10/03/2026
Teachings of the 3 Worlds
An excerpt from this months newsletter. If you would like to sign up for it, you can at www.newearthhealingcenter.ca 🙏
Dear New Earth Family,
This month I want to share a teaching that has helped me make sense of some of the deepest experiences in my life. It has given me perspective when things have felt heavy, and helped me understand what to do with the beautiful spiritual experiences that have opened my heart and reminded me of who I am. It is the teaching of the three worlds: the underworld, the middle world and the upper world.
In Andean teachings, these realms are called Ukhu Pacha, the lower world; Kay Pacha, the middle world; and Hanan Pacha, the upper world. Within the Pachakuti Mesa tradition, working with these worlds is connected to healing, sacred reciprocity ~ ani ~ and bringing our lives into relationship with the seen and unseen.
What I want to share here is how I personally work with this teaching as a map of the human experience. A way to understand the depths we move through, the heights we touch, and bringing what we receive back into our lives here on Earth. Because the integration of the medicine is in the return to the middle world. It is where we take action on what we have experienced and been through.
The underworld: meeting what lives beneath the surface
There are times in life when we are pulled into our depths. Sometimes this happens through loss, grief, trauma, addiction, a relationship ending, the loss of a loved one or an old wound that we can no longer push away. Sometimes something happens that shakes the foundation of who we thought we were & what we thought life was going to be. When we are rocked to our core, and life brings us into the depths of our shadows.
We come face to face with what has been living beneath the surface. Our fears. Our shame. Our unprocessed pain. The parts of ourselves we learned to hide or are unconscious to us. Our shadow can hold anger, jealousy, darkness, but it can also hold our voice, our tenderness, our power, our gifts & compassion. Sometimes what we have buried is something beautiful that never felt safe enough to be expressed.
Going into these depths takes courage. It asks for honesty. It asks us to feel what we have spent years trying to outrun, and to meet ourselves with enough compassion that something can finally begin to soften. Our shadows, our wounds, our darkness needs love, compassion and understanding to be integrated. As one of my favourite channellers Paul Selig says "what we dam, will dam us back"
It is in the Underworld that some of the biggest initiations happen. It is where we are deeply and forever changed by an experience. There is a higher intelligence at play at this level that we cannot see. These are the soul level lessons we have planned out for ourselves before we incarnated and what is shaping us into who we are becoming. This is where we truly begin to turn pain into purpose, wounds into wisdom, experience into medicine.
The heaviness of the underworld can become so familiar that we forget there is a world beyond it. This is where the map helps me.
The upper world: remembering what is possible
On the slip side of that is the Upper world. These are the experiences that open us beyond the limits of our everyday awareness. The moments of profound awareness, peace, beauty, joy, bliss. The feeling of being held by something sacred, something greater. The experience of love so vast that, for a moment, the separation we usually feel begins to dissolve.
We may touch this through meditation, ceremony, prayer, sound, sacred song, or a quiet moment in nature when everything suddenly feels sacred. These are the experiences of the upper world. They can remind us of something we had forgotten. That we are sacred. The life is sacred. That we are and come from Creation. These experiences can be so beautiful that we want to stay there.
After touching that kind of bliss, returning to ordinary life can feel difficult. There are dishes in the sink. There are bills to pay. Responsibilities waiting. Relationships that need care. Feelings that did not disappear just because we had a spiritual opening. We may begin chasing the next experience, hoping it will take us back to that feeling. This is where I remind myself that the experience has given me something to bring home.
Anchoring heaven here on Earth
For me, anchoring heaven here on Earth means anchoring these experiences here on Earth, into the middle world.
If I experience unity in ceremony, how does that change the way I treat someone whose views are different from mine? If I receive a deep sense of love, can I carry some of that into a difficult conversation? If I feel connected to the Earth, how am I caring for the land and the life around me? If I receive clarity about my purpose, what step am I willing to take?
The feeling may become quieter once we return to daily life. Sometimes we receive something in a single moment that takes months or years to learn how to live. Sometimes we need to be reminded a few times, sometimes many times before we can truly integrate it into our lives. There is humility in that. We can have a profound spiritual experience and still have human work to do. We can feel deeply connected and still need to apologize, listen, repair and grow.
The medicine becomes real in the way we bring it into those moments.
The middle world: where we live what we have learned
The middle world is this earthly life. Our bodies. Our families. Our relationships. Our work. Our actions. The land beneath our feet. The choices we make when nobody is watching. It is where the wisdom of the depths and the inspiration of the heights can meet.
Here, an insight becomes a boundary. A prayer becomes an action. A vision becomes something we create. Love becomes the way we show up for one another. Keeping our word can restore trust. Showing up in new ways can heal old wounds.
The middle world asks us to participate. The wisdom we gather becomes part of how we nourish our relationships and our communities. We do not have to wait until we are completely healed to begin living this way. We can bring what we know now, with honesty about what we are still learning.
A map for finding our way home
When I feel stuck, I come back to this map. Have I received an insight that I am ready to put into practice? Am I reaching for another beautiful experience when something in my everyday life needs my attention? Sometimes the answer is prayer or ceremony. Sometimes it is a walk, an action, a conversation thats been needing to be had.
We move through many seasons in a lifetime. There will be times of descent, times of opening and times when our work is to tend what is right in front of us. This teaching gives me room to hold all of that.
If you are in a heavy season, may you have the support you need to meet it. May you remember that there is more to you than the pain you are carrying, even when that is difficult to feel. If you are experiencing a beautiful opening, may you receive it fully. May you give it time to settle, and find ways to express its beauty through your life.
And wherever you find yourself, may you remember the importance of coming home to this Earth, this body and this present moment. Bring back the compassion you discovered in your depths. Bring back the love you touched in your highest moments. Remember all things are in motion and this too shall pass, the beauty, the pain, the mundane, all of it.
With Love & Gratitude,
Shawn Durocher
New Earth Healing Center
www.newearthhealingcenter.ca
