BY TED JAUW.
Here is Ted's new BLOG.
http://surcadiana.blogspot.com/2012/03/rest-of-story.html
Have been reading and rereading the blog entry, http://wapeyit.blogspot.com/ it's both informative and nicely written. I particularly enjoyed the Jack Palance reference.
One of the things I noticed here (on FB) and in general is that people use popular terms like ' lucid dreaming' differently depending on where they learned it. Ofttimes these words have been coopted from sciences or spiritualities. It seems that new words need to be minted just so we don't have to unlearn what we already believe.
My teacher called lucid dreaming, 'awake dreaming' and meant that one was aware and able to consciously go about. She also said that some could not only travel about in their 'own' dream but change and control the environment.
'Dream walking' is the word she would use to talk about the ability to go into other people's dreams and 'piggybacking' when you took someone along.
She believed that everyone had a natural gift towards one type of dreaming or another depending on what they had incarnated to do or learn in this lifetime.
For me, she used 'dreamwalking' to teach me the medicine wheel. Twenty two piggybacked dreams and as much time as it took in between to harvest from that dream/ direction.
In the end I am not a better dreamer than I was at the outset. And so here dreaming was a means to an end.
She also wasn't to concerned about what was 'real' or 'symbolic' believing we each perceived either in the same way and learned or didn't. And while she learned a lot of what she did from Navajo SkinWalkers she wasn't to concerned about attacks, boundaries etc. believing that life presents what it needs and if it happens that must mean we are able to deal with it. So if we were attacked it meant that we had already learned how to defend.
How people appeared in these dreams also was part of learning. In any dream people would take the form of what was most informative. Our perceptions able to metaphorize and layer meaning by choosing to see Jack Palance over the waking form.
My first piggybacked dream with her I was taken to a cave where a small thin snake with medusa like hair made of smaller snakes talked to me.
Many years later, after my teacher had passed, I was in New Mexico at a bookstore to see Guboo Ted Thomas the Australian Aboriginal elder speak and sign his book.
While there I was approached by a woman seemingly even older than he (he was around ninety). She was small and wiry and had grey dreads that stood up wildly about two inches all over her head.
She walked right up to me and said, 'You're Mary's bear...'
I looked at her closely thinking that anyone as striking as her I would have remembered and then she smiled and it dawned on me that she was the snake in the cave. To her and in her dream I had appeared to be a bear.
Since this was my first dream I was learning about zero, center, void and creation and the snake image was very useful and is to this day.
Since then I've met two more people I met piggybacking and their symbolic and real appearances were strangely intertwined and informative.
So when you mention Jack Palance a number of images come to mind. First and foremost his cowboy image that had a tough exterior but always a secret past or vulnerability.
I also think of his stint as the host of 'Ripley's Believe It Or Not'. Here he used his gravitas and great voice to lend credence and mystery to mysteries, oddities and other unbelievable things.
Mostly I think of him as the Twins. Whether Jeckyll and Hyde or the twins in the House of Numbers he was always both dark and light, good and evil and often it was hard to tell which was which. I can't remember his great vampire turn but he was both good and evil again.
I heard JK Rowling modeled Voldemort on him and his birth name was Volodymyr.
Thanks for the memories...
********
Thank you Ted for giving me permission to copy and paste this comment from our Facebook group (Medicine Wheel and Indigenous Dreaming).
Like I told Ted on Facebook: "When I wrote my blog entry in response to Kristen's questions I spent quite a few hours agonizing over "what to say and how to say it." I always seem to get caught in that kind of maze because a lot of what I learnt seemed to go with "a vow of secrecy (up to a certain point)." I try to honor this vow as much as I can. I agree with you "it would be great to have new vocabulary" when it comes to many shamanic or dreaming experiences.
I too was taught that lucid dreaming was "dream walking." Indeed there's a lot more to dream walking then simply traveling to the spaces of others... I think a lot of people would love to read some of what you share..... Unless you have a blog of your own that I could refer to. It's great to read stories that resemble my own. Thank you for the sharing. Beautiful."
LISA
Here is Ted's new BLOG.
http://surcadiana.blogspot.com/2012/03/rest-of-story.html
Have been reading and rereading the blog entry, http://wapeyit.blogspot.com/ it's both informative and nicely written. I particularly enjoyed the Jack Palance reference.
One of the things I noticed here (on FB) and in general is that people use popular terms like ' lucid dreaming' differently depending on where they learned it. Ofttimes these words have been coopted from sciences or spiritualities. It seems that new words need to be minted just so we don't have to unlearn what we already believe.
My teacher called lucid dreaming, 'awake dreaming' and meant that one was aware and able to consciously go about. She also said that some could not only travel about in their 'own' dream but change and control the environment.
'Dream walking' is the word she would use to talk about the ability to go into other people's dreams and 'piggybacking' when you took someone along.
She believed that everyone had a natural gift towards one type of dreaming or another depending on what they had incarnated to do or learn in this lifetime.
For me, she used 'dreamwalking' to teach me the medicine wheel. Twenty two piggybacked dreams and as much time as it took in between to harvest from that dream/ direction.
In the end I am not a better dreamer than I was at the outset. And so here dreaming was a means to an end.
She also wasn't to concerned about what was 'real' or 'symbolic' believing we each perceived either in the same way and learned or didn't. And while she learned a lot of what she did from Navajo SkinWalkers she wasn't to concerned about attacks, boundaries etc. believing that life presents what it needs and if it happens that must mean we are able to deal with it. So if we were attacked it meant that we had already learned how to defend.
How people appeared in these dreams also was part of learning. In any dream people would take the form of what was most informative. Our perceptions able to metaphorize and layer meaning by choosing to see Jack Palance over the waking form.
My first piggybacked dream with her I was taken to a cave where a small thin snake with medusa like hair made of smaller snakes talked to me.
Many years later, after my teacher had passed, I was in New Mexico at a bookstore to see Guboo Ted Thomas the Australian Aboriginal elder speak and sign his book.
While there I was approached by a woman seemingly even older than he (he was around ninety). She was small and wiry and had grey dreads that stood up wildly about two inches all over her head.
She walked right up to me and said, 'You're Mary's bear...'
I looked at her closely thinking that anyone as striking as her I would have remembered and then she smiled and it dawned on me that she was the snake in the cave. To her and in her dream I had appeared to be a bear.
Since this was my first dream I was learning about zero, center, void and creation and the snake image was very useful and is to this day.
Since then I've met two more people I met piggybacking and their symbolic and real appearances were strangely intertwined and informative.
So when you mention Jack Palance a number of images come to mind. First and foremost his cowboy image that had a tough exterior but always a secret past or vulnerability.
I also think of his stint as the host of 'Ripley's Believe It Or Not'. Here he used his gravitas and great voice to lend credence and mystery to mysteries, oddities and other unbelievable things.
Mostly I think of him as the Twins. Whether Jeckyll and Hyde or the twins in the House of Numbers he was always both dark and light, good and evil and often it was hard to tell which was which. I can't remember his great vampire turn but he was both good and evil again.
I heard JK Rowling modeled Voldemort on him and his birth name was Volodymyr.
Thanks for the memories...
********
Thank you Ted for giving me permission to copy and paste this comment from our Facebook group (Medicine Wheel and Indigenous Dreaming).
Like I told Ted on Facebook: "When I wrote my blog entry in response to Kristen's questions I spent quite a few hours agonizing over "what to say and how to say it." I always seem to get caught in that kind of maze because a lot of what I learnt seemed to go with "a vow of secrecy (up to a certain point)." I try to honor this vow as much as I can. I agree with you "it would be great to have new vocabulary" when it comes to many shamanic or dreaming experiences.
I too was taught that lucid dreaming was "dream walking." Indeed there's a lot more to dream walking then simply traveling to the spaces of others... I think a lot of people would love to read some of what you share..... Unless you have a blog of your own that I could refer to. It's great to read stories that resemble my own. Thank you for the sharing. Beautiful."
LISA
Comments
I have realised for a little while that I needed help with dream walking.
I met a character whilst I was dream walking once and I allowed fear to take a hold. Not having met a creature like this before and not having a teacher to guide me at the time either I closed myself off. It took a good friend of mine that lived overseas to reassure me and over a short while I got dreaming again but whenever the opportunity to walk came about I woke up. Still now I wake when I feel the vibration.
I know I need to begin walking again and yet I WONDER how can I stop my mental body from interfering when I sleep.
Now in this blog I read something that I need to assimilate and integrate...
"...believing that life presents what it needs and if it happens that must mean we are able to deal with it. So if we were attacked it meant that we had already learned how to defend...."
And the blog continues to help me see things differently.
Its late here and so I shall close but I shall return to read and read again.
Thank You
LOVE Leanne
Thank you for continuously reading.
It's great to read comments because they bring forth "topics of interest;" which I wouldn't have thought about.
Would you like to hear more about "dream walking?"
And how did it make you understand "lucid dreaming?"
LISA