The morning after I am still feeling the joy of sharing in an Active Dreaming circle where we all take turns to play dreamer and dream guide. There were ten of us yesterday evening in a local dream circle I have been leading for many years. In the space of two hours we made time for everyone to share a dream or life story and be guided by a different person through our Lightning Dreamwork process. This encourages us to give and receive helpful feedback in the "if it were my dream" mode and to come up with action plans to embody energy and insight from the dream worlds in regular life.
"They tell me the gate has closed but I push through and get on the plane. And find I am in Africa, driving a Jeep with a friendly lion on the hood who knows where we are going."
This report got us off to a lively start. Another dream carried us into the rainforest. A couple of dreams -of going back to the childhood home or the elementary school - carried not only nostalgia but the sense that there were gifts to be brought into adult life from a much younger self, gifts of energy and joy and imagination. A doctor's dream suggested an Rx for illness. A wildly funny dream of wearing lingerie to a gym and being celebrated by everyone around helped a man to recognize it is now safe to open up to his feminine side and show it to others.
The action required by some dreams is to reenter the dream, do more inside that space and bring back gifts. Lasr evening we were able to make a group shamanic journey through the portal of a dream with the irresistible title "To the Moon". In her dream a woman found herself among lively children in a writing workshop being held on the far side of a fast-flowing river "at the bottom of the moon". The kids were assigned roles and started improvising stories by acting them out All of us were eager to join that writing group and the dreamer gave us permission to travel with her with the aid of shamanic drumming.
We did not know what "the bottom of the moon" meant, but all found our way, and had adventures in a marvelous creative space. I flew through a great round moon face like the entrance of Luna Park, a theme park I visited in my Australian boyhood. I rode with kids in a flotilla of boats on an underground river. Kids led the way to the other side of the water as the boats became dormant crocodiles that let us us their backs as a bridge. Enormous theatrical curtains, opening just a crack, promised now entertainments. Characters from children's books fluttered around us. I heard the buzzing propeller of Karlsson on the Roof, Astrid Lindgren's delightful character.
Then I stepped through the curtains and the children started playing the roles promised in the original dream, acting out fresh stories. Right after the drumming sounded the recall,I urged everyone to write a couple of lines from their writing class on the moon. It was delightful to hear them all read aloud. I wrote in the voice of a girl complaining about a wild boy who was showing off the lunar horns he had sprouted:
"He's doing it again," said Emma. "He's putting up horns and he doesn't know what to do with them."
Then I stepped through the curtains and the children started playing the roles promised in the original dream, acting out fresh stories. Right after the drumming sounded the recall,I urged everyone to write a couple of lines from their writing class on the moon. It was delightful to hear them all read aloud. I wrote in the voice of a girl complaining about a wild boy who was showing off the lunar horns he had sprouted:
"He's doing it again," said Emma. "He's putting up horns and he doesn't know what to do with them."
One of our dream voyagers, a gifted poet named Tammie, heard the song of the moon children and recorded it in these lyrical words: “We are the children of the moon. Listen to our words. We are the poets and storytellers of the future, helping to keep dreams alive”
As we closed our circle,I recalled that Karlsson on the Roof says in one of Astrid Lindgren's stories, "It has to go bang and it has to be fun, otherwise I won't come." We delivered that in our circle. And we finished on time, to the minute. Dreamers can get it together.
Drawings: "The Nearness of the Moon" and "Wild Lunar Boy" by Robert Moss
As we closed our circle,I recalled that Karlsson on the Roof says in one of Astrid Lindgren's stories, "It has to go bang and it has to be fun, otherwise I won't come." We delivered that in our circle. And we finished on time, to the minute. Dreamers can get it together.
Drawings: "The Nearness of the Moon" and "Wild Lunar Boy" by Robert Moss
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