92 SECRETS OF SHAMANISMWhen you hear the beep of your alarm or timer it is time
to return. Increase the tempo of your drumbeat or rattle
slightly and rush back the same way you went. About one
minute.
How much did you experience in five minutes? Chances
are you experienced enough to spend longer than an hour
writing it down and understanding it.
Exercise #2: Contracting Time
To contract time you need to slide entirely outside the
present time frame in ordinary reality. Essentially you place
your body comfortably in park and then travel with your
spirit body to other locations where you busily take care of a
variety of interests. This is exactly what you do when you fall
asleep for several hours. Time passes and you are barely
aware of its passing. The secret is to be so absorbed and
involved in your travels that you lose track of the passing
minutes in ordinary reality.
There is no formal exercise that we can think of to lead
you into this phenomenon although you have probably expe-
rienced it many times. Storytelling is probably the best time
squeezer that we know of. Shamans are usually quite good at
telling stories. As you listen to a story from a good story-
teller, your imagination travels extensively to the location
and time frame of the tale being told. A simple way to expe-
rience this is to play professional tapes of an exciting novel or
story while you are driving on a long trip in the car.
You, however, are your own best storyteller. The more
exciting the story of your life, the faster it will seem to un-
fold.
A third way shamans play with time is to fly into the fu-
ture, take a look at it, and bring back the news of what is
going to happen. This is the art of foreseeing or prophesying
for which shamans are well known. They travel into the spirit
world via one of the many tunnels available for this purpose
and, in the world without time, they can reemerge through
an opening in so-called future time.
TTiis, of course, has many practical advantages. When you
know the probable outcome of a situation, you can plan for it
well in advance and set yourself up to be in the right place at
the right time. You may recall the tale of the farmer who
waited to plant until after the late snow. By knowing about
the late snow in advance, he saved himself a ruined crop.
On the other hand, shamans know that the future is never
firmly fixed, but rather is based on probabilities. They can