Becoming complacent with the idea, I decided to throw my whole body into the pool, only to find that I was suddenly being sucked under by what appeared to be mud. It was like quicksand, pulling me under with some force, until I got up to my hips. The pool then chose to release me.
In realms of the Middleworld points are made very concisely. The Otherworld is not a predictable place, and can become personal to each of us; its landscapes can change, just as a human being’s moods can change. The Otherworld moves, breathes, and lives. It is a ‘being’, in its own right, and it will usually react in a way you won’t expect.
This was a valuable lesson that I have never forgotten.
By the time students get out of their boats on their journeys down the river to the Otherworld, they are slowly being absorbed by another realm of the Middleworld. At this point it is not necessary for them to know which realm this is. If we pigeonhole everything and enforce too many rules about where we should be going, we can put up barriers, so it is best to allow everyone to find the place they need to be, within the basic guidelines of the journey, as eventually they will make their own adjustments quite naturally. In any case we can encourage alterations when there is sufficient confidence in journeying.
By the time they have reached the new bank, some are itching to explore, feeling quite at home straightaway, while others will wish they were suddenly busy doing something else because of mounting anxiety over the unexpected discovery of some new and strange dark inner forces. Whether you are longing to look around or longing to rush back to the physical world, there is every reason to work at things slowly. We are generally unaccustomed to spending time with our own personal inner worlds with all the distractions we have today in our physical world, so it is no wonder we build fears about exploring it. You are at that precarious gateway: the rabbit-hole Alice fell into, the looking-glass she stepped through, the wardrobe that the children went through when they found the lion and the witch. It is that mysterious indescribable doorway to another dimension, which can take many forms.
In the case of the river journey, we are not jumping through anything or passing dramatically from one place to another. At this point in our training we are slowly, comfortably, being eased into the idea of another world, because the Otherworld is extremely subtle and many of us in the physical world are sceptics, so we need to be taken into the Otherworld in a well-managed and what I would call a more lucid fashion.
Because it is not easy for any of us to acclimatize to the Otherworld and to perceive it as a real place, I find it necessary to strengthen the picture by asking people to build a home in the place they have found, generally giving them time and space to feel safe and secure about doing this. Building such a home is an important step for any student who is learning about the Otherworld, for as we make many return journeys, in whatever way we conduct these, we need to feel safe and secure, and if we become accustomed to a home of our own being there, the place itself can start to take on more distinct features and we can use these as an anchor in times of stress. We have then established a means of being able to live in the Otherworld in a way that we can identify with, which gives the Otherworld a whole new but acceptable meaning.
Until we have learned constructive methods of dealing with the nature of the Otherworld - which is a large part of one’s life training in the ancient way - the Otherworld home must become not only our refuge but our bridge, a kind of half-way house between the two worlds. It is, after all, better to run back to our Otherworld home rather than abandon the Otherworld altogether, purely because we met something we didn’t like.
The first ‘home’ is always built in the Middleworld - although we can eventually build homes in other worlds too - because in the Middleworld our home will be less subject to unsettling changes - rather like choosing to build your own home in the physical world away from war zones and earthquake regions and the hazardous perimeters of volcanoes. I have found the building of the Middleworld home a most useful means of helping people establish a bond not only with the Otherworld, but ultimately with themselves, which leads to more confidence, an increase in trust and a sense of adventure, all of which are needed before true exploration can begin.
Once we have built our Otherworld homes it is then safe to travel further afield. If students feel comfortable and strong enough to cope with Upperworld and Lowerworld activity and the adventures and challenges, which can await them there, they are encouraged to move on. Here is where they learn about their own personal contribution in Otherworld travel, i.e. what is given of the self constitutes a magic key, which can open up numerous doors to Otherworld landscapes. Invariably, although we don’t know it, it is often we ourselves who end up forming the barrier, which prevents a relationship with the Otherworld from developing. What we have in our psychological make-up often constitutes something of a currency for entrance into the Otherworld, and where there is restriction, unless we are prepared to make changes within ourselves we can sometimes find the road to the Otherworld a much longer one than it needs to be.
This is very different from travelling across the landscape here in this world. Any of us can walk along a beautiful country lane idly throwing litter around and committing any number of crimes to the countryside without any reprimand from nature at all, but in the Otherworld, the laws are vastly different. We cannot access those real places without a real contribution from who we are, like keying in the real password on your computer or using a particular key for a particular door. Where the Otherworld is concerned, only that which is required brings results. It is as simple as that. There are no compromises, but neither is there any holding back on nature’s part if you have given of your best. This will be the best time for both you and the Otherworld to be honest with each other where intentions are concerned. This very fact proves to me that the Otherworld is far more real than we suppose it to be, simply because if we do not make that real contribution, we just do not get the results. Should we try to cheat on it, the real Otherworld will continue to bask in obscurity and will even remain non-existent.
Therefore, when students travel along the river in their boat for the very first time to the Otherworld, they are also travelling along a road into their personal inner world to meet themselves. If they are enthusiastic, open-minded, honest and courageous enough, they will meet any obstacles which serve to keep them from themselves - and the Otherworld - by calling upon the spirits and fairy-tale-like figures who will help them make the changes they need to make in order to use that all-important currency.
When they take up residence in their Otherworld home, they begin to find a whole new world of things, both beautiful and ugly, within the new landscape, just as we may find things we like or dislike in our neighbourhood in the physical world, except these things will be more pronounced and will have more of a personal flavour for each individual. There may be beautiful rockpools and sunbeams in the trees in a restful wood, or a dramatic windy seashore, but there might also be enormous potholes, dark recesses or concealed caves which trouble the students. What is happening is that students are finally meeting those parts of themselves that have been obscured over a long period of time and which have transposed themselves into their Otherworld landscape. Some of the things students meet will inevitably present challenges for them, as there will be obstacles to overcome, past memories to let go of and parts of themselves to look at which might never have been looked at before.
Examples of a first ever journey and more experienced journey, undertaken by the same person, are given below.
I got into the boat and it was like a canoe. But it kept changing and was sometimes a coracle or a rowing-boat. The water had rapids. It was not a quiet stream at all and it rushed at me in parts, making my boat move up and down quite violently and at one point causing it to nearly smash into the rocks that were on the bank.
Eventually the water calmed and I was able to glide along, but on the way there was a distinct sense of foreboding, which I didn’t like, as
if something were about to attack me. There seemed to be a jungle on either side of the river, with all manner of dark and creepy things lurking there. But I held on to the sides of the canoe for all I was worth and allowed it to carry me on. I think my heart was beating so fast when I reached the bank, I thought I might just not make it. I really didn’t want to stay too long in that place. It was not very pleasant at all moving around and it is somehow difficult to describe. There was quite a thick fog encircling everything and within the fog the foreboding I’d felt earlier. So I paddled very fast on my way back, not stopping to look back. It had been so horrible. I was really glad to get back and out of that boat.
*****
I got into my usual canoe. It was painted beautiful colours and I paddled for a while downstream until I decided to lie back and let it carry me, as it has been doing recently. I felt quite safe and secure as usual, and lay on my back looking up at the clear blue sky. A smell of blossom was in the air, and was extremely strong, so I knew it must be spring.
I was alert when I reached the bank and leapt out, eager for my adventure to begin, bending down to finger the soil there, which felt so clean and good. I found my Otherworld home, my ‘bender’, which is always waiting for me, and stepped inside it. There I found hanging all the lucky charms I’d gathered over the recent months and I sat there for a while, feeling good about myself and good about this homely place. The birds were all busy singing outside and all was right with the world.
Then I went outside and gathered some of the beautiful branches of blossom, which I’d smelt earlier to put inside my bender – after asking the tree’s permission, of course. The feeling of spring was very strong within myself and I thought I could have stayed in that bender with all that beautiful blossom forever.
The two journeys are distinctly different, but the first is typical in illustrating how vulnerable we can all feel at times when we first turn ourselves over to the Otherworld. Between the two journeys there will have been all kinds of soul-searching within the student, realizations that unless the self is looked at with a view to more understanding, the Otherworld may remain unreachable, even perhaps a treacherous and dark place.
Remember, however, that you can always work your way around your difficulties and obstacles if you approach them by using your wits in the gypsy fashion, so there is no need to think that anything is a real obstacle at all.
As an example of this I worked with a lady some years ago who wanted to journey with me down the river, but who hated water. Her fear was so enormous that it posed the greatest threat, until she used her wits to challenge the situation and ended up putting a life jacket on, which meant that she went gliding down the river to the Otherworld in relative safety. Some might say that she shouldn’t have needed to worry about the water harming her, as this experience was only contained in her imagination, but this is where we learn that what we call the imagination can be real enough to bring people’s fears to the fore - and they are very real for the person concerned; it’s possible to work out constructive ways of dealing with them.
The constructive use of wits was also used by the student in the second journey given above, and there is a skill and ease in that journey which wasn’t there at all in the first journey. A landscape that held her deepest darkest fears eventually became a landscape she loved to spend her time in, which also means that she originally wasn’t very fond of herself, but with a little work learned to love herself. I always tell students that the place that holds your greatest fears can often be the very place where you will find your greatest dreams! Otherworld travels can usually help to reunite you with those.
So, whenever you do encounter problems, always make a rule to be patient with yourself. I have seen too many students with potential fall by the wayside because they believed that their Otherworld would only ever be a container for their fears, when all it would take would be a little work and some courage on their part to alter things. Determination pays off. Remember also that you are not the only one experiencing difficulties. We have all experienced difficulties at one time or another.
The lady whose journeys were given in the examples above went on to make many fascinating pilgrimages into her Otherworld and she is still exploring it today.
Once students step out of their boats and familiarize themselves with the land in the Otherworld, I have them make as much contact with it as they can, getting to know all the trees, rocks, cliffs, pools, lakes, mountains and rivers there, inside out if necessary! I encourage them to walk about as much as they possibly can, fingering leaves and touching soil, familiarizing themselves with their new neighbourhood in every possible way. They are taken back to their Otherworld home intermittently from wherever they are, so that they do not lose contact with it, and gradually the radius around their home widens and there are soon no dark corners that haven’t been looked at or shadows lurking that haven’t been questioned. Then, if darkness and shadows should arise, they are not a problem any more and can be dealt with constructively and usually quite swiftly. This translates to learning to deal with problems in everyday life.
It is important to establish this kind of contact and this kind of knowledge about your Otherworld. Then it is safe to visit the upper and lower regions with confidence.
Below is an example of a first visit to the Upperworld and a first visit to the Lowerworld. These accounts are by two different people, but they are fairly typical illustrations of what usually happens to people who visit Upper and Lower worlds for the very first time after a good Romani-style grounding in a middle realm of the Middleworld.
I climbed the vine that had appeared and was careful to keep my wits and senses about me as I went. The vine seemed to hang from nowhere in the forest and I was intrigued to see where it ended – or where it began! I climbed in a steady rhythmical motion, moving my arms and then my legs, feeling like a caterpillar moving slowly along a leaf. But I had my magic charms with me and all my experience from my previous lessons in the Middleworld, so I was able to ascend with confidence.
I soon began to feel light-headed as I rose first above the tree-tops and then above the clouds. Because I’d learned to use my senses so much, I felt the acuteness of the cold up above, but then as I climbed, the cold lessened and a warmth seemed to steal over me. I knew then that I was reaching the Upperworld.
A silvery kind of light washed across my eyes, as if the sun were shining brightly in them, and I was soon standing on firm ground, wondering vaguely how I was able to do this, having climbed so high into the sky. I then reached out and touched something soft. It was soft like wool or cotton, and I pulled on it and heard a thunderous noise from above me. But when I really focused on my hand I realized I was holding a handful of what appeared to be some kind of clothing. The thunderous noise rattled above me again and I knew then that it was the noise of a great man laughing.
This must be a giant, I thought, and looking at my hand again, I realized that I actually had a handful of the giant’s stocking roundabout where his knee-cap was and I seemed to be standing on his knee! His face was above me, looking down at me as he laughed. Fortunately for me, he was a very friendly giant and I was able to ask him all about his world.
*****
I went down into the hole under the tree roots. It was dark and dismal and I couldn’t see anything at all. At first I was crawling, but then I fell and actually felt as if I were flying, fully expecting to hit something en route, but the tunnel seemed to be never-ending. I saw below me a round pool of water, which I was fast heading towards. This then seemed to be a large well I had fallen down into. I held on to my magic charm, spoke some of my own magic words to myself and just let myself go.
Splosh! I hit the water with a force and sank down and down and down to the bottom. I thought to myself, I could never have done this before becoming used to the Middleworld. I would have been very afraid. Now, however, I could allow myself to sink. I wasn’t afraid of sinking or of what I might find.
Soon the
n a dragon appeared, who lived in the water in a great cave there, and he took me on a special journey in all the underwater caves, proudly showing me various places which I didn’t actually think I liked very much. He seemed to be very proud, so much so that I thought he must surely be my friend, as he seemed to have my interests at heart, but then he tricked me and shut me in one of the caves, and I had to spend three whole days and nights there, alone. And when the dragon returned, he said he was going to eat me, so I told him I needed fattening up before that as I was really quite a skinny person. He believed me and started bringing me food, but I didn’t really get any fatter and I needed so much food to make me worth eating that he found it all difficult to carry, so I volunteered to help him when he next went up to the surface and the Middleworld.
That was how I tricked him and made my escape. I tricked the dragon who almost succeeded in tricking me. I rushed back to my Otherworld home in the Middleworld where I felt safe again.
The two students are able to enter their worlds with such confidence and enthusiasm because they have had their thorough grounding in the Middleworld - which the second student acknowledges.
The giant in the first journey is strikingly real for the fact that the student finds himself standing on the giant’s knee - a most imaginatively vivid experience which somehow serves to strengthen the unique aspects of it. In this journey the giant is friendly; he might well not have been, as the student points out, so it is all the more important to have a good grounding and training in the Middleworld as preparation for the unexpected. The senses are extremely acute in the student’s experience of the hot and cold air that he encounters as he ascends the vine. This is, of course, very reminiscent of Jack and the Beanstalk. Jack also ascended into Upperworld heights where challenges awaited him with a giant native to that world.
We Borrow the Earth: An Intimate Portrait of the Gypsy Folk Tradition and Culture Page 17
