Learn how to distinguish between imagination and genuine spiritual experiences.

One of the hardest parts of shamanism isn’t doing a shamanic journey, it's figuring out if what you just experienced was an actual shamanic experience or just your imagination.

How can you tell?

In this article, I’m going to share 10 tips for figuring out if your shamanic journey was genuine or make believe. But first I want to dig into why this question is so hard to answer at all.

After all, shouldn’t it be easy to tell if something is real or imaginary?

The solution to this puzzle is fundamental to our experience of the world — and to shamanism.

Does a fish know what water is?

If you’re like me, you were raised in a modern, Western, non-shamanic culture. Your family and friends didn’t know or talk about spirits, power animals, shamanic journeys, soul loss, or anything like it. You went to school, learned how to think, got praised for good grades, and were discouraged from being too different.

One end result of this kind of upbringing is that while you may have been bright — aka, a good “thinker” — you were also disconnected from others and the world around you. This is very common. After all, “thinking” is all about separating and organizing things. This head-focused operating system feels natural to people who were raised and live in an environment where everyone around them approaches the world the same.

But this isn’t the only way of being in the world.

William S. Lyon cuts right to the heart of this in his book Spirit Talkers. He shares a story in which Sun Chief, a Hopi, points out how the white people he went to boarding school with think with their heads instead of their hearts, as he was raised to by his Hopi community.

Lyons adds:

Fully understanding the distinction between thinking with the head instead of thinking with the heart is crucial to any understanding of medicine powers. Sun Chief is actually referring here to two very different modes of consciousness, which he expresses as modes of thinking. However, he is not talking about a philosophic difference in points of view, but a different mode of being. Furthermore, each mode is simple to detect. Thoughts and words that arise between the ears are head mode, while thoughts that arise from the heart area, are heart mode. Implicitly included in this observation are two modes of speaking as well — speaking from one’s heart or speaking from one’s head.

A common theme in shamanism is that a shaman “sees with the heart”. This isn’t a colorful expression. It’s a reminder that shamans use a completely different operating system to the one that most modern Westerners use.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t do shamanic journeys and have spiritual experiences as a modern Westerner. It just means that you need to build your capacity to see, speak, hear, and engage with the world via your heart. Doing this takes time, practice, and openness. It’s also incredibly rewarding.

So back to our original question: Why do many people have such a hard time telling if their shamanic journey was real or imaginary?

Often, it’s because they inadvertently slip out of heart-mode and back into head-mode. This can happen after a journey when you start second-guessing the experience you just had. It can even happen mid-journey when doubts creep in while the drums or rattles are still going.

To the head, a journey looks like imagination, but the head only sees the tip of the iceberg. It’s missing all of the heart-level feeling, connection, healing, intuition, information, and power that are core to genuine shamanic experience.

When you’re about to journey, or you get distracted mid-journey, or you’re second-guessing your experience post-journey, try checking to see if you’re in heart-mode or if you’ve slipped back into head-mode. If you have slipped, take a moment to bring your attention back to your heart. Relax. Breathe. Recenter yourself here and see how your experience shifts.

You might be pleasantly surprised.

So, how can you tell if your shamanic journey is legit or make believe?

Ultimately, it’s your call. Shamanism is an independent spirituality. You have the freedom and responsibility to interpret your own experiences. That means that nobody can definitively tell you if your specific journey was real or not.

But there are strategies you can use to get more clarity on the genuineness of your journeys.

Here are my top 10 — from the most immediate and tactical to the broadest and most philosophical:

1. Do follow-up journeys

One of the best ways to figure out if your journey was real or imagined is to do it again.

Pick a different day. Perhaps in a different location or setting. Then journey on the same intention. Do you have a similar experience?

If you have a totally different experience, the first may not have been complete, empowered, or fully spirit-led.
If you keep getting the same message over and over in your journey, your helping spirits may be trying to get you to really pay attention to something.

In addition, you can journey to your helping spirits and ask follow-up questions. For example, “What was the meaning of ____ in my last journey?” They may help you see the hidden meaning in your experience or tell you it was nothing.

2. Look for signs

Another common way to verify if your shamanic journey was genuine or not is to keep your eyes open for signs.

Once, I journeyed to the Upper World and asked for protection in my shamanic journeys. A bird appeared in the journey and promised to help me. A few hours later, when I went outside, the trees were full of that kind of bird. I knew this was a sign that this bird was now a helping spirit for me and was watching over me.

Synchronicities between ordinary reality and your journeys can be validations

Synchronicities like this are always exciting when they appear. They can be validations that your shamanic experience was real.

3. Spend more time preparing for your journeys

A common cause of confusing or doubt-filled journeys is not taking enough time to prepare before starting. This includes time setting up a sacred space, relaxing or grounding yourself, calling in your helping spirits, and building up your power.

To effectively journey, we need to get out of our hustle-and-bustle head and into our hearts and bodies. This gets easier with practice, but skimping on this preparation can weaken your journeys (because we’re not full switched over from head-mode to heart-mode).

4. Ask your helping spirits for clarity during the journey

If doubts or confusion pop up during a shamanic journey, remember that your helping spirits are there to guide you. Don’t be afraid to pause and ask for help.

If something happens that gets your mind racing, ask your helping spirits to explain it. You can ask: “Is this something worth paying attention to?” and “What does this mean?” And if you don’t understand the answer, you can always ask them to explain it a different way.

5. Develop your relationship with your helping spirits

The more you understand, trust and can feel your helping spirits in a journey, the better you’ll be at noticing when something is off. This is like an internal alarm for when your spiritual connection is slipping or something (like your head) might be interfering.

Building this relationship takes time and effort, but it’s very rewarding.

6. Listen to other people describe their journeys

Another great way to build your “real vs imagined journey” detector is to listen to or read about the journeys of other shamanic practitioners.

In many shamanism workshops or drum circles, there is often a lot of space given for people to share their experiences. This can be especially insightful if everyone journeys on the same intention. How are the reported journeys similar? How are they different? How do the practitioners feel about what happened?

There are a number of books that include reports of what happens in shamanic journeys. This isn’t a replacement for shamanic journeying yourself, but it is another way to get a sense for what’s possible — and common — in shamanic experiences.

7. Don’t stress about it

Remember, we’re not robots. As humans, we get tired. We get distracted. We all have off days. I’ve had journeys where I get ready, set my intention, start the drums, and travel to non-ordinary reality…only to have my helping spirits say, “Nope, not today. You’re too tired. Take a nap.”

Sometimes you’re just too tired to journey

Did your journey turn into a rehash of the TV show you just watched — and you’re 99% sure is made up? That’s OK! It’s great that you noticed.

Are you naturally skeptical and want to set a high bar for what is a genuine shamanic experience? That’s OK, too. You get to decide how to evaluate your practice. Bringing some healthy skepticism to your shamanic practice can help keep you safe from wacky ideas and bad advice — and keep you clear on the real-world impacts of your work.

Again, if a journey feels made up, it might just be a sign that you’ve slipped out of “heart mode” and into “head mode”. Don’t beat yourself up over it. Just keep practicing. The more you practice, the easier it is to tell the difference and to stay in heart-mode.

8. For emotionally loaded questions, work with a shamanic practitioner

Being overly invested in the answer or outcome of your shamanic journey can make it hard to open up to what the spirits have to share. This is for the same reason that it’s often easier to see and judge someone else’s strengths and weaknesses vs. your own. Because of the emotional baggage, loaded journey questions can trigger our worries and pull us out of heart-mode. Our brains literally jump in to interfere, trying to protect us.

If your healing request or divination question is very personal — or feels very high stakes — working with an experienced practitioner is advised. They can bring a healthy distance and compassion to the work.

Reaching out to a shamanic practitioner like this isn’t a form a weakness or failure on your part. It’s a sign of maturity and strength. As well as trust in the helping spirits. We’re not meant to do it all on our own.

9. Be patient

Who says you’re supposed to instantly be an expert at shamanic journeying?

Who says that every journey should be instantly clear and powerful?

Understanding takes time. Soul change takes time. Sometimes, the meaning or depth of a journey may not become clear until months or years later. So be patient with your understanding.

10. Get comfortable with the mystery

Shamans work at the edge of the known and the unknown. The more you explore via shamanic journeys, the more you realize how much you don’t know. And that’s OK. “Knowing” isn’t the same thing as power or safety or effectiveness or ethics or happiness. There’s so much more to life — and to shamanic journeying — than knowing.

Being comfortable with the mystery means letting go of the need to clearly categorize every element in your journeys and opening yourself to the experience.

Yes, most journeys start with imagination. You picture yourself at your starting point, focus on your intention, and off you go. But exactly when your journey transitions from imagination to genuine, spirit-led experience isn’t crisply defined. Just as the line between land and ocean isn’t crisply defined at the beach. Just because the lines are blurry doesn’t mean we don’t move from land to ocean when we swim, or from imagination to spirit when we journey.

Next steps

Thanks for reading! Let me know if this article helped you make sense of your own shamanic journeys.

For more tips on journeying, check out my article on “How to do a Shamanic Journey.”

If you’d like personal coaching and support, schedule a session with me here.

Am I actually journeying or just making this up?