The Dream People Are Waiting for You

Around the mid-point of my life, I was awakened by a dream that changed everything.  

     I was embarking on the path that led me to become a dream teacher. I had practical concerns about paying the bills. I asked for a dream to guide me on a business plan. I was not happy with what immediately followed. In my dream, I found myself trying to drive down a street that was clogged by construction, where traffic was hopelessly jammed. I woke from the dream frustrated.  

    Remembering my intention to try to get some practical guidance, I tried to put myself back into the dream and find a way forward. I succeeded. Now fully lucid, I surveyed the scene, looking for a way through the traffic jam. Then I noticed something different in the scene. It was an amazing figure, flying over the broken street. I looked more closely and saw that this was an impossibly beautiful version of myself, a radiant double.

     He flew into the mouth of a kind of tunnel, going up a hillside above the city scene. I thought, How could I have forgotten I can fly? I flew after him, and came out in a lovely wooded setting. I was drawn to a large, simple building where people who lived close to the Earth were gathered in ceremony around a firepit. I was nervous that I might be intruding, but an elder made me welcome and showed me that they had a place for me in their circle. 

     I sang with them, I drummed with them. After a time, when the fire got friendly, I went and lay down at the center of the circle. One by one, the dream people came to me. They took red-hot glowing coals from the fire and placed them over my eyes, saying, "We do this to change your eyes, so you may see clearly."

     They placed hot coals over my ears, saying, "We do this to change your ears, so that you may hear clearly."

     They placed a red-hot coal on my tongue, saying, "We do this so that henceforth you will speak only truth."

     Then one of the dream people placed a glowing coal on my heart. I felt a stab of pain as it burned a way to my heart. I felt the fire within me rise from my heart to my throat. The dream people said, "We do this to open your heart and the passage from your heart to your throat, so that henceforth you will speak and act only from the heart."

     I rose from this thrilling lucid dream charged with energy and courage. I jumped in my car and drove to a lake in the woods. With my hand on my heart, I said to the wind and the lake and the trees and the red-tailed hawk that came knifing through the clouds, "Henceforth, I will speak and act only from the heart."

This was a turning point experience in my life, in which I reentered a frustrating dream and found myself guided to a hyper-awake, indelible encounter with my spiritual kin and my soul's purpose. That has stayed fresh in my mind across the years. On dark days, it gives me light and warmth. It resets my inner compass when I am confused about any decision. Following its direction, I found it possible to let go of old worries and ego agendas and pursue the path of a dream teacher - for which there was (at that time) no career track in our society - with confidence that the universe would provide, as it did. 

    I wish for you an awakening with similar power.

Drawing: "We Do This To Open Your Heart" by Robert Moss