This is a time of year for magic, a magic that brings us a deeper, stronger connection to all that dies, yet endures, somehow changed, but the same.  In our modern American culture, Halloween is full of "ghosts" and everything nightmares are made of.  I can't help but wonder how many of the displays we adults love so much give little, little ones nightmares!

What I love about Halloween, All Hallow's Eve, is that it celebrates a sacred duty to honor and thank our ancestors who came before us, preparing the way, best they could. This is the ancient Thanksgiving; a time to honor the land for the harvest and our ancestors for their efforts.  Gratitude is awareness that your particular ego shares the stage with others, some like you, some very different. Gratitude is acknowledging the benefit others have afforded us and also realizing the responsibility we have now as future ancestors to our children and their children.  Gratitude makes me stronger and more expansive; self-pity makes me feel weak and vulnerable.  I feel gratitude this time of the year, so full of ancient lore and ceremonies to honor the dying time of year,  the end of the harvest, the beginning of winter, and all who came before us.

Twenty first century medical research into NDEs, the phenomena that the great and lovely Dr. Raymond Moody first introduced in his 1975 best seller, Life After Life, has reached a tipping point for science and for medicine.  In the Netherlands, Dr. Pim van Lommel, a cardiologist now famous for his extensive research and ground-breaking book, Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near Death Experience,  sums it up in a patient's words; "it turns out dead isn't dead, after all."  This is the time of year to take such knowledge to heart and maybe expand the way we view and celebrate this lovely season.

Dreams are the bridge to that which isn't material and to the places where we can meet our beloved dead, now whole and on their own new path.  In one visitation dream, my shy, reclusive mom was young, dark hair flowing, riding a beautiful black stallion, like a free wild woman.  What a gift to see her that way after all her suffering at the end.  

This is the time to strenghten the bonds we have with those we love on both sides of the veil.  As in dreams, time, past, present and future, is all the same. We can gather our best dreams of those we love as a way to honor both them and the dreaming that keeps them so close to us.

Ask And You Receive

     In his wonderful book, The Three Only Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence and Imagination, Robert Moss offers a synchronicity game that he dreamed up, literally.  He calls it the Coincidence Card Game.  It's simple; every person in the circle gets an index card on which they are asked to write, legibly and on one side only, a saying, a line from a song, part of a dream, or absolutely anything that comes to mind.  The cards are collected and shuffled thoroughly, maintaining the blank side out at all times.  Each person gets to pick a card from this newly minted deck that they must put down without looking at the written message. Then, they must think of a question they would like to put to the universe, a question they don't mind sharing with the group.  One by one, each person states their question, turns their card over and reads the message they received out loud. I've played this Active Dreaming game in groups Robert Moss has led, as well as in my own dream groups; it never fails to bring laughter, but it also creates some undeniable synchronicities.   

The example I will share here happened in a group I led this past Saturday.  The CC Game is a great way to raise energy after some intense dream work, so before we wrapped up, I handed out the index cards, one to a person and kept one for myself to write on. I then put the rest of the cards away, so as not to confuse the deck.  Everyone wrote something and I collected those cards; I shuffled thoroughly and each person chose their response card from the deck I now held out to them, then put it down without looking at it.  We went around the circle with our questions and oracle answers and just about everyone felt that little pique of intrigue as they considered how the serendipitous message might answer their question. There was one wonderful synchronicity that I could not have anticipated.

At the beginning of our group, I gave a short introduction to Active Dreaming and the techniques of Lightning Dream Work and Dream Re-entry.  At one point, someone asked about dreams with departed loved ones and we talked about them briefly.  I made a comment like; "Well, we all have a physical body with an expiration date." as  a humorously intended aside.

In our Coincidence Card Game, the last participant, when it came her turn, said her card was blank, but that's okay, she was happy with that answer.  I was flummoxed; how did an extra card get into my deck?  I carefully handed a single card to each, took one myself and got rid of the rest.  I apologized and, realizing I was holding two written-on cards when I should have only one left for myself, I said; "Here, pick one of these", holding out the two cards.

She smiled broadly and said; "This really is the perfect card for my question which was, "What is my expiration date?"

There is always magic when we play with our dreams together in a group.  C.G. Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist and dream explorer descrlibed this phenomenom succinctly as an acausal connecting principle, or meaningful coincidence.  In my experience, it often comes with goose bumps, as it did this time for the whole group.  I don't know how the blank card got in the final deck; it was probably stuck to another one, but without my knowing.  What more powerful answer could this dreamer have gotten to her intrepid question?  We don't know our expiration date, so we live our fullest life now, trusting that when the time comes, we'll be ready.  

Connecting to our dreams connects us to the deeper realities that are in harmony with our waking ones; they come through with a personalized assurance that we're not alone.  We just ask for what we want, and as the song says, we'll get what we need.