The Bulldog and His Patriarchy

I mentioned in my previous post what fun dream archeology can be; I'm still on the trail of the bulldog.  Here's an interesting bit I found in Wikipedia:

Bulldogs have a longstanding association with 
English culture, as the BBC wrote: "to many the Bulldog is a national icon, symbolizing pluck and determination."^[6] During World War II, Bulldogs were often likened to Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his defiance of Nazi Germany.^[7] When the English settled in the Americas, their Bulldogs came with them. 

Interesting, it's definitely an English breed, but when I re-enter and check these ideas out with the bulldog in my dream, he wants me to explore further.  With a further search, I found that the reason they're called bulldogs is because back in the male fraternity of Medieval and Renaissance England, this hapless dog was bred for the sole (souless) purpose of watching it gore or be gored by a bull who was maddened beforehand by pepper blown up it's nose. It was the male sport of the day.

I digress here, but it reminds me of the story going around in my neck of the woods about people, some say the very coaches on the team, of an upscale township that shall remain nameless, (although it made the GoodWeek/BadWeek section of this week's Week Magazine), confronted with the cold reality that their kid's playing field was too wet to allow the scheduled games to commence, made the bold and mystifying decision to soak the field in gasoline and set it on fire so as to dry the field and allow the games to go on.

What planet are these people from?  How did 20 adults come to a decision so misguided and ill-advised? Yes, the field was destroyed, just for starters.  My neighbor and I were talking; he's well versed in school sports cultures, having followed his daughters teams as they grew up. We shake our heads and ask each other, how was this the decision of so many adults?

Do you see where I'm going with this?  How was bull baiting and bear baiting the decision of so many, so called, Christian adults?  

It's patriarchy.  The bulldog was bred as a symbol and a sacrifice to patriarchal insanity.  We treat patriarchy as if it's the only option we have for organizing a culture, when it's not.  Patriarchy isn't all of human history; it's a small distorted fraction. Homo sapiens (a rather ironic label for humanity as we know it, coined by an 18th century Swiss botanist) has been around for hundreds of thousands of years; "Thanks to the work of exceptional scholars like archeologist Marija Gimbutas, we know that: “The Goddess is the most potent and persistent feature in the archeological records of the ancient world, a symbol of the unity of life in nature and the personification of all that was sacred and mysterious on earth.”

Patriarchy is only some 6,000 years old! It's dualistic, focused on differences and competition; whoever pisses the farthest sets the rules for right and wrong, and uses all manner of cruelty, violence and inhumanity to enforce them.  

How can such cruelty to animals be allowed? Well, it was a sanctioned male sport until one of the first laws against cruelty to animals was passed in the mid 19th century. In patriarchy, male sports help develop the future generation of soldiers and keep the win/lose, either or mentality sharp for when war is declared.  

One of the characteristics of my dream bulldog is that he would occasionally roll his eyes, which made him look insane; then he'd resume a direct look and return to his doggie nature.  His crazy eye roll got me to pondering about the insanity of the bulldog as mascot for the patriarchal story. 


We've learned little about pre-patriarchal cultures in our history classes because history is the story the conqueror writes. In the last century, many vistas have been opened and explored.  Women have done their own scholarship and found that the male establishment's explanation of ancient artifacts and cultures has been tainted with patriarchal projection on to the ancient past, mansplaining cultures who were nothing like patriarchy in structure and function. "Goddess worshiping cultures weren’t necessarily matriarchal, they were, as Riane Eisler brilliantly presents in The Chalice and the Blade, cooperative societies." 

Ancient cultures existed that were perhaps far in advance of our own on many levels, like in using what we now call psi skills.  This internal authority of the hoi polloi was frowned upon during the brutal RC Inquisition, so we've come to be raised knowing little, discounting or sometimes fearing our dreaming.

The patriarchal paradigms reign with fear, exist in hierarchies of human worth, denigrate half the human race with misogynist rules and thinking, can only think in good/bad dualism and project their own self important image, an anthropomorphized male deity who hates women for their lack of obedience and submission, on to the Male Only Divine.

Ancient cultures weren't patriarchal.  Whatever they were before patriarchy took over with the sword, they were very interesting people, our ancestors.  And beyond a doubt, women were respected and the Goddess was revered for the gifts She gives humanity.  Goddess paradigms don't need the idea of duality, they practice the idea of the dance of life, where each person, male or female, does their best, according to what they desire to do.

But I digress, yet again. As an animus figure, Jung would have a field day with my bulldog in this dream; that's what I'm doing, too.  Just like there's a wounded Feminine Divine archetype in the patriarchal paradigm, one that Jung acknowledged, there's a wounded Male Divine archetype, too.  Actually, and fittingly so, today is the day of the international celebration of that wounding, Good Friday.

Patriarchal gods are constantly demanding sacrifice; ask Isaac how he felt about his dad's religious beliefs that almost got him killed.  Patriarchal theology is the psychic arm for the hostile takeover of  ancient spiritualities that payed great tribute to the Feminine Divine. It's easy to see how patriarchy claimed as their super power, the power to deal death.  

The Goddess is the direct giver of life.  Goddess cultures saw death as part of the cycle of a soul's journey, not an end but a new beginning. Many ancient burial sites suggest that care was taken at the body's burial to provide the soul the wherewithal to travel on. But Fear of Death is the supreme ultimate bogart in our cultural patriarchal closet; there are so many ways to mess up and the patriarchal god that rules on one's eternal continuance is demanding and hard to please.

So perhaps, as we all resurrect our way back home naturally, and quite organically, we can see in Jesus' sacrifice, not a necessary adherence to his father's terms of forgiveness for the human race, but a willing warrior for Love, who dared all by defying the strict patriarchal religion into which he was born, and paid the ultimate price to be a truly non-patriarchal man and a model for healing the wounded Male architype, the wounded Animus.  

For me, this is the day that launched my fascination with dreams, synchronicity and imagination; I call it Crocodile Friday.

Dream Spirituality: the Divine in the 21st Century

"Full Moon In Taurus" by Katrin Haiba   2017

I don't know if you've noticed, but the world is in a shit load of trouble.  My best friend and partner, Jim, has taught me to distinguish between the world's situation and the people in it.  The trouble is incontrovertibly, the people.  The world, as Jim insists, is a beautiful place.

Why are people causing so much trouble, so much suffering for themselves and every living thing around them? Could it be that the people are acting out of misguided beliefs?

For all of  recorded history, not to be confused with actual history,  history is the story as told by the conqueror.  The conqueror's rule, the conqueror's dictums, the story as the conqueror sees it.  In a patriarchal paradigm, might makes right, strength is power and daddy knows best.  Patriarchy conquered about 6 millennia ago; Homo Sapiens, our clan, have been around for about 200,000 years.  Do the math; do you really think we came into our own only 6,000 years ago and sat around twiddling our thumbs before that? Archeological records suggest periods of human history resplendent with remarkable human works, and whats more, with respect for the Feminine Divine, God as Mother.

Today, can we recognize a failed paradigm when we're living it?

On this beautiful planet, patriarchal religions constructed the paradigm of violence and domination.  For the six millennia of father rule, patriarchies have been one blood bath after another.  The more rigid the tenets of the patriarchal belief structures, the worse women in that culture fare.  Restrictions on everything female are a hall mark of these paradigms.  "And he shall lord it over her" because she is at existential fault for all things evil.  You can call her Eve, make sure she stays in her place or she will deceive and subdue you.

But there was a time when we emerged, wide-eyed from our caves and proclaimed the Divine Mother.  It was a simple deduction.  Who gives birth?  Who bleeds and does not die?  The Great Mother is not Barbie dressed as the Virgin Mary; the Great Mother is the primal creative force of the Universe.

The problem with problem paradigms is, as you think, so shall you do.  If society can get us to accept absurdity as the norm, even the goal, through the crap they teach you is true, when it isn't, then that particular consensus reality can rule.  Patriarchy is a physical earth consensus reality that I think is way past its use by date.

Men don't have to feel threatened; they just have to open their hearts to the Feminine Divine, think with their hearts more and join the revolution.  The opposite of patriarchy isn't matriarchy; the patriarchal paradigm rules by hierarchies and force.  The opposite of patriarchy is balance - harmony, dance, and chill living.  Anyone want to sign up for a new paradigm?

Thinking is dangerously arbitrary; a paradigm that dictates inane, insane beliefs, especially about women for the benefit of men, also justifies the subjugation of one race to another.  It all begins with the hubris to make rules that handicap to any degree the natural potential of a person, whatever gender, whatever race.

Isn't it time we took stock of the wineskins into which we pour the truest elixirs of our soul?  God is not male or father.  God/Goddess is All.  Light. Energy.  Way too big for those tiny, stiff foreskins, I mean wineskins.

Haven't you met the divine in your dreams?  It doesn't always take the same form. Sometimes it's surprising or humbling to recognize our initial blindness to the shape the divine does take in our dreams, but when we become aware, we know it by the awe it inspires in us.  Your divine and my divine will not manifest the same.

Yet, from the time we're born, we're told god is Father, mighty, to be feared and to be catered to, regardless of how callous, cold and petty vengeful his actions often prove to be.  Take the principal sacrifice at the heart of patriarchal Christianity, that of the only, the good, loving son who must die to settle a debt.

How can a religion that claims god is love also insist that something so unnatural, horrible and cruel as demanding your own son's gory death to satisfy a sour tempered grudge is ultimately an act of selfless love for humanity?  But then again, how many sons have been sacrificed in any of those bloodbaths that are just the way patriarchy rolls.

Why has the Divine Mother been forgotten or relegated to the handmaid who'll do whatever the Father says?  It is no accident, as I've written, but the question for today, for the 21st century is, how much longer is an untenable spirituality going to rule us?  How much longer will people listen to religious babble and consider it the word of the one, almighty, all male, god?  Isn't the definition of insanity doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?

If, as I've mentioned, our spirituality is as natural and individual to us as our bellybuttons, why not tune in to the channel you frequent every night and find out more about who you really are from your own direct connection?  Does that mean that we share nothing?  No, as it turns out, we soon learn that we share everything.  We are One.

Try seeing the divine in Mother as well as Father, equally; the yin and the yang is the great balance that makes life flow.  Try keeping an ear to your own best counsel of your dreams so that you come to realize you live in more than one place at once; the dream world and the physical world are equally, if differently, real.

Our differences are based not on physiology but on beliefs.  It's our belief that separates one from another, sometimes breeding real hatred.  Look at the racial hatred in vogue now; how stupid are these beliefs?  Many people can concur that they are; then how stupid is the belief in one supreme, male deity who wants anyone who doesn't agree to die a horrible, long painful death and forever burn in putrid fires for eternity.  Nice.

Dreaming is just one avenue to the spirituality that can liberate us of old, mean and dangerous beliefs. I heard Neal Degrasse Tyson call his version, cosmic spirituality.  We all don't have to arrive at the same conclusions nor follow the same paths; but we all have to find true balance so that we don't continue to rock the boat so violently ( the planet) on which our survival depends

There is no mistaking Love.  It doesn't restrict, punish nor demand.  It flows with what is needed most for the wellbeing of the soul. Love is ineffable and best experienced directly, so why not tune in to your own connections and open your heart to greater possibilities?

I didn't need to give up Jesus to give up patriarchal christianity; Jesus is the best feminist role model for men in patriarchal history.  The divine feminine is equally important to our psychic health as the divine masculine.  A divine masculine out of control is bad for you, a fact that history bears out repeatedly.  For spiritual balance the divine feminine must exert equal influence in the human psyche and the cultures we create.  Divine Love is a Dance.  We're here to dance, or at least let our hearts do it for us.

Waking Life/Dream Life

A participant in one of my workshops wrote down a question about whether we repeat our daily experience in the dreaming.

Yes, I think so from my dream experiences, but there always seems to be a twist. Even though the characters of my waking life, in person and from TV, may show up in a dream because they figured in my day; there's always more to it, and it's personal.

My dreams will throw me a bone sometimes in the way of wisdom for my waking life; but they aren't that interested in the physical life I'm living; they are partial to the life of the soul.

What's sad to me is that most people automatically think, oh religion.  Christian, Muslim, Judaism or Buddhism, that's where one goes to plug into the life of the soul.  No, wrong.    That's where you go to get told what to believe and how to save something that doesn't need saving.  The Soul saves, it doesn't need saving.  Dreams are the Soul's messengers.

Some people think "spirituality" is all OM and Amen.  Spirituality is whatever you do with an open heart and selflessness.  Like dreams, that come big and small, so does spirituality.  And I don't think you can enter into true spirituality without a sense of humor, which leaves most religions out.

So, our dreams are focused on spiritual growth over winning the lottery, which often means we get even more lost than we already are into the physical.  Dreams bring us the messages that help us let go of rigid, silly or unloving ways, not just towards others, but towards ourselves.

Let's face it; if you get told from day one by your culture that some Nobadaddy was pisssed with you from the minute you hit the physical because your ancestors disobeyed, therefore, you must spend a lifetime making it up to Him.  What?  This dude even insists His one and only son die for the cause.  Jesus.  Who needs a god like that?

Dreams remind us that the Divine has many faces, and sometimes it has no face at all; just Light, just Being.  Many of you dreamers know just what I mean.  After one experience I wrote about here, I came back saying, "I'll never be able to explain this to anyone, not even myself."

Isn't it better to experience spirituality than to be told what to believe?  There is no language for the Truth that Is, you've got to experience it yourself.  Luckily, not only are we born with belly buttons, we're born with the power to dream.

So, back to how dreams mirror an experience in waking life to us, day life; yes, it can seem mundane repetition, but play with it a bit anyway.  Write it down, ponder it from time to time.  Let yourself say, huh; yes, that thing happened yesterday and that person I saw or spoke to, that was the movie I watched, the fight I had, etc. but there are some very interesting other things in the dream; it's not an instant replay.  Sometimes I have to wade through the repetition of a dream before it clicks, but life's lessons are best learned both in sleep and wake.  If both sides agree; I'm in good shape, at least spiritually.

My spirituality is like my bellybutton, mine.  It doesn't need a credo, or ask allegiance of me.  It never harms my wholeness.

Look at women's situations because of patriarchal religious dogma and tell me those misogynous edicts don't harm women, sometimes body and soul.  Eve; really?  Check out my Howling Mary dream and my posts about the Great Mother.  There was a time when these crazy religions didn't rule and we, as a human race, were just not that crazy.

Dreams are still our lifeline, though many hold that line with lots of slack.  When people ask me why they don't remember their dreams, my first question is; do you want to?  Do you set an intention to dream before you go to sleep.  Do you take the time in the morning to gather whatever you can from the dreaming?

Yes, we see lots of parallels to waking life in dreaming; it's up to us to notice the differences, the new elements our dream has added, the challenge our dream is presenting.  We don't learn from being told; we learn from experience.  There's great wisdom in how dreams handle us; it's up to us to recognize it.

Each of us is going to die.  There are few things we'll carry across that transition with us, but they are the best things we can have on either side of the divide.  Who and what we truly, selflessly love, what we do for others, and how much we learn to truly, madly, deeply love ourselves.

There are huge obstacles to self love; it's ironic that we have such supreme ultimate narcissists right now on the global stage, keeping us cowering every second possible with war threats and closed hearts. I lay that obstacle square at the feet of the patriarchal paradigm of the last 6,000 years; and I propose that once we discover who we truly are as spiritual beings having a physical existence, those mind-forged manacles will fall.

Dreams matter whether they're mundane or mind-blowing, whether we know we left our body and are in the dreaming or we don't.  Wether we have one dream a year, or a dozen a day.  They matter to each dreamer.  That's the bridge, the cord, the secret door to our souls, as Jung insisted.

So dream strong and pay attention.

Ashé!

A Paradigm Shift: Revolution from Within

You say you want a revolution, well, you know...I agree; we need a revolution - a revolution from within, a paradigm shift.  Even though Trump is living up to the scary picture I had of him from the beginning, I propose that now is not the time to give up the ship, nor to bail on karmic duty.  The revolution that can derail the great pus pimple of world wide domination by very nasty men, (Putin, Trump, ISIL, etc.) is a revolution from within; a revolution in the human psyche.

British writer, Tobias Stone, looks at the Brexit and Trump phenomena and, based on what he believes is our innate self-destructive human behavior, predicts another huge blood bath, the trademark of patriarchal history. And who knows, Tobias muses, like at other moments of historical horrors, we resilient little devils recover and seem to do even better, (like cockroaches?).   

Stone's analysis assumes that the written "his-story" of patriarchy, a mere 6 or 7 thousand year old social structure, defines who we are as humans.  Scientific findings place humans many thousands of years earlier, based on amazing artifacts like 32,000 year old cave paintings.  "Anthropological evidence suggests that most prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies were relatively egalitarian, and that patriarchal social structures did not develop until many years after the end of the Pleistocene era, following social and technological developments such as agriculture and domestication." Wiki

The stunning fact is that humanity was not always warlike, violent and aggressive, not even the males.  Women and men shared communal power and responsibilities; most ancient ritual artifacts uncovered by archeology point to a Feminine Divine.   There was a time when hate didn't prevail or triumph, there was a time when women and men cared for each other and for young and old alike.  The patriarchal myth that human beings are naturally violent, vengeful and cold-blooded is recent. We can't look at what records remain through the lens of a false paradigm because all we'll see are our own projections, like cave men dragging cave women by the hair.  For a stunning narrative of human history and how having a bigger picture (paradigm) might help us create a better future read, Riane Eisler's book, "The Chalice and the Blade: Our Past, Our Future."

The revolutionary challenge is to think differently, quite literally outside the box, in the circle.  It's not the polemic way of thinking patriarchal paradigms teach, either this or that, yes or no, right or wrong. Patriarchal thinking is based on absolutes, on power-over models of domination, on might makes right and on righteous, extreme violence in the name of sating the Father's wrath. In Dr. Eisler's words, “In sum, the struggle for our future is . . . the struggle between those who cling to patterns of domination and those working for a more equitable partnership world." I'm not surprised that Hillary Clinton's slogan is "We are stronger together" while Trump's is "I alone can fix it?" 

We're at a human crossroads; we don't have to keep choosing a paradigm that divides and kills to conquer. A huge shift in emphasis is that women's rights are human rights, the imbalance in representation and legal protection around the world has to be corrected on every level for all humanity to thrive. It's just common Zen.  Hillary Clinton has for decades championed issues to benefit women and children around the globe; having her as our POTUS sends the absolute right message to every corner of our planet.  This is better than landing on the moon to prove how cool we are as a country.

We need a paradigm shift in which we look away from a daddy figure who can fix it (If DT saying 'who's your daddy?' doesn't scare you, I can't imagine what might.). The new approach at fixing things is to ask ourselves, what's my contribution?  Partnership, cooperation, compassion and understanding may be slower tools than shock and awe, but, truthfully, how have the blood baths been working?

A paradigm shift might take a long time to actualize, or perhaps no time at all.  I don't know.  It is, however, in process right now; each of us can have a part in growing the change we want to see happen.

In my dream of our immediate future, we come together as never before to give back in our communities and our country; we treat each other with respect, regardless of differences, and we take pride in this great rainbow nation led by our first woman president.  For those who persist in their bullying, jeering and hating, let's call them Roger:

The Flowering of Women

In my last post I told you about Mother Nature’s S.O.S. to all dreamers.  The real and present danger to our own survival as a species if we don’t learn to value all living things above ridiculous monetary gain should be apparent to all but the most concrete embedded citizens of this planet.  So that means that most of us must know this and most of us must act to do our part.  That means there’s hope.

And where there’s hope, there are women. 

Another dream theme that is coming increasingly clear to me is that Mother Mary is indeed howling for us to wake up, especially the women. (The link will take you to my Howling Mary dream. She’s the Feminine Divine who recruited me in a dream in 1971. When Mary howled, I listened; she led me to discover the goddess and the importance of dreams as organic spirituality.) Bye, bye patriarchy; I just can’t take you seriously, anymore.

The deep, ancient understanding that the Feminine is behind all creation, all life on the planet (and perhaps beyond), that our pre-historic ancestors saw the Divine as Mother, came to me first in dreams.  Synchronicity took care of the rest; my life played out in the most interesting and parallel ways to that big dream.  Having that dream as a road map made it much easier to sort out the paths I took; dream guidance is a powerful ally. 

At the time I heard Mary howl for help in my dream, there were very few women in religious authority; the stained glass ceiling of religion is a tough one to crack for women, to this day.  Many of the women I met as fellow students in seminary in those days were challenging the ban on women priests and ministers in Christianity; most everyone but the Catholics caved.  Many got ordained; I didn't because I learned that I didn’t want to change the system from within.  The definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome. 

So I turned my attention from theological studies to psychological ones, after all, the word psyche in Greek means soul.  By then, I was convinced that understanding dreams and dreaming was the road to my Divine connection and so much more. I pursued studies in transpersonal psychologies and Jungian ideas.  I also studied and continue to learn about the Goddess in her many manifestations and in her great antiquity.

This brings me to the real topic of this post.  Woman’s flowering.  Perhaps, you’ve noticed that a great divide exists in this American political race regarding issues that deeply impact women. I sincerely hope many, many Americans are disturbed about the attack on women’s autonomy and full constitutional equality afoot in Republican legislation.  What is at the root of these political attacks? Religion.  Religious thinking that says our god, the great white patriarch, knows what’s best for women.  Women should have no choice about when to conceive, let alone whether to be pregnant and give birth because it's really god who's creating; she's just the incubator.  

Already, the republican anti-woman rhetoric is beyond belief, from leering disrespect to condescending religious dribble.  Looking at the horrible situations in the world today, I feel stuck between two super patriarchy’s, Christianity and Islam, who have nothing but the worst intentions for me.  “Shut up, sit down, do as I say or I’ll make you.” Do women really want to be treated this way?  No, of course not. 

There is great danger in what’s psychically implanted, because we’re controlled by our deepest beliefs.  Notice please, that in groups where the strictest religious sanctions apply to women’s behavior, women lead invisible and often miserable lives.  Religion is the corporation that handles mind control for the big patriarchies of the world.  It’s easy to spot a patriarchy, just count the women in public and religious authority.  When you've only got a male god, watch out, especially when he's petty, unfeeling and constantly demanding.

Mary was howling about the way things are done in religion and about her relegation, the Feminine Divine, to the sidelines.   In my dream, I know I have to do something to help Her; her pain is unbearable.  I snatch the chalice from the priest’s hands and the worms he was giving as communion turned to rubber bands.  What do you use rubber bands for?  I use them to hold things together.

Just as we're being called in dreaming to honor the planet and hold it together, women, and men who love women, are being called to take charge of the clean-up and transformation of human consciousness, with our hearts open to the sacred Feminine.  I think the literal manifestation of this dream is that we'll see more women in roles of leadership, leading compassionately and cooperatively with men.  The flowering of women means that we come into our full potential as equal citizens of this planet, as leaders and saviors and healers and mothers of all.  We don’t use the same methods or employ the same mentality, because on this very real eve of self-destruction, we see clearly that those methods haven’t worked.

Consider the metaphor of women being de-flowered. In patriarchy, much is made of the deflowering of women, control of women's virginity.  I’m sort of stuck in reading "Memoirs of a Geisha"; I’m at the part where her virginity is being auctioned to sleazy old men and it makes me sad.    The sado-masochistic patriarchal paradigm of sexuality is another psychic realm where deep healing is needed.  Again, it’s about woman’s role in sexuality. Was it fun for her?  Was it joyful for them?  “The only sin that passion can commit is to be joyless.” Dorothy Sayers

What would it mean to flower a woman having sex with her – to invite her out to unfold in all her pleasure and all her glory?  What would it be like if advertising treated women and men as people instead of body parts?  Would we have more joy centered, less frenzy driven or repressive sexual cultures?  

The flowering of women means the empowering of all that is Feminine.  She’s calling to us all – be the change you want to see and see to it, with all your soul, that the change happens. 

I can't help hearing that hauntingly beautiful song of solidarity, "Bread and Roses".  Here's Judy Collins version on youtube:

Dream Archeology: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Survival

I’ve signed up for a wonderful course taught by Robert Moss on the Shift Network titled: “Dreaming into the Dreamtime: Tapping the Power of 7 World Traditions for Transformation.”  One of the great advantages of working with Active Dreaming is how it introduces vital but forgotten, ancient and indigenous methods to explore the dream worlds.  In this course, Robert is opening new doors, taking us even deeper into each dreaming tradition.

Learning from our ancestors and understanding their wisdom requires shedding the left-brain, white man knows best attitude we’ve assumed for the last few centuries.  It requires opening our hearts and knowing in a deeper sense what is true and what is vital for ourselves, understanding that though we’ve “evolved” in some ways, we’ve devolved in some important ways, forgetting what our ancestors knew, especially about living in alignment with Nature.  Robert Moss says:

“One of the things going on in your dreams might be that the ancestors are calling. When I say the ancestors, I mean the ancestors of your bloodlines certainly, but I also mean the ancestors of the land where you are living or the land you are visiting and the ancestors of your spiritual kin who may come from many places and many cultures. I think that dreaming is one of the ways that we interact with the ancestors, and it can become a very interesting source of guidance and direction of where to go with our interests and our sense of tradition and our sense of belonging in life.”*

I’ve found my bloodlines in dreaming; one is in the Lucumi peoples of Cuba, where I was born.  In my dreams I’ve danced to Yemaya and Oshun, visited with many Lucumi elders and shared many deeply healing experiences, full of gifts.  Because of these dreams, I’ve studied Afro-Cuban dance, music and culture in my waking life.   

Currently, I’m following teachings from my dreams that are challenging me to grow in my relationship to Nature and better understand the natural world around me. In a series of recent dreams, there are black bears on my path or I’m in bear country.  The beauty of a series of dreams with similar content is that you can compare and contrast vital elements of the dreams: place, characters, feelings and actions.  In at least two of the dreams, my dream self literally asks the question; “How am I not supposed to be afraid of bears?”  I re-entered one of these dreams with a partner/tracker and received a great gift from her journey into my dream.   

In her dream of my dream, she saw the antlered goddess, an element that wasn't in my dream report to her.  The Celtic goddess, Elen of the Ways, is one manifestation of this great Divine Archetype.  Here’s what the well known researcher of her stories, Caroline Wise, has to say about her:

“As the Green Lady, she peeps out between the trees in forests and woods. As a British Venus, Goddess of Gardens, she is the Flower Bride: at her Holy wells, mainly to be found in the North of the country, she is guardian of the underground streams that carry the sacred waters. These underground streams have themselves become a metaphor for the secret continuation of sacred wisdom. She is the Guardian of the ancient track ways, the Leys, the kundalini currents in nature, and as the Horned Goddess, she leads us to the first trackways, the migratory tracks of the reindeer and later, she leads us to the path of the red deer through the forests. From here she leads us to the lost Shamanism of the isles of Britain, and we can follow her across Scandinavia, Russia, Mongolia, Siberia, India and beyond.”

She is Lady of the Beasts. What Black Bear is trying to teach me is to grow in my connection to Nature and to Mother Nature, the Divine Feminine Archetype on whom all survival depends.  As Robert said in our second class, the Australian First Peoples teach us that we live in a “speaking land.”  Everything is alive and may have something to say to us, if we listen.

This summer, I’ve learned to hold birds in my hands, thanks, in part, to the inadvertent efforts of my cat. These were sparrows, small and sweet, that he brought alive into the house; in the past, I would have gotten Jim to pick one up and take it outside; after all, he grew up on a farm.  Through my dreams and dream re-entries I’ve come to realize that opening my heart, really seeing a creature and neutralizing my knee jerk instincts of fear allows me to “communicate” with another living being and see it for how it truly is.  That’s how I’m not supposed to be afraid of bears.  If I do end up face to face with black bear in waking reality, I’ll remember what I’ve learned and act accordingly.  Talking to a friend who actually lives in bear country today, she described to me how all bears are unique, and some have a really sweet disposition.  She also decried how our entitled attitude to study or control them in ways like banding them, distresses them and interferes with a more natural personality. 

I know from participating in this wonderful course that there are many, many people whose dreams are calling them to reconnect with Nature; it’s as if She’s put out an S.O.S.  Here’s a powerful excerpt from the dream inspired post of a sister dream traveller, Kate Temple-West calling us to act to save our waters.  "You can dream into the great river of story, into imaginal realms that are larger than your own subconscious mind.  There are vital medicines for us all in these places, and we need them.  Now, please.  We need them now." 

 May we grow a dream of awakening and healing together.  May it be so!