"Forced" Lucid Dreaming under the Guise of Shamanic Journeying?

[anti_nation]

Hey fellow dreamers! I'm going to share a couple different experiences I've had regarding Shamanic Journeying and ask a few (or more) questions to get some different perspectives. A little background on me - I was introduced to Shamanic Journeying about two years ago at a summer camp where I worked. Aside from lucid dreaming off and on throughout my life, I have not had any sort of experience I would call out of the ordinary involving everyday waking consciousness. I am not affiliated with any religious group. I am a firm believer in direct experiences, meaning I hesitate to invest belief (maybe there's a better word than "belief") in anything I have not experienced directly. For example, I've never had any form of an OBE. I am very much aware that there is SO MUCH that exists outside the scope of my five senses, but without that confirmation that comes from experience, I don't know how to gauge it, if that makes any sense. That being said, I've had a few different experiences regarding Shamanic Journeying that have been making me ask questions I've never asked before. I'll put them below in spoilers for the sake of convenience. Spoiler for First Experience: (Skip to the third paragraph for my experience) Staff training was in full swing at my new job - summer camp. It was camp out night. Boy and girl counselors were split, each group at a different camp site cooking their food over a fire and setting up tents and hammocks. My job was the camp photographer, so I was expected to jump back and forth between the two campsites to capture images. When food was ready, I stayed with the girls. I've always been more attuned to feminine nature, and I wasn't bothering anyone being the only guy there so it was mutual. Afterwards, an older woman close with the Director addressed the group and asked if anyone wanted to join in on a Shamanic Journeying session she was about to lead. Only a few opted out. She smudged the area and everyone participating with sage, lit candles at the four cardinal directions, and then began giving instructions. She was going to start an mp3 track with a drum beat going at 100bpm. We were to find a comfortable position and imagine a familiar place - find a way to go underground - find a tunnel - go through the tunnel to the other side - find entities there and ask them three times if they are our "spirit guide". It took a long time for me to muster the focus and attention to keep myself in my imagination. I envisioned my childhood home, going down the stairs to the basement, and through a tunnel. The tunnel stretched on endlessly. I began to lose patience and 'forced' an exit the way I would in a lucid dream. It was a big, wooden medieval door with iron bracings and a large iron ring for a handle. I pulled it open. On the other side, I came out onto a walkway made of smooth planks of wood. On either side was a still pond full of lily pads and flowers. The path lead to an incredibly large tree, the trunks diameter must have been at least 25ft wide. I couldn't look up far enough to see the top; it seemed like it stretched on forever. The path continued around it on each side. I came to a circular platform and found a completely featureless... person. They were kind of like an indistinguishable blob in the form of a standing human. They stood next to a yellow mop bucket. I asked "Where do I go?" and they pointed to my right, telling me to continue down the path. I walked on. I came to another circular platform and found something the size of a cat laying in the middle of it. It too was featureless, with the exception that it seemed like it was covered in this black, ethereal tar. (That's the best I can describe it). My gut reaction was to help in any way I could. I picked it up and ran back to the person and frantically asked how I can clean it off. They only pointed down the path again. I ran down the path, thinking of what I could do. My lucid dreaming instincts kicked in and I thought of a fountain. I materialized one as if I were in a dream. It had crystal clear water purer than I had ever seen before. As soon as I was about to submerge the creature, I heard the callback drum pattern and almost immediately 'woke' up. My body flooded with a strange sensation of electricity that quickly faded. Everyone took turns explaining their experiences. Roughly 15 out of the 17 people had never attempted anything like this before, but there were several insanely detailed stories that gave me chills. Something I noticed was that I was never fully apart from waking consciousness. I could always subtly feel my body lying down in the soft pine needles and hear the crackling fire. After everyone had a chance to talk about what happened, we were given the option to try again. It was a resounding yes. Some people had even more vivid experiences. Mine was not. I struggled to focus again. Flashes of images flew by me briefly. I was sitting on a log in another part of the woods. Everything was dark except a herd of deer quietly passing through. They emitted a golden light from their bodies. As soon as I began analyzing what I was seeing, a buck turned as if to look at me and I immediately lost the vision. Spoiler for Second Experience: This is a year later. Same camp, same spot in the woods, almost the same group. I struggled with my short attention span. I didn't get very far, but something happened. I imaged myself out of my body, walking away from the group into the woods. The air had peculiar feel, like it was clear, blurry and thick at the same time. I opened a wooden hatch in the ground and walked down the wooden steps in my bare feet. There were exactly 12. I came to a tunnel, but as I tried walking forward, it felt like something held my shirt and wouldn't let me go. And then I was turned around facing the steps, and no matter how hard I tried to turn and look into the tunnel, I wasn't able to. The woman guiding us thought there was something interesting going on with the 12 steps. She mentioned something about that being tied to past life regression. Spoiler for Going Alone: This time, I was alone in my bedroom. I turned the lights down, played the 100bpm drum track through my stereo and hunkered down. The entire time I could feel my body in my bed, my black piece of cloth over my eyes, and hear the low rumble of traffic outside. I was never fully into this other consciousness. I used my typical method - my childhood home. Focusing was really difficult, as I'm out of practice. At the top of the steps and at the mouth of the tunnel, there were trash bags of basketballs and other things (playground balls and footballs) in my way; I just threw them to the side and 'told' them I'd deal with them later. The struggle to maintain focus in the tunnel was very real. A human form appeared in the blink of an eye in front of me in the tunnel. Long white/grey hair. A firefly flew from their hand, then they disappeared as fast as they came. The firefly took me the rest of the way through the tunnel and showed me the same medieval door I remember coming to in my first journey. It landed on the handle and blinked its light. I pushed the door open - more black tunnel. I closed it, then pulled it open - cinder block wall. I tried something that felt instinctual; something I would do in a lucid dream. I turned around and walked backwards with my eyes closed through the cinder block. I opened my eyes and I saw sunlight shining on the other side of the cinder blocks. Turning around, I saw a lush green forest in a natural bowl/valley of stone. Blue skies didn't seem overly saturated or dream like; it seemed very real. A mountain lion came out of the forest and began nuzzling my hand. I was struggling to keep focus of this dream body and eventually lost it. When I came back, I could feel this powerful energy rushing through my body (just like before) like I had just been dreaming and woke up. Or just attempted a WILD and got close. But it was so strong, almost startling in a way I've never felt before aside from the first experience. So to explain the title of this thread, these experiences felt and reacted similarly to lucid dreaming in my experience. If I tried, I could change the environment. And some things seemed generated, but not fully detailed. Maybe this is because it wasn't an entirely formed dream, I suspect. Here are my questions: (Impossible for anyone to answer) How real was all this? How much was generated by my own mind, and how much (if any) could be from some outside source? Some of the elaborate experiences I've heard from the other first timers make me question it all even more. Does anyone here have experience with Shamanic Journeying in this fashion or any other kind? Is this just a forced kind of dreaming; manifesting the dream state through sheer focus and attention? That's surely what it felt like at times. I'm not sure there's any way someone else can validate my experiences, but I'd love to hear your thoughts and personal experiences on this. Please excuse my noobishness, as this is completely undiscovered territory for me.