Hello!
There’s been a lot of interest in the Upper-World course, and it’s been lovely to see how many of you are feeling drawn to this next step – as any truly balanced shamanic practice needs to include Upper-World work at some point.
This course isn’t just about journeying techniques. It’s about understanding the nature of Spirit itself – what the Upper-World really is, and how to experience it without falling into the hierarchical, ungrounded ideas that modern culture so often brings to spirituality. It’s about learning to rise safely, to meet authentic Upper-World Guides, and to bring back perspective, clarity, and discernment into your life and work.
Below are some of the most common questions we’re asked about the course. If you’re unsure whether you’re ready, or simply want to understand what this work offers, this should help.
To jump right to a specific question, simply click on it:
TECHNICAL DETAILS:
COURSE CONTENT:
3 reasons why you shouldn't miss this course
1. Because any truly balanced shamanic practice needs to include the Upper-World.
At the College, we place great emphasis on beginning with the Lower-World – on putting down strong, grounded roots before moving into middle- or Upper-World work.
That’s how a tree grows. The seed anchors itself first, sending roots deep into the earth. Only then does it reach upward. We too need the deep roots of the Lower-World and the high branches and perspective of the Upper World to best deal with our middle-world lives.
The Lower-World is the realm of Soul; the Upper-World is the realm of Spirit. A balanced shamanic practice needs both. Working together, Soul and Spirit can inform and guide how to best live and act in the middle-world. This course helps you learn to do that.
2. Because it shows how modern spirituality drifted from animism, and how we can return to it.
We begin by looking at how contemporary spirituality became tangled in hierarchy; in the unbalanced, Fallen, Taker culture idea that up is good and down is bad. An idea that has led to disembodied, ungrounded, and sometimes self-punishing spiritual paths.
Without strong Lower-World roots, we can drift into human-made stories and fantasies that take us further from animism. In this course, we’ll learn to see that for what it is—wonky Taker-culture thinking—and return to the simple yet profound and radical, animist truth: that everything is alive, and everything is sacred, including you.
Unlike Fallen culture spirituality, animism reminds us there is nothing wrong with us. We don’t need to punish ourselves or “transcend” life. We’re here to inhabit it fully, in all its depth and wonder. In all its sacredness.
3. Because it reawakens humility and healthy awe—and helps us return to “right relationship”.
In this unique course, we learn to convalesce in the presence of light, sound, and benevolent beings. These experiences rekindle humility and awe, opening the heart to healing.
Through this work, we remember what animism offers: the chance to wake from our human madness and see the sacred world around us again—to feel its call, its fierce beauty, and its invitation to belong.
This course is one of the rare opportunities to study genuine Upper-World shamanism, free of Taker culture, hierarchical distortions. If you’re building a full, balanced, authentic practice, this is a key piece of the jigsaw.
Who is this course for?
This course is for those who have already put down firm roots in the Lower-World—who have found their Power Animal, developed a steady practice, and now want to grow a fully rounded shamanic practice. This is an exciting area of shamanism, but a course that we don’t get to run very often. So please do take this opportunity to do it, as it truly is one of the key pieces in helping you grow a fully rounded shamanic practice.
If you’ve completed the First-Steps and at least one Next-Steps course, and you’re ready to deepen your practice, this course will guide you safely and clearly into the realm of Spirit, into the authentic shamanic Upper-World.
If you want to move beyond the distortions of modern spirituality and rediscover the animist truth that everything is alive and sacred, including you, you’ll learn to:
- Journey authentically in the Upper-World.
- Meet true Upper-World Guides and receive their teachings.
- Experience healing through light, sound, humility, and awe.
- Bring these insights back to earth, grounding them in daily life, purpose, and balance.
This is not a beginner’s course. It’s for those ready to rise rooted. It is for you if you want to bring together Soul and Spirit, Earth and Sky, the Sacred Masculine and the Sacred Feminine, and let this guide you in your middle-world life.
The course won’t be offered again for another 2 to 3 years, so if you want to begin to integrate this sane, grounded, and sacred animist spiritual practice into your daily life, book now.
THE CURRICULUM
(MIGHT BE SUBJECT TO CHANGE)
Module 1: We have an Upper World problem
We begin by looking at a tension that runs deep in our culture – the way the Upper-World has been distorted and used to separate us from animist ways of being. At its heart, animism is profoundly non-hierarchical: there is no myth of human supremacy, no ranking of spirit over soul, of male over female, or heaven over earth.
Yet with domestication and the Fall came the rise of hierarchical, disembodied spiritual thinking. Ascension, perfection, purity, orthodoxy, and heresy—all became tools of social control. Emperors turned into gods, commandments dictated behaviour, and spirituality was pressed into service as a weapon of domestication. From original sin to the belief in being unclean or imperfect, we inherited ideas that keep us small—promising a cure for the very wound they create.
Animism, by contrast, threatens such systems precisely because it empowers us. It tells us there is nothing wrong with us, that we will not be punished, that nature is alive and sacred, and that life is not something to escape from, but something to fully inhabit. Small wonder then that it has been deliberately suppressed, written off as “primitive,” and erased through genocide or buried by missionaries. These distortions live on in our very language, and even in contemporary animist cultures that have become entangled with hierarchy.
In this module, we’ll untangle the difference between animism and contemporary spirituality, and return to the simple but radical truth: everything is alive, everything is sacred – including you.
Practices will include:
- To identify non-animist spiritual thinking in yourself.
- What if you live as if everything is sacred?
- What is you are sacred – there is nothing wrong with you. That becoming human is the thing to be.
- To get grounded in the LW (deepening connection with your PA, connecting to the Standing People, finding a LW Human Guide/Tribe, finding your LW Soul).
Module 2: Deeper into the Realms
- Learning how to ascend from the axis mundi with your Power Animal always beside you.
- Journeying to discover your own Upper World imagery – contemporary or animist, while learning to discern and navigate carefully.
- Exploring the layered, spacious tiers of the Upper World.
Module 3: What animism and shamanism really are
- Meeting your Upper World “Guide.”
- Meeting your Upper World “Self.”
- Exploring disentanglement practices and the Council of Elders.
- Working with colour and sound healing.
Module 4: Magical thinking
What happens when “spirituality” becomes untethered from grounded reality? In this module, we confront the patterns of magical thinking that shape our modern-era personal and collective lives – and explore how beliefs can both guide and mislead us.
We’ll examine pre-personal, personal, and transpersonal layers of experience, unpack the “pre-trans fallacy” that is rife in much modern-day spiritual thinking, and look at the issue of spiritual bypassing—using “spiritual” practices to try and avoid dealing with tough emotions and reality. You’ll see how a divided brain can distort our perceptions, and how ungrounded spiritual beliefs can feed spiritual sickness, co-wetiko, and con-spirituality.
A balanced mind creates grounded spirituality. The left brain has a vital and healthy role to play in spirituality. It does this by keeping us grounded through discernment, fact-checking and healthy scepticism, wanting evidence, and by spotting logical fallacies and secondary hypotheses.
Practices will include:
- Noticing ungrounded spiritual beliefs in yourself.
- Journeys and exercises to explore the balance between insight and discernment.
Module 5: Meditation, rituals, and tradition
In this module, we explore meditation, rituals, and traditions, focusing on cultivating the Witness (or, Aware Self) part of us, the conscious self that observes without bias. Meditation and shamanic practices can strengthen our Witness, helping us step back from wonky stories (including wonky “spiritual” ones), from our middle-world dramas and habit patterns, and connect instead with our healthier Upper, middle, and Lower World selves.
We will also look at stripping away the clutter that meditation practices sometimes come wrapped in, and instead see the underlying mechanisms through which they work. We will see how meditations are in a particular sense (usually either visual, auditory, or sensory/movement), tend to be wide-focus or narrow-focus, and either internal or external. We will see how understanding all this opens meditation up, and how we can then use this to both enhance our shamanic work, and also our meditation practices too, and how to bring the two together and integrate them more.
Practices will include:
- Meditation practices in Middle-World: cultivate deliberate awareness across different senses and channels
- Shamanic Meditation: practice in the Upper or Lower-World
Module 6: Soul Roots, Spirit Branches
- Resources. Not taking more than we needed or more than our fair share.
- Responsibility. Fully owning and taking responsibility for our thoughts, beliefs, choices and actions.
- Power. Not seeking power over others. At the same time, not unhealthily giving our power away.
- Reciprocal living. Only taking the benefits of belonging to community if we are willing to honour and meet the obligations and agreements too.
- Contribution. Trying to be of service and contribute usefully to community. Sharing the knowledge and gifts we have.
- Truth and honesty. Being willing to face things as they truly are.
- Compassionate living. Trying to act compassionately. Trying to practice self-compassion too.
- Tribe. Look after tribe, both human and other-than-human, and caring for the weak and the vulnerable.
- … and more!
We have an Upper World problem
We begin by looking at a tension that runs deep in our culture – the way the Upper-World has been distorted and used to separate us from animist ways of being. At its heart, animism is profoundly non-hierarchical: there is no myth of human supremacy, no ranking of spirit over soul, of male over female, or heaven over earth.
Yet with domestication and the Fall came the rise of hierarchical, disembodied spiritual thinking. Ascension, perfection, purity, orthodoxy, and heresy—all became tools of social control. Emperors turned into gods, commandments dictated behaviour, and spirituality was pressed into service as a weapon of domestication. From original sin to the belief in being unclean or imperfect, we inherited ideas that keep us small—promising a cure for the very wound they create.
Animism, by contrast, threatens such systems precisely because it empowers us. It tells us there is nothing wrong with us, that we will not be punished, that nature is alive and sacred, and that life is not something to escape from, but something to fully inhabit. Small wonder then that it has been deliberately suppressed, written off as “primitive,” and erased through genocide or buried by missionaries. These distortions live on in our very language, and even in contemporary animist cultures that have become entangled with hierarchy.
In this module, we’ll untangle the difference between animism and contemporary spirituality, and return to the simple but radical truth: everything is alive, everything is sacred – including you.
Practices will include:
- To identify non-animist spiritual thinking in yourself.
- What if you live as if everything is sacred?
- What is you are sacred – there is nothing wrong with you. That becoming human is the thing to be.
- To get grounded in the LW (deepening connection with your PA, connecting to the Standing People, finding a LW Human Guide/Tribe, finding your LW Soul).
DEEPER INTO THE REALMS
In this module, we turn our attention to the Upper World itself. What do we really find there beyond the distorted myths, projections, and spiritual hierarchies that have shaped so much of our thinking in recent times?
We’ll explore the problem of the “creator spirit” (it’s not just another word for “God”, as people often assume!), and what animism can teach us about the problem of our moder-day human human-centredness and “spiritual” narcissism. How all we can truly know lies within the shamanic realms, and how it is in this that we rediscover healthy perspectives often forgotten—from the ancient wisdom of the Stone People to the balance of the sacred masculine and sacred feminine, and the vital distinction between Soul and Spirit.
So, what is the Upper-World like? The Upper-World is not the realm of the Animal, Plant and Stone People. It has an otherworldly quality – empty, spacious, and formless, unfolding in layers. The atmosphere is mostly quiet, though sounds and music can be present. Things like healing through sound and light belongs here, but not the familiar healing found in the Lower-World.
The colours are often light and soft, with pastel tones. The experience of being in the Upper-World is peaceful, transcendent and deeply restful. At the same time, it carries a vastness that inspires awe and is numinous, humbling, and beyond words.
Along the way, we’ll unpick modern-era myths like “ultimate truths,” “non-duality”, and modern imagery such as ascended masters, akashic records, or celestial palaces. This will allow us to strip back these wonky and hierarchical layers of distortion, and instead experience the Upper-World more as our animist ancestors would have.
Practices will include:
- Learning how to ascend from the axis mundi with your Power Animal always beside you.
- Journeying to discover your own Upper World imagery – contemporary or animist, while learning to discern and navigate carefully.
- Exploring the layered, spacious tiers of the Upper World.
What animism and shamanism really are
- Meeting your Upper World “Guide.”
- Meeting your Upper World “Self.”
- Exploring disentanglement practices and the Council of Elders.
- Working with colour and sound healing.
MAGICAL THINKING
What happens when “spirituality” becomes untethered from grounded reality? In this module, we confront the patterns of magical thinking that shape our modern-era personal and collective lives – and explore how beliefs can both guide and mislead us.
We’ll examine pre-personal, personal, and transpersonal layers of experience, unpack the “pre-trans fallacy” that is rife in much modern-day spiritual thinking, and look at the issue of spiritual bypassing—using “spiritual” practices to try and avoid dealing with tough emotions and reality. You’ll see how a divided brain can distort our perceptions, and how ungrounded spiritual beliefs can feed spiritual sickness, co-wetiko, and con-spirituality.
A balanced mind creates grounded spirituality. The left brain has a vital and healthy role to play in spirituality. It does this by keeping us grounded through discernment, fact-checking and healthy scepticism, wanting evidence, and by spotting logical fallacies and secondary hypotheses.
Practices will include:
- Noticing ungrounded spiritual beliefs in yourself.
- Journeys and exercises to explore the balance between insight and discernment.
Meditation, rituals, and tradition
Soul Roots, Spirit Branches
- Resources. Not taking more than we needed or more than our fair share.
- Responsibility. Fully owning and taking responsibility for our thoughts, beliefs, choices and actions.
- Power. Not seeking power over others. At the same time, not unhealthily giving our power away.
- Reciprocal living. Only taking the benefits of belonging to community if we are willing to honour and meet the obligations and agreements too.
- Contribution. Trying to be of service and contribute usefully to community. Sharing the knowledge and gifts we have.
- Truth and honesty. Being willing to face things as they truly are.
- Compassionate living. Trying to act compassionately. Trying to practice self-compassion too.
- Tribe. Look after tribe, both human and other-than-human, and caring for the weak and the vulnerable.
- … and more!
For more insight into what we’ll be covering, check out our latest blog,
The Upper World.
Live Sessions
The live sessions will run alongside the Upper-World course but will be open to anyone doing any course. So, if you’ve taken a First Steps course with us and want to attend the live sessions, you’re absolutely welcome. These live sessions aren’t teaching sessions. They allow time for questions and answers regarding how to do shamanic journeys. They are shamanic journeying group sessions, although you don’t have to attend them.
The feedback we get is overwhelmingly positive – people who do attend find them incredibly useful, helping with motivation, learning from others’ journeys, and clarifying things. So, if you can attend, please do consider it.
You can sign up for the Upper-World course without the live sessions for a slightly lower fee, or you can add them in as well.
Miss the deadline, miss the course!
I have been getting a stream of emails from people saying they want to do the Upper-World course, but who don’t want to sign up for it now. The expectation seems to be that we will still let them sign up for it at some point, even when the booking window has closed, so I want to clarify our position on this and explain the reasoning behind it.
This is not an open-ended registration course!
Some of the confusion may have come about because we have begun to offer some courses with open-ended registration (the new self-directed courses). To be clear, these are only some of the Next-Steps courses. The reason we have set these up is so that students who finish a First-Steps, and who are keen to keep exploring, have something to go straight onto.
Our other courses still have limited booking windows, though. The reason for this is that, without a booking deadline, if people think they can book a course whenever they want, what happens is that the number of bookings plummets. The reality is that, without deadlines to encourage people to book, the college would go out of business pretty quickly.
So, if you are interested in the Upper-World course, you need to book before the deadline closes in November. Otherwise, you will be waiting a long time before the course is open to bookings again (as the course will go back to the bottom of the pile again regarding which courses we offer, and it will likely be several years before we can repeat it).
Remember, you can pay for the course in 3 monthly instalments (if you aren’t offered this by PayPal when you book, contact me, and I can set this up for you manually). Plus, even if you don’t feel ready to do the course at the moment, if you book on it, you have access to it indefinitely, so you can always do it in your own time and at your own pace.
Ongoing access and free course repeats
Ongoing access to the course
When you sign up for the courses, you have access to the recordings and the other teacher materials for life – life, of course, meaning for the life of the college. So as long as there’s a college running, and as long as the internet exists, you’ll have access to the recordings. So you can take as long as you want to work your way through a course, and you can come back to it and revise any bits of it as often as you want. It’s sort of like buying a book – once you bought the materials, you know, they’re yours and for as long as you want.
Transcripts are available!
For those whose first language isn’t English and have concerns about understanding, transcripts are available. Vimeo automatically generates transcripts for our hosted videos, and Zoom provides transcripts for live sessions, though they’re AI-generated and may not be perfect. Nevertheless, they offer sufficient assistance for comprehension.
Payment in three instalments
In terms of payment, we utilise PayPal, and you may be aware that PayPal offers a “Pay Later” option. When you book for the course, you will likely see a PayPal “Pay Later” option, allowing you to spread the payments in three interest-free instalments of £50 each. However, occasionally you may not see this button, as the option is not available in all countries worldwide, and for reasons that appear somewhat arbitrary, PayPal may not offer it to certain individuals. If you wish to pay in instalments but cannot find the “Pay Later” button, please contact me, and I will arrange to send you three monthly invoices instead, enabling you to pay in instalments that way.
Unlearning Heaven: What Does the Upper World Really Look Like?
When people first begin journeying in the Upper World, it can seem largely empty. This is because all shamanic journeying is a co-created process. It isn’t “just imaginary,” as some might suggest — it is objectively real, yet real in ways we can’t fully make sense of in its raw state. To work with it, we have to clothe it in imagery, metaphor, and symbolism that we bring to the experience.
In the Lower World, much of this imagery is already there — the Animal People, the Plant and Stone People, the landscapes of nature. But the Upper World is different. It isn’t the realm of People or nature; it is more a oneness, a vast, unified presence. With fewer forms and familiar images, it can feel intangible or confusing at first.
The real difficulty is that most of the imagery we unconsciously bring to the Upper World comes from our fallen, modern culture — from human-made ideas of heaven, gods, and hierarchies that have little to do with true animism. Just as we once learned to strip away Middle-World imagery from our Lower-World journeys, we must now learn to strip away these cultural overlays as well. This takes more awareness and care — but it’s essential if we are to see the Upper World as it really is. And that’s what we’ll go into in this course.
What Is Animist Spirituality - and How Is It Different from Religion?
Animism invites us to step out of the human-made stories that fill us with shame, loneliness, and disconnection, and to remember that life itself is sacred; that there is nothing wrong with us; that we do not need to punish or transcend ourselves to be worthy. Spirituality is not about escape or obedience — it is about belonging and right-relationship.
Animist spirituality truly begins with understanding that the Creator Spirit is not the same as the hierarchical “God” of modern religion. We will unpick the myths our culture has woven into spirituality: the ideas of higher beings, ascended masters, celestial palaces, and systems of submission and sacrifice. These are human inventions, not animist truths.
Instead, we will return to a clearer way of seeing — a healthy, animist relationship with the Upper World and its beings. One rooted in humility, presence, and awe, not hierarchy or power. You’ll learn to ascend the axis mundi with your Power Animal, to discover your own authentic Upper-World guides, and to experience healing through light, sound, and presence.
We’ll explore the Council of Elders, the work of disentanglement and perspective, and how to rest in the presence of true Upper-World beings — feeling humility and reverence, yet staying grounded and whole.
Animism teaches that life is not something to escape from, but something to fully inhabit. It restores a spirituality that is clear, embodied, and sane — one that brings us home to the sacredness of life itself.
How Do Meditation, Being of Service, and Ethics Complete the Upper-World Work?
Once we’ve explored the Upper World, the next step is to bring those insights home — to ground them in daily life. We begin by cultivating what is sometimes called the Witness or Aware Self: the part of us that carries an Upper-World quality, able to step back, see clearly, and not get so caught up in the middle-world dramas.
To do this, we take a fresh look at meditation — stripping away the traditions, stories, and belief systems it’s often wrapped in so that we can understand what is really happening when we meditate. This allows us to find the practices that genuinely work for us, and to weave meditation and shamanic journeying together — each deepening and clarifying the other.
From there, we explore how to ground all this work in our actual, day-to-day lives — how to live a sane, embodied animist spirituality in the Middle World. This includes looking at what it means to be of service and exploring the core human archetypes that guide us: Mother and Father, Anima and Animus, Lover, Adult, Human, Elder, and Death. Through them we find authenticity, meaning, and a sense of right purpose.
Finally, we turn to animist ethics — not as commandments or rigid rules, but as a living map to help guide our choices and relationships. This is where all the worlds meet: Spirit, Soul, and Body — clarity, compassion, and groundedness coming together in a life that is balanced, humble, and whole.
I hope to see you on the course!
Dates: November – December 2025
This course can help you:
- Discover no-nonsense and uncluttered spiritual practices.
- Learn to journey to the true shamanic Upper-World and make sense of what you encounter there.
- Explore the different ‘tiers’ of the Upper-World and the different beings you encounter there.
- Learn Upper-World healing and meditation practices.
- Explore Upper-World teachings on things like compassion, detachment and ethics.
- Demystify meditation, find a practice that works for you, and take your meditation practice to new levels.
Blessings,
Paul Francis
