There is a yawning gap in understanding between mainstream Western psychology and neuroscience and the oldest and continuing indigenous understanding of what goes on in dreams. It is understood in every indigenous tradition I have heard about - and no doubt by all our ancestors if we go back far enough - that the dream world is a real world. Compare the view of the yogis, and you look in a mirror: for those who practice the yoga of illusory forms, waking life and dream life are equally illusory; for dreaming cultures, they are both real.
Some dreaming cultures say more. The Seneca Iroquois say that the
dream world is the real world. An Aboriginal people of the Western Desert say
that the dream world is “really real”.
If you know that the dream world is a real-life world, as opposed to a rummage sale in the basement of the personal subconscious or a chemical wash in the brain, then you know that what happens in dream time does not stay in dream time. There are consequences. You bear responsibility for what you do and do not do. You are in a field of interaction with other folks, some alive in both worlds, some dead in one. You encounter beings other- than-human.
You may walk with gods of the upper air, you may fly as a swan, you may prune rose
bushes in the garden of the home you will inhabit in your next life. You may eat a peach in an orchard of tigers, you may
find the girl with apple blossom in her hair,
you may study with a master who died on Earth millennia ago or has yet
to be seen down there.
Illustration: Fig Tree on Magic Island. RM with NightCafe
4 comments:
When I was around 22 years old something much older than me kept calling me deeper to the spiritual tradition of my people (northern plains nehiyawak). I started to fast, pray, smudge, and spend more time listening to the rocks as the elders say to do.
One night I had a vivid dream where I was flying through my home reserve and I found I could move the earth. I was changing the landscape, our beautiful lakes and rivers until something called for my attention to the top of Steele Narrows (historical site of the last battle of Chief Big Bear). I got the the top of the large hill and I found an old man, stoic faced and proud. He flew off into the distance and when he returned he chastised me saying “Manawah, (you say this when someone always does something foolish, it means always/usually) I come back from fixing everything you did back there, this is real!”
He took me further west to a small lake in the distance where there was a house I recognized that was the home of a spiritual elder of the community, Joyce. She greeted us outside of her home and he told me I was to do work with her before forcing me awake. I later did do a great deal of spiritual/dream work with and for Joyce, so much so that she gave me an old rattle. I was the youngest rattle carrier of my community.
Deae Lincoln, thank you for posting this powerful experience which confirms the idea that dreams can be really real. I would love to know more about your dreamwork with Joyce, if you are wiling to share. Did your family and friends value dreams when you were growing up? Was Chief Big Bear himself a dreamer?
I am willing to share some of the dream work I did with and for Joyce. However, if that could be done in private in some way that would be preferable. Unfortunately, I still hold onto the adaptations of my people’s spiritual life being restricted by colonial governments. I know when I’m older it’ll be easier to share, that the person stumbling upon this is meant to read it and it’s not a matter of ‘easy access.’ Everything happens for a reason! But, I don’t know, I’m still a bit guarded with experiences having to do with spiritual elders of the community.
Nohkom (my grandmother) was someone who raised me to value dreams. She always told me that when in a dream it is important to know how to come back. Know your way back. She never outright told me it’s because our spirit soars in dreams. But I think that’s because she took the reality of dreams for granted. It was self evident to her and to child Lincoln, so I don’t remember any lessons about how some can dreams go further into the beyond the more you travel. Or that dreams are real and one must know how to journey, take them seriously, and always return home to share. It was always sort of self-evident and I guess implicitly danced around.
The stories I heard about the old man (we call Chief Big Bear that on my reserve) were that he spent a long time in spiritual isolation near cypress hills saskatchewan. He returned to his people spiritually wise and not wanting to go to war, but also not wanting to sign the proposed treaty. His actions lead to treaty six holding extra clauses for medicine cabinets, and eventually he was one of the last Chiefs to sign.
He came up to my home reserve Makwa Sahgaiehcan First Nations often for ceremonies. It was one of his bands sacred lands, and many elders say the land here is potent as it borders the woodland and plains. There are trails where you can see on one end a woodland forest with spruce, lichen, moss, mushrooms, and on the other end a diverse plains forest of birch, shrubs, and berries! I’ve never been visited by Big Bear in my dreams or visions, however I do know he was a big dreamer, but he was not the man on the hill for me. The old man who would repeatedly visit was chief Fineday, Poundmaker’s war chief. I didn’t identify him until a few years ago! He was in many of my big dreams and when I saw a picture of him I was shaken, he was known to be a man who saw far into the future.
Fascinating. Thank you, Lincoln. It makes sense that you don't jump about telling each other that the dream world is the real world if you and your people simply know that is so and fly back and forth all the time. I have heard similar teaching by other First Nations elders that it's important to know how to come back from these dream journeys. You are welcome to email me - mossdreams@gmail.cpm - if that works for you.
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