideration of using plant medicines, I think this
will be a good program for you today because the
approach is a little bit different. And again, according to
my guest today, indigenous cultures did not introduce plant medicines

(04:30):
until a good deal of prep work was done identifying
the problem areas working with drumming, working with dreaming. We're
gonna talk about lucid dreaming. We haven't talked a great
deal recently about lucid dreaming, which is a very, very
powerful aspect of dreaming. But actually you have to get

(04:52):
into the repetition of remember your your dreams, having regular
dreams before you go to bed, closing your eyes, and
having an intention to have a good, solid dream on
a topic. I want to dream that defines the relationship
that I currently have. I want to dream that helps

(05:15):
me understand my work situation. I want to dream about
you know, this work that I am doing, and so
forth and so on. So these dreams are a part
of our consciousness that we don't really I mean, dream work,

(05:37):
dream journaling is really sacred. And I'm one of these
people that go to bed and I'm gone, and I
probably remember my dream I probably have dreams, but I
just don't wake up. And so I'm the worst person
right now to be remembering my dreams, promoting my dreams,

(05:58):
and intending that have good therapeutic dreams. Now, I don't
remember ever having a lucid dream. But over the years
I've I've featured people who are experts on lucid dreaming,
and from the sound from the sound of it, it's

(06:19):
just in what I've read, it sounds it's just amazing.
It's like a form of a different reality. It's so real,
and there's techniques to understand that you are in a
lucid state of consciousness and lucid dream. So and so
I think you're gonna enjoy today's program, you know, because

(06:40):
it is a prep for the potential of using plant
medicines or in many many cases, the journey, the healing,
the vision quest that takes place outside of using plant medicines,

(07:02):
powerful plant medicines, so that you in some cases don't
even have to worry about using plant medicines. And as
you'll hear today, there's a lot of our population that
doesn't need to use psychedelics and other powerful plant medicines
to induce other states of consciousness. So today's program is

(07:25):
navigating liminal realms. And my guests are Norma and Nisha Burton,
mother and daughter authors. This is a great segue into
our tours. We have a Guatemala tour coming up. It's
the Sacred Temples of Guatemala, December first, the twelfth. I'll

(07:47):
tell you what's beautiful about this tour is that we
will be working with shaman. We will be working with
people who are sensitive to energy, and we have hands
on access to climb some of the largest and most
important pyramids and temples in all of Central America. This
is a wonderful tour, not only because it is great

(08:08):
for enhancing your consciousness and also healing trauma, but we'll
also have a chance to do sessions together. We'll also
have a chance to be with people who are sensitive
to energy, who understand the energy that it's emitting from
these various temples and pyramids. Again, this is not to

(08:29):
be missed. We have some special additions for you. The
price is going to be increasing in August, so if
you can get on board before the last part of
the month, and also those who sign up between now
and the first part of November will receive the full program,

(08:49):
tapes and audios of the Atlantis Summit that just happened
last month, and you get a bonus program of Lydia
Di Leong and Arturo Di Leong, Sacred Geometry, Sacred Building
Mechanisms and Sacred Energy. Finally, those who sign up before

(09:11):
the end of the month get an Earth Ancient's T
shirt complete with the latest logo designs that we have
been working on. The Sacred Pyramid tour of Guatemala December first,
the twelfth. For all the details and all the information,
go to earthacients dot com forward slash tours, look for

(09:32):
the banner, click it and register. I'm always looking for

(10:14):
interesting books on not only working with psychedelics, but also
dealing with trauma and dealing with trauma in a way
where you can identify it, which I think a lot
of us have a problem with. I admit to that.
I'll raise my hands with that. Where is my trauma?
What is my trauma? But moving beyond that into therapeutic
approaches that are beneficial and not so much painful, And

(10:39):
I think sometimes people get into situations where they're having
some problems. My guests today are a mother and daughter team,
Norma Burton and Nisha Burton, who've written a book called
Navigating Liminal Realms, and I have to tell you I
liked it a lot because we're talking about working with

(11:00):
psychedelics but also identifying trauma through more traditional means. Norma
is a counselor with a degree in comparative religion, focusing
on Buddhism or Buddhist and Shamanic traditions. She specializes in
trauma healing, shadow work, and dream analysis. A Nisha is

(11:23):
a skilled dream worker and we're going to talk a
lot about lucid dreaming today as well. Trained in the
art of journeying and the deep subconscious from a young age.
So those are great. So, guys, welcome to Destiny. Great
to have you on the program, Thanks.

Speaker 3 (11:41):
For having us.

Speaker 1 (11:42):
Excited to be here.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
Norma, I want to talk really with you first. One
of the things I really like about the book is
the kind of Indigenous background that you have, and you
kind of carry that through the book as a foundation
and little bit about how you have been impressed by
Indigenous therapeutic approaches, how they as a people, as different

(12:10):
tribes or whatever go about working with trauma.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
Well, first of all, we all have a deep indigeneity,
which means connection to the earth in our lineages, right,
but many of the Western lineages have been so cut
off from our earth based roots. But it's a creation

(12:37):
centered spirituality, so that means going to nature, to valuing
being with plants, animals and other consciousnesses that can help
us and guide us. And we really think and must

(13:02):
do many things to be thankful for and help indigenous
peoples on the Earth who have held these traditions alive
all through the centuries and have gone through a lot
of suffering to try to do that. So I grew
up on a Native American reservation where my grandparents were

(13:23):
adopted into the tribe, and then that created in me
a deep desire to study with and be with indigenous
Native people in many places. So I traveled around the
United States in Mexico and Central America and South America
through my twenties and thirties and forties to be immersed

(13:44):
in these cultures and learned from amazing teachers that had
not lost touch and were the bearers of this information.
So in regard to what is unique about it beautiful
about indigenous teachings, like I've just said, being in touch
with nature, but then also navigating one's inner cosmos, that

(14:09):
we have a birthright that we must explore our deep unconscious.
So the first thing that you do in shamanic or
a ritual that is it's based on nature like this,
is you dig into the earth, and it also is

(14:30):
symbolizing digging into your own deep unconscious. So we go
down and in first, not up and out. And so
many of the patriarchal oriented religions, whatever we want to
say about the disconnect from the earth, they teach you
to go up and out and to flee from what
they call hell or the darkness or the body, to

(14:53):
flee from that as if that is evil. But no,
indigenous teachings will always tell you to go down and
in into your body, into the earth, into your deep unconscious.
So stop talking there for a minute. But that's one
distinctive part about is.

Speaker 2 (15:09):
There something about the actual act of digging that triggers
the mind? And I'm thinking they're drumming as as somebody
is doing this digging, because you're there's a portion of
your book that's very focused on drumming. But is there
something happened to the person who is beginning this therapeutic
journey that they're digging and triggering, like releasing trauma or something.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
Yes, in the shamanic drumming, you know, the shaman, the
leader is drumming just a steady beat, and that is
actually it's been proven scientifically, and we speak about this
in the book. That's aligning your brain waves with a
certain energy that's called the earth energy. So it's bringing

(15:58):
your brain waves down into concentration that enables you to
be receptive, to be hearing, the feeling, hearing, sensing in
all ways, the energies of the earth. And so the
digging process is the ancient method of getting your brain
to focus, because our brains are so easily distracted and

(16:21):
you know, monkey mind led in all directions, and so
the digging is, in this meditative practice, the way to
get your mind to focus. But it's very symbolic to
the right of going down into the earth and getting
your fingernails dirty and getting down in there, but down
into your own deeper unconscious too.

Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah, Nisha, what do you feel about this native tradition
that your mom is bringing forward. I mean, obviously you're
living that and you're around that all the time, but
as a younger person, how do you adapt that information.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
Yeah, it's been so wonderful to grow up in the
way I have, and I really am grateful to my
mom for raising me in this very multicultural way. From
the time I was a child, she was leading tours
to sacred sites around the world and working with indigenous
teachers and healers and shawmans, and so I joined her

(17:17):
on all of those trips and I really got to
see how various cultures approach reality and the dream time
and ordinary reality, and how it can be so different
from our Western world where the two are very cut
off from one another and waking reality is held as
the pinnacle of what we should all be focused on,

(17:37):
and the dream time is diminished or disregarded, And so
traveling and seeing and being immersed in these other cultures
where the dream time and waking reality are much more
integrated helped me in my foundational self to value the
dream time along with my mom's encouragement. And then on
my dad's side of the family too, we are Native

(17:58):
American as well as African Americans, and so the indigenity
and being raised in that in all ways feels very
powerful because it is and then kind of being a
bridge person right living in this Western world too and
being able to have a foot in both worlds, so
to speak, and understand that there is a craving right now,

(18:21):
in this current time in our culture for that reconnection
with the dream time and for the reconnection with these
non ordinary states of consciousness, which I think is a
lot of why people are very excited and seeking out
psychedelics too, is to be able to experience firsthand what
it's like to cross over into the dream time while awake. Still,

(18:44):
so yeah, very grateful for how I was raised and
that I can have all of these parts in me
that now are being really like welcomed by the world
because everybody wants to know about all these things.

Speaker 2 (18:56):
Yeah, I love it. Before we started, I mentioned that
I've after reading the book, I felt that you both
were what you could considered present day shaman. And you know,
I don't neither one of you've balked at all, because
you're kind of like, well, maybe that's a definition of
what we do. Well, when I say that to you, Norma,
what does that imply? How do you feel about that?

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yes, well, I was saying to you that the word
shaman has been perhaps appropriated and overused some and so
now people are tending to shy away from it. But
when I was younger, I was called together by my
whole community tribe, the elders, when I was seventeen, and

(19:40):
they said, we've watched you grow up and we know
you have a spiritual calling.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
Hmmm.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
So I was seen as having some you know, special
psychic abilities I guess, and energy of healing, and so
the only direction I knew to go was toward seminary
and getting educated to be a minister, right, which I did,
But all along I knew it wasn't really quite a

(20:07):
minister in the Christian sense, although I deeply value who
Christ really was, of course, which I think is one
of the greatest shamans that's lived.

Speaker 2 (20:20):
That's a good term. I never thought about Christ he
as a shaman.

Speaker 1 (20:23):
Yeah, So that I kept seeking out though, well, what
are other models in the world for being a spiritual healer?
And Michael Harner in the late seventies brought back the
term shaman from the Amazon, but really it originated in Mongolia, right,
So this word to name a spiritual healer leader in

(20:46):
the tribe became very resonant with me, and I felt like, wow,
I think this is what I felt in my soul
and was called to. So I value what that concept is.

Speaker 3 (21:01):
You know.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
And it's different than a priest too, you know. It's
a shaman is someone who lives more on the edge
of town, on the edge of society, and it's not
there to just uphold the societal norms. But people come
to you when they're ready to deconstruct how they have
identified in the world and go into this deep deconstruction

(21:24):
of self so that they can become more whole and
more integrated. And that may be challenging to society's constructs.
So that's a difference between a shaman and a priest.

Speaker 2 (21:35):
Working with indigenous people in some ways getting educated and mentoring.
Now that you've been in practice for many years, do
you think that we are missing something in our therapeutic
approach the general psychological evaluation and therapy. I mean, you
must be shocked at some of the stuff that is recommended,

(21:58):
But just quick, can you give us a sense of
why the path that you've chosen is more comfortable than
perhaps traditional therapy.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
That's a great question. As I was trying to into
it and be carefully crafting and being informed by spirit
about my career path, I made several key choices because
I saw the psychoelmic world is going in a direction

(22:34):
of more and more clinical rigidity and uprating the healer
from the people, putting oneself on a pedestal and being
not affected by and I always knew that wasn't true.
I always felt a deep inter beingness and yet you

(22:54):
know to have good boundaries, but at the same time,
know that we are not so separate from the ones
that were healing. So a book then later came out
that validated it, called Present and there's ay done by
a psychiatrists in New York that showed that no, the
therapist is not an unaffected observer, that we are a

(23:17):
part of the community.

Speaker 3 (23:18):
So I.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
Veered away from being a clinical psychologist and went toward
pastoral counseling, which you still get a deep training in
all aspects of abnormal psychology and psychology, but you're moved
into a communal role. So that's one part of it.
The communal role where you're in the position of being

(23:40):
with the people not so separated off. You have to
learn really good boundaries and confidentiality. But at the same
time you are an anamkara, a friend to the soul
of people in the community. That's one thing. A second
thing that's different is animism. That we are living in

(24:03):
an animistic world and we are part of it. We
are animals too, so to speak, you know, we are
part of the spirituality of the natural environment and that
can't be cut off. So early on I went towards
trans personal psychology as it was developed in my youth right,
that we don't separate ourselves from the spiritual dimensions. That's

(24:24):
a very important part of counseling. And so we accept
that we are greater than these bodies that were not
just limited to ordinary reality. So that's another part of it.
And then another part of it is that we are
ritual oriented. So ritual is very important to humans, you know,

(24:46):
doing things that connect us to the spiritual realm. So
my counseling process involves various rituals that I've been taught
by the Weechul and others to bring people into contact. Hey,
we're not just two humans doing this together. We are
in connection with things greater than ourselves, with great spirit,

(25:08):
and we're being met and guided. So those are some
ways that I think the shamanic type counseling is different.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
You know, I was thinking, we just came out of
this pandemic, and if you guys are doing the therapy
work on Zoom, they imagine that my imagination was going
to a drumming circle on Zoom. Did you guys do that?

Speaker 3 (25:30):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Yes, yes, that's kind right. I mean, you don't get
the same effect because the vibration isn't the same because
you're being passed through the little speakers, but maybe the
visual of everybody beating their drums still has the same effect.

Speaker 1 (25:47):
I guess definitely do it all on zoom, And yet
in my counseling process, like I have several weeks and
sessions that we can do it all on zoom, but
then I say, now we have to be together in person.
There's certain junctures in the deep journey to completion process
where I bring everybody together in person, because you're so
right that the energetic presence, in vibrational reality of being

(26:12):
in person is different than being a zoom.

Speaker 2 (26:15):
Fantastic nishe Your book covers the topic of the shadow,
and a lot of people don't understand what the shadow is.
What is the shadow and why is it so important
to identify the various aspects.

Speaker 3 (26:31):
Yeah, so it's true that a lot of people talk
about the shadow nowadays and invoke it and then don't
necessarily know what to do with it or how to
handle it. And I again feel really grateful to be
raised by my mom and her modality of shadow work
that she teaches, which is called the Journey to Completion,
because it feels like it is one of the most

(26:53):
accurate systems out there for identifying the shadow and understanding
how to work with it and then how to actually
bring it all the way through to healing so that
you can get the gift out of it. So I'll
begin talking about the shadow, and then my mom can
also talk about it. But the shadow she always talks
about is when somebody experiences trauma, then there's a split

(27:17):
that happens, and one part of you goes into the persona,
which is who you present to the world, and then
the other part goes down into the shadow, and that's
the part that you might have had to suppress or
to silence your voice, to put things down in there.
And we're always seeking to come back into wholeness. But

(27:40):
if we're operating from this place of being split, then
a lot of times we're working with projections and seeing
the shadow externally. And she has a really amazing way
of framing the shadow too, that's very unique. Where there's
inner shadow, which is how you are reacting to situations,
and there's the outer shadow, which is the people that

(28:02):
are triggering you or the situations that you're currently seeing
appear in your life. These patterns and these people that
are personifying these energies that are irritating to you and
are triggering to you, but it's because it's part of
the shadow pattern that exists together within yourself. So with
her work, what she does is she helps people to

(28:24):
really name those things, to trace the traumas as they've
occurred related to a particular shadow pattern, and then to
do the work of be integrating the shadow. And a
lot of what I talk about too is with the
dream time, you will see the shadow appear in the
form of nightmares, in the form of recurrent dreams. This

(28:47):
is your psyche trying to work through these shadow patterns
and work through these past traumas. But if people don't
have the right skills or tools to work through them,
then a lot of times that can be something that
turns them off from the dream time too, because maybe
they're having a lot of nightmares and are like, I
don't want to remember my dreams. I don't want to

(29:07):
be in touch with my dream time because it's a horrible,
scary place, right But really understanding, no, that is your
inner world, your psyche letting you know, hey, there's something
that I want to work through, and I'm going to
present this to you over and over again and in
stronger ways until you start to listen to it and
then seek out and waking reality, the shadow work help,

(29:29):
and then in the dream time, the lucid dreaming work
that you can do with nightmares and the shadow and
the dream time is really powerful. So we can talk
more about that.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
Yeah, I want to talk more about lucid dreaming, which
is kind of your sweet spot. But norma you use
a term called psycho navigation as a theme in the
therapeutic work that you do. Can you define that a
little bit and how you and this is this theme
runs through the book. How this is the important aspect

(30:01):
of identifying problematic trauma and how to resolve it. This
is the beginning of it. And we're going to talk
about the three key elements in a minute. But if
we could just get the psycho navigation to find I
really appreciate that, right.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
That's the theme of our book, psycho meaning the psyche,
the conscious and unconscious navigation. Like you're navigating a ship,
you know, you have to have a map and orient
yourself so that you know where you're going and where
you want to get to. So we have the premise

(30:40):
in this book that in ancient cultures that are like
we've been talking about, shamanic nature based people were taught
from the time they were children to learn how to
navigate in their own psyche through the dream time. They
were taught navigation skills. And this came about all over

(31:03):
the world in a similar way of valuing dreams and
learning from them, and of going into the altered state
by being let in there by a drum. And then
in that altered state there are geographies to explore. And
I've done this work with people all over the world

(31:25):
and it's amazing how humans in Japan, South America, Europe
all go to similar geographies in the dream time. Now
what does that mean? We humans have these places that
actually exist in altered states that we go to. So

(31:46):
I've learned these maps, you know, for over forty years,
these maps of the inner terrain, and then I discovered
that just a few years ago that there are shamanic
drums being discovered from ancient times in different cultures like
the Sami and Norway all tie way down in Lower Russia,
in all these different places where shamans made the maps

(32:09):
on their drumhead of the places that they were exploring,
and they were very similar to the maps that I've
journeyed on myself and watched people exploring. So psycho navigating
implies there are maps to follow, there are large general maps,
and then you have to discover the map of your

(32:31):
own inner pathways in your psyche. So this is the
work that people are jumping into, kind of into the
deep end when they take psychedelics, because you're going to
be going into these altered space zones but quite unaware
of what the patterns are and how to navigate there.
So that's why in our book, we're really trying to

(32:53):
let people know, hey, there are precursor methods that you
can develop that you can learn how to gradually, step
by step navigate well and purposefully and accurately in your
inner domains.

Speaker 2 (33:07):
Yeah, I just want to.

Speaker 1 (33:09):
Add something to that too.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
In our book, we talk a lot about this concept
of monophasic versus polyphasic awareness, and what those terms mean
is monophasic is when you're aware of one phase of
consciousness of reality, and polyphasic, as you can hear in
the word, means many phases. And so our culture is

(33:30):
very monophasicly oriented, meaning we're aware of waking reality. That's
what we put the importance on like I said earlier,
and that's all we regard really and are told to
forget our dream time, forget these other realms that we're
venturing into. But polyphasic cultures really appreciate and value all
the phases we go through. And why I bring it

(33:52):
up in relation to what my mom's talking about is
to be aware of the subtle because I feel like
in our culture we get so oriented towards extremes, and
so that's why psychedelics too, can be really alluring because
there's an extreme experience of an altered state of consciousness.
But truly we are constantly being altered, and we drink

(34:14):
caffeine and then we're altered that way, or we have
a charged experience with somebody, we're altered that way. In
the dream time, we're in another state of consciousness. And
so what we're teaching people, as you can hear, is
to be very present and aware continuously of what state
of reality they're in and what state of reality their
consciousness is in, because when you track that, when you

(34:36):
learn the maps of that, then you can live and
dream with more lucidity, which is what we talk about,
because you're really taking note of where your consciousness is
in every moment.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
I like that. We're going to take a short commercial
break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we
will return shortly with my guests today, authors Norma and
Nisha Burton, discussing their new book, Navigating Liminal Realms, will

(35:09):
be right back. My guests today are Norma and Nisha Burton,

(35:59):
a mother and daughter team who've written a new book
on shamanic journeying called Navigating Liminal Realms. The premise of
the book, I feel, is that you need to do
the work before you take the psychedelics. And I like

(36:21):
that because I think a nishe you phrase it beautifully.
I think people want to quick fix and they want
to take LSD or ayahuasca because everyone else is doing
it and they're missing out on the fact that our
Native elders were doing work and at the very end
of a ceremony or whatever, after perhaps weeks or maybe

(36:43):
even months, then a piote experience was delivered. Talk a
little bit about that, Norma, and this is I think
the fundamental basis of your book is that drumming dream
work prior to doing the psychedelic journeying is really critical,

(37:08):
isn't it.

Speaker 1 (37:09):
Yes, that is exactly the premise of our book and
why we felt it was crucial timing to get the
book out there because there's so much seeking of altered
states through psychedelics going on, like we know, and there's
done also a lot of exploitation and danger that is
developing right and people are lots of times not having

(37:32):
very good experiences because they're not taking it more slowly.
So the book shows that there are ways to have
amazing altered state experiences naturally without them being induced by
any substance. Because that's who we are. We have an

(37:54):
inner cosmos that we are meant to explore. And as
Niche was saying, there are subtle ways that we as
humans were taught by our shaman guides from the time
that you're a child to be aware of subtleties so
that you grow in your ability. It's like growing your neurons,

(38:15):
you know, growing your brain power to be much more
aware of subtleties and energy. It's all about energy right
in our energetic exchange. So when you slow it all
down and then teach people to walk this path of
inner awareness with more subtlety. You become more masterful in

(38:38):
ordinary reality dealing with energetic exchanges, as well as more
masterful in the dream time. And so there's the word impeccable.
I use that word a lot that we're heading toward
wanting to be more impeccable with energy, in other words,
doing the right thing in any particular moment with the

(38:59):
energies that are present. So you've got to be aware
of what the energies are, be aware of your own
energy system and your own abilities and skills so that
you do the right thing in the moment. And I
think that's what shamans have been trying to train people,
and with the use of psychedelics too, that you then

(39:20):
get big revelations about ways that you haven't been impeccable,
or ways that energy has been misused around you and
you've been traumatized by it. You get to be very
aware of that in an extreme way on a psychedelic journey. So,
like you're saying, the messages of the psychedelic journey were

(39:42):
meant to punctuate a lot of inner work. So when
I worked with the Weichow for many years, for example,
we did a lot of slow in our work with
them over a long period of time, and then we
would be given the peyote. It was a huge revelation
that brought together all that we'd been learning about ourselves.

(40:07):
And then they would tell us go slowly afterwards, and
we weren't allowed to take the peyote again for maybe
two years.

Speaker 2 (40:15):
Wow, a lot of.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
You needed to integrate it and go very slowly in
the integration of it. So, yeah, I think indigenous cultures
didn't just use it over and over and over again
in such close repetition, you know.

Speaker 2 (40:31):
Uh, yeah, I was going to ask you, how quickly
did they introduce psychedelics in the indigenous tradition for you?
Was it like after a month, a year, or at
the end of a cycle of learning or what.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
Yes, at the end of a cycle of learning. So
for me, it was several years of being with them, and.

Speaker 2 (40:55):
That seems more natural to me. You know, I think
people are jumping into ayahuasca right now, you know, I mean,
that's just that's just Western culture. You know. We don't
want to sit still and we don't want to do
the work.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
Well quick fixes. And I feel like that is something
that the movement has kind of capitalized on. In some
ways where it's like selling the miracle drugs of the
next thing. You're going to do one mushroom journey and
you're going to be healed from all your depression, and
like we're talking about, yes, they can be really powerful
punctuation tools to give you that insight and to create

(41:33):
the neuroplasticity. But then it's nice now because more people
are talking about integration, and that's the true change happens,
the preparation and the integration. And so really with many
plant medicines, the integration is going to be unfolding in you.
For like my mom was saying many years and especially

(41:55):
right after going on a plant medicine journey, the dreams
that you're having, the mess that you're receiving, the synchronicities
that you're seeing in your waking reality and your dream time,
all of this is the medicine still speaking to you
and still working with you. But then if you rush
to the next journey, if you rush to the next thing,
Oh I heard that this, you know, psychedelic is really great.

(42:17):
I'm going to do this next weekend, then you're probably
missing a lot of the messages, and that change doesn't
have an opportunity to actually take hold because you're just
running to the next thing, the next thing.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
No, I really like that definition nische, because opening neural
pathways is not a small deal. It's a big deal,
and you should let it unfold before taking on another journey.
And as your mom was mentioning, that can take years. Yeah,
because these are powerful stimulants to the brain. You know,

(42:49):
so perhaps the whole idea of continually microdosiness and such
a great idea after all, you know, because you're not
allowing the journey to unfold.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
Well, I'll address the microdosing in a second, but I
just wanted to say to what you're both saying. I
talk about unmetabolized shadow unmetabolized you know, so you're bringing
up the shadow material. But then if you just go
right on to the next alter experience and next, you
can see how you're not taking the time to metabolize

(43:26):
what's been given to you. So I've counseled a lot
of people that are under a shadow, so to speak.
You know that they're more blocked from themselves than they
were before because they have so much they haven't metabolized.
And then, you know, I ran a drug and alcohol
Recovery Center, but used altered state induction through the Drumming

(43:51):
journey to help people realize that you can still access
altered states without drugs and that there's a lot of
integration work to be done. So as we're all saying,
we're not at all against the amazing and wonderful effects
of psychedelics and these plant medicines that have been given

(44:13):
to us. It's an extremely valuable thing that humans have.
But in Western culture we do tend to grasp after,
you know, these quick fixes. And for example, living in
Japan for several years, they were amazed at how someone
would come to Japan and study Aikdo for three weeks

(44:34):
and then go back to the United States and say
they're an Aikdo teacher.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
You know.

Speaker 1 (44:37):
So it's kind of similar to that, right, like wanting
to despond to something and not taking the time to
really learn it yourself and in yourself.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
Let's talk about drumming for a minute. This is another
important part of the book once and tell me a
little bit about how you go about working with it.
Does the individual identify a shadow and then use drumming
as a way to release it or identify in a

(45:10):
better manner so that it's more tactile or what. How
does the drumming work to integrate the healing.

Speaker 1 (45:19):
Yeah, it's perhaps not what people think when they first
hear it, because it's not that you're just sitting there
and everyone's drumming, or that you're in a drumming vibe.
Although that's a wonderful thing to do.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
I've done a few drumming circles. They're kind of cool, you.

Speaker 1 (45:37):
Know, very cool because you do go into a wonderful
stage being this with each other in the drumming. But no,
this is the person receiving the journey lays down and
is instructed about a pathway, how to take the pathway
into the deep unconscious, and the guide person is doing

(45:59):
the drumming, and it's a certain style of drumming that
has to be at a certain rate that takes the
person's consciousness into this deep zone. So you're instructed in
a certain way, which I can just say what that
is briefly, you know, but you have to go into
a portal that's actually a place that exists in ordinary

(46:21):
reality that you've been, that you're very familiar with, that's
a place in nature that is a portal for you
into the underworld, so you don't just pop into altered
states from anywhere, which is a big mistake that people make.
They don't know where they've gone from and where they're
coming back to. So that portal anchor in nature is

(46:41):
really important. And then you're instructed to put your mind
to work digging down from there, digging for perhaps a
long time before you learn how to get there. But
in that digging process, you're learning how to train your mind,
so you're training your mind into cooperating with getting there.

(47:02):
And then you arrive in an underworld place which you're
not supposed to go around exploring it by yourself. You
just wait there and the first thing that you do
is call out to a being to come and meet you,
the power animal, because they are your guide in the
underworld zone. You're not alone there, and you're not supposed
to be alone. You're not supposed to go around on

(47:25):
your own. You're supposed to learn how to follow after power.
The power and that being is real. It's not just
this wou woo you know thing that the modern culture
has come up with. Now. It's an ancient truth and
cultures all over the world that the animals are there
to guide us. Even Rudolph Steiner said, the animals are

(47:47):
a little lower than the angels, and they're here to
help us.

Speaker 3 (47:51):
Right.

Speaker 1 (47:51):
So you form this relationship that's a real relationship of
intimacy with this being, and we call it the I
Thou relationship ship is Martin Bueber talked about that, I'm
with someone in our consciousness and then you explore your
inner terrain and there are many places to explore and

(48:12):
experiences to have that train you step by step by
step in how to navigate. So I've watched people, you know,
thousands of people go on these exact steps, and even
if I don't tell them, I don't tell them the
step ahead of time, and spirit guides them to the
next step and the next step. So there's like a

(48:33):
whole school system within the deep unconscious and the dream
time that you're taken in to be trained in how
to navigate by being guided by the power animal.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
Yeah. I didn't even ask you, guys, do you work
together as counselors when you see people or having you
like a team approach? How do you guys work?

Speaker 3 (48:56):
It's really fun nowadays to be on this ship pathway
together you know, I have my whole other career of
being a filmmaker and an emerging technologist, but now being
able to again bring this lineage forth. The way that
we're working together is by co teaching together. And my
mom is a therapist as you're hearing, so she has

(49:18):
her clients too that she works with in the profound
system of the journey to completion. But then together we've
been doing more retreats and co teaching what we're and
gather these two modalities of the drumming journeys, the shadow
work and then the lucid dreaming and dream time work.
And it's really beautiful. And as my mom was talking,

(49:39):
I was thinking about how really being raised doing drumming
journeys from a young age to be able to have
to take off in the skill of lucid dreaming very
quickly because I was encouraged in my dream time. I
always shared my dreams with my mom and she would,
you know, beautifully work with them with me. And also,

(50:01):
the drumming journey and the state that you're going into
is similar to the journey you take if you're taking
your waking consciousness and bringing it directly through into a
lucid dream which is a bit of a more advanced technique,
but it's training you in this pathway like you're hearing
about of how to maintain lucidity, meaning how to maintain

(50:23):
awareness as you enter into the dream time or a
non ordinary state of consciousness. And so then once you
start doing the practices of lucid dreaming, which are waking
reality practices, there are things you do while you're awake
to constantly be questioning what phase of awareness am I in?
Am I actually awake? Or am I dreaming? And when

(50:46):
you do that during the day again, you're creating these
neural pathways that are constantly questioning could I be dreaming?
Which is a big thing that we don't do. It's
like biologically we don't do it because part of our
prefrontal cortex is turned off where when we're in rem sleep.
And so by being able to question that, what you're

(51:10):
doing is you're training your mind to turn that part
of your brain back on while in rem sleep. And
once you do that, that's when you switch into a
lucid dream, which is what a lot of scientists recently
have studied what's actually happening in your brain when you
switch into the lucid state. So by like you're hearing,

(51:31):
By constantly questioning and working with these daytime practices, you
are training in the skill of lucidity and to question
when you're in a dream, could I be dreaming? And
when you do that, that's when I call it the
light switch of lucidity flips on and you have that
aha moment of realizing I'm dreaming within the dream, which

(51:51):
is the definition of a lucid dream, when you realize
beyond doubt that you're dreaming while still immersed in the dream.

Speaker 2 (51:58):
I think it was you that mentioned that you had
studied the work of Stephen Leberge, who I knew personally
here and is a stanform and I used to be
the program director for Whole Life Exponent. He spoke regularly,
and when he was talking about lucid dreaming, it was like,
I want to do that. I want to do that,
but it takes work. It takes consistent dreaming, and I

(52:23):
just don't have consistent dreaming. But it's important to consider
lucid dreaming for real healing, isn't it.

Speaker 3 (52:32):
It is because you are really able to go into
your unconscious, into your deep inner worlds. And bring this
lucidity where then you're able to do things that you
couldn't otherwise, because once you have that realization that you're
dreaming within the dream, you have this level of agency
that turns on because you're like, oh, this is a dream,

(52:54):
so I could And then having a clear intention of
what you want to do once you become lucid, So
say you're wanting to do more psychological work within yourself
and have a dialogue with your inner child, you can
have the intention before you go to sleep. I'd like
to become lucid tonight, and when I do, I'd like
to call upon, summon my inner child to talk through

(53:16):
this issue that I'm having, or this trauma that I
had in my childhood. And whereas with active imagination or
guided visualization it can be powerful to do something similar,
but then to dream, it's as real as waking reality.
It really like your sensorial factors turn fully on. You
feel like you're their taste touch, You can fly through

(53:39):
the air and feel the wind rushing through your hair.
So as you can imagine, it's not like you're just
imagining that you're talking to your inner child. You're actually there,
present with them. And having this dialogue. And that's just
one example of what you can do once you become
lucid for your deeper psychological work and spiritual work.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
You can hear the different state of kind consciousness than
just talk therapy. You're going into the state of consciousness
where things are coming at you. You're interrelating in a
way that's different than just thinking about it. So that's
what we're trying to get across about lucidity and being

(54:19):
in these realms of energy. You're actually in the moment
interrelating with it.

Speaker 2 (54:26):
Yeah, I've had people on the program talking about dreaming.
I'm one of these people that just doesn't remember my
dreams simply because probably either too exhausted or I've had
so many scary dreams of my brain shuts down. But
you do present an important aspect of your writing, which

(54:49):
is to bring dreams in as a form of therapy.
And how do how does that work?

Speaker 1 (54:55):
Normal?

Speaker 2 (54:56):
How does that work where we're I guess we want
to intend before we begin, right, intend on having a
dream that's healing or brings us information we need and
so forth.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
Yeah, it's a big part of the therapy work because
I have people we do a ritual I went through
with the Wheechole about committing to enter into the dream time.
So that means that you're being willing to begin to
really pay attention to your dreams. And if you don't
remember them, there are techniques that we can give you

(55:33):
to help you remember them, because everybody is dreaming. It's
been scientifically proven that everybody is dreaming at night, and
there are ways to remember your dreams better, like, for example,
just lay there when you first wake up and don't
move your head at all, because it's like an etchy sketch.
It erases the dream if you move your head, so
things like that, just you know, be very still when

(55:56):
you first wake up, and then try to record your dreams,
even if it's just one little tiny piece that you remember,
write it down and that shows your dream time that
you're willing to receive, and it starts to open up
rather quickly after that. So yes, remembering your dreams is
key to it, and we can help you to be
able to do that. And then the dreams start really

(56:19):
wanting to communicate information to you. So I call that
getting to the point where you're syncing up with your
dream time and ordinary reality. The dreams start presenting you
things that you've got to know about your ordinary reality,
and so we do a whole you know, integration learning
process between the dreams and ordinary reality in therapy. How

(56:44):
could we leave out our dreams? You know, it's such
a huge part of what we have access to and
our birthright to be able to pay attention to them.

Speaker 3 (56:56):
And one thing I want to add to that too
is that as you're working with your dreams, you're learning
your personal dream symbolism and your dream signs. And a
lot of times again we can get in our Western
culture the way we're oriented to externalizing authority, and so
we'll look to like dream dictionaries or different people to

(57:16):
interpret our dreams for us, and that could be helpful,
but really the work that we're doing with people is
teaching them how to track their dreams, how to learn
and map what their dreams are telling them, and then
really being able to interpret them for themselves and look
at their dreams through these different frameworks and modalities so

(57:37):
that then they can make meaning of what the dream
was presenting and what they're dealing with in their waking reality.
And it's really powerful because you can take a dream
that seems quite simple on the surface, or like, oh
that was, you know, just a weird, mundane dream, and
a lot of people will disregard those dreams, will be like,
I don't even really want to write that down because

(57:59):
that was nothing. But then as you start to pull
the threads of it and you start to see, oh, well,
in that dream, I was driving my car and it
was kind of out of control, and hey, that's something
that actually happens in my dreams often. And what is
happening in my life when I'm driving this car, which
can you know, symbolize your autonomy or your mobility, or

(58:19):
your your ability to move in the world. And then
it's malfunctioning. Okay, what's that relating to? So you can
see that's just a small taste of how you start
working with the symbolism that your dreams are speaking to
you in and then understanding what they're revealing to you.
And one other thing I'll just note too, is that
it's amazing but a lot of times dreams are very precognitive,

(58:43):
and if you don't write them down, you miss that.
But so many times I've had dreams where, again it
seemed like a very mundane one and I was like, ugh,
do I even need to write this down? But then
I did, And then the next day, or the next
week or the next month, I was dealing with the
exact issue that was appearing in my dream, or a
symbol from my dream then appeared in ordinary reality in

(59:05):
this way that I could have never expected. So our
dreams are constantly communicating to us and transmitting this deep
amount of knowledge that we don't have access to in
our waking consciousness.

Speaker 2 (59:17):
I like that. We're going to take a short commercial
break to allow our sponsors to identify themselves, and we
will return with authors Norma and Nisha Burton discussing their
newly released book Navigating Liminal Realms. Will rejoin you shortly.

(01:00:21):
Norma and Niche's new book on Navigating Liminal Realms is
an excellent opportunity to work with indigenous shamantic techniques for
releasing trauma without using plant medicine. Some people believe that
dreams are our higher self or the soul. It's this

(01:00:42):
only chance or a soul gets a chance to communicate
with us. What do you think of that? Is that
something you consider?

Speaker 1 (01:00:49):
Yeah? Absolutely well, when you think about what is our soul?
You know it's like the wonderful about care of the soul.
You know, we need to pay attention to these souls
ish things that it may be uncomfortable, because the soul
is drawing us to the depths, you know, to be
with the things that are difficult that happen, so that

(01:01:12):
we can really feel into what they're all about, which
is what you can hear and what Niche is saying.
We tend to want to just get away from the
difficult things and have you know, easier time, but the
difficult things are there to help us heal and integrate us.
So Nishe, you were talking about dream signs, you know,

(01:01:35):
and there's so many tools that we through studying Stephen
Leburgh and others and our own dreams, tools that you
can grow gradually, step by step in working with your dreams.
And we wrote a previous book that's called Lucid Dreaming
Lucid Living and oh yeah, Yisha created a whole wonderful

(01:01:59):
oracle deck that it's a book and this oracle deck
of images that are a systematic approach to learning how
to lucid dream. So we just draw people's attention to
that this will manual for how to learn to lucid dream.

Speaker 3 (01:02:17):
Yeah, and it's a fun nonlinear way to learn it,
because that's something as I was starting to teach people
about lucid dreaming, they would say, oh, yeah, I got
really into it for a couple of weeks and I
read this book, but then I just fell off the
practice of doing what I needed to do to have
regular and sustained lucid dreams. And that can be very

(01:02:37):
common where it's exciting at first, but then life can
take your focus other places. So by being able to
just pull a card each day and have one lesson
delivered to you, it's a really fun nonlinear way to
learn lucid dreaming and to continue your lucid dreaming practice.
And as you can hear, it is a skill like
anything else. Some people also think, oh, I can't lucid

(01:02:59):
dream because I never have before, and some people are
just naturally gifted in it and I'm not. But really,
I believe that anybody can learn to lucid dream if
they take on the daytime practices of questioning if you
could be dreaming, and then tracking your dream signs, which
are things that regularly occur or appear in your dreams. Objects,

(01:03:22):
people experiences like being by a large body of water,
or being in an elevator or traveling on a plane.
These are things that are very common that a lot
of people have in their dream time and also experience
an ordinary reality. And then what you do with those
dream signs is anytime you notice one while you're in

(01:03:42):
waking reality, you ask the question could I be dreaming?
And when you do that, you perform This is the
third part, which is a really key element to having
a lucid dream, is you perform what's called a state
check or a reality check, where you do an action
to verify if you could be dreaming or not. So
one a lot of people know is looking at your

(01:04:04):
hands and flipping them back and forth. And if you
do that in waking reality, they'll stay your hands as
you're used to seeing. If do it in a dream,
what will happen is you'll grow an extra finger, or
they'll glow a different color, or they'll change into something
else entirely. And then, because that's so different than waking reality,
you then know, beyond a doubt that you are dreaming,

(01:04:26):
and that's when you can fully flip into lucidity. So
you hear how there's these fundamental things that you do
during the day. You're performing state checks regularly throughout the
day and questioning could I be dreaming? And that's again
training your mind to do that same action in the dream,
because whatever we do while we're awake regularly comes into

(01:04:48):
our dream time. So that's the pathway that you're creating.

Speaker 2 (01:04:52):
Are you suggesting that where someone is doing a normal
type of dream, that you can click into to lucid
lucidity within the dream exactly?

Speaker 3 (01:05:04):
Yeah, that's hard.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
You're looking at the hands, and then are you asking
or is the subconscious or the higher self saying, Okay,
she's this far, We're going to click into another realm.

Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
Yeah, let me give an example of a lucid dream
that I had, because that can sometimes help to ground
the concept. So I one of my dream signs that happens,
It's kind of funny, is that oftentimes in my dreams
I'll be going into a public bathroom and it'll be
really gross, and that to deal with that, I'm like,

(01:05:37):
I don't like this. So this is something that regularly
happens in my dreams, and I go to public restrooms
all the time in waking reality. So that's a really
good dream sign because it's both present often in your
dreams and in waking reality. So I was getting up
from bed at night, and I thought I was awake
and walked into the bathroom, and because I had trained myself,

(01:06:00):
every time I go into a bathroom, I perform a
state check. Even though in this state, I was sure
I wasn't dreaming, I was like, no, I'm just going
to the bathroom. This is what I do in the
middle of the night. I stopped and I said, okay,
but could I be dreaming? And I looked around and
it seemed so normal. It seemed just like my regular

(01:06:21):
waking life bathroom. But because again I've been practicing, okay,
but I always do a state check, I always do
a state check, I flipped my hands back and forth,
and sure enough I had an extra finger. And so
then I said, aha, okay, my god, I mean, oh
my god, I can't believe this is a dream, but
it is. And then from there, because I was lucid,
I was able to then decide, Okay, now I'm going

(01:06:42):
to fly up out of my bathroom into the cosmos,
and I'm going to go have this experience with my
higher self and ask them these questions that I had
intended to ask when I became lucid. So that's an
example of how when you're constantly doing the state checks
in waking reality, then even though in a dream it
might seem like, oh, this isn't a dream, by doing

(01:07:04):
that action, you can verify wait a minute, this actually
is a dream and flip into lucidity.

Speaker 2 (01:07:10):
Amazing is it's.

Speaker 1 (01:07:11):
Hard to wake up, you know, like that we're talking
about waking up and being aware, and so many things
are happening in our culture to deaden us and to
keep us from waking up. So it's kind of an
effort to wake up, and that's what Niche is talking about,
taking it on as a practice. But we can, and
we need to write, especially nowadays with all the crises

(01:07:34):
that we're facing, we need to wake up so that
we have as much lucid agency available to us individ
rellectively fantastic.

Speaker 2 (01:07:46):
The books called Navigating Liminal Realms. My guests have been
Norma Initia Burden, who is this book for? Who would
you suggest We haven't even talked about people who are
in crises, people who have an inkling that they're just
not feeling right and they don't know what's going on,
but they're not physically ill. Something else is going on.

(01:08:08):
Who is the book for.

Speaker 1 (01:08:10):
Books for anybody who wants to explore their inner self
and heal anybody. It's written in an accessible way. I
think people of any age or level of psychological insight
can read it and understand it and value it. But
we also hoped that it would be used by people

(01:08:32):
wanting to be psychedelic facilitators or go into a psychedelic experience,
because it's a good training, a precursor training for people
who want to experience psychedelics. What do you say about it?

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):
Yeah, I agree with that. I mean, my mom and
I are very much in the space of the psychedelic
renaissance as they're calling it, and so many people recently
as they've seen this book have talked about how it
is a missing link of what's out they're in the
training around how to properly facilitate psychedelics, And really, what

(01:09:05):
you need to know first is how to work with
your own self, but your own psyche, your own inner realms,
before you then assume that you can lead somebody else
in that experience. So really it is a training ground
in that way, but also for people who are not
interested in using psychedelics, it's a pathway to enter altered

(01:09:26):
states of consciousness like we've been talking about all along,
without the use of psychedelics and showing people that you
have a birthright you have access to these non ordinary
states of consciousness right within yourself. And I think that's
really empowering to realize that. And so anybody that's interested
in wanting to seek this deeper guidance within themselves and

(01:09:50):
experience what it's like to step beyond this waking, mundane reality,
really this book is for them too.

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
Do you think there are and are an Oregon? And
I had to mention to our listeners that organ has
passed laws that allow for therapeutic psychedelics. I forget what
type of so cybon primarily, right, Yeah, And that's that's
pretty that's an amazing But are there some people that

(01:10:19):
are that don't need to go to the psychedelic realm,
that can get the basic program without having to do
the what I call the tripping.

Speaker 1 (01:10:33):
Well, that's what the book is saying, that anybody can
have very lucid and important experiences without psychedelics. So we're
trying to promote people getting in touch with capabilities that
we have in our own psyche and that we're much

(01:10:55):
vaster than we realized. You know, we only use such
a small percentage of our brain capacity. So yes, you
don't need to take psychedelics, and there are these things
that we want people to explore within their own capacities.

Speaker 3 (01:11:13):
And what I'd add to that too is, yeah, many people,
you know, like psychedelics do provide a very heightened experience,
But when you do lucid dreaming or the drumming journeys,
what's beautiful about it is that it's coming in your
own inner pacing and you are working with your inner
journey and so a lot of times it can unfold

(01:11:35):
in a way that's a lot more comfortable for people
and really provides this deep level of meaning making that
I think is what people are also seeking when they
do psychedelics, is they're wanting to make meaning out of
what is happening in their lives. They're wanting to understand
why do you have these habitual patterns or ruts that
they can't get out of. And by accessing these realms

(01:11:58):
within yourself and at a pace that's appropriate for how
you're naturally unfolding. Then you really do have this beautiful
integration that happens constantly and that unfolds within you. So yeah,
somebody is not interested in doing psychedelics, but we all,
like my mom said earlier, want access to non ordinary reality.

(01:12:21):
It's a part of who we are as humans. Every
night we're going to sleep, That's like a essential part
of being alive, right, what's built into our very code
of our bodies, and so it's important and being able
to know how to access those realms of lucidity is
incredibly valuable. And a lot of times when people start

(01:12:43):
lucid dreaming or having drumming journeys orre like, oh, actually
what I thought I was seeking over here in the
psychedelics is actually this, This is what I was seeking
to be experience this.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):
Yeah, I love that. I think a lot of people
are just disconnected and what you guys are present is
a way to connect with nature, connect with earth, Gaia,
and I love what you're presenting, and I think a
nice way to begin considering the healing work. You know,
and rather than all these technical terms that psychoanalysis presents

(01:13:17):
to us, it's like, what the hell's they're talking about
I mean, I just want to be healed. You know,
you're presenting it in a much more palatable way. So hey,
thank you both for joining me. The book just came out.
How can people get a hold of you? What's your
website and talk about some of your seminars.

Speaker 3 (01:13:37):
Absolutely, so, we have a whole mystery school launching right
now around the dream time psycho Navigation, and our website
is Lucid Dreaming Lucid Living dot com and that has
everything there. It has links to both of our books
as well as we're launching several online courses that were

(01:13:58):
really excited about around Lucid Dreaming, the drumming journeys and
the shadow work that my mom does, the journey to Completion.
And so within this month, the first course is going
to be launched, and then many more will be rolling
out over the fall. And there's a space on our
website to sign up for the newsletter to find out
when those are live. But we also have a free
course on the website right now that is about sleep

(01:14:22):
hygiene and starting to work with your dreams so you
can remember your dreams, which is a huge part of
what a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:14:28):
Of people say sleep hygiene. Yeah, Yeah, isn't that What
does that mean? It means you're no alcohol or drugs
before you go to sleep.

Speaker 3 (01:14:36):
That's good, that's good sleep hygiene. Yeah, it's all.

Speaker 2 (01:14:39):
About I don't know. I'm joking, I don't know what
you were.

Speaker 3 (01:14:42):
I think that is part of it, being aware of
what conditions you were entering the dream time in and
what the space that you're carving out before you go
to sleep is. And then also there's another part of
that course that's in the morning, a morning routine that
helps you to remember and capture your dreams. And that's

(01:15:02):
kind of the beginning of all of this stream work
is those two pieces and working with those so that
you can start to connect to your dream time. And
then briefly, we also have an Instagram that's the same thing,
Lucid Dreaming Lucid Living. That's our handle where we post
bite sized content around all of these things, and a
YouTube channel that is the same name, Lucid Dreaming Lucidliving

(01:15:25):
dot com. And then for my mom's work, the Journey
to Completion, her website is Norman Burton dot com. And
we love hearing from people, hearing questions, things that they're
running into challenges, So you can contact us just through
our website and we will love to get back to you.

Speaker 2 (01:15:42):
I'd love to see a dreaming circle where you guys
were online on zoom and everybody had their drum, you know,
like one hundred photographs of everybody was a little drums.
So cool.

Speaker 3 (01:15:54):
Yeah, we're really building out community right now, which feels
very exciting and powerful to have this community of dreamers
of psycho navigators that can talk with one another about
these things, because I think that's another thing everyone is
really craving in these times.

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
Yeah, I think you guys have a compelling message message.
I really appreciate your work. All right, hey, continue success
and thanks for joining me.

Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
They really appreciate your questions. Great to talk with you.
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (01:16:26):
The book contains chapters on a wide variety of the
topics that we presented today, but it also has case
studies of people who are using these techniques and getting
profound results. The very last part of the book is
integrating plant medicine like psilocybin or ayahuasca or you know,

(01:16:49):
even cannabis. There's a number of types of cannabis now
that are very very strong and can duplicate a psychedelic experience.
But as I've met many times, it's not necessary. And
this is a great example. This book Navigating Liminal Realms
is a great example of working in an indigenous fashion.

(01:17:12):
And I think that we're forgetting that the indigenous people,
the people who are listening to Gaya, the planet, the Earth,
use plant medicines very sparingly, very sparingly. And if you
actually read the book, normally provides an example of working

(01:17:32):
with a shamanic group and after two years then they
introduced some mushrooms to kind of conclude a stage of growth.
But it's not used every week every month as a
form of therapeutic approach. And I think again, and I
think we're you know, taking it, the use of plant

(01:17:56):
medicines out of context and try to speed up the
results when the body very likely needs to have time
to adjust to absorb the healing wisdom of the plant medicine.
And then you process it, you probably go through you
go through stages of awareness following the use of it.

(01:18:19):
So and this is great, This is the kind of
thing I'm looking for. If you're like me, you're not
jumping into working with plant medicines, right away, And I've
mentioned this many times. I don't know if I'll ever
use ayahuasca. I don't know if I mean, I don't
have a great appeal. I think for me it's going
to be more like doing DMT, but microdosing so that

(01:18:43):
I'm I'm not traveling in space untethered. Anyhow, I hope
you enjoyed that. Again. The book is Navigating Liminal Realms,
Psycho Navigating Skills for Lucid Dreaming, Trance Journey and Altered States.
And the guests and the authors are Norma and Nisha

(01:19:06):
n I s h A. Burton. If you're enjoying Earth
Ancients Destiny and Earth Ancients Special Edition the Archives, please
consider it becoming a subscriber For as little as five
dollars a month, you can support the work we do
here on these podcasts, and it's really appreciated. To become
a subscriber. Go to Patreon dot com, forward slash Earth

(01:19:31):
Ancients and subscribe. We have a ton of really cool
gifts for you, including a complete digital library that you
can look through and download at your leisure. We have
some unpublished interviews as well as some photo galleries, and
it's always great to check in with you as a
subscriber again. To become a subscriber, go to Patreon dot com,

(01:19:55):
Forward Slash Earth Ancients. All right, that's it for this program.
I want to think my guests, Norma A, Nisha Burton
coming to us from Oregon. As always, the team of
Guil tour, Mark Foster and Faisal Parvet. You guys rock

(01:20:17):
all right, take care of you well and we will
talk to you next time.