In the ‘90’s the trend of telling our
children “not to talk to strangers” had just started. My husband and I actually questioned it for
years before cautioning our kids and even then, it was always with a big story
attached and a reminder that we weren’t born on this planet just to hide in a
hole.
“Keep your wits about yourself,” we’d say,
“and listen to the dreaming, listen to your gut.”
At
our house, we have often had these kinds of conversations. The kind that starts with “wait a minute” and
“is it absolutely necessary.” With time you
notice things change, and the factors are never the same. We don’t live in my parents’ world anymore
where families lived in the neighbourhood for generations and it was OK to
treat the neighbour’s kids as your own.
Today, most people move every 3 to 5 years and you never know if the
nice man next door won’t be the kind to make a move on your daughter after she’s
babysat his kids all night. Where my
parents taught us their ways and their grand-parent’s ways, my husband and I
now stop and sigh – knowing that time moves too fast now and nothing about the
way we used to do it still applies.
Where am I going with this?
Well, recently I was asked to speak about
the dreaming ways of our ancestors and share some stories on how Traditional
Dreamers used to dream for the community and for others.
CONSTRUCTING
REALITY
From my perspective before we can even
speak of “communal dreaming” we need to consider how people construct reality. A Traditional Dreamer doesn’t just “pick up
on community dreams” – he or she has to be part of the community and connect
deeply to the simple structures of behaviour, emotion, thoughts and beliefs.
I was educated at a Catholic convent and
for years I jotted down dreams people shared with me connecting with Christian
imagery. It fascinated me that people
could dream of the Eucharist for example, or being a witness to a crucifixion. I never dreamt of such things and a part of
me felt cheated. Since I was brought up
in Christianity, I assumed such dreams implied being “chosen by God.” They were in my opinion at the time: Holy
Dreams.
It was only after I reached my early 20’s
and started learning about traditional dreaming that I realized these dreams
spoke of personal interests and a deep sense of commitment to the Christian
ideology. If I didn’t dream these kinds
of dreams it was because I didn’t belong to the collective frame of thought.
Just the way I went about exploring these
dreams and attempting to understand them showed more of a shamanic
perspective. It explained many of the
kind of dreams I had from birth. For
example, even before knowing what a Sweat Lodge was – I had dreamt of it a few
dozen times.
As I’ve said repeatedly through my blog
entries dreaming isn’t just about the images and scenarios we come across while
sleeping. It’s about the way we think,
the way we feel, the way we behave and the way we present ourselves to the
World. Bellow the surface it is about
blood, genes, and cells. In many ways I
define dreaming as the “communication we have with the Life within us and
around us.”
COLLECTIVE
CONSCIOUSNESS
There’s no doubt that dreaming translates
to us how we relate to the World around us.
It basically awakens this notion of “collective consciousness.” Through my blog entries I have often explored
hypersensitivity. As described countless
times – hypersensitivity is basically a “hyper-sense of our environment.” Example, I once met a woman who bought a
whole wardrobe based on what she hyper sensitively picked up from another woman
she was shopping with. When she came
home and looked at the clothes she disliked every single piece. None of it spoke to her. It was as if she had picked up someone else’s
bag.
We see the same kind of phenomenon amongst
children between the age of 7 and 15 years old.
You sometimes get the impression your kids are possessed by their
friends. They speak similarly and even
adopt the same maneurism. I had to
continuously remind my children that I loved them the way they were and that
they didn’t need to imitate others. As
soon as they discovered compatibility, or took notice of an attraction to
certain behaviours or certain people – they let go. I always managed to get them back (so to
speak) in their natural, original forms J.
Understanding hypersensitivity and learning
to be disciplined with it has an impact on the way we dream. Rather then finding ourselves magnetized to
all kinds of strange dream spaces, we wake up in dreams; and participate in
them. We contribute to “our fate.”
The notion of collective consciousness
isn’t so much about hyper sensing as it is about hyper knowing. Yet before we can move to hyper knowing it
is crucial to have knowledge and know how when it comes to hyper sensing. I always tell my students that even though
hypersensitivity may seem like a curse at first, it is incredibly important to
remember that in ancestral times it was instrumental in survival. Hunters for example often allowed their hyper
sensing to bring them exactly to herds of caribou. Sensing, dreaming the exact place or site as
well as waking up with a clear knowing of where it was made a difference
between life and death.
Today dreaming hasn’t changed.
What has changed in our social
conduct. We still construct our reality
in very much the same way as our ancestors; but it now takes new forms.
COLLECTIVE
DREAMING
A few years ago I moved to a new city. Previously, I was used to a more rural
setting with a few acres of land dividing homes. For eight years I dreamt the land we lived on
and was used to dreaming about raccoons, skunks and deers. As soon as I found myself in a suburban area
where people enjoy barely 8,000 square feet of land – I began to dream about
people and their culture. Suddenly, I
was dreaming of people from India, Japan, Africa and Europe. After a summer of observing the activity in
my neighbourhood I was able to place each dream on a grid.
·
Two house down from ours: An Indian family.
·
Right behind us: A Japanese
family.
·
Four houses down from ours:
African couple
·
And three houses on the right
of us: A Scandinavian family.
We dream what surrounds us. Sometimes it’s about details we’ve
intentionally noticed; but other times it’s subconscious or even intuitive. Through collective dreaming we become aware
of how many layers of consciousness we’ve picked up on in one scenario. For example I once visited a friend in the
Hospital. She was being investigated for
colon cancer. The doctor had found a
tumour on her intestinal wall. It was
surgically removed.
According to all medical personnel my
friend had cancer. There was no doubts
about it.
When I arrived on the scene a therapist was
discussing with my friend, some of her options concerning “cancer.” Our visit was short and uneventful. Yet my dreams the following night seemed to
be saying otherwise. According to these
dreams, not only was she being misdiagnosed; but the whole story was somewhat
attached to her father and his colon cancer.
Once I shared the dream my friend asked for a second opinion and
discovered she did not have cancer at all.
In the following days after questioning her parents she also uncovered
that her father struggled with cancer for years without sharing it with
anyone. This collective dreaming
triggered a number of outcomes. For
starters, she renew relationships with family members, healed some ancestral
issues / stories, and took care of herself better.
I have a long list of examples of
collective dreaming. It seems that as
soon as you connect collectively with people and under a wide umbrella of
ideas, emotions, and behaviours you also begin to dream about them. The wider the umbrella (so to speak) the more
potential of dreaming consciousness.
ANCESTRY.
For our ancestors dreaming wasn't so much a luxury or fascination as it was about survival. If you could dream about herds of elk, caribou or deer and lead scouts to them you were an incredible asset. Traditional dreamers also helped in understanding the roots of certain ailments and even find the plants to heal them. Everything dreams: Animals, people, plants, rivers, mountains etc.... If you can dream the environment you can communicate to its different parts and bring back the most incredible sacred knowledge.
Learning to develop, practice and discipline the skill of dreaming is a life long journey.
One that literally gave meaning to my life!
Hau!
********
P.S. Looking forward to your feedback and questions.
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