These three are among my favorites.  One is the dream of a Cherokee woman become Sundancer.  Big brown eyes, big heart, around her one could expect the wildly improbable.  Her curiosity was intense and encyclopedic – mythology, energy fields, medicine, the latest therapy.  It was not unusual to receive a call from her quite early in the morning – so early it could almost be called the middle of the night – with a dream.  Here is one of these.  A medicine woman arrives carrying a knife.  She stabs my friend in the area of her heart and slits open the cavity.  Inside is the universe – star systems, constellations.  My friend is directed to one of these and the medicine woman names it.

The dream directs my friend’s focus to her own psyche/spirit.  It is telling her that she will find what she seeks in her heart’s knowing, something as big as anything exterior.  The dream says that in the enormous, spectacular universe there is an amazing correspondence to what she individually is.  “It is here.  The door is internal.  Don’t expect what you find to dwarf you.  Expect what you find to be as big as your longing.”

Another friend who dreams in simple but compact images, dreamed this – God’s living hands wearing gloves.  This friend is a mature woman, grounded in the practical but who is curious about the shadows flitting at the edge of vision, conversations not quite heard, the unlikely arrival of help.  The answer to her not quite articulated question was that the experience of the spirit cannot be direct.  The touch of divine intervention must have separation even if the separation is quite thin.  The dream also says that the implied presence of spirit – the shadows, the voices, the oblique responses – is no less evidence than a note on the table.  Immediately after this dream my friend had several very unlikely coincidences as if to reinforce the fundamental message.

One other.  A man was in one of those terrible times when every important aspect of his life was in turmoil.  During this time his need centered on one question, “Is there reincarnation?”  Yes, it is obvious he wanted to know if he was going to survive his current circumstances and, if so, in what form, but he received a bigger answer than he anticipated, an answer that was almost a note on the table.  First it showed someone who was reincarnated from one lifetime to another.  Question answered.  But then the dream drew back to provide a larger view.  The scene of the reincarnating man became a small insert into something as big as a galaxy and very complex.  The larger scene seemed to say that reincarnation was insignificant in the larger scheme.  After the dream, though the external turmoil continued, the man had peace, the kind of luminosity that some people have, those who have the good fortune to “know.”

I have been careful not to report the exact dream.  When telling big dreams it is good practice to leave out a small detail in the reporting just as you would if talking about a vision.  Though big dreams have a message to benefit us all and are meant to be shared, the dream was nevertheless sent to the individual.  In a sense, the conversation with the Other becomes part of that person’s medicine and it is best to hold something back.  The exception might be family, a trusted friend, a therapist.   But even then…

We see the same thing when the startled deer runs. She lifts her tail and the white underside is visible long after the camouflage of her body has done its work.  We are captured by this.  Even when the deer is gone our eyes seek just one more glimpse.

This characteristic, the flashing signature as the creature disappears, is the reason we find these two in so much spiritual medicine – the feathers, the hooves.  They are the guides into the unconscious; they mark the edges of the known.  They take us somewhere a little further, someplace we haven’t been or that we’ve forgotten.  For this reason we find them in our dreams, in mythology.

But these creatures, their medicine is not only about taking us to what we don’t know, or to a destination.  Their bigger message is about the nature of most of our encounters with the other side.  They show us how consciousness usually works in relationship to what it doesn’t know but knows it needs.                                                                                                                                                                                      

The deer, the bird tell us that these things come to us in flickers and flashes and then they are gone.  We move across the line into a wilder place for a moment and then come back to what is solid, to what we see with our daytime eyes.

It is maddening because we want to know and frightening because we don’t want to give up the sunlit places.  If we did succeed, if we managed to persuade these old entities to “hold still” our hearts would dry up.  And our dreams.

So we dream.  We contemplate the images.  We look for the flicker of correspondence in our daytime life.  Suddenly in the middle of a conversation with a business partner or a friend, a word catches our attention, our train of thought scatters.  It is the bird.  She is there telling us to pay attention, asking us to sink a little deeper into the soul, into the feeling for the other.  That soft flutter at the heart, its sudden opening, when that happens, the lovely bird has found you.  Yes, she is going to leave again.  But not for long.

Of all the roadblocks to understanding dreams, to dream consultation, this is the most consistent.  Odd, that I don’t see this characteristic so much in American Indian people.  But, let’s not pause to examine culture and how it structures the psyche.  I am not sure I am up to it.

Often when I ask what the dreamer thinks of the dream they become hesitant and self-critical, self-diminishing or defensive.  It is not that dreams can’t give us insight about how we are, can’t prick our conscience, give us another point of view.  But even when this does happen the dream maker is not taking a moral stance, but offering a bigger place of more possibilities.  And, as I said in the last blog, the dream maker uses our wounds, their sharp edge, to lead us to higher places.  From the spirit’s point of view, the journey is not so much about the wound, or our faults, as it is about the individual’s calling, making place for it, living in its center.

Look at it this way.  Yes, of course, you have things to work on, issues of conscience and insight.  We all have the icky places we fall into.  That will never change, improve perhaps, not be so difficult, easier to recognize, but chances are that no surgery will be sufficient to not find it nipping at your ankles again.

The real purpose of the dream, its assumptions, seems to be something like this – despite the problems in your personality, you are a messenger with a work to do.  A potential wisdom.  Your most important job is to learn its language and its requirements, to give it expression.  It is not an issue of self-importance but of service.  I have heard spiritual leaders say, “Don’t disparage what you are given.  If you are given it, it is because the people need it.”  They also say sometimes the gift comes in fully developed but most often it unfolds over time, flies higher, goes deeper.

Maybe this is worth saying, too.  From respect for the source, I am hesitant to criticize spiritual leaders (someone who is strong in their gift) even when they are personally awful.  One of my favorite descriptions of this is to say that I may not leave the children with them but that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize the gift they have.  So I give them the respect they are due.  Respect for the source – if for no other reason than my own welfare.

On the other hand, I do not allow just any to work on me, follow just anyone into the sweat lodge or in some other way to guide me.  If you know anything about this, you’ll know that the gifted spiritual person may not be someone who intends your highest good.  Or even your health and well being.  So, I avoid, am gracious, courteous, drift somewhere else.  I watch, listen to my own soul, am not too eager, wear my own medicine.  I have heard women say that there are places they will not go without tobacco ties secreted in their hair.  That sort of thing.

So, try this.  If a dream seems self-critical, turn it upside down.  Pretend it isn’t.  Instead pretend you are being given knowledge, clues to a gift, a spiritual assignment.  Assume the dream maker is more concerned with your spiritual development, the realization of purpose, than she is that you are jealous of your sister, or lied to your spouse yesterday.  Turn it upside down, inside out.  See if the prism shifts to give you something different.  Something bigger.

"The Journey" by Bear O'Lague

We look for the illusion of healing, resolution, to find what was lost, arms that welcome us home, but that is not what happens.  The injury, the loss, the early damage we all experience separates us from an original self, separates us from what we were when we were born, who we remember.   Sadness, anger, despair arrives.  The first nightmare appears and the journey begins.

The journey is necessary and aimed at the impossible.  We cannot reclaim the original self, the sweetness, the power, the clarity.  We cannot recover what was lost.  Through no fault of our own, we are exiled.  The source – home – no longer exists.  In this way we are all Cherokee on the Trail of Tears, we are the Cheyenne making the long winter walk from Oklahoma back to Montana; we are Geronimo searching for sanctuary in the mountains.

The wound, the loss is necessary because it initiates the journey.  We cannot help but search for the lost bright twin, the child left with strangers.  You could say that we are compelled to find the authentic life, a way to live that is closest to our nature.  We find something then grow restless, expand, move, go deeper.  Restless, we look for another medium, another position of experiencing the one we already have.  We thought we had the answer, but the answer has moved on.

Papa would say that this journey is following the spirit.  He would say that the spark we remember is a gift from the creator to cause us to make a soul.  He would say that the lost self is not in the past but the future, a possibility offered.  We are sent, he would say, to work for each other, but most of all to create ourselves.

He would tell us that we needn’t do this in a vacuum, that though it often seems like it, we are not alone in our efforts but to access help we have to learn to listen and to see.  He said that the longing, the restlessness is the hand of a higher power; dreams the direct voice of creation’s source.  So, don’t expect peace, he said, except occasionally.  But he added, you can expect sweet moments of joy when you are aligned with the right journey.  And signs will be sent, he said, “Watch for them.”

In the search we don’t find what is missing but we do find something.  It might be more accurate to say we make it.  Or make a place for it to come.  I think I agree with papa – it is a presence.  We wake up one morning and there it is.  We attain it, loose it, find it again.  Like a gyroscope we learn how to be so it is with us more.  And stronger.

So what do dreams have to do with this?  They can be a guide, a roadmap.  Not one that shows the whole journey but one that gives suggestions at the intersections, that lures us to the next turn.  Finally we learn something about the way the map works.  The dream says that underneath, the road was always there even when you were freaked about the lack of guardrails, and when you couldn’t see the road at all, it was there.   But, of course, the dream maker does not tell us this too soon.

Dreams often make use of horse images in a similar way.  In the early stages of life the arrangement between horse, driver and carriage functions even though more and more is expected of the horse.  There are the big emotional events – death of loved ones, loss of work, divorce – that might not get their due attention.  We try to move on as if grief, or love, could be timed.

But there are other things besides the big events to tire a good horse.  They are subtle but pervasive.  They include the early life-strategies we develop; the attitudes, the familiar mood, the automatic responses – determination, cynicism, naiveté, righteousness, toughness.  These work for us.  We build our success and our relationships on their foundation.    Perhaps, these characteristics are the core of our identity.

Over time, though, what they ignore becomes weight that the emotions have to sort out, that the carriage has to carry and the horse has to pull.  We all know this; it is familiar territory.  Yet, when the horse finally balks, when those things that have always worked, don’t anymore, we are as puzzled as if we didn’t know.

It can be a frightening time and it doesn’t go away quickly.  We are asked to be something other than what we think we are.  It is a time to sort through the accumulated pain, the mistakes we made, that tendency to justify and defend.  It is time to be suspicious of our strengths and look for a softer place inside and toward the self.   The horse says you’ve missed something and you have to find it.

The dream horse doesn’t just suddenly refuse to move, or buck us off, or run us down.  But we don’t hear her when she first stumbles, or see when she begins to look back in question.  Those of us who are eccentric have had to protect ourselves, but even for us – or is it most especially for us – there is often a point when the foundation has to change.    When we reach this point, expect a horse.

So here is a story.  When I was adolescent I had access to a horse named Silver.   She drove me wild with frustration as I chased her through the willows and across the cold creek, both yelling and offering oats.  (There’s an early life lesson I missed.)  I could only ride in skirts (my father) and Silver loved to throw me, bottoms up, underpants flashing.  Though the one time I lost consciousness, she waited patiently, careful not to step on me, until I woke looking up at her round white belly.   Silver hated a saddle so I never learned to ride with one.  I liked the feel of her muscles, her breath.  I tried a saddle once but thought I might as well have been on a bike.  Now, I hope Silver and I have a less frustrating relationship; I hope not to be thrown again and I promise not to yell or throw the bucket.        

One time I gave the shawl away to a woman I love.  After a year, and terrible dreams, I did the unpardonable, and went to get it.  She is a good friend and didn’t hold it against me.  She said it had always been mine.

It belonged to an old woman.  No one knew for sure how old she was, but from what she remembered, she was probably over one-hundred.  She’d been to the local hospital several times, and was there again.  “It is time,” she told her children and grandchildren.  “Take me home.”  They did.  As they began to prepare for her death ceremony, she stopped eating and drinking.  Other elders gathered to sing to her.  When she died, people worked with her body to rub it free of rigor’s potential.

When she was gone, I was invited to the small longhouse high atop the mesa, for the long night.  Sometime toward morning, I left and was there in time to see, against a black, black sky, the stars begin to fall.  That’s what happens, I was told, when a spiritual being dies.  Not quite human, not quite anything else.  In the cold I watched for a while, then drove off the mesa, followed the river to my house.

The dreams about the talking stars began that night.  When they began I put out bowls of food for them, a pretty piece of fabric, a drum or a whistle.  The knocking on my walls began again.  I saw lights in the open spaces around the house.   When I was afraid, I went outside and walked straight into it.

I refer to that time, as the winter I became crazy; crazy like my mother and my father, my grandmothers.  I tracked wolves, talked to the mountain, clamored over the rim rock, crawled along ledges  to better see the wild horses.  Or feed the hawks.  Papa came to see me several times.  He said it was a holy time, that I was being called.

What I know is that dreams cracked open into language, into the day.  I gave up trying to avoid what I am, trying to avoid the eccentric, old-fashioned way my parents understood the world.  Papa wasn’t surprised that my dreams talked in the day, or through the stars.  He thought it was to be expected.

I was given the old woman’s shawl for the sake of my grandmother.  I wasn’t ever quite sure why.  As I grow older, I think about the old woman, about the talking stars, the way to die.  The way to live.

Or even, number-dependent.    In my work and in hers, we have noticed that there also seem to be personal “reset” numbers.  Regardless of age, the psyche begins again.  Starts over.  It signals the beginning with numbers camouflaged in a dream. All of this seems curious, but I suppose if there are Fibonacci numbers in nature, a human fascination with certain dates, there might also be more personal versions, or applications.

Certain numbers sometimes repeat at critical times in a person’s life.  I don’t mean a preference for a given number as when you say your lucky number is seven, or five.  I mean that the individual psyche seems to make some kind of complex sense of our lives – not only in terms of myth and image, but in terms of numbers, repeating patterns tied to number.  Sometimes, I think of this as a kind of musical score of long notes.

An example came forcefully to my attention some years ago.  Events had seriously run amuck and to put on the finishing touch my son was injured and needed surgery.  As I sat by his hospital bed waiting for him to regain consciousness, I sorted through a confusing dream I’d had about numbers.  I won’t go into the detail, but what suddenly came to me was a precise intertwining of numbers that repeat in my life.  In the moment beside my son’s bed there was an abstract code of sorts that underlay the timing of our awful joint unraveling.  Looking back I could see that these numbers had been in play at most of the major changes in my life.  With a sigh of relief, I could also see that the reset button had been pushed – if my son and I were not at the end of a difficult time, we were at least at the beginning of the end.

A simpler less dramatic example occurred in a dream I recently had after I retired.  The dream held the number I associate with beginnings.  In this simple dream the dream maker affirmed that I was starting a new life.  She had pushed the internal code for reset.  Regardless of my age, the dream maker said I was at a beginning.   Actually dreams don’t seem to acknowledge death, though they do have lots to say about fear of death.

Yet, having said that the dream maker doesn’t acknowledge death, I have seen number play an important role in the timing of an individual’s death.  It is not like an internal clock as much as it is that key numbers, or numbers important to the person are deeply embedded.

mama

Here is one example of numbers, the unconscious, and the timing of death.   My mother had extreme dementia the last two years of her life, but there was some portion of her mind that did not seem to be affected.  She seemed to be counting the months of her care against the money in her bank account.  Even though no one talked to her about money, what was in her account or the cost of her care, even though my brother and I had a Plan B, she died exactly as the money finished.  She seemed to be ably tracking the figures as she had always quite competently done.  I might put this down to coincidence if I had not seen this with others – some kind of timer, some kind of internal bookkeeping, math determining transition, even death.

Yes, this raises other questions as well.  I had to wonder at the end if she wasn’t reading my mind.  That last night I gave up and began to answer the questions she asked.  And acknowledged that I had the song a bit wrong.  Off key.  She gave a mental shrug and chuckled.

This weekend a friend asked, “How can I remember my dreams?”  Here is the answer I gave.  “Begin by signaling the dream maker that you intend to change the relationship.  Be willing to be dismayed.  Become a little bit crazy.”

The friend who asked the question can remember five dreams, but those five are block-busters, sleeping visions as much as anything else.  They are what I call traveling dreams, ones that don’t have the usual metaphoric dream-scape, but are direct experience.   This very spiritual woman could be content to leave her dreaming as it is.  It could be that traveling is the way the dream maker works with her.

But she wants to expand the conversation.  Her desire may signal that the psyche has something to say: a train is coming down the track; something really, really wants to open; a direction needs to be revisited.  In other words, my friend may not be seeking the dream; the dream may be seeking her.

First, put a notebook by the bed so that you can reach it in the dark.  After you turn off the light for sleep, practice reaching for it.  This shows the body what you want of it and makes sure the mechanics are simple. The next morning before you turn on the light, before you sort through the content of the dream, write.  The most significant features of the dream, the deepest elements are lost otherwise.  If you wait until you are more awake, the mysterious content is gone: the words to the song, the story within the story – all the details that are most Other.  Habit may argue with you, assure you that you won’t forget.  But you will.

Dreams often unravel backwards.  That is, if you write the dream you awoke with, the one you had before it may appear.  Dreams sometimes occur in three scenes, or three different dream sequences, each an explication of the same subject or dynamic.  The first in the series is usually the most profound, the densest, the most universal.  The last is the personal application, or how the material is lived in your life.

Prime the pump.  Stir the pool.   Before sleep read something with a dream-like quality or that is about dreams, the psyche, the mysterious.  Or watch a movie.  Listen to music that opens feeling and mind.  Paint.  In this way, you send the message, “I am here.”

If you want to dream about a particular subject, to make dream your teacher, then make that the before-bed focus.  I like to do this.  Take the resulting dream as a beginning point for writing, use its imagery to begin meditation.  Doing this strengthens the relationship to what you seek to know.  It brings the relevant metaphor into the day, or, more accurately, it reveals the metaphoric quality of the day, strengthens your eye for it. Until you remember dreaming, write a few words of the morning impression – three or four will do.

And once you do remember, write it down, re-read it during the day, draw something that seems to relate, even if this is only an abstract shape, a few squiggles.  And revisit the dream the next day – sometimes it is on the second day that it becomes understandable.   See what you can make of the message.  Don’t make it too complicated.  Keep your touch light at first.  Remember, sometimes very long dreams with lots of images and action are suspended from a few words, one image.   Start there.

by Frank Howell

I know I am belaboring a favorite theme, but my brother’s recent dream, and one of a friend, has brought me back to this track.  While I can’t relate either dream, I can say they are the kind of dream that is probably the reason I like dream-work so much – they blow the top off reality as we usually understand it.  They take us into the territory of the mind-blowing.  If I go beyond image…   If I am taken as far as spiritual abstraction can go…  Where do I arrive?  What am I?

The old religions say something about this.  They give metaphoric depth to the ordinary acts of the day that help our minds take on a bigger reality.  Within their teaching, the ordinary contains the resonant meaning – the first drink of water in the morning, the last fire of winter.  These old religions have something to say about how to see life, how to see ourselves, how to live.  The ordinary isn’t ordinary, but does, or can, attach us to a network of correspondences; or as I prefer, a network of natural reverberations.

Most of us are captured by ordinary life early; the spirit’s potential is taken captive.  We are taught how to negotiate the basic needs of the body, how to get along with others, make a living.  We are confined in this small territory as if it is all there is.  As we are, we lose – not only our spiritual identity – but the spiritual nature of living itself – the depth and height of it, the bigness – how to attach ourselves to it.   If someone does not teach us about this, during our development we can come to attach this impulse to the ego:  the identity we use to buy a car, or check for traffic before crossing the street, build a resume.

Because we are too often taught only the material – even in our religions – we have few places to take this innate knowledge about life, the longing to understand, to relate to the never-ending reverberation of reality – like a tone that once sounded travels the galaxy, sings to the comets, makes infant planets.  So, we take this innate possibility to the ego, to the ordinary identity.  And get lost there.

Put another way, we don’t understand the greater truth in our metaphors.  We settle for fantasy, but only because we reach a dead end in the understanding available.   This mistake can blow up our lives, and does all the time, as the too-small tries to encompass the too-big.  Or, as the amazing scope of reality tries to get our attention so we can know the awesome, can participate in it.  As is intended.

About the old religions, the old cultures, anthropologist use deduction to understand the principles, to nail them to the page, but at the end of the book, the heart of it is still missing.  In these old religions, there is never any end to the prey’s cry in the night, the feather on the porch, the nature of fire, how to feed it.

But, as Joseph Campbell said, if we forgot everything, the water, the stones – and dreams – would teach us again.  So, even when we forget, dreams take us on reality tours.  I remember a man who said he asked the dream maker about reincarnation, if it was true.  The dream answer was, “yes,” but the dreamer was taken on a journey; at its end, he understood that reincarnation was a subtext in something so much larger that it hardly mattered.

The dream didn’t leave the man more humble, smaller.  Instead, his spine was a little straighter, his mind bigger, the risks he took were greater.   He had become a participant in something more;  a participant important enough to be told, his question answered.

Most tribal people when entering a gathering are taught:  don’t hesitate, stand up, look ahead – you are not humble people.  Economically, maybe, but not in spirit, not in essence.

And the big cats – cougar, panther –  if I move past thoughts of her in chase, or at the kill, I can see more clearly her boneless, languorous quality, how liquid she is when draped across a limb, sprawled in the grass, how snakelike. When she stalks, she slinks, nothing sudden to catch the eye, to raise the alarm until it’s too late.  Or she lies, no longer boneless, in the tree above the trail.  I have heard the men in my family talk of being stalked by her through the night.  One was on horseback, and the cougar kept trying to spook the horse sufficient to throw the rider. Cunning, he said, she seemed to know his thoughts. Or the night my brother realized one was near so turned back to the car.  Tell me why she got  within six feet of him and screamed, slunk between him and car sufficient for him to see her clearly, and then stepped back into the woods?  Or, imagine papa’s panic when he placed mama on an outcrop to wait for deer, walked further into the canyon, up its steep shoulder and there found fresh cougar tracks headed for mama – easier prey than the alert deer.  Papa was a big man, but could move quickly when there was need.   When he got there, he could see where the cat had crouched above her and the scattered dirt where she’d sped away.  To be stalked it not necessarily to die, but it is to know you might, and so, in a way, you do.

We are told that when the eagle turns upside down, tilts her claws upwards, she passes our prayers to god.  The Sundancer calls her to do just this by blowing on the eagle bone.  On a clear day we can follow her long spiral until she disappears, but, still, we know she is there just beyond the eye.  She is an airy mathematician of the perfect angle to hide the foretelling shadow from the dove or the salmon.  While the eagle is sometimes associated with war, I think her intensity is best seen in the courtship dance: the piercing whistle, the meeting in the air, the entangled talons, the plummet of the doubled weight.  Just as it seems the two have waited too long, these masters of angles and distance, masters of their own exact limits, separate and save themselves.   Still, it is in the early morning that I understand her best: she spreads her wings, tilts her back to the sun to collect its warmth, opens the door.   “Let’s go see the eagles!” Papa said.  Sympathetically, mama thrust a cup of coffee in my hand.

I live in the northwest, so we could add Sasquatch, but few people ever see one much less meet her in a dream.  There are places that tribal hunters won’t go because they say the area belongs to the big creatures, the same with certain creeks.   It doesn’t matter that she seldom leaves tracks, that she is even less visible then the panther.  Thankfully, given her capabilities, she is more predictable.  She lives for the most part on the other side and so efforts to prove that she exists, or doesn’t, involve evidence that doesn’t belong to her world.  But if you do see her, take it as a gift.  Leave fish, some berries.  Don’t chase her or yell; she doesn’t like it.   And, if you dream her, I’d like to know right away.

I could tell you of those times in the forest or on the high desert when I’ve crossed a border where dream and not-dream mix, but you have probably been there too.  Our spirit knows the animals past the surface where the mind has learned to stop thinking.  With a small push we can open doors into the less obvious, think about indigenous traditions, recall family lore; we can expand the message, affirm these old relationships.   While I believe the relationships are literal, knowing this doesn’t do much for me unless I take the implications as far as I can.  We do this for ourselves so that we are more complete.  These old spirits of the earth haven’t given up on us; I am not quite sure why, but they haven’t.

Eagle Hand Rattle, carved and painted by John Edward Smith, Skokomish/ you can find him on facebook if you want to see more of his art