I have reached the most difficult part of my project: trying to shed some light on something that can almost never be expressed in words. "Crossing into the Otherness" is a term I use to describe the "point" between ordinary cognition and non-ordinary cognition, a point of transition that you simply become aware of when you have successfully changed how the awareness-power of your being flows within you.
This "transition" is not just a single event; after you have made the "crossing", you can still typically "feel" the presence of the "ordinary state" that you left, but you now feel the availability of the "new" state of cognition- almost as though you were divided into "two" halves, mentally. The more you focus on the "new" state, the more you will be drawn into it, and begin to receive perceptions born in it.
As your own power withdraws further and further from your ordinary sense portals, a great feeling will begin arising in you, a feeling that you are peering into a great dark and obscure world, which seems to want to take some form, but always remains formless. Bear in mind that the act of willing the energetic flows of your awareness-power to move back from your sense-portals does not mean that you will stop seeing and hearing- such a thing is not possible because your eyes and ears are still open, still seeing, and still hearing, and the flow of power is intensely strong; it is tied to the nature to see or hear.
What a dilemma! Though the eyes and ears and ordinary sense-portals are operating as normal, the internal power of awareness is no longer fully engaging them; at one point, in very deep trances, it may not engage them at all. Instead, the internal power flows are engaging more subtle sense portals- and the fact that ordinary sensory data is still entering your ordinary sense portals causes a very strange feeling. You will know that you have reached the "boundary" between the two states of cognition when you begin to feel like you are seeing "two" places or things at once- on one hand, you will see whatever happens to be around you. On the other hand, you will "see" something that is not possible to describe, like a great obscurity, or some dark, grey, or white "space".
Often times it doesn't "look" like anything at all; it may appear to you as a great feeling or a sensation. However, the feeling of this occurrence is unmistakable.
What is occurring, as the living power of your awareness withdraws from solid and full contact with ordinary sense organs, is beginning to engage non-ordinary sense organs, while the ordinary organs still continue working and affecting your brain on a coarse level. Though you may be staring straight ahead, after a point, you will be "seeing" something else entirely, without losing the original, ordinary sight. This is called "Seeing without seeing", or "Power-sight". The same can be said for all your other senses- you may still hear the drumbeat, but you are "hearing without hearing", or using "Power-hearing".
At this point, you are fully engaging a mode of shamanic cognition. If you continue with your empowered intention to shift your state further into a non-ordinary state of awareness (and thereby deepening your state of shamanic cognition) you will eventually become very aware- by means of direct perception, of one of the central concepts and power-realities in the shaman's world of secrets: The Great Power.
