Appendix D:
A Quick Guide to Guided Meditation
As you may have noticed, this book relies heavily on guided meditation. The purpose of a guided meditation is to use visual imagery or other sensory cues to help you reach a more relaxed altered state of consciousness where you can access a sort of “other realm” where the totems may meet you. From a purely psychological perspective, it allows you to access other layers of your consciousness besides your normal state of awareness. In this altered state you can explore possibilities not accessible in everyday life. We’re not going to see a totem walking down the street; that crow you see on the phone line is just that—a crow. It may have a connection to the totem Common Crow, but it’s not the totem in and of itself. In our meditations we can see and talk with the totems however they choose to present themselves.
If you don’t have a lot of experience with this practice, try some of the tips and techniques in this appendix to help you hone your skills. Extra practice is especially important if think your inexperience may interfere with your ability to do some of the exercises in this book or if you’ve already been having trouble with them.
General meditation improvement
Sometimes it’s best to start with the basic skills you’ll need for all sorts of meditation: focus, patience, and relaxation. Focus is what helps you to stay embedded in your meditation. Early on you may need to get rid of all distractions—sitting in a quiet room where no one will disturb you for a while, for example. With more practice you may be able to focus on your meditation even if the neighbors are yelling or you’re a little too cold or your stomach’s rumbling. Patience allows you to stay put for longer periods and to keep trying with meditation even when you feel frustrated with your (lack of) progress. Relaxation allows you to let go of other concerns for the moment, like what to make for supper or a bad experience at work. It also helps your body to calm down and stop releasing the natural chemicals and hormones that may keep you too keyed up and alert to tiny distractions.
There are countless guides to meditation in book and online form, and there are classes in most metropolitan areas. Think of how you learn best—are you more of a self-teacher armed with books and other materials, or do you prefer the guidance of other people to support your efforts? Try different methods of basic meditation; some rely on complete stillness and a quiet mind while others require you to maintain your focus on a single chant or image. It will take time to figure out which methods work best for you. Above all, remember to be patient with yourself. It takes most people years to get good at meditation.
Scripted, guided meditations
My guided meditations tend to allow you a lot of freedom. Some people find themselves a bit lost once we get past the part where I tell you where to go and what to look for; the free-form part of the meditation is often the toughest. Often people may tell me after the meditation that they found themselves wandering off the path and instead of finding a totem they simply walked in circles, or ended up meditating on something not related to totemism at all. Or they may find a possible totem but not be able to communicate it, or have it fade in and out of the meditation.
A lack of focus is the biggest cause of this phenomenon. Think of it like having weak phone reception; the message is there, but it’s hard to get through the static. One of the best ways to get better at focusing in the altered state of guided meditation is to practice with fully scripted meditations first. These are the ones that tell you what to do from start to finish. I don’t recommend them for totemic work simply because the author of the meditation is already dictating which totem you’ll find, what they’ll tell you, etc. But they’re great preparation for the more free-form meditations I advocate in totemism.
One of my favorite sets of basic guided meditations to practice with can be found at http://marc.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=22. These are more focused on your awareness of your body, but they’re excellent for helping you stay focused up to twenty minutes at a time. For those wanting more of a story format, I recommend Nicki Scully’s Power Animal Meditations (Bear & Company, 2001); all the meditations are fully scripted and help prepare you for the sort of experiences you may have in more free-form guided meditations.
Some people like to record themselves reading the meditation scripts out loud and then meditate while playing the recordings, or have someone else read for them. Others prefer to memorize the scripts and then meditate from memory. Whatever method works best for you is the one you should use.
I am hard of hearing and can’t hear the meditation recordings/I have trouble with visualization or other sight-based exercises
One of the shortcomings of guided meditation is that it assumes certain sensory preferences. If you can’t hear a recorded or live-read meditation, you will need to find another alternative. For some who have no hearing at all, this may be memorizing the meditation and playing it back in their head. For others, it may be more useful to have the words up on a computer screen or open book, though this may make having a visual meditation more challenging as they switch between what their physical eyes see and what their inner eyes see. Similarly, if you are blind you may need the meditation printed into Braille, and again either memorize it or read it as you go through the meditation with the same potential challenges between paying attention to what you’re reading and trying to imagine.
Sight is the most common sense invoked in guided meditation. Most meditations ask you to “see” yourself walking down a path and “look” at various things in your meditation. For some people, that just won’t work. If you cannot visualize in your head no matter how hard you try or if you have been blind for long enough that you can’t remember what it is to see (or never were able to see in the first place) the sight-based language of the meditation may need to be changed to something more appropriate to senses you use instead, such as sound or touch.
I just can’t make meditation work for me at all!
If after all of the above, meditation isn’t effective, there are alternatives. Intuition is one possibility. If you’ve ever had a “gut reaction” to something, where you just know what’s going on even though no one’s told you, that’s your intuition talking. Sometimes it’s a warning—for example, if I go out walking one evening and I get a bad feeling about it even though I’ve gone out on plenty of other similar evenings, I may decide to go back inside. Other times it’s a good feeling, like I just know that today I’m going to get something in the mail I’ve been anticipating.
In addition to guided meditation I also tend to use my intuition a lot. If I’m out hiking, for example, I may notice I feel an intuitive tug whenever I pass by a particular species of plant. When it happens, I sit down next to it and explore the feeling more deeply. Do I just think it’s an especially pretty plant? Do I feel there’s more to the connection? If it’s the latter, I may follow it up with a guided meditation to verify; if it’s secluded enough and safe to do so, I may do the meditation right there.
Note that I’ve personally been working with my intuition long enough that I can tell the subtle differences between when a totem wants to talk with me, versus when the individual plant spirit is interested in chatting, versus when a flower is visually appealing. There’s no fast track to being able to discern these subtleties; only time and experience will help you develop these skills. Guided meditation is a way to check your work and to help you identify what you were feeling and why.
Another way people access altered states of consciousness is through active ritual. Rather than sitting quietly, they may dance, chant, sing, or recite sacred verse in order to invite totems and other beings to join them. If you have experience with rituals, try creating one that calls in the totem(s) you wish to talk to. Or you might try a grounding ritual to connect to the Earth before you do one of the exercises where you walk around outside.
If you’ve never done any sort of nature-based ritual before, I highly recommend Scott Cunningham’s Wicca: A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner (Llewellyn Publications, 1989). Even if you don’t consider yourself to be Wiccan, the various seasonal and lunar rituals he presents have been adapted by nature spirituality practitioners of many sorts, they’re simple enough that even a beginner can give them a try, and they’re a nice way to mark the changes that happen in nature throughout the year. Once you’ve gotten a feel for how rituals work, you can start writing your own; I recommend Elizabeth Barrette’s Composing Magic (New Page Books, 2007) for inspiration.