Rattling the Bones

Twenty years ago I met this great lady who was a Jewish psychologist in the Montreal area. Her 50 year old career took her all over the World where she gave talks and workshops on the importance of self-discovery. She was definitely a pioneer in her field especially when it came to women psychologists; and talked about Freud, Jung and other psychoanalysts as if they were her peers. She was in her 80’s when I first met her and wasn’t even thinking about retirement. She told great stories about her spiritual journey the kind that would inspire. I remember being really nervous and shy the first time I met her. She asked to meet with me through a friend, after hearing me talk on the Medicine Wheel. She was extremely persistent. I was incredibly nervous and shy at the prospect of spending a few hours with the lady. I was told she was brutally honest and incredibly intimidating. I couldn’t possibly understand why she wanted to spend time with me. It took a while before I mustered ...

Picture of Jack Palance -- in case some of you wonder who he is. Kristen started her question-message with the greeting: “Blessings Dreamers!” After reading her questions I was suddenly inspired to title this blog: “Blessed Dreamers!” Enjoy! ***** Blessings Dreamers! Excited to have been introduced to this community... My first post and question. Any insight would be appreciated! A few nights ago I had a dream~ was in a train, and someone I know was in cabin across the hall. There was a great storm outside my window that I felt compelled to show him, so I ran across and knocked. The man I know flung the door open startled, had a sleeping mask on his forehead and said, "don't ever do that again!” His reaction rattled me and I thought to myself "What? knock? I only knocked. Did I interrupt something?" He did end up coming across to see the storm outside my window (which wasn't there when he looked) then invited me in to his cabin where his fa...

FROM CATHY: I’ll have to give this dream a lot of thought as it stayed in my memory with an urgent feeling of writing it down so I would not forget it and the same type of urgency to share it to hopefully gain a better understanding of it. Also when I woke up I found myself questioning whether someone had been in my dream space last night. It is possible as I have given one person permission when they are able to. FROM LISA: Lots of people think “they need to give permission” in order for people to visit their dream space. The fact of the matter is – it’s respectful and professional courtesy to ask permission to journey to someone’s space when you’re a traditional dreamer in service to community; but on a regular basis “we” (dreamers in general) journey to the dream space of others without even mentioning it. Where some characters are a figment of our imagination (so to speak) many other characters are regular visitors: People who are learning and healing along with us. With some...

I’ve been sitting with our Golden workshop for over a week. I knew that I would eventually write a blog on “our” experience but wanted to take some time to integrate. I was telling G before the workshop that even though we’ve been teaching for over 15 years, I always come out of these experiences learning more… Every workshop is different despite the fact that we’re always exploring the Medicine Wheel and Indigenous Dreaming. How do we describes what goes on at one of our workshops? This particular workshop started off with the title: Northern Star. The objective was to help people find their path and purpose. Yet as the week got underway we noticed that more and more the workshop was about inter-relations. As it turned out most of the participants were hoping to work on their couple relationships and even those single individuals found themselves unexpectedly exploring different forms of love-relationships. The whole idea of “relationships” is a great topic to bring to t...

The big question these days on our Facebook site Medicine Wheel and Indigenous dreaming is: “Why do some people have a difficulty to dream?” There’s more than one answer to that question depending on the perspective we take. It would be incredibly easy to say that all those people who don’t have the dreamer role on their personal Medicine Wheel would find dreaming a challenge. The fact of the matter is this answer is actually accurate but does it explain how dreaming works and why one would find dreaming difficult without the dreamer role? Where most people understand the Medicine Wheel as an esoteric concept there are some who abide by this ancient science still today. It’s rare that you’ll find me talking about the brain when it comes to dreaming. From a sacred circle perspective there’s more than one physiological element that plays in the process of dreaming and each one plays a distinct role. It’s no different than working with our personal roles on our sacred circle (fire...

In 1988 I graduated from McGill University in English Literature and Religious Studies. In the span of three years I literally read over 3,000 books. For as long as I can remember I’ve loved reading. Yet, from the moment I could write my dream was to become a writer. I have always loved stories. Once an elder told me, that when traditional dreamers are called to the path they dream about the old Creation stories, which are shared with them by the ancestors. When it’s time for them to start their dreamer initiation they are given one particular story, which is said to hold all of what they need for their life’s path and purpose. For me this was certainly true! After I graduated from school I got married and became a full time mom. Often just this sentence turns off people because it gives an illusion that I spend a decade being bored and busy with diapers, feedings and day cares. Yet for me this was in no way my experience. For the first decade of my children’s life I concentra...

CC who’s Metis recently started to learn Cree. He’s been sharing his journey with us on our community aimoo site. His process has brought up some questions for me: • Shamanism: Language where does it fit? • Why is language so important? • If language can touch the soul how is our soul touched by our mother tongue? • Can bilingualism be considered a language in itself for some people? • What is language? Fifteen-some-years ago when I was searching to know more about my Onondaga roots I met a few people who were generous enough to offer me friendship and share with me traditional stories. Every time they would tell me a story, they would also teach me a word in the original Iroquois language. An elder, VLB who was also an incredible storyteller, said to me one evening after a circle: “ Every story holds medicine, which in turn is harboured within the words.” Like Hebrew, lots of First Nation people believe that their original languages holds spiritual wisdom and a connection to “God...

The topic of initiation was a big topic at one of “our” chats last week. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many people present to the chat and completely animated by the topic. There were lots of questions and lots of sharing. There were also synchronicities all night and it was great to have so many people leave totally inspired. If we look up the word “initiation” in the dictionary it basically says “it’s a ceremony, ritual test or period of instruction with which a new member is admitted to an organization or office or to knowledge.” The dictionary also adds: “it’s a condition of being knowledgeable.” At the end of any kind of study, exploration or hunt for knowledge there is always a challenge or test to see if we’ve understood whatever we were exploring. Right? The concept of initiation is basically to evaluate whether or not we’ve grasped whatever we were studying; and to prepare us for the next step in the journey. I personally like the word “rites of passage” better than “...