We pass the sage around, to get rid of the negative and then start drumming...a steady beat. My eyes close and almost immediately I am floating in black. That's how it always is. I'm floating in blackness, my ankle feels like it tethered to something (probably my physical body!) and I just bob around like a balloon on a string.
Now I should mention here that I don't have a lot of experience with astral travel. I haven't even really read up on it all that much. I'm just going with the flow here, working on pure instinct, which is how I roll a good deal of the time. I'm in the black and I wonder to myself, "self, I wonder would happen if I swam up? What would happen if I stretched this cord tethering me to my body?" I push upwards, kicking my legs, as if I'm at the bottom of the pool or the ocean and I'm trying to break the surface. As I get closer I can see light and then a shadow crosses overhead. My first thought is that it's a turtle but as I break the surface I realize it's birds flying low over the water.
I climb from the water and see that it was a creek...but wait it isn't me. It's as if I'm watching a movie. I'm there but I'm watching a girl. A Native American girl, long flowing black hair, which she wrings the water from before she takes off at a run. It's near dusk and growing dark quickly under the cover of the trees in the forest. She's running a path she knows well, leaping over roots, and dodging trees. I'm floating behind her, keeping up with her. She doesn't seem to be aware of me.
As darkness falls, I can hear chanting or singing? I'm not sure if which it is or if it's all one and the same in this instance. She stops to catch her breath, looking up. I follow her gaze and see smoke rising over the trees. She starts running again, but she doesn't go far before she breaks into a clearing and immediately starts dancing, swinging her dark hair around and round. I stand at the treeline, men are playing large drums and chanting around a fire. The chanting is mesmerizing, the beat of the drums shake the ground, the fire seems to move to the beat. I try to find the girl but only catch a glimpse of her as she dances around to the other side of the clearing.
Suddenly, I'm snapped backwards. Quickly trees fly before my eyes and then blackness and then my eyes pop open. I'm back in my drum circle and the session is winding down. There's an older man sitting next to me and is turned looking at me. The leader of the group is also watching me. Were they aware of what I was doing? Where I was?
I bend over and touch my hands to the floor, getting rid of the excess energy. All the drumming stops. The older man next to me asks if anyone else heard the chanting.
Yeah.
And so much more.
