EPISODE SUMMARY:
This week on The Conscious Consultant Hour, Sam welcomes mother-daughter duo Norma J. Burton & Nisha Burton, co-authors of the transformative new book Navigating Liminal Realms.
Together, they explore the mysterious in-between spaces of human experience, the thresholds between the seen & unseen, waking & dreaming, life & death, and how these liminal realms can become gateways for healing, creativity, and awakening.
With over 30 years of experience apprenticing with Indigenous elders and holding advanced degrees in Buddhist psychology and shamanic traditions, Norma brings profound insight into trauma healing, shadow work, and the power of mythic understanding. Her Journey to Completion methodology and Circle of Trust Healing Center have supported countless individuals in transforming pain into purpose. Nisha, an award-winning filmmaker and dreamwork specialist, weaves her expertise in lucid dreaming, storytelling, and emerging technologies to illuminate how imagination and consciousness intersect in modern life.
In this deep and fascinating conversation, Norma and Nisha share how their collaborative work bridges ancient wisdom with cutting-edge thought, guiding us to navigate times of transition with courage and grace. From dream messages to shadow integration, from personal transformation to collective evolution, this episode invites you to discover how to embrace uncertainty as the portal to profound renewal.
Tune in and share your own thoughts and feelings about exploring your psyche on our YouTube livestream or on our Facebook page.
In this opening segment of The Conscious Consultant Hour, Sam Liebowitz reflects on his blog “Having Patience with Our Healing Process,” reminding listeners that spiritual growth unfolds gradually, like a seed developing unseen beneath the soil. He emphasizes that each small act of self-care nourishes deeper transformation, even when progress feels invisible, and that gratitude eventually reveals how far we’ve come. Sam then welcomes guests Norma and Nisha Burton—mother-daughter co-authors of Navigating Liminal Realms—to explore the thresholds between waking and dreaming, life and death, and how ancient practices like drumming, lucid dreaming, and plant medicines can help us consciously navigate altered states for healing and awakening.
Sam and his guests, Norma and Nisha Burton, explain that lucid dreaming, drum journeys, and plant medicines all lead us into liminal states—threshold spaces where we meet the psyche and the Higher Self in an “I–Thou” relationship. They emphasize cultivating inner guidance first through drumming and lucid dreaming—meeting a power animal, building agency, and learning psychonavigation—so that encounters with the distinct consciousness of plant medicines unfold safely and purposefully. Drawing on their mother–daughter lineage, early initiations, and the Journey to Completion framework, they share how rites of passage and shadow work prepare us to explore non-ordinary reality with clarity, reverence, and integration.
Norma reframes shadow work through her Jungian and Indigenous-informed “Journey to Completion,” emphasizing patience, clear intention, and reconnection to an inner guidance system that sets the right pace for healing. She distinguishes the “outer shadow” (people/events that trigger us) from the “inner shadow” (our feelings and responses), and describes “threshold guardians” that appear at the edge of ordinary reality and dreamtime—often experienced as sleep paralysis—inviting commitment rather than fear. Together, Norma and Nisha show how drumming, lucid dreaming, and plant medicine become sacred pathways to enter the dreamtime, study our wounds layer by layer, and alchemize them into mature integration and impeccability of power.
Sam, Norma, and Nisha explain that post-ceremony nightmares and strange dreams are the shadow’s way of asking to be witnessed—plant medicines accelerate this encounter, which is why precursor training (drum journeys, dreamwork) and patient integration are essential. For those seeking lucidity, Nisha recommends daytime practices that carry into sleep—regularly ask “Could I be dreaming?” and perform state checks (like flipping your hands) to build the agency needed to navigate the dreamtime consciously. They close by urging seekers to “go slow to go fast,” work with trusted guides and integration supports, and explore resources like LucidDreamingLucidLiving.com and NormaBurton.com to engage these liminal realms with grounding and reverence.
00:00:45.590 --> 00:01:01.720 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Good afternoon, my conscious co-creators! Welcome to another edition of the Conscious Consultant Hour, Awakening Humanity. I am very, very pleased that you are here with me today. I've got a
00:01:01.720 --> 00:01:09.759 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: couple of guests I am dying to bring on to the show, so I'm gonna make this quick, but first, of course, we always have our blog post.
00:01:09.760 --> 00:01:15.650 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: From a couple of years ago, just taking these in order. I was actually gonna skip my blog this week.
00:01:15.650 --> 00:01:31.280 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: But then I saw which one came up in the order, and I was like, this is perfect for what we're going to be talking about. So I said, let me go through this, but I gotta go through this quick, because I really want to bring on my guests. I got tons of questions for them. So, this week's blog post is entitled.
00:01:31.570 --> 00:01:36.349 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Having patience with our healing process will serve us well.
00:01:36.910 --> 00:01:42.820 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: We all want to make big leaps, to move forward on our healing path quickly.
00:01:43.020 --> 00:01:47.349 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And get to the point of feeling better as soon as possible.
00:01:47.620 --> 00:01:50.829 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Wanting some relief from our suffering.
00:01:51.370 --> 00:01:55.980 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: There is nothing wrong with wanting things to change right away.
00:01:56.350 --> 00:02:00.960 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Though the reality is that healing takes time.
00:02:01.600 --> 00:02:04.370 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: It happens in small steps.
00:02:04.750 --> 00:02:10.860 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: As one builds on top of the other, we may not see the progress.
00:02:11.200 --> 00:02:16.110 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So it feels like we are not making any headway on our challenges.
00:02:16.470 --> 00:02:21.839 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Yet the truth is that each small step is a big step forward.
00:02:22.910 --> 00:02:29.879 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And every time we show up for ourselves, we are actually making a difference in our lives.
00:02:30.550 --> 00:02:35.649 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Being impatient comes from having suffered for so long.
00:02:36.040 --> 00:02:41.209 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: For we make effort after effort, and still we are suffering.
00:02:42.430 --> 00:02:50.530 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Just as when we water a seed waiting for it to sprout, Patience will serve us.
00:02:51.440 --> 00:02:54.100 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Nature just works that way.
00:02:54.770 --> 00:02:58.159 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: We water and water and water the seed.
00:02:58.420 --> 00:03:00.859 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Nothing seems to be happening.
00:03:01.050 --> 00:03:05.249 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Yet, underneath the surface, the roots are starting to grow.
00:03:05.790 --> 00:03:08.689 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: The seed is turning into a plant.
00:03:08.950 --> 00:03:14.390 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Until one day, after what seems like an eternity to us.
00:03:14.560 --> 00:03:17.060 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: A stem comes up through the ground.
00:03:17.460 --> 00:03:22.269 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: It starts off so small, almost too tiny to see.
00:03:22.770 --> 00:03:28.799 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And it starts to grow and grow until we have a beautiful plant before us.
00:03:29.650 --> 00:03:32.859 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: This is how our healing journey works.
00:03:33.290 --> 00:03:38.279 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So much is happening under the surface each time we make an effort.
00:03:38.460 --> 00:03:47.780 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Even when it seems like nothing is changing for us, we are actually feeding the change we want to see.
00:03:48.200 --> 00:03:52.320 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Until that day, when all our effort pays off.
00:03:52.600 --> 00:03:54.850 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And suddenly we feel the shift.
00:03:55.490 --> 00:03:57.829 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: We see a change within us.
00:03:58.060 --> 00:04:00.630 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: That we never noticed before.
00:04:00.820 --> 00:04:06.529 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Our life shifts before our eyes, and we come to our hearts.
00:04:06.870 --> 00:04:10.020 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: It may have taken longer than we wanted.
00:04:10.130 --> 00:04:12.930 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: But it happened sooner than we thought.
00:04:13.330 --> 00:04:21.490 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Now we see how all those small steps added up to a big shift in our lives.
00:04:22.160 --> 00:04:25.489 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And we can be grateful for the journey.
00:04:27.270 --> 00:04:31.129 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So… I wrote this blog post a couple of years ago.
00:04:31.710 --> 00:04:37.640 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Because a number of people I'd been working with at the time on their healing journey.
00:04:38.740 --> 00:04:51.069 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: we're all like, oh, I just want to feel better, like, like, take me deeper, I want to go really deep in my process, oh, you know, I just… I just want to feel better, I just want relief.
00:04:52.750 --> 00:05:00.280 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And I had so much empathy for them, because I know they had been suffering for so long.
00:05:02.290 --> 00:05:04.709 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And at the same time.
00:05:04.960 --> 00:05:11.089 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: I know that they weren't seeing those little shifts that were happening in the process.
00:05:12.170 --> 00:05:19.370 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And that they were so focused on getting to that point where they just feel good to be alive.
00:05:19.880 --> 00:05:21.429 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: That they missed.
00:05:22.020 --> 00:05:28.930 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: All the steps and the results that they had taken on their healing journey, on that path.
00:05:32.160 --> 00:05:39.659 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And so, the… the… just the imagery that I know is used so frequently
00:05:40.460 --> 00:05:44.660 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: About watering the seed and waiting for that to turn to a plant.
00:05:44.950 --> 00:05:50.690 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So much is happening under the ground that we don't see, that we don't feel.
00:05:52.010 --> 00:05:58.109 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Until one day, we look back, and we're like, oh my god, I can't believe how much has changed.
00:05:59.170 --> 00:06:06.099 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: You know, oftentimes I say to people, look, it took 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 years to get where you are today.
00:06:06.260 --> 00:06:10.000 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: It's gonna take a little while to unwind that.
00:06:11.540 --> 00:06:17.449 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And so patience is really our friend when we start on this healing journey.
00:06:18.480 --> 00:06:26.749 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And so that's why I wrote this blog post, kind of in response to, so many people.
00:06:27.300 --> 00:06:33.530 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: just coming and just, oh, I just want to feel better, I want to feel better, like, I want to feel better now, today.
00:06:35.360 --> 00:06:37.259 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And I'm like, we will get there.
00:06:37.370 --> 00:06:38.699 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: We will get there.
00:06:39.290 --> 00:06:42.360 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Might not happen as quickly as you want.
00:06:42.980 --> 00:06:45.809 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: But it'll… it'll happen faster than you think.
00:06:47.010 --> 00:06:51.129 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And so that's where this blog post came from, and…
00:06:51.280 --> 00:07:10.839 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: this is… this is why I couldn't skip this one, because this is just so perfect, for my guests today. And of course, you can always find my blogs at my personally branded website, theconsciousconsultant.com, and of course, on the station's website, talkradio.nyc slash blog.
00:07:11.510 --> 00:07:12.350 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Alright.
00:07:13.630 --> 00:07:18.799 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: It is now my pleasure To welcome to the show.
00:07:19.190 --> 00:07:25.910 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Both Norma and Nisha Burton, co-authors of the transformative new book.
00:07:25.970 --> 00:07:41.330 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Navigating liminal Realms of this book. Together, they explore the mysterious in-between spaces of human experience, the thresholds between the seen and the unseen, waking and dreaming, life and death.
00:07:41.350 --> 00:07:48.910 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And how these liminal realms can become gateways for healing, creativity, and spiritual awakening.
00:07:49.170 --> 00:08:05.869 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: With over 30 years of experience apprenticing with Indigenous elders and holding advanced degrees in Buddhist psychology and shamanic tradition, Norma brings profound insight into trauma healing, shadow work, and the power of mythic understanding.
00:08:06.020 --> 00:08:15.730 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Her Journey to Completion methodology and Circle of Trust Healing Center have supported countless individuals in transforming pain into purpose.
00:08:15.870 --> 00:08:30.990 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Nisha, an award-winning filmmaker and dream work specialist, weaves her expertise in lucid dreaming, storytelling, and emerging technologies to illuminate how imagination and consciousness intersect in modern life.
00:08:31.340 --> 00:08:34.640 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Welcome to the Conscious Consultant Hour, Norma and Nisha.
00:08:35.059 --> 00:08:38.389 Norma & Nisha Burton: We're so happy to be here, thank you. Yes, thanks for having us.
00:08:38.419 --> 00:08:46.300 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Oh, my pleasure, my pleasure. I usually like starting off just talking a little bit of, sort of.
00:08:46.630 --> 00:08:53.949 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: your background and the journeys, I mean, you've worked with Indigenous peoples, you've been around this
00:08:54.250 --> 00:09:05.130 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Dream work, drumming work, working with plant medicines. But what got you to say, like, we want to write a book about
00:09:05.350 --> 00:09:14.169 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: how to really navigate these spaces. Why did the… what was the… the germination, the seed of saying, like, let's write a book together?
00:09:14.760 --> 00:09:29.490 Norma & Nisha Burton: Yeah, that's a wonderful question. So, we're mother-daughter, and it's really beautiful to be able to have a lineage, and to be able to combine our talents together in order to bring forth the message that's in our book.
00:09:29.490 --> 00:09:54.400 Norma & Nisha Burton: We wrote one book before this, too, called Lucid Dreaming, Lucid Living, and that's a book and oracle deck that teach the skills of lucid dreaming through the intuitive art of pulling oracle cards. And so that was a beautiful first way that we came together, and my mom was able to weave in her wonderful psychological knowledge and shadow work and trauma healing expertise, along with my lucid dreaming
00:09:54.500 --> 00:10:17.590 Norma & Nisha Burton: expertise and journeys, and so being able to share that was beautiful, bringing it into the world. Now, the second book, we wanted to build on that, and especially because she does, and has done for many years, drumming journeys as a way to bring people from ordinary reality into non-ordinary reality, into the dream time.
00:10:17.590 --> 00:10:41.400 Norma & Nisha Burton: And, as you've heard, I specialize in lucid dreaming, and that's another way to bring people from an ordinary dream state into this lucid, heightened dream state. So we really wanted to compare and contrast those two states, which I don't think has been done anywhere else before, and so that was one purpose in being able to write this and bring our two areas
00:10:41.400 --> 00:11:06.379 Norma & Nisha Burton: of expertise and specialization together in that way. And then also, there's a lot of interest right now in altered states of consciousness, especially through psychedelics, and my mom has worked extensively here in Oregon in the psychedelic renaissance that's happening because psilocybin-assisted therapy was legalized here. And we saw the need for people to know how to navigate
00:11:06.380 --> 00:11:10.899 Norma & Nisha Burton: their psyches. That's why psychonavigation is a term that we use.
00:11:10.900 --> 00:11:11.260 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Because…
00:11:11.260 --> 00:11:18.180 Norma & Nisha Burton: More and more people are going into these altered states, are going into their psyches, but they don't really have
00:11:18.180 --> 00:11:39.670 Norma & Nisha Burton: the precursor training of how to do that in a skillful way, and we believe that really working with the dream time, working with altered states through drumming journeys, and this pathway that the journey to completion, which is my mom's work, lays out, is some of that precursor training to be able to do altered state journeys in a good way.
00:11:39.670 --> 00:11:47.170 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Yeah, yeah. So, Norma, let me ask you, because I'm really big on defining terms so that we know what we're talking about.
00:11:47.310 --> 00:11:57.140 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So when you… the title of the book is Navigating Liminal Realms. What is a liminal Realm? I mean, it may seem, like, obvious, but I'm like, let's define that.
00:11:58.080 --> 00:12:00.750 Norma & Nisha Burton: Well, liminal means on the edge of.
00:12:00.750 --> 00:12:01.619 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Who knows?
00:12:02.060 --> 00:12:03.970 Norma & Nisha Burton: Go to the edge of town.
00:12:04.160 --> 00:12:11.790 Norma & Nisha Burton: you'd be in a liminal realm. Or you could go into a movie theater and watch a movie, and that could be a liminal realm.
00:12:12.010 --> 00:12:25.139 Norma & Nisha Burton: But the liminal places in our own consciousness are those places that we haven't fully explored, that are between the realms of consciousness and unconsciousness, or superconsciousness.
00:12:25.140 --> 00:12:26.260 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So…
00:12:26.280 --> 00:12:32.130 Norma & Nisha Burton: Shamans of old tended to live in the liminal space on the edge of town, so.
00:12:32.130 --> 00:12:32.580 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: and…
00:12:32.580 --> 00:12:51.880 Norma & Nisha Burton: would have to go out to the edge, away from their structure of their dominant society life, to find the shaman, to go into an exploratory state. So, liminal means that, you know, it's a place that we are compelled to go
00:12:51.880 --> 00:13:01.049 Norma & Nisha Burton: To search for the mystery, or to search into the shadow, or to find, you know, a doorway into a deeper place in ourselves.
00:13:01.870 --> 00:13:09.059 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Right, right. So this is really about finding the liminal spaces within ourselves.
00:13:09.060 --> 00:13:09.600 Norma & Nisha Burton: Yes.
00:13:09.600 --> 00:13:15.409 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Though the external can sometimes support that.
00:13:15.510 --> 00:13:29.289 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: As in times of old, and in this case, the external stimulus could be a drum journey, could be, you know, a plant medicine ceremony, or it could be working in lucid dreaming.
00:13:30.100 --> 00:13:31.250 Norma & Nisha Burton: Exactly.
00:13:31.710 --> 00:13:32.270 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Okay.
00:13:32.650 --> 00:13:38.359 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And… You've been around this work for a long time.
00:13:38.520 --> 00:13:43.340 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: It must have been a very gratifying
00:13:43.380 --> 00:14:04.319 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: when Oregon legalized psilocybin, and seeing the renaissance, and now Colorado, and I think New Mexico, it just decriminalized it, and more and more states, I know New York State is looking at potentially psilocybin for medical use, New Jersey is, there are a number of states moving in that direction.
00:14:04.710 --> 00:14:11.240 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: What do you think… really started to…
00:14:11.710 --> 00:14:28.240 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Get us to the tipping point where enough people in society said, these kinds of tools are important enough that we need to explore them and not look at them as illicit drugs.
00:14:29.300 --> 00:14:32.089 Norma & Nisha Burton: Great question. In my youth.
00:14:32.270 --> 00:14:48.049 Norma & Nisha Burton: I was one of fewer people that felt compelled to go searching for this deep wisdom path, and I… before there were cell phones or computers or anything, I was going by writing letters to South America and Central America and
00:14:48.240 --> 00:14:53.149 Norma & Nisha Burton: Finding the wisdom elders to talk to and work with.
00:14:53.340 --> 00:15:10.119 Norma & Nisha Burton: So, now, in this generation of young people, so many are feeling compelled to go to the Amazon, you know, to seek out wisdom figures to help them. You know, they're born into an era when
00:15:10.470 --> 00:15:25.229 Norma & Nisha Burton: to speak of it astrologically, Pluto is their ruling sign, so they are compelled to go into the underworld and seek the transformation and help the planet go through the steep transformational time that we're in. So…
00:15:25.440 --> 00:15:29.540 Norma & Nisha Burton: Right? The evolution of consciousness is taking place.
00:15:29.660 --> 00:15:40.680 Norma & Nisha Burton: In humanity, and compelling people to seek connection with our greater selves, with the consciousness of the universe that
00:15:40.830 --> 00:15:51.470 Norma & Nisha Burton: ultimately is love, you know? So, there's this draw to understand more and to realize our capacities for creating reality.
00:15:51.730 --> 00:15:56.120 Norma & Nisha Burton: So I'm thrilled that the United States.
00:15:56.280 --> 00:15:57.130 Norma & Nisha Burton: Oh.
00:15:57.530 --> 00:16:15.659 Norma & Nisha Burton: healers and people in power are realizing the importance of these ancient medicines. These medicines are a whole consciousness, you know? Each one of them is a consciousness that is given to humans to help us, to teach us.
00:16:15.880 --> 00:16:18.860 Norma & Nisha Burton: So, I hope that…
00:16:18.950 --> 00:16:27.200 Norma & Nisha Burton: As people approach these medicines, that they're going to do it with the lineage available of all of the
00:16:27.220 --> 00:16:45.810 Norma & Nisha Burton: ancestors that have been expert in guiding people in these realms. So that's, again, one of the reasons for writing our book, because we want to emphasize to people that there are these teachings available from ancient times as to how to interact with the plant medicines and with consciousness.
00:16:46.280 --> 00:16:52.470 Norma & Nisha Burton: Yeah, so I'm… I'm thrilled that this is happening, and I… I was actually on the Oregon,
00:16:52.650 --> 00:17:00.480 Norma & Nisha Burton: Rules Committee for the state as one of the therapists who helped to shape how this would unfold in the state, so…
00:17:00.480 --> 00:17:01.040 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Oh, wonderful.
00:17:01.040 --> 00:17:05.960 Norma & Nisha Burton: very involved, and… You know, watching how it all takes place, and…
00:17:06.079 --> 00:17:20.700 Norma & Nisha Burton: It's been a very good unfolding of it, and many people are taking advantage of a well-held container, you know, with therapists present, and being able to do it in this safe way that we've tried to construct in our.
00:17:20.700 --> 00:17:22.339 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Wonderful, wonderful. Awesome.
00:17:22.930 --> 00:17:26.530 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: I remember one ceremony, someone once said.
00:17:28.240 --> 00:17:33.789 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: I'm a divine being… giving a divine being a divine being to ingest.
00:17:33.790 --> 00:17:34.949 Norma & Nisha Burton: I like that.
00:17:34.950 --> 00:17:47.720 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: I just thought, oh, that was beautiful. All right, we're gonna take a quick break. When we come back, I'd like to just talk briefly about, sort of, what is the commonality, because you talk about, you know, three distinct
00:17:47.720 --> 00:17:55.710 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: endeavors in the book. The lucid dreaming, drum journeying, and working with plant medicines and psychedelics.
00:17:55.710 --> 00:18:10.560 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So I'd like to talk about, like, how are these things interrelated? Like, how are they similar? And then I want to start to dive in into some of the methodology and your completion method… journey to completion, which I think is beautiful, okay?
00:18:11.690 --> 00:18:12.690 Norma & Nisha Burton: Sounds good.
00:18:12.690 --> 00:18:27.559 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Wonderful. So everyone, please stay tuned. You're listening to The Conscious Consultant Hour, Awakening Humanity. We do this every Thursday, 12 noon to 1 p.m. Eastern Time, right here on talkradio.nyc and all over social media, and we'll be right back with my guests.
00:18:27.840 --> 00:18:34.520 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Norma and Nisha Burton, author of the book, Navigating Liminal Realms, in just a moment.
00:20:20.250 --> 00:20:33.230 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And welcome back to the Conscious Consultant Hour, Awakening Humanity. We're speaking this hour with Norma and Nisha Burton, authors of the book, co-authors of the book, Navigating Liminal Realms. So,
00:20:35.860 --> 00:20:46.809 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: In the book, you talk about, sort of, three distinct methodologies. Lucid dreaming, drum journeys, and working with psychedelic medicines.
00:20:46.860 --> 00:20:58.059 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: How are these three things similar? Because, you know, on first blush, they don't necessarily look so similar, but let's dive into that.
00:20:58.700 --> 00:21:16.199 Norma & Nisha Burton: Absolutely. So back to the title, Liminal Realms, they all do take you into this liminal state, this place of transformation, where you come into contact with your psyche, with your inner self.
00:21:16.200 --> 00:21:33.339 Norma & Nisha Burton: and what we call the I-Vow relationship, which is so important to establish, especially with the first two, with lucid dreaming and drumming journeys. What they're doing is connecting you with this part of yourself that is,
00:21:33.340 --> 00:21:46.210 Norma & Nisha Burton: That is… you call your higher self, your greater self, your intuition. And by establishing that, then you're ready to interact with the third consciousness of the plant medicine.
00:21:46.210 --> 00:21:53.820 Norma & Nisha Burton: So a lot of people miss this. They dive right in to interacting with this other consciousness, and
00:21:53.820 --> 00:22:09.069 Norma & Nisha Burton: when you… especially plant medicines, when you interact with them, they really do have their own journey that they're taking you on, and I think of it sometimes like a roller coaster ride, where once you get on it, you're on it, and you'll be on it until it's done, and it'll take you where it does.
00:22:09.070 --> 00:22:25.269 Norma & Nisha Burton: So, we emphasize that by learning how to first go into your inner worlds, into your unconscious realms, through drumming journeys, being able to then connect with a power animal, that's the first thing you do in the drumming journey.
00:22:25.320 --> 00:22:35.300 Norma & Nisha Burton: You're connecting with this inner guidance system, and you're going where it goes, you're being led by your inner guidance. And then with lucid dreaming.
00:22:35.300 --> 00:22:47.709 Norma & Nisha Burton: and those types of experiences, you get in there, and a lot of times people think, once I have a lucid dream, which is a dream in which you know beyond a doubt that you're dreaming within the dream.
00:22:47.730 --> 00:23:06.439 Norma & Nisha Burton: Once I have a lucid dream, I'm going to be able to have complete control. And I always say, you don't have control, but you have agency. You have a heightened level of agency. However, there's this other force that meets you, and you can think of it as the universe, as your higher self, as your subconscious mind.
00:23:06.440 --> 00:23:21.570 Norma & Nisha Burton: But there's this other force you're interacting with, and it becomes a really beautiful relationship where you're learning and growing through having this level of lucidity and awareness in that space and interacting with that inner part of yourself.
00:23:21.570 --> 00:23:44.540 Norma & Nisha Burton: So by doing these works, the similarity is that you are going into these spaces where it's non-ordinary reality. It's the unknown in some ways, and you're exploring them, but then to be able to explore them consciously, you do that by really connecting with this inner guidance system, and then seeing how you interact with the third consciousness of the plant medicines.
00:23:44.990 --> 00:23:52.960 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Just out of curiosity, What did you experience first? Lucid dreaming, drum journeys, or plant medicine journeys?
00:23:53.400 --> 00:24:18.089 Norma & Nisha Burton: Yeah, I'll speak to that first. So, I feel really blessed to have been raised by my mom, who's an amazing shamanic teacher and healer. And so, from a young age, I was going on drumming journeys with her, you know? And I traveled, too, with her as she went to all of these sacred sites around the world to study with Indigenous elders. I was right there with her as a child, so I got to really experience
00:24:18.110 --> 00:24:42.919 Norma & Nisha Burton: what it was like to be in cultures where the dream time and ordinary reality were valued in equal measure. And so I got to see and grow up with that, which I feel like is quite unique for somebody coming from, you know, our American culture. And then, when I came into my 20s, which I was always an avid dreamer, but when I came into my 20s is when I really got into lucid dreaming as a practice.
00:24:42.920 --> 00:24:46.489 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Which, it's a skill that you really build up in life.
00:24:46.490 --> 00:24:59.120 Norma & Nisha Burton: And then just took off in those realms. And I really believe because I was primed through drumming journeys, through understanding how to go into my psyche in those ways, the lucid dreaming skills developed so rapidly.
00:24:59.360 --> 00:25:01.520 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: How about for you, Norma?
00:25:01.660 --> 00:25:10.190 Norma & Nisha Burton: For me, from a young age, I had a lot of dreams, and also had a mystical consciousness, so I was a visionary
00:25:10.240 --> 00:25:27.029 Norma & Nisha Burton: able to see beings walking across the lawn to me, or interact with fairy-type beings that were very present and real, and I was so blessed to have a family, and especially a grandmother, who was also very psychic. She was a…
00:25:27.610 --> 00:25:33.280 Norma & Nisha Burton: A medical healer on our native reservation that we lived
00:25:33.280 --> 00:25:54.060 Norma & Nisha Burton: right next door, too, and was called upon by the tribe for her psychic abilities, too. And so, she was an amazing person that I was nurtured by and trained by as a child to value what was happening to me and not be afraid of it. So many people don't have that kind of nurturance and get afraid and
00:25:54.060 --> 00:25:59.809 Norma & Nisha Burton: shut down that part of themselves. But I was encouraged to keep developing it and to own my…
00:25:59.810 --> 00:26:06.239 Norma & Nisha Burton: mystical access and to value it, so by the time I was 17,
00:26:06.340 --> 00:26:23.139 Norma & Nisha Burton: my whole community tribe came together and said, we see you as a person with a gift, and we support you in pursuing it. So I knew I was to be a spiritual leader, healer of some type from the time I was young. So I pursued,
00:26:23.480 --> 00:26:32.730 Norma & Nisha Burton: The traditional route given in our society, which was going to study religion and psychology, and becoming a psychologist and a minister, and…
00:26:32.730 --> 00:26:46.270 Norma & Nisha Burton: doing all the work in the academic realms, but I was also simultaneously so hungry for authentic experience from wisdom elders. So from the time I was in my 20s, I started traveling
00:26:46.490 --> 00:26:49.209 Norma & Nisha Burton: All over the world to find that.
00:26:49.470 --> 00:26:53.890 Norma & Nisha Burton: And, you know, came into drumming Journey.
00:26:54.010 --> 00:26:58.480 Norma & Nisha Burton: In my late 20s, and it seemed like such an important…
00:26:59.190 --> 00:27:17.090 Norma & Nisha Burton: tool that it really became my major way of guiding people into the altered states, although I'm also, like, a certified hypnotherapist and, you know, all of the Western ways of doing it, but I find the drumming journey to be…
00:27:17.270 --> 00:27:19.260 Norma & Nisha Burton: Most helpful, because
00:27:19.550 --> 00:27:32.189 Norma & Nisha Burton: I'm not then the authority figure saying, now do this, now do that, as happens in hypnosis. But I'm drumming, and I give people instructions ahead of time as to how to do it, but then they're following their own timing.
00:27:32.210 --> 00:27:43.080 Norma & Nisha Burton: and the response to their own imagination and their own unconscious, and they learn their inner pathway. So it's a great tool for teaching psychonavigation.
00:27:43.350 --> 00:27:51.239 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Wow, beautiful, beautiful. You know, I find it so fascinating, I've had so many people on my show over the years who…
00:27:51.600 --> 00:28:08.619 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: like, had a parent, a grandparent, a great-grandparent who was psychic, or I like to say, tuned in, and that talent kind of passed down. Nisha, I'm just curious, you got brought up in a very unique way.
00:28:08.620 --> 00:28:20.059 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Like, when you had to go to school and interact with other kids, like, was it challenging, or, like, were they, like, really fascinated by all the things you got to do with your family?
00:28:20.360 --> 00:28:41.579 Norma & Nisha Burton: That's a great question. I feel like, really, there was this time when my mom and I, we were in Machu Picchu, and up, you know, very high in the sky, and I told her, okay, I need to go over here by the ledge, and I was… how old was I? 8 years old. I was 8 years old. I was like, I need to go over here by the ledge, and you have to stay over there, and you can't see me.
00:28:41.580 --> 00:28:53.619 Norma & Nisha Burton: And so she was nervous about that, right? Her child on the cliff's edge, but she let me do it. And so I walked over, and then when I came back to her, I told her I had had this whole experience with these
00:28:53.620 --> 00:29:17.180 Norma & Nisha Burton: beings, you know, these, celestial beings from another dimension, and talked to them about how I needed to go into a time of forgetting, of the greatness of who I was, to be able to have, like, a normal kid's life. And so, that really, like, I feel, in some ways, of course, I was still connected to all of these things, and still having the mother I did, still
00:29:17.180 --> 00:29:32.749 Norma & Nisha Burton: having the upbringing I did, but I had a time of being able to also just be in this mundane world as a child, which I think is important for everybody, and still having very mystical experiences of, like, star beings visiting me as a child and whatnot.
00:29:32.750 --> 00:29:33.210 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Wow.
00:29:33.210 --> 00:29:58.179 Norma & Nisha Burton: then coming back into it, you know, in my teens and in my 20s, and having these moments of initiation, too, which I think are very much missing in our culture, rites of passage. But again, having the mother that I did, we had these marked moments of rites of passage into the next stage, next chapter of my life. And so then through those, and through my coming back.
00:29:58.180 --> 00:30:23.179 Norma & Nisha Burton: into the deeper spiritual connections, I was able to come back into that fullness of experience, and having had the also very, like, simple, mundane experience of just being a kid and playing with the kids, so it wasn't like I was talking to them about, like, yeah, this shaman in Brazil told me blah blah blah when I was on the playground. But I'm so grateful, too, that I never had a time
00:30:23.180 --> 00:30:36.770 Norma & Nisha Burton: when I really felt like I needed to rebel strongly against all of it, which people often ask, like, being brought up in this way. I was always connected in this through line to working with my inner worlds, and especially my dream time.
00:30:37.130 --> 00:31:00.349 Norma & Nisha Burton: working with the Journey to Completion system of knowing how to delve into shadow material that appeared all through my life and transmute it. So I feel really blessed to have had those skills and tools, and then now, coming back into this chapter of being able to fully share all of these things with everyone that we teach and talk to and write books.
00:31:00.770 --> 00:31:24.410 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, thank you so much. And a perfect lead-in to what we're going to talk about when we come back from this commercial break, which is shadow work, because I kind of feel like what I read in the book, your approach to shadow work is slightly different, I think, than what's commonly out there, so I'd like to talk about that and talk a little bit about what your journey to completion methodology is normally, okay?
00:31:24.670 --> 00:31:25.470 Norma & Nisha Burton: Great.
00:31:25.470 --> 00:31:38.470 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So, everyone, please stay tuned. You're listening to The Conscious Consultant Hour, Awakening Humanity. We're speaking this hour with Norma Anisha Burton, co-authors of the book, Navigating Liminal Realms, and we'll be right back in just a moment.
00:33:23.020 --> 00:33:37.610 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So, Norma, in the book, you talk about shadow work, but you talk about it a little bit differently than I think most people out there talk about shadow work. What's your approach to this idea of shadow?
00:33:39.260 --> 00:33:46.819 Norma & Nisha Burton: Yes, I… my Jungian-trained depth psychologist therapist, and…
00:33:47.310 --> 00:33:56.830 Norma & Nisha Burton: then also having worked, in particular, with the Weichol, that's spelled H-U-I-C-H-O-L, people in central Mexico for over 20 years.
00:33:56.920 --> 00:34:08.520 Norma & Nisha Burton: They really, through working with peyote, delve into the shadow material and help people to transform their lives with plant medicines. And so.
00:34:09.000 --> 00:34:20.080 Norma & Nisha Burton: I've had a lot of good training in it, but at a certain point in my 40s, I looked into all the different ways that people were teaching about the shadow, and I…
00:34:20.360 --> 00:34:21.589 Norma & Nisha Burton: I felt that…
00:34:21.750 --> 00:34:36.259 Norma & Nisha Burton: there wasn't quite the adequate tool that was simple enough for people to use, and yet adequate in its reflection of how the unconscious really works. So that's when I delved
00:34:36.420 --> 00:34:39.210 Norma & Nisha Burton: Deeply into a period of… of…
00:34:39.710 --> 00:34:48.630 Norma & Nisha Burton: inner introspection and creation of the journey to completion. So, it's a methodology that
00:34:49.090 --> 00:34:56.319 Norma & Nisha Burton: I think accurately helps people to explore their wounded places.
00:34:57.220 --> 00:35:02.680 Norma & Nisha Burton: A material within each person that we all have that's repressed.
00:35:02.890 --> 00:35:17.430 Norma & Nisha Burton: And pushed down out of our awareness, because it's too painful to know at first. And just like our bodies, if we get wounded, builds a scab around it, so our unconscious builds up a protective
00:35:17.450 --> 00:35:26.749 Norma & Nisha Burton: set of defense mechanisms around these places where we're wounded. So they can be difficult to get at, and it takes,
00:35:26.750 --> 00:35:29.300 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Patience, as you were saying earlier.
00:35:29.300 --> 00:35:29.950 Norma & Nisha Burton: hand.
00:35:30.890 --> 00:35:42.939 Norma & Nisha Burton: allowing the unconscious to present its material at the pace that's right for the individual. I've seen so many therapists, because they can push over people's boundaries.
00:35:43.350 --> 00:35:45.290 Norma & Nisha Burton: Push them too quickly.
00:35:45.420 --> 00:36:02.340 Norma & Nisha Burton: Leading to dire consequences. People can become suicidal and, you know, it feels unmanageable to them, so you have to be careful to go at the pace that the unconscious is guiding you. So here's where, again, Nisha was talking about the inner guidance system.
00:36:02.340 --> 00:36:03.450 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So that's.
00:36:03.450 --> 00:36:04.710 Norma & Nisha Burton: First step.
00:36:04.900 --> 00:36:10.709 Norma & Nisha Burton: that I get people re-hooked up with their own inner guidance system.
00:36:10.710 --> 00:36:11.490 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Hmm.
00:36:11.490 --> 00:36:12.520 Norma & Nisha Burton: That's key.
00:36:12.540 --> 00:36:31.859 Norma & Nisha Burton: Yeah. And they're setting their own intention that's the right amount of exploration for that period of time, finding the right edge of what they're needing to, understand and heal for that time of their life, because it's like layers of the onion. We have to go layer by layer to…
00:36:31.950 --> 00:36:35.950 Norma & Nisha Burton: All the way to as that movie talked about, the inception point.
00:36:35.950 --> 00:36:36.890 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: You know?
00:36:36.890 --> 00:36:44.479 Norma & Nisha Burton: So, that's what I help people do to move at the pace that's right for them, and then going into the shadow.
00:36:44.940 --> 00:36:52.239 Norma & Nisha Burton: I created this, unique approach that, as you were reading in the book, you know, that deals with
00:36:52.390 --> 00:36:55.669 Norma & Nisha Burton: That we all have an outer shadow, an inner shadow.
00:36:55.740 --> 00:36:58.699 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: One time I was teaching this to…
00:36:58.700 --> 00:37:04.350 Norma & Nisha Burton: people at the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute, and they said they felt like I came up with a missing link in Jung.
00:37:04.840 --> 00:37:05.990 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Oh…
00:37:05.990 --> 00:37:24.410 Norma & Nisha Burton: So it is quite unique, and so I have a method of helping people to work over a long period of time to study their shadow, and that's what you were talking about earlier, too. Jung said, we should not come to premature foreclosure.
00:37:24.910 --> 00:37:27.980 Norma & Nisha Burton: But hold the complexity long enough
00:37:28.220 --> 00:37:33.180 Norma & Nisha Burton: So that we can come through to true maturity or integration, so…
00:37:33.180 --> 00:37:33.650 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Yeah.
00:37:33.650 --> 00:37:40.340 Norma & Nisha Burton: We'll have to, though, have help and have a structure in which they can be brave to study the shadow long enough.
00:37:40.630 --> 00:37:49.650 Norma & Nisha Burton: Until we have gathered all the data and the fullness of the information that we need, and then it's like we have a fulcrum to shift the whole pattern.
00:37:50.010 --> 00:37:56.589 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Right, right, and I've seen it so much in just my own work with me and my wife working with people that…
00:37:56.990 --> 00:38:05.299 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: You know, it's like, sometimes as an external person, you can kind of see where someone's, like, core issue is, but they don't see it themselves.
00:38:05.300 --> 00:38:17.600 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: But, like, if you push them towards it, they actually, you know, they still… they can't deal with it, they can't do it. And just having patience and trusting the process that when they're ready.
00:38:18.060 --> 00:38:31.619 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: it will come up, and they'll be able to deal with it. It's been a real lesson in trust that a person's… and trust in people's process, even if it's not what we think it should be.
00:38:32.060 --> 00:38:41.010 Norma & Nisha Burton: Yes, that's so true. As you said in your blog intro, that was so apropos to the shadow work, right? Yeah.
00:38:41.090 --> 00:38:48.260 Norma & Nisha Burton: there is an inner guidance system in each person, you know? Lots of times, people fall prey to
00:38:48.260 --> 00:39:04.040 Norma & Nisha Burton: authority figures telling them what to do, or even cult figures who are trying to control their transformational process. So it's really important for people to be guided into connection with their own inner guidance system.
00:39:04.730 --> 00:39:11.429 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So you mentioned about an inner shadow and an outer shadow. What's the difference?
00:39:12.350 --> 00:39:17.189 Norma & Nisha Burton: Right? So the outer shadow are the people outside of us that trigger us.
00:39:17.410 --> 00:39:17.940 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: I don't know.
00:39:17.940 --> 00:39:26.949 Norma & Nisha Burton: bring up our awareness of, this is a wounded place in me. And then your inner shadow is your feelings and your behaviors in response.
00:39:27.170 --> 00:39:29.380 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Right. Right.
00:39:29.380 --> 00:39:36.630 Norma & Nisha Burton: So, that's a good way to start studying the shadow, to be able to observe the people that are triggering you, and then…
00:39:36.780 --> 00:39:48.070 Norma & Nisha Burton: note to their qualities and how they do what they do, and then your inner response to it, and your actions in response to it, too. So I set up a chart and have people study.
00:39:48.220 --> 00:39:56.239 Norma & Nisha Burton: the people currently triggering them, and then take it back in their lives into their past. And so we set up this whole
00:39:56.420 --> 00:39:58.370 Norma & Nisha Burton: Connecting the Dots study.
00:39:58.840 --> 00:40:08.689 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: You have a nice little, chart here on the Journey to Completion map, which… it's not going to come through too well here, but,
00:40:08.730 --> 00:40:20.000 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: you kind of have on a circle, and on the top is ordinary reality, and on the bottom is… is dream time. And a line through the center, and… and at the…
00:40:20.160 --> 00:40:27.570 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: this, the, the, sort of the transition points between Ordinary and Dreamtime, you have Threshold Guardians.
00:40:28.160 --> 00:40:30.549 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: What are threshold guardians?
00:40:30.740 --> 00:40:48.499 Norma & Nisha Burton: Yes, so, as you pointed out, the circle is the pathway. We always are following cycles and circles on planet Earth. So, yes, you're going in this clockwise direction where you get a calling to do what? To go into the underworld, to go into the dream time.
00:40:48.500 --> 00:40:50.610 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Into your unconscious, and…
00:40:50.610 --> 00:40:54.380 Norma & Nisha Burton: Study and collect this information about yourself.
00:40:54.430 --> 00:40:57.170 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Just to be clear, Dreamtime could be…
00:40:57.280 --> 00:41:02.470 Norma & Nisha Burton: A lucid dream, it could be a drumming journey, it could be a plant medicine ceremony.
00:41:02.930 --> 00:41:07.670 Norma & Nisha Burton: Exactly, right? Those are actually the ways to get into…
00:41:07.780 --> 00:41:13.459 Norma & Nisha Burton: The Dreamtime, which is a place that we all go. We go every night.
00:41:13.570 --> 00:41:15.199 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: But it's a vast…
00:41:15.310 --> 00:41:21.459 Norma & Nisha Burton: Terrain that humans have access to, that actually is a geography, just like
00:41:21.640 --> 00:41:24.190 Norma & Nisha Burton: Dwelling in ordinary reality on planet Earth.
00:41:24.400 --> 00:41:29.810 Norma & Nisha Burton: And it includes the greater cosmos, so the dream time is the realm of all potentiality.
00:41:30.100 --> 00:41:30.570 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: That we…
00:41:30.570 --> 00:41:32.049 Norma & Nisha Burton: Yet to journey into.
00:41:32.340 --> 00:41:41.110 Norma & Nisha Burton: So you're crossing over that middle line in the center of the circle, like you pointed out. You're crossing from ordinary reality as you have constructed it.
00:41:41.730 --> 00:41:42.710 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Mmm…
00:41:42.710 --> 00:41:47.709 Norma & Nisha Burton: into the dream time, which is the realm where you're going to get deconstructed.
00:41:47.870 --> 00:42:03.700 Norma & Nisha Burton: The structures that you've built in your psyche are going to get deconstructed so that you build a better, more adequate structure, so that you can use power more impeccably. So we've all got to go into the dream time to get deconstructed and reconstructed.
00:42:03.700 --> 00:42:11.699 Norma & Nisha Burton: And you're asking about the threshold guardians, right at that point where you're crossing over into the dream time.
00:42:12.030 --> 00:42:30.939 Norma & Nisha Burton: there will always be threshold guardians, which are a momentary showing of the shadow that you're going to encounter later. It's a foreshadowing of the shadow, so it can be scary for people. I mean, in the dream work, there is the experience that a lot of people have of,
00:42:31.420 --> 00:42:33.610 Norma & Nisha Burton: Being in sleep paralysis.
00:42:33.950 --> 00:42:36.739 Norma & Nisha Burton: So that's an example of threshold guardian.
00:42:36.740 --> 00:42:37.500 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Oh…
00:42:37.500 --> 00:42:38.250 Norma & Nisha Burton: And Nisha can…
00:42:38.250 --> 00:42:44.440 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So in the freeze mode, or… or… or stuck in some way?
00:42:44.600 --> 00:42:56.640 Norma & Nisha Burton: Right, and just a moment before you go into that, because I just want to say that the threshold guardians are not meant to stop you, though. They're just giving you a moment of decision and commitment.
00:42:56.640 --> 00:42:57.300 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: You know?
00:42:57.300 --> 00:43:14.590 Norma & Nisha Burton: Are you really going to go forth in trust and enter the dream time and explore what you have to? So you look at the threshold guardians. Carlos Castaneda talked about this. You look over your left shoulder into the face of them, the face of death, he said, and you say, I see you.
00:43:14.660 --> 00:43:20.589 Norma & Nisha Burton: But I'm going forth here. I'm gonna go on into this, and I'm going to trust. But you know.
00:43:20.590 --> 00:43:28.920 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: It's almost like a bit of resistance that causes us to build the psychic or emotional muscle to kind of push through.
00:43:28.920 --> 00:43:35.139 Norma & Nisha Burton: Exactly, and the threshold guardians will stop a person if it's not the right time for them to go.
00:43:35.340 --> 00:43:51.280 Norma & Nisha Burton: So we can trust that. I always, you know, encourage people to pause at the threshold and let it stop them if it's supposed to, because it's not the right time if they get stopped. But on the other hand, if they're meant to do it, then their strong intent.
00:43:51.460 --> 00:43:52.090 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Comfortable.
00:43:52.090 --> 00:44:08.549 Norma & Nisha Burton: forth, and then we do a ceremony to set the intent right there at the threshold. And then it's like Carlos Castaneda again said, a stake in the ground. You know, you're putting a strong intent in place, and then that will get you all the way through, because I say, spirit doesn't want you to get lost in the underworld.
00:44:08.940 --> 00:44:09.660 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Dude.
00:44:09.660 --> 00:44:20.250 Norma & Nisha Burton: go in there without that strong intent, so that you're just left wandering around. No, you're meant to have a clear intent about why you're going in, what you're gathering, and what you're going to come out with.
00:44:20.250 --> 00:44:22.319 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So it gets you all the way through.
00:44:23.720 --> 00:44:24.470 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Gotcha.
00:44:25.010 --> 00:44:48.829 Norma & Nisha Burton: Yeah, and within that, like my mom was saying, the dream time is another space that we can encounter the shadow. And what I love, again, about dream work and lucid dreaming work is that it goes at your own pace, so you can trust that too, just like you do with the shadow work in waking reality. These are tools that allow you to connect with your inner pacing.
00:44:48.830 --> 00:45:12.279 Norma & Nisha Burton: And so, a lot of people do have nightmares and the sleep paralysis experience, which is one in which you are starting to wake up, but your physical body is immobilized. And this naturally happens every time we go to sleep. Our bodies are immobilized so that we don't act out our dreams. We don't start running around. But normally what happens is that your
00:45:12.280 --> 00:45:29.670 Norma & Nisha Burton: bodies stops being immobilized, and then you wake up. Sometimes that happens in reverse, where you are waking up, but your body is still not able to move, so it's already a very frightening experience, and on top of that, it's often accompanied by seeing a being
00:45:29.670 --> 00:45:54.649 Norma & Nisha Burton: there at the bottom of your bed, or holding you down. So it's a very scary experience for many people, but we teach about how actually, in that space, one, it's kind of like a threshold guardian, saying, okay, are you really ready to enter into this lucid dream space? Are you really ready to enter into an out-of-body experience, which you can have from a sleep paralysis experience? Here's the guardian at the threshold, seeing it.
00:45:54.650 --> 00:46:02.200 Norma & Nisha Burton: if you're ready. And so then, if you're able to transform that fear, know that you can't be physically harmed and have boundaries.
00:46:02.200 --> 00:46:10.890 Norma & Nisha Burton: First and foremost, with any energies that you're feeling that you don't want in your space, then you can leap into that realm of lucidity and power.
00:46:11.230 --> 00:46:11.680 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So that's what.
00:46:11.680 --> 00:46:27.880 Norma & Nisha Burton: it's all about, and that's what nightmares are about, too. They're showing us these past traumas, these shadows, in this symbolic form, and they're saying, hey, we're calling you in a very strong way to look at these things, both in waking reality and in the dream time. Are you ready?
00:46:27.880 --> 00:46:51.220 Norma & Nisha Burton: And you can choose to not answer that call, or it might not be the right time, you might not be resourced enough, but then once you're ready to take it on in a lucid way, it's so beautiful because it can be really completely transformed in pair with the shadow work and waking reality, doing the dream time, lucid journeys and nightmares, really is such a profound tool for healing wounds.
00:46:51.480 --> 00:47:06.799 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Beautiful, beautiful. All right, we gotta take our last break of the show. When we come back, I have a few more questions about the interrelationship between the dream time, the plant medicine work, the drumming journeys, and how it all works together, okay?
00:47:07.510 --> 00:47:21.420 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: All right, so everyone, please stay tuned. You are listening to The Conscious Consultant, Our Awakening Humanity, and we'll be right back with our guests, Norma and Nisha Burton, co-authors of the book, Navigating Liminal Realms, to finish it all up in just a moment.
00:48:55.960 --> 00:49:14.110 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: I have so many questions for you, an hour is not enough time to get through everything, but I do have a question about the interrelationship between these different endeavors of lucid dreaming, drum journeys, and working with plant and psychedelic medicines.
00:49:14.210 --> 00:49:32.010 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: One of the things that I've seen is often when we engage in medicine work, the psychedelic or plant medicine work, that it's not uncommon to have nightmares, as you were talking about before, and very bizarre dreams afterwards. Why is that?
00:49:33.140 --> 00:49:47.020 Norma & Nisha Burton: The shadow will stalk you, you know? The shadow material is always wanting to be noticed and dealt with. It's like, I say, it's like a little kid pulling on your coat, saying, I'm here, you've got to look at me.
00:49:47.040 --> 00:50:03.380 Norma & Nisha Burton: You can't ignore me. And the plant medicines, I think, are set up to take people into their shadow material, right? So that's why it's good to do the precursor trainings before go… diving off the deep end into the.
00:50:03.380 --> 00:50:03.760 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Yeah.
00:50:03.760 --> 00:50:20.260 Norma & Nisha Burton: psychedelics, because they will take you into your shadow material, and it's good to be trained in how to interact with it and to know yourself better before going into it. Then you'll get a lot more out of the intense interaction that's accelerated.
00:50:20.430 --> 00:50:20.989 Norma & Nisha Burton: And the plant.
00:50:20.990 --> 00:50:36.080 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Nisha, I could ask you a million questions about a whole show just around the lucid dreaming aspect, but if someone wants to start to engage in lucid dreaming, and it's something that I've tried to do in the past many times, and
00:50:36.080 --> 00:50:44.499 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: I think I've only ever had one dream that I knew I was dreaming in the dream, and it's something I've always wanted to develop more of.
00:50:44.510 --> 00:50:48.839 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: But how would you recommend someone to start on that path?
00:50:49.000 --> 00:51:06.900 Norma & Nisha Burton: Yes, that's an excellent question. So again, I talk about how it's a skill, and some people think, oh, some people are just naturally lucid dreamers, I can't do it. But no, anybody can lucid dream if they learn those practices and do those. And really, it's about the practices you do while awake.
00:51:06.900 --> 00:51:25.410 Norma & Nisha Burton: to train your mind toward lucidity, because it is a unique brain activity sleep state that doesn't normally occur where, when we're typically in REM sleep, the prefrontal cortex, many parts of it are turned off, are powered down, and so you're turning back on these parts of the prefrontal cortex
00:51:25.430 --> 00:51:33.099 Norma & Nisha Burton: That are the questioning mind, that are the reasoning mind. And so, how you do that is, while you're awake.
00:51:33.100 --> 00:51:51.550 Norma & Nisha Burton: you ask yourself, could I be dreaming? Because in dreams, we think, oh, it's so obvious it's a dream, but we don't ask ourselves that, and then we don't realize it until after we've woken up, and we're like, oh, of course the pink elephant in the middle of the room should have shown me that it was a dream, but I didn't question that.
00:51:51.550 --> 00:51:52.430 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Right.
00:51:52.430 --> 00:52:15.719 Norma & Nisha Burton: your mind to be constantly questioning, could I be dreaming? And the next thing that you're doing is you're performing these actions, which are called state checks, that help you to verify whether or not you're dreaming. Because again, for a lucid dream, you need to know beyond a doubt that you are dreaming within the dream. So one that I always give people, and a lot of people know, is to look at your hands and flip them back and forth.
00:52:15.810 --> 00:52:32.760 Norma & Nisha Burton: You do this while awake, and if they stay the same, then you know, okay, I'm awake, I'm not dreaming. But if you're in a dream, they'll maybe have an extra finger, they'll glow. One time I had my hands turned into lobster claws, so I knew, I knew, I knew, I knew I was dreaming in that dream.
00:52:32.760 --> 00:52:57.560 Norma & Nisha Burton: So what you do to cultivate the practice of lucid dreaming every day is you question, could I be dreaming? Especially when you encounter situations, people, objects that often appear in your dreams. And then you do a state check, you perform a state check to verify whether or not you're dreaming, and then if you're not dreaming, you continue on in your day. What happens is you're training your mind to be doing that
00:52:57.560 --> 00:53:21.900 Norma & Nisha Burton: neural pathway of every time I encounter this thing, or I do this thing, I ask myself, could I be dreaming? I do a state check. So then when you're in a dream, eventually what happens is that you do, you have that question, you perform the state check, and it verifies you're dreaming within the dream, and then you click on to full lucidity, where the dream's characteristics change. You have this level of agency, and it feels as
00:53:21.900 --> 00:53:41.409 Norma & Nisha Burton: as real as waking reality. So that's why I tell people, if you're unsure if you've had a lucid dream, you probably haven't. You've probably had steps toward a lucid dream, like a very vivid dream, or semi-lucid, where you're kind of aware. But once you become fully lucid, it's an entirely different experience of the dream time that's very rich and alive.
00:53:41.770 --> 00:54:00.129 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Yeah, yeah, beautiful, beautiful. So it's kind of like you're creating the habit or the routine while you're awake of checking, am I awake? Am I dreaming? Am I awake? Am I dreaming? And you do that enough times when you're awake, and then you'll naturally do that when you're dreaming, and then that's how you'll create beautiful.
00:54:00.130 --> 00:54:07.450 Norma & Nisha Burton: Exactly it. Beautiful. Yeah, I can give a brief example of how that happened for me, where I was…
00:54:07.450 --> 00:54:32.280 Norma & Nisha Burton: one of my things that commonly occurred in my dreams was that I would, like, go to a public bathroom, and it'd be really gross, so that was a dream sign for me, which is kind of a funny one. But then I went into a bathroom one day that I thought it was a day, and I thought, okay, every time I do this, I perform a state check. But it seems so real, so mundane, so I was like, of course I'm not dreaming. But I went ahead and I flipped my hands back and forth.
00:54:32.430 --> 00:54:57.419 Norma & Nisha Burton: And sure enough, I had an extra finger. And so I was like, aha, I know I'm dreaming. The light switch clicked on, I was able to achieve full lucidity, and then flew up out of the bathroom, out of my house, into the cosmos, and had an incredible lucid dream experience where I was speaking with a dragon guide. So that just shows how even the most mundane dreams can be transformed into lucid experiences.
00:54:57.420 --> 00:54:59.630 Norma & Nisha Burton: If you're doing these practices.
00:54:59.630 --> 00:55:06.720 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Right, right. Norma, I mean, in the book, you kind of talk about how Y-you…
00:55:06.720 --> 00:55:27.250 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: the two of you wrote this book really as a guide, because so many people are engaging in plant medicine and psychedelic work, and they're not really prepared, and they're not really well educated on it. What would you recommend? If someone's curious, they're hearing about it, their friend went down to Peru and did ayahuasca, and all this stuff?
00:55:27.300 --> 00:55:30.850 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: How would you recommend people get started on this path?
00:55:31.570 --> 00:55:40.910 Norma & Nisha Burton: Well, I recommend that they would work with us. I mean, we… we have groups online, and you can have an individual boost session.
00:55:42.000 --> 00:55:44.450 Norma & Nisha Burton: And we lead retreats, so it's…
00:55:44.860 --> 00:55:51.090 Norma & Nisha Burton: Important to connect with people that are, Guides that you can trust.
00:55:51.090 --> 00:55:54.299 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Right, right. That have a lineage, that have experience.
00:55:54.300 --> 00:55:56.590 Norma & Nisha Burton: Right, right, and so…
00:55:56.590 --> 00:56:16.310 Norma & Nisha Burton: it's important to do, as I was saying, the work inside of yourself leading up to plant medicine, and then the integrative work afterwards, and people… like, I just went to the big psychedelic science conference in Denver, where there were 12,000 people there, and everybody's admitting, hey, we've gone too fast, you know, we really need to back up.
00:56:16.390 --> 00:56:16.870 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Yes.
00:56:16.870 --> 00:56:27.990 Norma & Nisha Burton: emphasize to people that they've got to do the inner work leading up to this, and a lot of integration work afterwards, so I really emphasize to people, slow it down, you know?
00:56:28.450 --> 00:56:33.330 Norma & Nisha Burton: And work with your dreams, and the material they're presenting, and then
00:56:33.520 --> 00:56:53.310 Norma & Nisha Burton: be in good therapy, so if they want to be in touch with us, you know, we'd love to talk to people and work with them, and we have a lot of ways available, including our online courses that they can have a passive way of working on themselves to start with, and then work with us in person.
00:56:53.490 --> 00:56:59.349 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Wonderful. Wonderful. And this… I guess this is one of those cases where going slow is the fastest way to go.
00:57:00.570 --> 00:57:05.390 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: So, how do… how would people learn about you? How do they find you? Where do they go online?
00:57:05.640 --> 00:57:27.699 Norma & Nisha Burton: Yeah, so our main website is luciddreaminglucidliving.com. On that website, you find links to both of our books, the Oracle Deck and book, as well as The Navigating Liminal Realms. That's also where we have our online courses, the passive ones, and the ability to get in contact with us to do the one-on-one work or the group work.
00:57:27.700 --> 00:57:49.740 Norma & Nisha Burton: Normaburton.com is the other website specifically for the Journey to Completion and the shadow work, so that's the way to reach out directly to Norma. And then our Instagram is the same thing of Lucid dreaming, Lucid Living, and that's where we post a lot of bite-sized chunks about how to lucid dream and how to engage with these psycho navigation practices.
00:57:49.740 --> 00:57:51.650 Norma & Nisha Burton: And our YouTube channel is the…
00:57:54.420 --> 00:58:02.560 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Oops, I guess she was about to say their YouTube channel is the same, Lucid… Dreaming, Lucid Living.
00:58:02.930 --> 00:58:08.889 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Looks like their computer froze, or something happened, so we lost something.
00:58:08.890 --> 00:58:09.750 Norma & Nisha Burton: practices.
00:58:10.080 --> 00:58:12.590 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: You're back. Okay, you froze for a minute.
00:58:12.590 --> 00:58:15.129 Norma & Nisha Burton: Oh no! Where'd I leave off?
00:58:15.130 --> 00:58:26.530 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Well, I said, you froze at, your YouTube channel, so I said… so I told the audience, I think it's… you were going to say Lucid Dreaming, Lucid Living is also the YouTube channel, yes?
00:58:26.530 --> 00:58:37.020 Norma & Nisha Burton: Exactly, and that's where to find more long-form content. So any of those spaces are great spaces to reach out to us, to connect with us, and we'd love to work with all of you.
00:58:37.020 --> 00:58:54.969 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Wonderful, wonderful. Nisha, Norma, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show. I could literally do, like, a full day just talking with the two of you. I so love what you do and what you're all about, so thank you for doing the work that you do, because I know it is very, very needed.
00:58:55.410 --> 00:58:59.929 Norma & Nisha Burton: Thank you for having us. It's been great to meet you and to feel our synchronicities.
00:58:59.930 --> 00:59:10.940 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Yes, totally, and please, please, please, if you ever come to New York City, you must let me know so that we can meet up, and if I make it out… where in Oregon are you? Near Portland, or Eugene?
00:59:11.190 --> 00:59:12.350 Norma & Nisha Burton: Ashlyn.
00:59:12.770 --> 00:59:18.950 Norma & Nisha Burton: We come to the East Coast quite often, so definitely we'll look you up, and it would be great to meet you in person.
00:59:18.950 --> 00:59:22.639 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Yeah, please, please. It's so funny, I actually…
00:59:22.930 --> 00:59:30.419 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: I'm not going to be there, but an organization I'm involved with, they're doing an event in Ashland in November.
00:59:31.310 --> 00:59:33.080 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Is it the Dream Group, or…
00:59:33.080 --> 00:59:37.100 Norma & Nisha Burton: No, it's the Evolutionary Business Council. Oh, wonderful.
00:59:37.100 --> 00:59:51.350 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And they're tagging on to the end of a joint venture JVX Live thing that's happening in November, but unfortunately, I'm not going to be there this year, but… but yes, if I make it out to Ashland, I will definitely look you up, and please come back.
00:59:51.350 --> 00:59:53.260 Norma & Nisha Burton: Love to have our paths crossed.
00:59:53.260 --> 01:00:10.130 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: Yes, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for taking the time out of your schedule for coming in. I really appreciate it. Once again, Norma and Nisha Burton, authors of the book, Navigating Liminal Realms, highly, highly recommend it. Thank you all. Thank you, Norma and Nisha.
01:00:10.260 --> 01:00:11.179 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And of course.
01:00:11.180 --> 01:00:12.380 Norma & Nisha Burton: Like, forgiving us.
01:00:12.740 --> 01:00:33.209 Sam Liebowitz | The Conscious Consultant: And of course, thank you, my loyal listeners, for tuning in each week. Without you, there is no show. I truly appreciate it. And don't forget, if you did miss any part of today's show, you can always catch the replay on talkradio.nyc, on YouTube, on Facebook, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, on Twitch. Thank you all for tuning in. Take care, we will talk to you all next week.
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