Warning! Entering the Dreamtime - Shamanic Dreaming Workshop (Post 4 of 5)

(continued … click here for post 1, post 2, post 3)

As June’s tree dream shows, dreams can be meant for more than one person, thus it is important to share them. 

During the workshop I had a dream that was meant to be shared so I share it with you now and post it below.  This dream had something to do with the Dreamtime – a world that in some indigenous cultures was understood to be the place where all things originate, where reality is dreamed into existence before taking physical form. 

Thus, art of dreaming has additional potential.  That is, in addition to gathering information and insight from dreams, dreams can be tapped for their creative potential.

This dream was a bit of a riddle.  I continue to work with it and uncover more of its meaning.  This is a dream about time, how to use it, how to ride it to get what you want.  It’s also a dream about the importance of merging with the cycles of nature.  Unlike most of dreams, it also came with a warning! 

After I had this dream, I talked with my guides and they provided some insight into the meaning of some of the symbols.  Below, I reprinted what they said for any who are interested in using this dream for themselves!

The dream went like this:

How to Get Stuff You Want

Or

How to Consciously Enter the Dreamtime

(Warning: It will be challenging to enter the Dreamtime if your intentions are not pure as spiritual gifts were meant to be used for the well-being of all.)

I am at an outdoor train station on an elevated platform waiting for a train.  The platform is built so high off the ground I feel as if I am waiting in the sky.  I am the only passenger waiting on the platform.  The train pulls into the station.  It is heading North.  I stand up meet it.  As I stand, as I wait for it to slow, I begin to think about the things I will do when I get to my destination and even things I will do after that.  As I stand there thinking about the future the train begins to speed up.  As it speeds up I become alarmed at the things I will not be able to accomplish if I don’t get on the train.  As I worry, the train speeds up even more and finally disappears. .....

(for more, see next post)

A Beautiful Dream from the Trees – Shamanic Dreaming Workshop (Post 2 of 4)

(continued… click here for post 1)

In early February 2011 I attended a shamanic dreaming workshop led by June BlueSpruce, tree in human form, life coach and shamanic practitioner.  (Click here for June’s website).

As discussed in the last post on this blog, though shamanism has traditionally thrived within a shroud of secrecy, it is also a powerful practice intended to serve the well-being of humanity and the Earth. 

June was kind enough to write down what she saw and learned from one dream from the trees, a dream she also shared verbally during her February workshop:

                ______________________________________________________________

Tree Dream #1: Trees Are Part of the Earth’s Nervous System

“The story we need is written on wood, on the trees.  This is not a story we can get from computers.  We must not rush.  We learn to speak tree language to use in healing.  Healing energy enters through lines of text.” – Dream, March 2004

Deep in the silence of my first Medicine Walk, a month after I had this dream, the trees spoke to me. 

In the words of Grandmother White Eagle, a gifted shamanic teacher with whom I have worked for many years, a Medicine Walk is “a sacred adventure.   It could be described as a vision quest on the terrain of the Divine Feminine, a journey into the natural and spiritual realm of the Earth Mother.”  For a period of 36 hours, we opened ourselves in silence to the guidance, support, and wisdom of Spirit, seeking healing, grace, vision, and medicine.  It is not necessary to fast or stay awake outside during a Medicine Walk, as one does during a traditional Vision Quest.  What one gives up can include outgrown notions of oneself, one’s limitations and fears, one’s separation from nature and Spirit.

About five hours into the silence, on our second night among big trees on the Washington coast, I woke to feed the fire in the wood stove.  Trying to go back to sleep, I experienced a rush of adrenaline, a familiar pattern of worries and fears, wakefulness that resulted in part from childhood trauma.  Seeing the moon’s light through the trees, I thought of my mother, born in the sign of Cancer, ruled by the moon.  She had died of metastatic breast cancer over twenty years earlier, days before her sixty-seventh birthday.  In one of my dreams, she had a beautiful round face like the moon.  I called her to me, felt her hands on my heart and mid-back, and began to cry. 

Between the house and the ocean stood a large Sitka spruce around which we had performed a ritual in the afternoon.  The spruce called, “Come outside.”  I got dressed, went out and lay face down on the ground at the base of her trunk.  I knew I was with my mother then – my human ancestor and the Earth herself.  I was – and always had been – held and supported, like a child on her mother’s shoulder.  I never needed to feel alone again.  I prayed to let go of my fear.

My roots extended deep into the soil of the sandy bank, like the trees.  I felt all of our roots forming a network, a vast nervous system, of which I was a small part.  My fear could be released, transformed, along these connected roots.  I was accepted into that web and knew I could draw on it for knowledge, healing and inspiration. .......

(for more, see next post)