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In a dreaming culture, dreams are valued and celebrated. The first business of the day, for most people, is to share dreams and seek to harvest their guidance. The community joins in manifesting the energy and insight of dreams in waking life.
In a dreaming culture, nobody says, “It’s only a dream” or “In your dreams, mister.” It is understood that dreams are both wishes (“I have a dream”) and experiences of the soul.
Honoring Dreams Creates A Magical World
I have a dream: that we will again become a society of dreamers.
If dreams are honored throughout our society, our world will be different, magical. Let me count the ways.
1. We will deepen our relationships.
Personal relations will be richer, more intimate, and more creative. There will be less room for pretense and denial. Sharing dreams, we overcome the taboos that prevent us from expressing our real needs and feelings and open ourselves to those of others.
2. We will enrich family life and home entertainment.
“What did you dream?” is the first question asked around the table in a family of dreamers.
In our dreaming culture, families everywhere will share dreams and harvest their gifts of story, mutual understanding, and healing. Parents will listen to their children’s dreams and help them to confront and overcome nightmare terrors. Best of all, they will learn from their children, because kids are wonderful dreamers. This might be bad for TV ratings, but it will bring back the precious art of storytelling, helping us learn to tell our own story (a gift with almost limitless applications) and to recognize the larger story of our lives.
3. We will use dreams for diagnosis and healing.
In our dreaming culture, dream groups will be a vital part of every clinic, hospital, and treatment center, and doctors will begin their patient interviews by asking about dreams as well as physical symptoms.
Health costs will plummet, because when we listen to our dreams, we receive keys to self-healing. Dreams often alert us to possible health problems long before physical symptoms develop; by heeding those messages, we can sometimes avoid manifesting those symptoms.
Dreams give us an impeccable nightly readout on our physical, emotional, and spiritual health.
4. Dreams will help us care for souls.
As a dreaming culture, we will remember that the causes of disease are spiritual as well as physical. We will use dreams to facilitate soul recovery.
In dreams where we encounter a younger version of ourselves or are drawn back to a scene from childhood, we are brought to recognize a deeper kind of energy loss, which shamans call soul loss. Through trauma or abuse, through addiction or great sadness, we can lose a part of our vital soul energy. So long as it is missing, we are not whole, and the gap may be filled by sickness or substance abuse.
Dreams show us what has become of our lost children and when it is timely to call them home.
5. We will practice dream incubation.
In a dreaming culture, we will remember to “sleep on it,” asking dreams for creative guidance on school assignments, work projects, relationships, and whatever challenges are looming in waking life.
When we seek dream guidance, we must be ready for answers that go beyond our questions, because the dream source is infinitely deeper and wiser than what Yeats called the “daily trivial mind.”
6. We will take advantage of dream radar.
Dreaming, we routinely fold time and space and scout far into the future.
As a dreaming culture, we will work with dream precognition on a daily basis and develop strategies to revise the possible futures foreseen in dreams for the benefit of ourselves and others.
7. Our dream sharing will build communities.
When we share dreams with others, we recognize something of ourselves in their experiences. This helps us to move beyond prejudice and build heart-centered communities.
8. Dreams will help us hone the art of dying.
The path of the soul after death, say the Lakota, is the same as the path of the soul in dreams — except that after physical death, we won’t come back to the same body.
Dreamwork is a vital tool in helping the dying to prepare for the conditions of the afterlife.
9. Dreaming will enable us to walk the path of soul.
The greatest gift of dreaming is that it facilitates an encounter between the little self and the Greater Self.
Active Dreaming is a vital form of soul remembering, of reclaiming knowledge that belonged to us, on the levels of soul and spirit, before we entered this life experience. So much of the harm we do to ourselves and others stems from the fact that we have forgotten who we are and what we are meant to become. In dreaming, we remember, and we encounter authentic spiritual guides who will help us on our paths.
Dreaming a Better World
You can heal your body and your life by dreaming a better story.
Why not dream a better world?
How about now?
Writing Practice: Define Your Personal Truth
Your personal truth is what you remember and act on. It is not something you can find through an internet search. In Greek, the word for truth is aletheia, which means “not succumbing to Lethe,” the waters of forgetfulness.
In that cause, give yourself enough private time and space to respond to the following questions from deep inside, from your heart and your gut, not merely your head. Say them aloud, then repeat them silently until responses well up within you:
What do I love?
What makes me happy?
What does my heart long for?
What would I risk everything to defend?
If my life ended today, what would I most regret not having done?
Write down your responses. If you find you can’t answer one of the questions, note that down. It will create a space in your mind and your life that will be filled when you have learned and grown more.
Writing Practice: State Your Life Intention
When you have answered the questions in the previous exercise, you are ready to respond to the query Mary Oliver expressed as follows: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
So much in life depends on intention. It’s time to come up with a big one.
Quick — what is your life intention?
I heard these responses in one of my workshops:
I want to live every day as an adventure.
I want to love and be loved.
I want to be a healer.
I want to bring something new into the world.
I want to fulfill my sacred contract.
I want to find my soul mate.
I want to write children’s books.
I want to live my bigger story.
Whatever words you choose, they should pass the tingle test: they should give you goosebumps.
However you state your life intention, the universe won’t believe you until you come up with an action plan that supports it. Write down one simple physical action you can take right away. Then do it.
Your personal truth is what you remember and act upon.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher,
New World Library, Novato, CA. ©2020 by Robert Moss.
www.newworldlibrary.com or 800-972-6657 ext. 52.
Article Source
Growing Big Dreams: Manifesting Your Heart’s Desires through Twelve Secrets of the Imagination
by Robert Moss.
Growing Big Dreams is a passionate yet practical call to step through the gates of dreams and imagination to weather tough times, embark on travel adventures without leaving home, and grow a vision of a life so rich and strong it wants to take root in the world. Vitally relevant today more than ever, dreams are a tool available to all.
For More Info or to Order This Book. Also available as a Kindle edition and as an Audiobook.
About the Author
Robert Moss was born in Australia, and his fascination with the dreamworld began in his childhood, when he had three near-death experiences and first learned the ways of a traditional dreaming people through his friendship with Aborigines. He is the creator of the School of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of modern dreamwork and ancient shamanic and mystical practices. He leads popular workshops all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming and online courses for the Shift Network. Visit him online at www.mossdreams.com.
