When I first started navigating my spiritual path, I had a hard time finding someone who could explain some of the bigger spiritual concepts to me in a way that I could understand and digest them. I think partly, a person can only understand what they are ready to understand. It is also possible that if a person just isn’t ready to know something, it simply doesn’t click and stick.
Everything I am going to attempt to describe here is only just scratching the surface. In fact, you will find that the more you learn, the less you know. That being said, it seems important to share the perspective. Someone needs to hear it! I am going to start on the “simple” end of things and move my way to deeper concepts as I go into defining Portals, Attunements, and Dimensions.
Attunements
This is one concept that I feel is relatively straightforward compared to the others. On a super basic level, many of us have heard the term attunement in the context of getting certified in Reiki. What this means in that context is that a Reiki teacher attunes you to the Reiki symbols or Reiki energy, thus allowing you to now access and use this energy on yourself and others for healing purposes. The idea is that you don’t have this healing ability, or ability to use this energy, and you must first be given it so you can use it. In my experience, this is both accurate and it’s not.
The idea of attunement isn’t wrong in this context, but I think the whole process of anything that gives you a paper certification and a title is kind of bullshit. You can actually be attuned to this energy by receiving it from an energy healing session, standing next to a person in a shopping center, or in your dreams. You may not get the step-by-step instructions with it, but it’s there. I do recommend and encourage everyone to have basic training in energy healing. But please do pass over the certifications and titles - don't feed the ego beast if you can help it.
In short, Attunement is the exposure to a frequency or doorway that you have not yet been exposed to. Once you are attuned, it can be accessed within you.
Attunement in my world is very similar, though I see it happen on a very different level. When I work with someone, I can be attuned to their unique Medicine and then I have the opportunity to see it, access it, and illuminate it within them. I’ll provide an example. In a Ceremony last year, there was a pregnant woman present. During the Ceremony, I was attuned to a very pure creation energy. With this energy, I was shown how to create healthy constructs and structure in the Ceremony space for those who had their unhealthy constructs destroyed and needed something put in their place. I can now also see when someone is creating/gestating/birthing something in their life, or if they need to be, I can help them pull that energy through more fully for them to access. I was not previously attuned to this energy because I had not been exposed to it in such a way. It opened a door in me that was previously closed… Even though I have birthed two children myself!
Another example, though slightly different, is when we conduct a plant diet (dieta) and we are attuned to the specific abilities of the plant we are working with. This means there are doors inside you that are not yet open, but they are open for the plants. Once the plant shares this attunement with you, you can have access to those things.
For me, Rose has been the most profound attunement so far. It has given me that chance to deliver a very powerful Medicine with such great softness and to plant it on a bed of nurturing energy. As a result, people experience a slow but powerful transformation in my Medicine Ceremony instead of being kicked to the ground and ripped open.
In simple terms, you generally can’t vibrate at a certain frequency until you have been exposed to that frequency first. In most cases, it also can’t be accessed by force and it must be something you are “ready” to experience. This is the process of attunement.
Portals
I think for me, this is one of the hardest concepts to describe. The first time I knew I was dealing with a portal, I just *knew* deep down in my being.
I bought this super creepy necklace at a shop down in Portland that had full-blown witch-doctor vibes. The main pendant in the necklace was a beautifully created artificial eyeball and I felt almost irritated when I had a huge intuitive nudge to purchase the piece. When I wore it into Ceremony for the first time, its purpose was clear. I was stewarding people out of one portal and into another. As I crossed over the “in-between space” the necklace was actually like a lantern, keeping things away that would potentially harm us on our journey.
That was a huge WTF moment. LOL.
Wait, I do what now?
A portal is simply a doorway to another dimension. We don’t have to get too woo here either — this is pretty simple in explanation. I see people walk through portals in a number of ways:
You can be primarily living from a place that is where your 10 year old self lives. When you come for spiritual healing, you may be stewarded (as a 10 year old) to where your adult self lives so that the two aspects can integrate into one.
If you are living in a high density/low frequency (stuck in fear, depression, anger, etc.) and you have the space to process what you need to process so that you can move out of that high density, you will be taken through a portal that brings you into higher vibrational plane/low density. This place may include emotions like gratitude and joy, or perhaps even contentment and hope.
I have witnessed a portal open that went straight to what we call heaven. It was opened so that higher vibrational energy (pure love!) could pour into our dimension swiftly. When it was done, it closed itself.
During soul retrieval, I can see soul parts that are trapped in another dimension. This means they literally cannot see or connect to you unless you create a bridge to them, or until you have a person who can be your portal walker — like a Shaman! If there is unprocessed junk blocking these hallways between portals, a Shaman will help you clear that out first so the jump can be made.
Every time you get on the plane and travel to a new place, you are portal jumping. The place you are traveling to has a unique vibration and signature — a different one from where you came from. It has different coordinates on our physical earth and sits on different energy lines. This is why some people have such great trouble with flying — they don’t cross that threshold easily. It’s usually people with control issues or anxiety (inability to live in the moment or surrender). I make no judgments here, this is something I struggle with and so I know it well. When I went to South Africa a few months ago, I could feel myself fighting that portal. I was entering a place on the earth that I’ve never been before. It had its own dense and primal frequency and coming into it was disorienting, confusing, and filled me with fear. When I surrendered into it and embraced what was coming up, I stepped through that portal fully and felt AMAZING. I experience this every time I walk through a new portal — it’s my least favorite thing about my job lol.
I had a Ceremony participant once tell me that he witnessed the group open a portal to “a place of great light and love” and all the suffering being held by the people in the group was ushered up to this place of light for healing. It was carried up by a dump trunk driven by Grandmother spirits. Now whether you believe this or not, the metaphor remains. Even more interesting, this person actually witnessed this outside of having a psychedelic experience!
Portals are simply doorways to different dimensions. They allow you to hop great distances and thus your healing or spiritual work can happen swiftly and easily when you have a portal walker as a guide. We can travel to these places on our own, and many people do, but it goes much more slowly than when you do it via working with a Shaman. Think about the time it takes to build a bridge versus walking through Grandpa Rick’s portal gun.
As a last note, I will say that you generally can’t travel to a place you aren’t ready to visit. If you are forced in any way, you will risk a psychotic break or complete destabilization without proper support. This is one of the reasons psychedelics can be harmful in the wrong hands and why I don’t support Psilocybin in a clinical setting.
Dimensions
This one is fun and also hella confusing. A lesson in quantum physics anyone?
First, on one level, another word for dimension is perspective. Every perspective held about a person, situation or _______ is coming from a different dimension.
I will give you an example. Some people go through their healing process best when a person holds space for them to process and some work best when they connect to their body. The way I work through complex things or places where I am stuck in my life is by talking something out with someone who can offer me a very diverse perspective. Through talking with another, I am able to see new sides to a situation which allows me to become unstuck. A doorway opens to a new dimension (a new perspective) on the topic and the whole thing releases its hold on me. This is why exploring different types of therapists, coaches, and friends are important. This is why sometimes being around people who don’t share your beliefs is important. Each of these perspectives is coming from a different dimension. Literally.
The more perspectives you can hear, hold and understand, the closer you become to “enlightenment”.
This is one level of dimensions. The next level is realities.
Have you ever had that feeling — either in public with a stranger or even with someone as close as your partner — where you felt like they were literally living in a different world from you? They are. It means their perspectives are so different that they are actually living in a different dimension or reality. They most likely can’t even really see you from where they live. You won’t be able to connect on any level. This is very different from when you meet someone you really jive with — this person lives in the same dimension as you. There are multiple realities going on around you at all times — they overlap and yet they don’t. They are similar and yet totally different. It’s also easy to jump from one to the other with practice.
People whose souls are mostly out of their body also feel like they “aren’t here”, but that is due to trauma/soul separation or they could be close to death. This is a different topic.
Sometimes people’s life or personal growth will take them down a path that is no longer parallel with your own. This is how relationships and friendships are outgrown. You can no longer connect when you aren’t in the same space dimensionally speaking. It often just feels hard and awful. It’s because you’re in two different dimensions and building a bridge between them is tedious and complicated.
In the Shamanic context, I cannot open or access a new dimension I haven’t been exposed to myself either in this lifetime or another. I cannot give you a perspective I haven’t personally explored in depth or else I don’t know how to open that door. This is why it’s so important for shamanic practitioners to work with plant diets, traveling, personal healing, working with other healers, etc.
To make things even more confusing — all of these concepts overlap and all of them are connected.
Last, but not least, here are a few higher-level concepts to ponder:
When you visit a physical location on earth, there are new doorways that can open within you or attunements to new lines of energy/dimensions that you now have access to. You can also reach in and retrieve the energy “of a place” and bring it in to heal someone or something who needs that specific frequency once you have been there. Traveling abroad is expensive and often discouraged, but the importance of it cannot be emphasized enough.
Considering all of what I have discussed above, can you see how necessary it is for people to connect and work together to help one another heal or grow? There is great importance in diversity and community. No one can heal alone. No one can grow alone. We need each other in order to move forward collectively.
And just for fun....
