Mujiba Cabugos - The Shaman as Psychopomp™

Join Mujiba Cabugos as she shares her transformative journey into shamanism, her experiences with Core Shamanism, and how she integrates psychopomp work into her life to help spirits and suffering beings. Discover practical insights, healing stories, and the spiritual power behind this ancient practice.

Guest: Mujiba Cabugos, RN, CHC, LMT
Guest's bio: https://www.shamanism.org/faculty/mujiba-cabugos/

Host: Kerri Husman, MD
Bio: https://www.shamanism.org/faculty/kerri-husman/
Website: https://www.mammothhills.com/services/courses-in-core-shamanism/

Workshop: The Shaman as Psychopomp™
https://www.shamanism.org/workshops/the-shaman-as-psychopomp/

Learn more about shamanism and shamanic workshops by visiting the website of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies: https://www.shamanism.org

Transcript

Introduction to Shamanism and Personal Journey

Speaker 0:07

You are listening to the Way of the Shaman Podcast with your host, Kerri Husman. The content shared in the Way of the Shaman Podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute professional or therapeutic advice. The views expressed by the host and interviewees reflect their personal experiences and opinions. Please consult with an appropriate licensed professional if you have any medical, psychological, or legal concerns.

Kerri 0:38

Hello and welcome to the Way of the Shaman Podcast. I'm your host, Kerri Husman, and today Mujiba Cabugos is joining us from the central coast of California. And we're talking today about an online workshop, the Shaman of Psychopomp. Welcome, Mujiba.

Mujiba 0:57

Thank you so much, Carrie. Such a delight to have this visit with you.

Kerri 1:01

Oh, and I'm so glad you're here. And we're going to start this off as we do with many of the folks we interview. Tell us the story of how shamanism and specifically Michaels Harner's work found you.

Mujiba 1:14

It literally did. First, I'll start by backing up. I just been back in Santa Barbara from some crazy world travels. And I had been hit by a drunk driver while I was riding my bicycle. And I had an unusual experience with that. The car hit me. I was flying through the air. And then I had this view of my body flying through the air and my bicycle flying off the road aways. And this awareness told my body to tuck, to tuck. Tucked my head. I had no helmet, no nothing, just a backpack on. And when I tucked my head, uh, by the time I hit the ground, I was somersaulting. And every time I roll I rolled, I landed on my day pack. So I'm watching my body do this down the road a long way. It's just like down the road. And then finally my body landed on its back, and um I slid back in. No broken bones, not a scratch except for some road burns where my backpack wasn't and where um my leg hit the bike. People saw me, the driver drew off, uh drove off, and um I had such a feeling of exhilaration. I mean, I was I mean it was adrenaline, sure, but also the exhilaration of having that experience and then sliding back into the body, and I was like, no broken bones, I was laughing. So of course people thought I was hysterical. They're saying, don't move. They called the ambulance, and I'm like, no, no, no, I'm fine, really, I'm fine. I was like, woo, you know, from this experience. And then thereafter, I recalled another time when another drunk driver had hit me in the middle of the night. Um, I was the only person besides him on the road. He hit me and drove off and got my car spinning. So I was spinning like Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz in the tornado until my car uh ended up with the back end uh of the fence um in front of a department store. But while the car was spinning, I was sitting in the back seat looking at myself in the front seat, telling myself in the front seat to hold on, because of course I didn't have a seatbelt back then. This is back in the 70s or whatever. Once again, no nothing. So so I'm recalling these events very interesting to have this experience of my body's there and there's something here, all this, and actually having some kind of um interface with that event and what my body was going through. So those um experiences got me kind of interested. And now I I hadn't investigated any psychic, nothing, you know, just grew up Catholic as you know, most of us do, grew up Catholic. And um, so there was a little ad in the newspaper, teeny weeny little ad, psychic development class. And I thought, oh, okay. So beautiful, very informative. I found oh, oh, I do operate on intuition a lot, and that you know, that this is an actual thing. Um, and uh at the end of the class, the last day, he said, I have a little treat for you. And he brought out a little cassette tape, uh, Way of the Shaman, drumming for the basic journey. Um so he he taught us how to journey had uh Michael Harner's book, Way of the Shaman, described for us what we were gonna do and how we were gonna do this and when the drumming tape went on and da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And um I took to this like a fish to water. I was so happy um to have this introduction and to have this practice. So I continued, you know, I got the cassette tape and I continued to um practice journeying. Uh um fast forward to about maybe three or five, three, four or five years later, Michael Harner was um presenting way of the shaman at the OHI Foundation. So, of course, I my life was vastly different then uh by then, um, and also hugely informed uh by my shamanic journey practice. And so I uh my my my uh shamanic practice uh became much more of an overt kind of thing um at that particular point in time.

Experiences of Healing and Miracles

Kerri 6:33

So wow. So you had some real life-changing experiences that could have been they could have turned out very different, right? You could have been seriously injured or even lost your life. And you you you took that as there is this possibility for the spirit to observe and and took that and then having that opportunity to learn how to journey just really helped connect the dots.

Mujiba 7:03

Well, because because of those experiences, you I I was left with this question of well, what was that? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Flying out of the body, and then of course, um also uh what Robert Monroe's and his institute was very um starting to be very prominent at that time, and he's talking about this. But what I loved um and in found myself instantly magnetized to uh with learning about the shamanic journey and core shamanism was um to be conducting this practice with this intention to relieve suffering to help people.

Kerri 7:43

Yes.

Mujiba 7:45

That seemed to be like the key or you know, the fit for me. Um I wasn't necessarily it it it it kind of fell flat for me simply to explore the possibility of this and and this experience without this purpose. For some reason, it that just settled in my heart.

Kerri 8:07

Um uh yeah, and I was able to investigate it more. Yes. Yeah. So could you tell us about a shamanic miracle or healing story that may have affected you directly or you witnessed or were a part of, or even happened to you? Mm-hmm.

Mujiba 8:24

Um so many experiences. Uh um I've been uh privileged to both receive and witness and experience through my life, but this one, for some reason, it just it just popped up as a story that I could um tell because I don't uh you know haven't really through my life and through practice made it a big habit to tell anything. Right. Um so um my family and my my partner and my daughter and I were traveling um down under uh um and had quite a number of experiences. I started that particular, it was a year-long journey, and I started that particular uh um period of travel with this resolve because I'd been working really, really hard here with my uh practice, and um my resolve is no healing on this journey for a year. I'm gonna take a break from healing, I'm gonna take a break from spiritual work. It's just I'm I'm going out here simply as a tourist.

Kerri 9:33

Wow.

Mujiba 9:33

So I get on the plane. So our um our trips to Australia and New Zealand were uh, which was the brunt of the journey, were uh uh sandwiched by first six weeks in Fiji and then uh ending with six weeks in Bali on the way back um after almost a year um New Zealand and Australia. So I get down on the plane to Fiji, and um I'm sitting next to this young woman. Plane starts to take off, she looks at me, she goes, Have you seen this book? And it was Shirley McLean's Out on a Limb. And she goes, and do you know anything about crystals? And I'm like, Oh my gosh, here we go. So much for my resolve. But anyway, um, on the way home, we were in Bali. My partner had this habit of coming to me when he happened to meet people that were sick or you know, having a problem with something, um, and he would ask me to go and help them, um, especially if they were sick with something. And so um this was in the middle of the night in this little um lost man in ball in Bali, uh, probably about midnight. I was fast asleep. He shakes me awake. This guy's really in trouble. You have to go. And I said, No, you know, no, and he goes, You have to. So I went. So this guy was on his mat in his room, he had fiance. They um had just been earlier in the day to a regular medical doctor somewhere in another village. They had that was the closest Western doctor. The doctor gave him antibiotics and some Maalox and said gastroenteritis and and sent him back. So he was burning and delirious with fever. He was so hot it was radiating, and his urine, if I may, looked like Guinness beer. He was very, very, very, very sick. Yeah. Here I am. So, yes, I am a nurse. I did, and a homeopath. I brought my homeopathic remedies, but I'm looking at this going, you know, I have no business dealing with this situation. But there were no other doctors around. So I did, I did ask my helping spirits, you've got to do something about this because I do not know what to, I don't even know how to approach this at all. Uh fiance was freaking out, of course, she didn't know what to do, and um so I went back in. I was aligned with my helping spirits in in in such a way, and they said, go to the kitchen, get ginger and garlic, hot towels, you know, these homeopathic remedies, and you know, instruct the fiance in such a way, tr. You know, so I'm like this. I go to the kitchen to ask for the ginger and garlic and hot towels, and they go, Why? Um, you know, the village people are in there in the middle of the night, they're sitting around. And I said, Um, because there's this guy that's very, very sick, and they said, Oh, where has he been? And I said, Well, his l his fiance said that they'd been to Lombok. And they looked at each other and they go, Oh, Lombok. And I go, What's what's with Lombok? And they go, Black magic. I go, oh, great. So I get the garlic and the ginger interview, make the compresses, do all that thing, uh, tons of water, instruct her how to hydrate him, made a you know, urine bottle, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, gave homeopathic remedies, sent her out to get some more water, and then did the shamanic healing work. Okay. All kinds of stuff, all kinds of stuff, all kinds of stuff. Work is done. Told her I've done all I can do, keeping my fingers crossed. You need to stay up all night, forcing fluids, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'll be here as soon as I wake up in the morning. I go over. I'm really scared.

unknown 13:56

Yeah.

Mujiba 13:57

They're still there. They're still there. I'm like, oh, they're still here. And he's sitting up in a chair, bright-eyed, no fever. Thank you. I had some additional advice dietary-wise, because it was a really bad liver inflammation. He said, No fats, no fats. He thought he'd test me on that. He had, you know, some beef or something like that. Distress, distress, okay. You know, be new to um uh uh mind. My uh follow-up is instructions after that. And um, oh my gosh, did I ever go back and thank my helping spirits for all of that, for the power that came in? Right. You know, I had no, I had no, I just did it. I just did it. So that that was huge. Um in terms of oh my gosh, I had no choice but to trust it uh in that moment and oh my goodness.

Kerri 15:01

Yeah, yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that story. I can only imagine that and it and it and really like the the ki the the kitchen folks sharing with you um what happened in in that village or on that island, you know, that that you had.

Mujiba 15:19

When they said that, when they said black magic, I go, I'm screwed. It's like I don't know. It happens, you know, it it does. People do engage spirit power for for harm. You know, yeah, for nefarious reasons, whatever.

Kerri 15:36

So I'm really glad that your helping spirits were able to give you and take advantage of the skill sets that you did have with your homeopathic remedies and other um treatments and your nursing skills and background, so they were able to use all of what you had brought to the table.

Mujiba 15:51

It literally felt like I was going like this. When power comes in, it's can be pretty wild sometimes. Yeah.

Kerri 16:02

So another question about your own personal heritage and traditions, and how do you see core shamanism helping to build your own personal heritage and traditions from your own ancestry and ethnicity? Or do you feel that core shamanism is something entirely separate? Do you feel like it's it's helped to bridge, or are these two separate silos for you?

Mujiba 16:30

Well, um, on the surface, as far as um family and friends, uh I wasn't that overt with my practice. They knew I was up to something, but they didn't really know. And and way, way, way back in the day, um, you know, we were Catholic. And um there was a particular time when I, you know, was stepping out uh and breaking away from my Catholic upbringing. Um and actually it was um various teachers and clergy in the Catholic Church that uh helped me to see another way. Wow, that's really interesting. It was interesting. We it was an interesting time for the Catholic Church back in the you know post-Vatican II or 23 or Pope John the XXIII with Vatican II, yeah. Um a lot of liberation happened at that time, and I felt very fortunate to be kind of you know at the tail end of that. But fundamentally, um in within our Catholic practice, and I think this might be the case for many people who are raised Catholic and find themselves having a bent for shamanism or more mystical types of practices, is because there's an inherent kind of or was an inherent kind of mystical uh element to our Catholic practice. I loved all of our rituals. I found um in grammar school when I was troubled, uh bullied by people, or you know, confused about something, I would go into the church, I would pray to certain statues, the statues would answer me back and give me advice about how to handle the situation. I mean, I drive tremendous comfort. So that's one way that I personally, through my Catholic upbringing, kind of was set up for this. Um my family was concerned about me at one particular point of time because I'd met um some people who were in the uh Rajnish community, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, way back when. And of course, um there was the fear that I was being indoctrinated by a cult, you know. So they called the the um our pastor from the Catholic Church in to bring me back. Um and um the value of the Rajneesh experience was that it opened the gateway uh for me to be able to be okay and just go full on out with the ecstatic experience that that I could actually just be with this. And um, and so I'm just trying to describe the trajectory. Yeah. Um so so while my family and friends didn't know so much what I was doing or or understanding this, um at one point we had gone back to the Philippines and the first time my dad had been back in 60 years or something, and meeting his brothers and sisters again on the island of Bohol, um, were 100% uh Visayan uh Filipinos. And um all my family there, you know, oh, she's a nurse and she's Catholic and she doesn't want to know about what's going on in the village. Finally, um the night before we left, somebody confessed to us that there was um a talking rock in the house in the village. And of course, I wouldn't want to know about this because I was, you know, from the U.S. and I was a nurse and I was Catholic, but there it was, and I'm like, oh my God, I need to know about this. So the story of this was that this woman had given birth to twins, one of the uh babies died, and it was its spirit that was speaking through this rock and uh giving divination advice. Oh wow, how nice. Yeah, it was really nice. It was nice for the family because they were making quite a bit of extra money, you know, offering the rock and the advice from the spirit of this child through the rock. So, you know, there was spirit influence. My family's um family members inherently believed in ghosts and spirits. This is very common, and there were quite a number of experiences even here in Santa Barbara that they were dialed into, quite vivid experiences. So there's just this, you know, the Catholic background, and then also this familiarity with and interface with spirit world in in these ways. So um when I uh had this gift of connecting and learning about core shamanism, uh being able to then be able to understand and recognize the undercurrent and background of shamanic influence in basically all the world religions. religions and all the world traditions. And so it is quite native, if you will, to human beings, this experience of directly communing with spirits. And being able to cultivate an exp a relationship with spirits for the purposes of your own gathering your own knowledge wasn't necessarily available just to everyone.

Kerri 22:43

Usually there was a pastor, a priest, a rabbi, a somebody or the shaman in a village.

Exploring Tibetan Shamanism and Personal Growth

The Influence of Shamanism on Nursing and Healing

Engaging with Spirits and Psychopomp Work

Artistic Expressions: Music and Healing

Mujiba 22:50

You know, even it was the purview of gifted individuals that did it for everyone else. But as it turns out, you know, a lot of everyone else was actually having some kind of initiation into being able to cultivate their own or at least demonstrate that they were connected to their own resources of power or at least the community's resources of spirit power. Because it was essential and crucial for the survival of the community that each person be spiritually healthy as well as physically healthy because somebody who's not healthy and and whole is is a liability. That's a good way to look at it. Yeah. So anyway, you know learning about core shamanism really kind of fleshed out for me. And also going back to the experience with um the Bhagavan Rajneesh, he would he would speak uh extemporaneously about all the world's teachers and philosophers. And I'm like wow and gleaning you know there's value from each one of the traditions. So this set me up too with my understanding with um shamanic practice and shamanic understanding and just how far back shamanism goes and feeds our desire for direct connection with the divine. It's rampant today as people are kind of either disenchanted or not being initiated into the so-called conventional world commute religious communities right now. People are um wanting the ecstatic experience wanting it uh to feel like they're directly connected to some kind of spiritual something or other I mean even the desire in uh the kids who are going to rave you know they wanted this um expansive and transformational kind of experience and direct connection to their own spirit selves. So it it's it's a real gift that we have this today. And that it's more of more available you know this isn't it's natural it's natural that we have this desire to connect with the divine and that uh people can find a way to take responsibility for their own spiritual development um and have a way to verify the experience and um the way to mature uh spiritually and as a person um for themselves and mind you it takes a lot more uh integrity and honesty I think to be able to investigate this way um as opposed to you know just taking on dogma and believing what somebody tells you to believe well stated Mujiba so with that said tell us a little bit about your visit in the 1990s with Larry Peters when you went to Nepal to study with Tibetan shaman what was that like and tell us more about that transformative experience. Well um yeah it was quite an opportunity and I I jumped at it as soon as um Sarah Dole was the one coordinating that um for for Larry and and uh Larry's been associated with the Foundation for shamanic studies many many many many years too and quite the scholar and been uh had the good fortune to cultivate and study with Nepalese and Tibetan shamans and have um you know a vast experience with them and um so I'm still sitting with this uh you know um investigating uh many kinds of traditions so I had the Raj Nish thing going I had the Catholic thing going I had also and this is all informed by my helping spirits too you know they're like try this try that and and then it was for me to um evaluate or assess from those uh um uh exploring those other traditions and investigating their practices what the value was for me but beautiful so it and it was beautiful and I did you know start to you know kind of uh be able to understand a little bit what the value of each one of these things was so I had the Tibetan Buddhism and I had um uh teachers from various indigenous communities too um and and while I was gleaning the value from all of these you know and forming my own kind of uh bed um if you will of wisdom and knowledge from from the privilege of uh of uh practicing this way and having so many teachers available that there was a little there was a little nick or uh uh uh a pinch in each one of them that was saying you shouldn't be you know you're exploring this you shouldn't be exploring that too you know so I see some of the teachers had a problem with me exploring the shamanism and then of course there was you know anyway so it wasn't on the outside world it wasn't meshing inside of me it was meshing so anyway so I I I go to um Nepal with Larry and he had us um set up to learn from largely the Nepalese shamans we were there at a time of this Maoist coup so there was a lot of um disruption and political um agitation at that time so there were curfews and then also our time with the Tibetan shamans we didn't get to have it um because they the access to them was cut off as a result of all this um turmoil that was going on but the but the time with the Nepalese shamans was hugely rich. In addition to that um our our guide if you will our help Larry's helper um would uh you know be guiding us around Kathmandu or wherever we were and he what he was a teacher he was high school principal and um he uh walking with him was like having this ongoing narration of Hindu teachings all the Hindu deities all every single little shrine you know the Hindu deities with their familiars and the and what the ceremonies they were going on lots of festivals and ceremonies and um so so it was just like a walking living through the Mahabharata type of thing um going with him just stories and so many dimensions and layers um uh of experience uh and um combined with the shamanic experience so so for our um final kind of initi uh part of our initiation with the main our main teacher Aama Bombo she's not with us any longer but she um uh initiated us into the Nepalese shamanism we had our dress and we had our drums we learned to uh journey and drum the way that they do and then she took us out to do this in the streets of Kathmandu in the middle of this big huge I forget the name of the festival but this enormous festival this is the streets were lined with people and here we are this little group with our peacock feathers and our drums and our white and you know and our malas and going down the middle of the street to visit um uh various uh temples to the Divine Mother and in the middle of all of that uh what was just for me was just this tremendous healing all is good all of these are good all traditions are good don't worry about this and then then this huge presence came in and it said these you these as we're drumming down the street uh you these are all my children all my children that I hold with love what an extraordinary look upon my children with love send them my love send my love so this propelled me through I don't know heat you know and the humidity we're just dripping with sweat you know we're dancing down the street drumming drumming drumming drumming I don't know how many miles to the final um Mother Devi Temple uh it was just an astonishing communion uh with this divine mother spirit it was it was just astonishing you know uh safe to say quite transformative especially the healing of all the disparate they're not disparate they're not disparate this is the color and the variety of our human experience that each person experiences spirit in a particular way spirits speak to each person in a particular way might not be you know the way they're speaking to you might not be for anybody else and that's okay so anyway it was rich it was rich to say the least and and and we got to view you know quite a few um kind of um intriguing shamanic practices there it was a rich time I could only imagine thank you Larry after all these years so let's shift gears a little bit and talk about here you are you're a retired nurse and you've practiced homeopathy massage therapy and so I'm sure that in your professional work you have dealt you know outside of shamanism you've dealt with death and dying at some level how do you feel these careers have been shaped or influenced by your shamanic learnings and learning about psychopomp so I uh have been a a renegade nurse there are a few of us in this community um that went to alternative modalities so um I think in my uh I would say in my immaturity working in the hospitals I had authority issues so I didn't get along um with institutional organization whatever so when I you know found my way into the alternative modalities was kind of like going blind I knew nothing about that but you know here I was I had an instant kind of therapeutic um massage practice so but um you know having the nursing training helped people feel comfortable with what I was delivering of course yeah and um the homeopathy is an ever even though I'm not practicing so much anymore of course I still use the remedies and the homeopathy I I in shamanic terms I consider that um the remedies were kind of like our power animals and plants and that each person you know has their own um uh kind of array or symphony constituted of uh these various resonances of plants animals minerals that uh the remedies are so so nowadays um I will uh sometimes use uh homeopathic remedies after um shamanic healing to help the person to either cope or integrate the healing that they received um because lots of times people go through you know quite a number of changes right after shamanic healings and I found homeopathic remedies useful now in terms of um dealing with um suffering beings we'll call them you know ghosts um uh I have had quite a history of uh experiencing um people who've crossed over starting when I was a child my my dearest dearest dearest godfather died and his dog was poisoned in the neighborhood and I had uh a "for reals" visit from them I was five years old they came to visit me and um my mother I you know I screamed and called for my mother when this happened and um she said don't worry they just came to say goodbye and so this engagement with this kinds of this kind of spirit um was able I was able to rest with it you know to settle with it I've had the privilege of attending and being with um uh a lot of my elders in their passing. Oh wonderful and having exquisite experiences informed you know by my shamanic practice and um so yeah so it's it's been a theme you know and then and then marrying that with you know my own uh uh spontaneous experiences of out of the body experiences this is kind of an ongoing theme for me and so in learning about the psychopomp work is like oh there's something I can do with this exactly and psychopomp work of course is um healing for the soul feeling for the spirits that are no longer in the body and um so you'd say well what what good is that to be preoccupied with something like that but people do are sensitive and have reported being sensitive um and and sometimes disturbed feeling some kind of discomfort or or or having an awareness that something is not right in a particular environment in a particular space you know what can be done about that and so when somebody comes uh asking me if there's some way uh to deal with that you know go and investigate the space and oftentimes um there has been an unquiet or um you know disturbed or uh unsettled kind of soul lingering there. And it's been uh beautiful to be able to offer them um uh a way to move out of their situation and finally to transcend to the next leg of their journey rather than being stuck in a place where there's nothing happening for them and their sense of disturbance uh translates, transmits uh to people around them. And then people you know report um that the the space feels better or they're not having the disturbing dreams anymore or or whatever because you know doing this work I I um am always surprised with every single one uh uh you know shamanic healing thing I I honestly never know if it's really gonna work or not I hope it does you know and so to have confirmation you know that something feels better something feels balanced something feels harmonized something feels light um uh very reassuring lovely yeah now you have healing for the dead absolutely we're gonna talk a little bit more about that but I would like to touch on your artistic background you've created some music to acknowledge loved ones who are crossing over uh called Zaremiah can you tell us more about the inspiration for this work um so uh so I grew up you know learning how to play music and dancing I identified myself that way as a dancer and a musician and whatnot um uh and it was when I started shamanic practice that there was this uh uh informing of musical expression by my helping spirits by the helping spirits which ended up being you know quite a rich um thing over time um uh so it inspired a lot of um quite a few musical productions um forming uh since a child I'd always uh gathered girlfriends together to to perform perform music together a little group in grammar school and I had a couple of groups in high school and then um uh and then more recent well well not recently because it's been a while now but um uh in my kind of shamanic years having this inspiration to combine poetry and music in certain ways putting it into a body of work enlisting women to come and uh perform these things so it's been wildly beautiful wildly beautiful and rich so the first um uh um kind of more overt one is I was inspired to uh create this retreat for women called Ecstatic Woman and I was going to be introducing um songs that I had learned from various healing circles and um I wanted to be able to uh provide a way for the women in the retreat to go home with a collection of these songs so I gathered some friends together and we uh five women we call we called ourselves Moving Breath oh I love it and um a cappella and we uh learned these healing chants design harmonies and everything put this album together so I had my little souvenir album to give to the women and I'm still selling that album to this day not wildly you know voluminous volumes of it but um you know st some people are still interested in that um Beautiful little thing. And then subsequently we made a second album called. So that one was called She Changes in honor of Starhawk, who who created a chant entitled that. And then the second one was called She Dreams. And that is contains all these original works from each one of us in that. So in that was my dear friend Lorin Grean, who uh plays harp. And we we continue to, after moving breath, you know, kind of dissipated a bit. We continue to make music together. We have been in uh part of this little group called Tingsha. Uh we've been doing vibrational sound journeys uh for over 30 years now. We're all kind of getting too old to carry all of our gongs and bowls and whatnot and be enticed to come out every so often. In fact, we're gonna go to um this beautiful um estate called Lotus Land here in Santa Barbara and do a little mini retreat of uh of a sound journey for um their staff. So um Lorin and I, you know, were the vocalists in this thing, and we had the experience of our best friend from Moving Breath, um, who had died of cancer. And not long after her, my mother left suddenly, too. So both of us were, you know, really ripe with um our friends passing, and I was really, really ripe with my mother's passing. And having these spirit experiences, and the title of this um album was informed by some experiences I was having in in particular realms of this um, you know, now I know there's a word, this synesthesia kind of experience where of hearing sounds, feeling colors, right, right. Uh and hearing color, you know, it was just all the senses were all kind of interwoven together. I could tell, you know, colors, sound, tactile emotions, you know, were all not coming through the the the sensory channel and channels that we're accustomed to. So so the the name of that. And and we decided that it was going to be largely improvisational, that we wanted it to be informed by you know the spirits of my mother and our friend. So we did form an outline and we had a few musical phrases and you know, decided on instrumentation for that, brought that into the studio up in Seattle with our dear friend Daniel, amazing acoustical sound engineer, and and lived on the ranch where his studio was, so we could just be, you know, with this experience of my mom and my and our friend, and let that inform the album. That was a huge experiment, but it it was lovely.

Incorporating Psychopomp into Daily Life

Kerri 47:09

Thank you for asking about that. Yeah, thank you for sharing the journey. It's so such an incredible way to honor. Really. And so one of the important things about psychopomp is that this work is giving back to the planet, it's assisting suffering beings, it's alleviating suffering. It's really a gift to the world. I mean, we aren't generally getting paid to do psychopomp. Psychopomp is done as a public service. So, how do you incorporate psychopomp into your daily or weekly life? What does that look like?

Mujiba 47:49

Well, aside from what I described about people coming to ask, you know, could you check this out? Yes, yes, absolutely. Oftentimes when people come for um shamanic healing to, there might be uh the opportunity to engage with a spirit that's kind of hanging along eating this. And um, and then, you know, of course, we'll, you know, really what is the value? Are we really doing something? Uh, people uh who learn the practice are curious about being able to help out if there's a huge conflagration, if there's huge war, if there's a huge disaster. Can we go into that environment and see if we can help any souls that are stuck as a result of that trauma? And certainly we can. And we go, well, what difference does that make? I had this experience in New Zealand. Uh some people had invited me, oh, we're gonna have this meditation on top of this old uh volcano or syndicate site. Uh maybe about 10 of us, you know, just have meditation. And um, I wasn't being, you know, shamanically inclined or anything at that moment. I was just gonna go meditate. These new people I met. I'm sitting there. Um we're we're we're into it, and it's beautiful, beautiful views of the valley all around, valley surroundings, and very potent sight energetically, even though it was uh you know long um slumbering volcano, I guess. Um and in the middle of the meditation, I got this surge and a and uh and a voice uh from a spirit that I was not familiar with, and it simply said, hold still, open, and don't move. Don't move. Next thing I know, I'm feeling like the volcano is erupting through my spine. It's just going like this. It was so intense, I was shaking, but holding on, um, as it felt like whatever it was was I was this conduit or this vent for this very fiery, very angry, immensely um intense, very hot, whatever it was, experience. Finally it dissipated. I came, I was okay. I was very awake, very um alert by then. The uh meditation experience was completed, you know. Everybody else came out of it. The person facilitating this brought us out of that. I'm looking around, nobody seemed to be aware that this was going on for me. For you, yeah, at all. So I'm like, okay, did I make that up or whatever? And I said, So I said, so what went on here in this place? And they said it was the site uh way back when of a particular village with a particular chief. They had an advantage here because it, you know, any attacking um tribe had a had a difficult time reaching this place, and so, you know, but you know, there were battles here, pretty violent ones. There was that's the history of the thing. I guess, oh, thank you very much. So, so the resonance of these, you know, even if if you're not going to attribute it to spirits, the resonance remains. And for people who dial into sites of war, um that that this healing can happen for souls who are stuck and um traumatized, don't have the vitality to move on. This because we're engaging in non-ordinary reality, we're engaging with these souls. We we can't help it. It we encounter them, and it and it's a gift to have this practice, this ancient practice, actual, and universal practice, actually. So, yes, uh, we can go and help uh change the vibe in a place.

Guiding Students in Psychopomp Practices

Kerri 52:40

So thank you for that, Mujiba. Now, if a student is considering signing up for this, let's say they've taken the shamanic journey and um shamanic divination in practice, or they've taken the way of the shaman and they are interested in helping the deceased, the departed, the suffering beings. Um, but they're maybe concerned, maybe not sure, maybe uh don't know that it aligns with their religious background. How do you help them make the decision? Do they ever ask you or reach out about this class? And if so, how do you help guide them?

Mujiba 53:18

Well, um my kind of pat answer um to people is uh if you take no other courses with us ever again, at least take either this course or dying and beyond. Because we learn methods and practices that help us to explore the nature of our souls and um investigate the possibilities of where we could move on from here. This is what is at the what is fundamental to the practice of Psycho pomp. So you need to do that kind of exploration in order to be able to assist people. You need to know where to help them go. Um you need to explore this for yourself. So these practices are exquisite opportunities that we can give ourselves to explore just that. I mean, it's a huge preoccupation of humanity. Yes, what happens after we die? What happens after we die? Where am I going? Um how can I ensure that my loved ones get to a good place, that I can I'm gonna go to a good place? What is the hell business all about? You know, all of that stuff. So I don't have answers for you, but you know, I have methods and practices for you to be able to investigate this and come to your own uh learning and conclusions about it from your public spirits directly. So take this course if that's what you want.

Kerri 54:58

Thank you for that. And and what do you think, you know, a student should expect? They've taken, they take these this course, there are specific journeys that are real powerful and life-changing initiations. They help alleviate the fear of what's next and what's to come because you get to see it and experience it at a certain level. So do you think that most students, after they've taken um psychopomp training, most of them go on to assist and do psychopomp work?

Mujiba 55:34

You know, I had this um uh thing happen. I uh taught my family to journey many, many years ago. And so there was this blue moon happening one year um at the time of New Year's Eve. So I said, let's have a journey circle. We're gonna go upstairs and we're gonna journey because it's the right time to go and have shamanic journeys. So my mother, my brothers, sisters-in-law, a dear friend, and we just assumed my dad wasn't gonna want to because he was always saying I was doing all this voodoo stuff. So um, and so we appointed dad to stay down and watch the kids while we all went upstairs to do this. He um, so we're going upstairs, and my brother goes, Dad's coming. I go, Well, who's watching the kids? He got the kid from across the street to come and watch the kids, and dad's coming. So we do this, we have the journeys and everything, and my dad had this experience. He went to the lower world. He said that he got to visit with all of his family that had died, including um a young sister that died in infancy. Amazing. And his conclusion from that experience, oh my dad is crying, and he's he's saying, now I don't have to fear death anymore. Yeah, I know where I'm going.

Kerri 57:08

So that is the power of this for the person who's the student, um, you know, learning in the class, but being able to bring that to others is a priceless gift.

Mujiba 57:20

I thought I do nothing else for my dad. I have falling out with my dad, if you know, whatever, I've done this. What a service. It was precious, it was exquisite that he had that.

Kerri 57:36

Thank you for that. So that's for everyone. It really is. And so this is one of the courses that is three segments. Typically, if people teach it in a you know, evening or morning segment, and you know, each week as you learn through this class, you really build your uh confidence with journeying to these new places in the upper world and lower world, and and and learning where the so the suffering beings might be here in the middle world. So could you tell us more about how you think, and again, this is your experience, your independent experience, how do you think the power that you bring to the suffering beings to assist them on in their spiritual progression, how do you think that works? How do you think that power assists them?

Mujiba 58:33

Um the outline of the methods and practices is quite simple. You know, if you read it in a book, you go, oh, this is what you do, and you go, you know, and you go and do it. But the the efficacy of your attempt is only uh from uh the power this of your helping spirits, really, and being power-filled. And so I've really um learned over time, you know, that that this is in fact true. And it is um it is a a great um opportunity to be initiated into these methods and practices in a group where a a ton of spirit power, quite frankly, has been called. Right. So that each one of the participants has you know this extra boost for being able to investigate um the practice for themselves in that time and in that moment. But it really is um uh being filled um and having the support of the power of the spirits around you that makes this uh effective. True. Truly, truly, truly.

Kerri 59:55

So the power of the helping spirits is an essential component to doing psychopomp work. At most. Well, with that said, Mujiba, I want to thank you again for joining us and sharing about your uh journey with shamanism as well as about this beautiful workshop, the shamanist psychopomp. If you'd like to learn more about Mujiba or more about this workshop or any of the other workshops the foundation offers, please check us out at shamanism.org.