Dreaming with the animal powers

When shamans go dreaming, characteristically they operate under the protection and guidance of animal guardians. Forging a close relationship with one or more "power animals" is central to developing the arts of shamanic dream travel and tracking. It is invaluable in maintaining healthy boundaries and defending psychic space. A conscious connection with the animal guardians shows us how to follow the natural paths of our energy. A strong working connection with the animal powers brings the ability to shapeshift the energy body and project energy forms that can operate at a distance from the physical body. 

Our ancestors believed that we are born with a connection with a particular totem animal; this was the raison d'être of the clan system. Some Australian Aborigines believe, up to the present day, that when a human is born, its "bush soul" is born in the form of an animal or bird. We may feel that we have a lifelong connection with a certain animal or bird. Others may observe this in our body type, our life styles, our modes of responding to challenges. 

But in the course of a lifetime, we may develop many animal connections. Some of these may stem from our relations with the animals who share our homes and habitats, from the family pets to wild animals encountered in nature and in our travels. Animals we have met in the physical world may reappear in our dreams, as allies and helpers. 

Here are two personal examples, one involving a dog who had shared our home, the other a bird who had shared our habitat: After a black dog I had loved was killed on the road, he appeared again and again as a family protector. His presence, for a time, was all but physical. Driving the Jeep he had loved to ride in, a family member saw him in the rearview mirror and told him firmly to "Sit down!" The dog had died, but he was still very much around, watching over the family he had loved fiercely. After a time, I performed a ceremony to release his spirit. 

After this, he appeared in a different way. A larger intelligence began to work through his form, and I found a black dog - who sometimes walked upright and even drove an automobile - appearing as a guide and bodyguard in my dreams and journeys. He showed me passages into the afterlife. He played guide and escort for me on a powerful and challenging journey that finally resolved a past-life issue that had shadowed my current life in many ways. I believe that, in the year after his death, I was dealing with the individual spirit of the dog I had loved. I feel that in later years, the form of my beloved dog has fused with a larger transpersonal source of guidance, linked to the precinct of Anubis, the "Opener of the Ways". 

On the same land where I lived with my black dog, I had a series of physical encounters with a red-tailed hawk who spoke to me in a language I felt I could understand - if I only spoke hawk. In a spontaneous vision one night, when I was drifting between waking and sleep, the hawk lent me her wings, and I found myself drawn to a cabin in the woods, north of Lake Champlain, where I had the first of a series of life-changing visits with an ancient Iroquois "woman of power." I have written about this at length in my book Dreamways of the Iroquois. The hawk has appeared again and again over the years, to offer confirmation or warning in its flight patterns over the roads of everyday life, and to lend me her wings in dreams and visions.

Animal dreams may be the doorway to developing strong working relations with the animal guardians. These dreams may hold up a mirror to our health or habits. They may show us how we need to feed and attend to our bodies. They may reveal a potential we have not yet developed. They may tell a story about our lives or relationships like one of Aesop's fables. They may be the place of encounter between our dream self and a spiritual ally or guardian. 

Our true spiritual teachers come looking for us in our dreams, and often they come in unexpected forms.The cat in your dreams may be the kitty you remember from childhood, or an aspect of your self that needs to be pampered or walk by night or play hunter, or a guide that has assumed a familiar face.

Drawing: "Calico Tiger" by Robert Moss.  As she approached death, I dreamed that my beloved elderly calico cat had a giant version of herself waiting to receive her on the Other Side. After she died, I saw them fuse and become one.

When dogs became movie producers

Animals not only feature in our dreams; they may help to produce them.
    I had a remarkable experience of this several years ago, staying with an older friend who owned a large rural property. He owned two German shepherds. He wanted them to be able to run on his land but he also wanted to make sure that they always came when called, especially since he had a hard time getting around. So he put electronic collars around their necks. When he wanted them back at the house, or anywhere else, he would zap them with a monitor that delivered an electric shock.
   I found this barbarous, and told him so as gently as I could. He insisted that he loved his dogs, and they were content with their situation.
   In the morning, at the breakfast table, my friend was troubled by a dream that lay heavy on him. I urged him to tell me.
   "I was in a Nazi concentration camp," he began. "They fitted me with an electric collar. Whenever they wanted me to do something, they zapped me. They had me marching up and down like a robot."
    The analogy to the situation of his dogs was screamingly obvious, at least to me. It was as if the dream had been crafted to help him understand what he was doing to his dogs. I could not fail to remember that German shepherds were favored guard dogs in the Nazi camps. "If it were my dream," I commented, "I would wonder whether my dogs asked for this dream to help me to understand their situation."
    My friend did not want to hear this. I have since lost contact with him, and I wonder whether he has gone on zapping his dogs.

Dreams are infinitely various. A dream may be a visitation, an adventure in another reality, a rehearsal for the future, or the effect of the leftovers of the day before. Some dreams have the quality of productions, and it is always interesting to speculate on who and what, exactly, is involved in the making of a particular dream of this kind. I know that our dead are sometimes involved in dream production for the living.
    I led a group journey to explore such things in a circle of active dreamers last night. I found myself arriving at a movie set where I had to put myself in a vintage convertible, behind shades, to be admitted by security. I was given a tour of current film projects and met directors with distinctive styles. I warmed to one "Arturo" who specialized in extravaganzas that meld Fellini and Alejandro Jodorowsky. I toured costume departments where the right outfits for dream characters are selected. I attended a design conference where a new fuzzy character - it looked like a hyperactive woodchuck - is being developed for dream movies.
    I saw situations where requests for dream intervention are considered and acted upon. I learned that dreams are sometimes crafted for individuals because someone who has their best interests in mind has requested a production that will dramatize a certain issue. The request may come from a spiritual guide or another person connected to the dreamer. Among those putting in such requests are animals. There were talking animals all over the studios.
    I don't doubt now that those German shepherds found a way to zap their owner back, as dream producers.

Drawing (c) Robert Moss
    

Lying down with Lion: Of energy doubles and animal messengers

When I lie down for an evening nap, I become aware of the full-formed energy presence of a maned lion on the bed with me. He settles down, nose to nose, like a friendly dog. He is all lion, except that his breath seems sweet; I am fully aware of his strength and killing power. But he is my very dear friend. I drift off into a delicious nap. And dream:

I give an impromptu speech to a large audience. It's all about how to get to the Place of the Lion. This requires you to speak and act, always, from the heart. I talk about Aslan, how "he is terrible but he is good". My voice rises to a roar, then drops to a far-carrying purr when I remind my audience, "When the lion speaks, everyone listens."

Feelings: delight

Reality: Yes.

This sweet encounter got me thinking about the many ways in which energy doubles and visitors have turned up in my field of perception in animal form. I started to make a mental inventory of bedroom encounters in that drifty hypnagogic zone prior to sleep, or to hyper-awakeness.

     While I can see the lion in my bed as my own energy double, the jaguar who turned up in the night many years before in my bedroom was definitely something else. He startled me, though he did not scare me. When he made me understand that he was a messenger, I agreed to travel with him, and sped through the astral to come down among lush tropical vegetation at the home of a Maya shaman in Belize, who proceeded to instruct me in songs of healing and rituals of divination.

     Then there was the white wolf who showed up in my bedroom another night. Though I knew him and loved him, he was not a part of myself. I let him lead me out the window and across the night sky, to the far North, to an encounter with a radiant being who seemed to be entirely covered with glowing white shells. Deeply moved, I felt I had been blessed to encounter a form of the Peacemaker.

This is an unedited excerpt from my journals from January 24, 2011. I write about the

Place of the Lion in my book Active Dreaming. 

Graphic: I took the photo of the lion in the Egyptian rooms at the Louvre in December 2013. He is an appropriate presence here, since he once guarded a doorway to the Serapeion in Memphis. Dreaming and dream incubation were highly encouraged in the cult of Serapis, a composite god whose first image was a statue carried to Alexandria from the Black Sea because of a dream of one of the Ptolemies.