Shamans and The Spirit World

Lucid Dreams and Psychopomp Work

by Mato Kinze

I am a practicing shaman and most of the work I do, I do in the dreamtime. Since I am not a medium and am not consciously aware of ghosts, I have to do my work with the help of my guides in the dreamtime. For me to do it well, I have to be lucid.

I developed my lucidity skills specifically for this purpose with the aid of prayer, some plant medicine, dream journaling, and practice. I am a student of Native American and Toltec Medicine and have been doing a lot of what's called psychopomp work over the last eight or nine months.

A psychopomp is one who helps souls cross over to the next experience. The very first lucid dream I had was an experience in this realm.

In these dreams, I always go to the same place: a bed and breakfast somewhere where the inn keeper knows me and knows that I come there to help spirits continue their journey. I believe this inn keeper is actually either an angel or other spirit ally, because she has helped me on a few occasions when the troubled spirit didn't want to go.

In any event, in one dream, I arrived at the B&B and was met by the inn keeper who told me that there were several new spirits here.

I checked into my usual room and was immediately in the presence of the spirit of a little girl about 7 or 8 years old. She was Caucasian, had long, dark, brown hair, was dressed in what looked like a nightgown and was holding a long-eared stuffed bunny with a pink nose and pink satin inside the ears.

I tried to talk to her, but when I approached her she disappeared.

I then went out to the garden where I encountered a very hostile spirit. It appeared to be a white man in his late forties, early fifties with coarse salt and pepper hair, about two days worth of stubble on his face, and dressed in a blue and white checkered shirt, dark pants (I think denim, but not sure) and black work boots. He was about 5'10" and probably about 180-185 lbs.

He grabbed me by the shirt and started to pull me towards him as if he was going to attack me. I could smell his sour breath as he jerked me toward him. I grabbed his hands on my shirt and could feel how thick his fingers were and how rough and callused his hands were. He let me know that he was a rapist.

Even though I was afraid, I kept calm and asked him how he had died. He didn't want to talk at first but I kept asking him questions about his death. I asked him if it was sudden or if he had been sick. I asked him if he knew he was dead. His anger began to dissolve and uncertainty replaced it.

He showed me a lot of blood. I asked him if he had bled to death. When the vision of the blood had cleared, he wasn't a middle-aged man any more, he was an 18-year-old boy.

He let me know that he had raped a girl and that one of her older male relatives (I wasn't sure if it was a father, or an uncle or an older brother or what, but it was an older male relative) had caught him and castrated him and then left him to bleed to death.

I told him that it was time to cross over. He was very scared but seemed like he would go. I turned us towards the back of the garden waiting for the gateway to open but it didn't happen.

The inn keeper came from behind me and said, "Here, let me help." She waved what looked like a wand (not a sparkly fairy princess kind of wand, but more like a stick or a Harry Potter kind of wand) and a column of sparkling light appeared at the back of the garden.

I walked the young man back towards the gateway. When he got to it, instead of stepping in, he looked in and then just kind of cringed and ran away.

I looked into the gateway and saw two figures there waiting to receive him. They didn't acknowledge me, but as soon as I registered them, the dream ended. NOW... here comes the kicker....

About two weeks later, it was just before Christmas and my family and I were at a shopping mall finishing up our shopping. My daughters had their allowance money and wanted...no... NEEDED to spend it before they just busted! So my wife took them to one of their favorite stores: Build-a-Bear Workshop.

I wasn't particularly engaged so I was just kinda wandering around off in my own little world when I hear my wife say to our six year-old, "Honey, you can get that one if you want to, but it will take ALL your money and you won't be able to get any clothes or accessories for it." My daughter responded, "But Mommy, I REALLY want THIS one!"

I glance over to see what all the fuss is about ready to chime in and help out my wife with a little lesson in fiscal responsibility. No sooner do I see my daughter than I felt like I had just been kicked in the gut. There was my beautiful six-year old daughter, whom I love more than life itself, holding the EXACT same bunny as the little spirit girl from my dream.

Please understand, I don't mean a bunny that kinda looked like it; I mean the EXACT SAME bunny. Same pink nose, same pink satin in the ears... SAME BUNNY.

I wanted to scream at her, "NO!! Put it down! Don't touch that! Run away!!" But I couldn't talk and somehow, I knew that she was supposed to have that bunny. I know I must have looked like hell, because my wife looked at me and said,"What's wrong?? You look like you've seen a ghost!" All I could manage to do was shrug my shoulders, turn around and walk out of the store.

That was my first real experience in helping souls continue their journey. Since then, I've had 18 more dreams in which I'm doing this. Of those 18, only 8 were lucid, and of those 8, only 5 were successful in actually helping the ghost move on.