Dreams, to be precise, ought to make us grateful for their blessings. Dreams are each a beautiful night, the Sun and the Moon metamorphized, and also those texts, calls, and emails creeping back into our Soul if we do not follow the road of wisdom.
Let us set the books down, invite the ego to slow down (in its desperate attempt to intellectualize any experience), and learn how shamans deal with visions. The ego has divided us from the realm of dreaming in Western cultures, thereby dividing us from an integral aspect of our own reality. This isn't the case anywhere.
Dreams are a big part of daily life in South American communities that have kept their conventional modes of life. When children first learn to communicate, they continue to work for their visions, which becomes a way of life for them. People gather in a circle and tell stories of their nighttime experiences. Whatever the message is, it tells you what to do during the day. Let us abandon our jobs if the dream instructs us to do so!
However, if Westerners behaved in this manner, those around them would believe they were nuts for taking "a simple dream" so seriously.
We must, though, survive with the knowledge of our dreams. Limiting our behavior to a series of closed boundaries, on the other hand, stops the mystical and imaginative universe inside us from touching our lives. Perhaps leaving a job where you feel suffocated and bored will allow you to uncover a secret talent or potential that you were previously unaware of. Let us travel if the dream says so! We will sail as we grasp the natural rules of a divine dream. Our potential is boundless.
The anthropologists' question to the shaman, "Can you fly like an eagle?" is out of place for him because, in non-ordinary experience, of course he can!
Everybody can recall wanting to leap out of the window or off the balcony and fly when they were a small child. However, when we attempted to run, we were injured.
Yet we kept believing in our visions and we trusted them more than we trusted ourselves. On the inside, there is a sense of oneness and magic that tells one that everything is possible. Children understand this better than adults because they are already mindful of and focused on their life force. They want to believe in the magic of the world they live in, as well as the imaginative life force that motivates them. Let us be serious about our wishes.
If we have a feeling that we are soaring, let us construct a flying ceremony, dress up as a condor, head to the mountains, and learn to fly symbolically.
However, if we believe it is unlikely, we would not leap out of fear of falling. To comprehend our visions, we must set aside our egos and conditioning in order to approach the dream's truth. People who have the courage to fly and leap do so in a non-physical dimension. Dreams will serve as a reminder of our journey to wholeness in this universe. Any component of a dream is a part of ourselves. We are similar in spirit to the heart of ourselves if we dream of an animal or some aspect of Nature.
Let us pay attention to Nature's influence and decipher the messages in our dreams. In the realm of dreaming, the four elements – earth (East), fire (West), water (North), and air (South) – reflect the four directions of the mesa or wheel of medicine. They provide us with the keys to deal with.
I recommend working with Dreams rather than merely interpreting them. If, for example, one has a dream about the fear of altering a part of one's life that involves air and the wind blowing in the direction of South, one can learn to let go of feelings because air is the factor of transition.
Remember that the snake is the symbolic animal for the way South, which aids the rise of the life force (kundalini). A dream will also instruct us to consume those foods in order to benefit our bodies on a physical basis. This is due to the importance of working for the body. When we are mad, for example, our body expresses this emotion.
However, keep in mind that this state of being is only transient, since the body and its cells are continually changing in response to our level of consciousness.
Often keep in mind that as the mental and metaphysical bodies change, the physical body must and can change as well. And "evil" dreams still have a positive message for us. They imply that we're working on something really dear to our hearts.
For instance, a woman told me about a brief dream she had. In her dream, she was lying on the ground when she was stung by a scorpion above her navel. She assured me that this bite had left her with no emotion or physical pain. The scorpion represents the way East for the shaman, the one dealing with the bond between the body and the world, and it was a messenger of the earth in the dream.
The scorpion's poison is a potent medication, and this woman required one to purify her body, especially her blocked energy zones in the solar plexus, stomach, and heart.
Another example: if you have a dream that you are being pursued by a tiger, the shaman will interpret this as the tiger having a very valuable message for you that needs to be interpreted right away. And don't run backwards! Let us not be afraid!
Let us make friends with the tiger and converse with it. Let us visit the dream and learn how to communicate with it in its own language. The longer we engage with dreams, the more we appreciate their complexity, the more they remind us at different levels of our understanding of their beauty, and the more they assist us in becoming mindful of the insight and experience that we all possess.
We may use a variety of resources to help us remember and deal through our dreams. Consider the following example:
- 1. Have a pen and a journal by your bed so you can write down your thoughts as soon as you wake up. Remembering one's visions is a way of honoring them and giving them tangible form. People often delay this action until later, only to forget about it and lack the time to complete it. Finding the time to write down any thoughts about the dream will help us remember its vitality at first. It would then manifest itself in the form of images, emotions, and sensations.
- 2. Use a tape recorder to capture the dream orally.
- 3. Make a drawing or painting in your fantasy.
- 4. Dance or make fluid moves in response to the dream's force.
- 5. To make you recall your wishes, drink a glass of water. That is, drink part of the bottle before going to bed and the other when you wake up. This grounds the dream in the body, which can struggle to recall information when it is exhausted, preoccupied, or recovering from the previous day.
- 6. Before going to bed, avoid watching tv. After a long day of work, we return home exhausted and switch on the tv, which disrupts the brain's routines. It disrupts the pituitary gland's activity (which aids in the development of our sense of magic) and halts the normal flow of dreams.
- 7. Prior to going to bed, take care of yourself. In a stress-free, relaxing manner, ritualize the transition from everyday activities to sleep.
- 8. Before going to bed, avoid having a lengthy conversation about an issue and refrain from anxious feelings. The mind must be at ease.
- 9. Read a holy book, inspiring sentences, or religious scriptures to relax into a state of sleep.
- 10. Make your bedroom a sanctuary for sleep rather than an extension of your busy everyday routines, unfinished jobs, and/or life in general.
It's a good idea to make an altar by your bed with simple and beautiful things. Include any good objects, images, or other elements you choose to bring into your dreams.
You may also want to read more about Shamanism here.
Also, be sure to check out our section on Religion.
