Fly Free; You Are Forever

In the aftermath of the waking dream that has many of us stunned, saddened and fearful, it's hard to find that silver lining.  Many of us in the consciousness/spirituality movement feel it's very important to stay positive, because despair leads to emotional catatonia, which literally gets us nowhere.

In my last post, I mentioned how one of the things that seems apparent is that we won't have a leader to turn to, so we'll need to do it ourselves, for each other and with each other.  Do what?  Make sure Love trumps hate.

Obviously that won't be easy, but the hard things seldom are.  For myself, I'm choosing the areas I most want to champion and commit my energy there, while supporting others in their endeavors to move human consciousness beyond the stagnant mental swamp of this dying patriarchal system and its death generating values.

For me, the women's movement has received a huge wake up call; too many women, white women it seems, voted for a misogynist and put their own civil liberties, their daughters' and their grand daughters in jeopardy.  Why?  Brainwashed, that's why.

That's the title song by George Harrison on his posthumously released album:

Brainwashed in our childhood
Brainwashed by the school
Brainwashed by our teachers
And brainwashed by all their rules
Brainwashed by our leaders
By our Kings and Queens
Brainwashed in the open
And brainwashed behind the scenes

God God God
A voice cries in the wilderness
God God God
It was on the longest night
God God God
An eternity of darkness
God God God
Someone turned out the spiritual light

Patriarchy is a 5-6 thousand year old paradigm that has forced humanity into this perilous period of self-destruction.  It takes many forms on the planet, physically, monarchies that are inherited or hierarchical legislative structures that are to various degrees elected, but psychologically it takes one common form.  God is male, so the male is the only suitable representative of his rule in the physical. This belief is manifest to varying degrees of severity, depending on where in the world we find ourselves.  But very few societies extant give equal voice to the Feminine Divine.  This denial of half of who we are, within and without, has created the dark paradigm, the collective dream, we're living on this physical plane.  I spoke about this in my Mother's Day Homily a few years ago in more detail.

The good news, as I've mentioned before, is that we humans have been here much longer than the patriarchal age and have experienced peaceful coexistence and egalitarian organization of societies. The myth of it's always been like this is part of the patriarchal, apocalyptic narrative.  Are the myths of Eden hinted at in this bleak story echoes of the paradise we indeed lost when god was not the war tyrant father and all that was life was the Mother? 

The challenge of the times we're in is doable; it depends on one person at a time learning to free herself/himself from the mind-forged manacles that make us conform to values that are religious rather than spiritual, exclusive rather than holistic.  The choice isn't religion or atheism; it's dogma versus experience. The realm of God/goddess is within and the path is always open to us, especially through our dreaming.  Paying attention to our dreams, our organic spirituality, can free us from the religious strictures and lies that cloud our judgments and harden our hearts with fear.

We are forever because we're spiritual beings in this present physical existence.  We've been here before and we've been elsewhere in the multi-universe, as well.  We don't have to earn our way into heaven because heaven is inside us - as is hell, if we choose it.

The question for each of us is, why am I here now?  What do I need to learn and what am I here to contribute?

A world out of whack is a world of imbalance; many teachers in the consciousness/spirituality movements of today believe that the Feminine Divine must be returned to equal status with the Male Deity that's been Ramboing us to perdition these past several millennia. The influence of the Feminine is key to achieving balance; the goddesses that all our earth centered ancestors revered informed our moral codes very differently.  Goddess respecting cultures embodied a very different paradigm, a very different consensus reality. 

We need to melt down this hateful paradigm that's imprisoned the human imagination for so long and fly free.  Patriarchal religions control through fear and coercion, just like patriarchal governments or patriarchal family structures.  But no one can control our inner freedom.

The spiritual movement of this dark patriarchal age is brighter than it has ever been, thanks to so much passionate research and writing in the last century.  Material science and metaphysical science are partners in the current conversation on what constitutes "reality."  We can take heart in that.

There is no doubt in my mind that as Jesus put it, you can't put new wine into old skins; the new skin we need to grow, to rebirth, regenerate and renew our existence on this planet is a psychic one.  We need to act as if our spiritual being is just as important as the ego being of our waking reality. It's not either/or, it's both/and, especially when the shit hits the fan.  We need to examine our beliefs, where and how we got them and whether they serve our deepest values.  We need to tune into our dream lives because that's where we find the help we need, custom tailored to our own soul, not mass produced, mass distributed and controlled by patriarchs for their own profit.

As Robert Moss teaches; "We are born to fly, and in dreams we discover that the soul has wings."

Family Dreaming/Spiritual Parenting

"River of Dreams" Elizabeth Westaway, 1962

In my dream practice training group, we dedicate one session to dreaming as a family activity.   This is an important part of Active Dreaming, sharing dreams with those we love and using dreams as family entertainment.   

How were dreams approached in your family? What did you learn from others about dreaming growing up?  What dreams do you remember from your childhood?  What help did you receive figuring dreams out?

For many, the answer to any of these questions is, not much.  It complicates things that the most memorable dreams are often experienced as nightmares.  Unless we’re working with PTSD playback dreams, nightmares are usually dream gauntlets thrown down by our dream guides because they think we’re ready to face what we’re running from in waking life.  As you know from many of my previous posts, I believe a nightmare is my best friend.  Working and playing with nightmares  is a practice that has always payed off for me and for dreamers in my groups who’ve bravely ventured where before they feared to tread.  There is an old saying: “Where there’s fear, there’s power” that is especially true in dreaming dimensions.

One of the perks of being a dream teacher is you witness magic and healing in every encounter involving someone’s dream.  Sometimes people tell me they used to have vivid, magical, wonderful dreams as a child, then “something” happened and their dream portals dried up and their dreams are full of the worries of waking existence, when they’re remembered at all.

I’ve had the great honor of seeing that turn around in my students.  Just recently someone who said that very thing to me when we first met at a workshop, at the end of the group course she took with me said of a dream she'd just had:

“Last night it hit me like a ton of bricks!  I guess I couldn't see the forest for the trees but this was the first time in decades that I was flying again in my dreams.  For me this is HUGE as I loved my childhood flying adventures and finally I was, AM, airborne again!!!!”  Yay, hurray, yippee…that’s all I have to say.”

Again and again, I see the joy people take in their own dreams once they reconnect with their dreaming self.  Wouldn’t it be better if we nurtured the dream life we all came here with in our children, instead of letting it be shut down due to ignorance or censorship?

It’s only a dream?  Really?  If we learn to follow and trust our dreaming intelligence we can pass that wisdom on to our children and they can pass the magic of that world from their vantage point back to us. Parents who know how to work and play with their own dreams are at a tremendous advantage, as are their children.

For one, dreaming is an organic path to consciousness and spirituality. We have natural access to the many dimension of reality we left behind to incarnate into this physical body, in this physical world, through our dreaming, lifelong. 

This can come in handy when addressing the quintessential questions about God, death and the meaning of life that often get asked of parents by their children.   When a parent has nurtured a dream dialogue with their child, and encouraged a dream practice in their child, it’s more than likely that child, having grown up with strong dream guidance and experience, will come up with some answers on her/his own.  If not, the parent has the entire cornucopia of dream images they've heard from their child to build an explanation to which the child can thoroughly relate.

For example, this might be a scenario of a parent listening to a child’s dream of a beloved grandma, who died; the child dreamed of her last night: “You saw grandma last night in your dream?  Yes, grandma died last week. The dream didn’t scare you?  You felt happy to see her?  She wanted to visit you and tell you she’s okay and how much she still loves you?”  Then a parent might say;  “Shall we draw a picture of your dream?  We can give it to grandpa, if you want.” 

A parent with a dreaming practice has access to a unique resource for nurturing a spiritual core in their children  that goes far beyond what Western culture has offered in centuries.   Today’s parents can learn how to develop a family dream practice that will serve their children throughout  their lives.

I hear so many friends say when their children reach that questioning age that they are going to take their child to church, regardless of the fact that they, on their own, wouldn’t go, but they say, they want to give them a spiritual base.  Later they say, their child can choose what religion or not they will follow. 

As a former psychotherapist, I say this is the stuff the profession counts on for their bread and butter, that and childhood family entanglements.    Not to worry, I would love to say to them, connect to your own dreams, teach your children to connect to theirs, and not only will you feel confident that you’ve given your child a spiritual terra firma, you’ll also have a lot of fun in the process and develop out of the ordinary communication with them, as well. 

As in any other practice, yoga, tai chi chuan, dance, playing an instrument, etc, you can't teach what you haven’t experienced yourself.  It’s a great idea for parents to learn how to have an ongoing relationship with their own dreams.   I highly recommend the innovative and practical approach Robert Moss presents in his books and DVD series on Active Dreaming; it's the modern shamanic approach to a dream practice.  His book,  “The Three Only Things” is a great introduction to Active Dreaming, as is, quite humbly, the DVD series Jim and I produced with him, The Way of the Dreamer.   With a little guidance from veteran dream explorers to get you started, nothing beats your own dream journal for the best tutorial on dreaming. I encourage parents to develop a dream practice so they can pass this great gift on as soon as possible to their children.

Dreaming protects and sparks imagination, something we desperately need in these creativity- numbing times of electronic entertainment.    Do you think, when you’re dead, you’ll still elect to spend hours of each day in front of a babbling box of ever cascading images of the same thing?  Or will you be out there doing the impossible, dancing and singing your joy?   Flying? 

We are not finite human beings; we are infinite spiritual beings.  Nothing ends; it’s never over.  It changes, that’s all.  The good news of this brave new world we are now living in is that consciousness studies and dream pioneering has brought us to this new age of discovery, not an exploration of outer space, but one of inner space.  The 100^th monkey has got the picture; it’s time.  Dream time is as important as waking time.  Help, as Robert likes to say, is always available to those who ask, especially if they listen to the answers offered in dreams.

May your best dreams come true.