Stranded in Time - Shamanic Dreaming Workshop (Post 5 of 5)

(continued click here for post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4)

.....Resigned, I sit down on the platform to wait.  I sit through several nights and several days.  A large red rose hangs in the air to my right.  At night, I am not lonely because I have the stars.  A few times I think I can reach my destination by walking on the train tracks but my gut tells me that this would not be a good idea.  So, I sit on the edge of the track, waiting.

Soon, as I sit, I notice within my center, below my belly button, and in the middle of my abdomen, a small black dot that ricochets around inside of me like a ping pong ball.  As I sit beneath the stars and I focus my attention on this dot I notice that it begins to slow down and when it is finally still and vibrating in place, I notice that as the sun rises and sets, it is as if I too rise and set.  Soon I and my dot are so still that I no longer notice the passage of time or all the things I am not getting done.  It is then that I see the train beginning to slow and take form in front of me.  It had been there all this time, whizzing by so fast I could not see it and so believed it had left without me.  I am glad now that I listened to my intuition and did not step onto the tracks to walk to my destination because I surely would have been injured! 

The train stops and I am able to board.

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Dream Symbols

Train – The trajectory of time as it exists outside of us.

Small Black Dot – A piece of our energetic anatomy.  An energy center.  The trajectory of time as it exists inside of us.  In the dream, as in life, the train (external time) moved faster or slower depending on how quickly time moved within the dreamer.

Rose – Angelic forces that protected me during my stay at the train station and who blew fragrant healing energy down up on me during my stay at the train station.

Stars – The Ancestors who are also guides who also form part of our spiritual family.

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 3 of 4)

(continued… click here for Post 1, Post 2)

…And I was also responsible to it.

Having long known that trees are the lungs of the Earth, I was just beginning to grasp that they are part of her nervous system as well.  This knowledge, transmitted directly from the trees, was confirmed five years later when I happened to pick up a copy of Sun magazine and read an article about biologist Paul Stamets’ work. 

Based in Olympia, WA, Stamets has devoted his life to studying mushrooms and mycelia, or the webs of fungi’s networked fibers.   These organisms partner up with other plants, including trees, for mutual benefit; the partnerships are called mychorriza.  The fungus breaks down nutrients that can then be more easily absorbed by the roots of the tree.  In turn, the tree releases sugars that the fungus depends on, as fungi don’t photosynthesize.  One Douglas fir tree may form mychorrizal partnerships with 2,000 species of fungi. 

In his book Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World, Stamets says:

I believe that mycelium is the neurological network of nature.  Interlacing mosaics of mycelium infuse habitats with information-sharing membranes.  These membranes are aware, react to change, and collectively have the long term health of the host environment in mind… These networks not only survive, but sometimes expand to thousands of acres in size, achieving the greatest mass of any individual organism on this planet.[1] 

After reading this, I dreamt for three nights of being held in the net of tree roots beneath the surface of the Earth, feeling deep connectedness.  Re-entering the dreams through a shamanic journey, I experienced the mycelial networks directly:

My spirit allies take me down into an underground cave.  Others arrive; I am moved to have them all present.  They put me in the middle of the circle.  I sink down into earth, connect to the fine roots of trees, which show up as white threads.  I start to swim in the brown richness of the soil, bathed in the neurotransmitters secreted by the mychorriza, feeling calmed, nourished.  This deep layer is the nervous system of the Earth.  Disrupting and thinning it causes neurological damage to Earth that is immediately reflected in our nervous systems.  Is it any wonder that we’re all so damaged by mental illness, abuse, depression, trauma – that humans are so out of balance?  We damage the Earth’s nervous system, which damages our own, which brings us to further damage the Earth. 

I also understand that trees are literally “standing on their heads”; their primary neurological tissue is under the surface of the Earth.  This is where they dream from.  Swimming in this deep brown layer, I am in the trees’ dreamtime.

We can create the capacity to dream ourselves back to health – and we can help heal the dreaming tissue of the Earth.  Who among us can imagine the restored power of the dreaming trees, the dreaming Earth?  As we learn to dream with and for them, we become whole.

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Thank you, June, for sharing this beautiful dream and message on this blog!  My hope is that in the future we will get to hear more about how we and trees can heal together!

Wait, did I hear that right?  Did that June Bluespruce woman say she was a tree in human form?!

Hmmmmmmmmmmm?  Takes one to know one, I guess!

(for more, see next post)

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[1] Paul Stamets, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2005), p. 2.