My very first shamanic journey (only a few minutes long) began at a burrow. On my first attempt to enter the burrow, and being claustrophobic, I balked, and it was almost a week before I mustered up the courage to try again. This is a spirit journey, I told myself, and if my spirit wants to travel into a burrow, it will. And it did.
For a few moments, I felt myself flow into the burrow, not touching anything. It was so unexpected that I stopped, and before me appeared a mouse, dressed like the mouse guru in KungFu Panda, and looking amused, but a real mouse, not a cartoon. And mouse asked (telepathically), "Whither goest though, Friend Snake?" No wonder the burrow felt so spacious!
Wanting to record this in my journal, I sped back, opened my eyes, and sketched my meeting with Elder Mouse.
In another journey, this time into the Lower World to retrieve a lost part of my soul, Elder Mouse led me on an adventure where I learned an important lesson: that I am too focused on my spiritual goals and study, and miss so many opportunities for play, laughter and simple companionship.
"It is the little things that make the big things"
And at Elder Mouse's instigation, we ended up roughousing and rolling down a hill in uncontrollable laughter.
Elder Mouse Mandala.