I recorded just one short dream report from last night:My dreamspace is filled by a great animate power of synchronicity. It is growing bigger and bigger, until it bursts into the physical world, like a great Mother Bear with many cubs. While most people can't see her, they'll find the tracks she leaves, mysterious but meaningful, and for at least a moment they'll slip free from linear understanding into the dream logic of the world-behind-the-world where synchronicity is born and grows, again and again, until it has to burst into everyday reality.
I was thinking about this, walking in the park and watching red and gold leaves skittering away in a moody wind, when my BlackBerry throbbed in my pocket. I found a fresh email from Robyn Johnson, a poet, photographer and teacher of Active Dreaming who lives on the edge of a nature preserve on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State.
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She included the photos above, with this report: "Look who came strolling into our backyard from the neighboring preserve! Yesterday I was working on my computer just before dusk and looked up to see this mama and her two cubs. They nosed around exploring and then came up towards the house.
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"When I grabbed my camera and slipped out onto our deck, mama called to her babies and scooted off into the preserve. I’m sure they’re around for the free salmon dinners being served up daily compliments of the coho, in the bay. It was a day of synchronicities. When I looked up to see these magnificent beings I was writing an email to my daughter congratulating her for a breakthrough story she wrote about her dreaming. It was also my mother’s 94th birthday.
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"I awoke this morning singing our Bear Song. What a thrill seeing those three bears."
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I shared Robyn's sense of blessing. The timing of her message, with the three bears, seemed lovely confirmation of what I had dreamed, about the synchronicity beast growing bigger and bigger until it simply HAS to burst into the world, perhaps for a salmon dinner...
I find it a very intriguing thing when I dream about synchronicity. I have had a few dreams this year in which I recognize within the dream that something has happened a second or third or fourth time within the dream, making it a kind of "life rhymes" synchronicity. Do you have any further thoughts on synchronicities that happen within dreams and/or how to work with them?
ReplyDeleteHi Justin - Well yes, we often notice rhyming elements inside our dreams, and may get the sense that our dream producer is multiplying these resemblances or "isomorphisms" to coax us into paying attention to something. This experience is paralleled by a rhyming sequence of meaningful coincidences in waking life. We also experience dream sequences in which we remember, revisit, discuss or interpret dreams within our dreams. Ancient dream intrepreters thought that a dream interpreted within a dream is an especially fruitful and trustworthy source of guidance.
ReplyDeleteMy little big dream from last night was less about any of the above than about the way that what we experience in physical life as synchronicity may be generated by a movement of forces in a deeper reality, which we sometimes glimpse in dreams. I was delighted when my musings about this received instant confirmation from the three bears.
I put on my Bear earrings this morning to invoke healing on a personal level. Bears are all around me right now in dreams and waking, and I am very grateful.
ReplyDeleteFor some years now I have been living with the assumption that synchronicity is the natural state of affairs and that when it appears to be absent it is an indication that I have fallen off the synchronic wave and that I am temporary out of sync.
ReplyDeleteDreaming is naturally synchronous. The experiences related in this blog are proof thereof.
Nature is naturally synchronous. Man is the only animal on the planet that thinks otherwise, as if synchronicity was some sort of special state of consciousness.
Worldbridger, I live by correspondences in Baudelaire's sense, walking in this world as in "a forest of living symbols that are looking at you." I agree with you that being "out of sync" is an abnormal and unhealthy condition, and it is diagnosed and treated as such by the doctors of the possible future society I call Dreamland.
ReplyDeleteThe dreamspell of history has us all in its grasp, no doubt about that.
ReplyDeleteGood to know there are sleeper agents in our midst!
And oh, how delicious, how exquisite, how healing, to dwell in the mystery of connection. Like the growl of Mother Bear, it can wake you up. Like amber honey, it can be sweet to the taste.
ReplyDeleteDear Carol - Yes, it is sweet. You are reminding me that when I was in Lithuania I found the Bear (meshka in the local language) seemed to go with me everywhere as an ally in healing, and we sang the Bear in as medicine healer at the start of our circles. When we did the seven-stage journey through the chakras for living symbols and allies, I was surprised not to see the Bear in my own energy body - until, as I drummed for the journey to the heart center, I saw a wonderful beehive floating in midair, dripping golden honey. Then, of course, Bear showed up, big-time :-)
ReplyDeleteSusan, The Bear is a marvelous ally in healing, if we'll let it be. I notice that people who run away from bears in their dreams often seem to be running away from their own power of self-healing - except when the dream is a prompt not to be careless about how you handle food when you're camping in the woods!
ReplyDeleteWell the Bear Dreaming continues:
ReplyDeleteLast night I dream I walk into my kitchen in the middle of the night, and there curled up is a large and furry black Bear....sleeping soundly and at home. !
I like the idea that the bear is at home in the place where I am fed and nourished, which is probably also the center of my family life. For me, in my dreams, the kitchen is also my creative center, the place where I cook new things up and figure out how to plate them.
ReplyDeleteRobert-
ReplyDeleteI just emailed you a news story from BBC website (Americas section) that showed up yesterday. It's about bears. I know you'll enjoy it, although it apparently dispels a myth concerning honey. If the email doesn't show up, please look on their website -you'll appreciate both the article and the synchronicity.
What beautiful dreaming! Bears, I love it! I have just come back from visiting little ones and interestingly the 'Synchronicity beast' was in play (I do love this word), Bears were the popular companion! It seems the teddy bear knew that there were bears who slept under the dinning table at night and of course these bears then showed us where to find the fairy dust on the leaves while we went on our walks! My little three year old was a great bear interperter! Children are wonderful teachers and reminders of 'The-world-behind-the-worlds'!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Robert for keeping the dreaming fun, from the little kid behind the dreamer!
Love, Karen
Ginta, Oh don't ever suppose that bears don't love honey! The final authority is Winnie the Pooh:
ReplyDeleteIsn't it funny how a bear likes honey?
Buzzz buzzz buzzz. I wonder why he does?
I see that the guy in your BBC documentary has interesting comments on how bears hum their hum, something very familiar to the great Pooh.
Hi Karen - Ah yes, a three-year-old lives very close to the dreaming and holds the keys to Teddybear Land. All grown-ups learn so much by listening to very young children, and can even regain the child of wonder in their own hearts.
ReplyDeleteRobert, I ran across a video of a man who studies bears. In the video he says that bears hum when they are happy. Dosen't that just crack you up! Humming bears!
ReplyDeleteHe said they "flutter" when mating. I'm not sure what he meant by fluttering....perhaps another sound.
Hi Robert,
ReplyDeleteDuring my life as a 'queen bee' running my new business, I have been feeling like the spirits quite possibly don't hear my concerns. Then before I went to sleep a few nights ago, I asked, 'Where are my bear spirits?', then of course in my dream that night, not one but 2 GRIZZLEY BEARS were crossing the road I travel everyday but so close they could've been hit my my car. They growled, as if to scold me 'yee of little faith'..they appeared so close to me that my vehicle may have hit them but they won't leave..I saw blood but they are still so close to me & alive...