The matriarch on the golf cart: welcomed to the future by the deceased

I always pay close attention to dreams that unfold around the turning of the year. They may give a feel for the quality of the year ahead and sometimes contain clear glimpses of the possible future. In the early hours of January 2 this year, I entered the following report in my dream journal:

2020 1.2 New Year's Night

dream

Invited to a Famous Women's Retreat

I am invited to lead a program at a famous women's retreat center in the rural Midwest. The legendary founder - an aged and immense matriarch - drives up in a golf cart while I am being given a tour of the rural property. She greets me warmly and I treat her with appropriate respect 

Feeling/reality check. I welcomed this dream as both a glimpse of a possible coming event and as lovely confirmation, as a mere man, that my work is of service to women.

Action: The dream had sufficient energy for me to draw the matriarch on her golf cart. I resolved to be ready to receive a corresponding invitation.  

I included a summary of the dream in a selection of "Dreams of Epiphany" (reported over the week before January 6) in my new book Growing Big Dreams

When the pandemic shut down all my travel plans,I mentally filed my dream of the matriarch on the golf cart as a glimpse of a possible future that had been rendered inactive.Clearly I would not be traveling to that rural campus this year. 

Then my friend Normandi Ellis -renowned for transporting us into the mind of ancient Egypt - approached me to sound out whether I would be willing to give presentations for at the annual conference of a Spiritualist association. Normally their gatherings take place at a center inIndiana, but this year the conference would be conducted remotely, via zoom. I said I would be honored, and my calendar was open for their October dates because I can no longer jump on airplanes to foreign destinations.. 

I did not fully grasp the connection to my dream until I received the contract from the association this week. The address of the association is  "Historic Camp Chesterfield". I promptly sent my January 2 journal report and drawing to Normandi, who fired back this response:

Ha! Yes, it was about Camp Chesterfield! Mabel Riffle who ran this place for 50 years was known to tour the grounds in her golf cart to see how everything was going. There is even a portrait of her in the Art Gallery here. I'll send it when I find it. BTW. I live in Mabel's house.  

When Normandi found the portrait I was amazed and delighted to see that it shows Mabel (on the right) standing by an old-fashioned golf cart with her mother.  

Normandi noted that Mabel Riffle presided over Camp Chesterfield with great authority and presence for half a century. We agreed it would be most appropriate for the leader of a Spiritualist association to welcome me, in spirit, to a conference where I will be speaking about dreaming with the departed and opening paths for for personal journeys to the Other Side. 

Sometimes little stories are instructive about big things. This happy little tale of dream manifestation confirms several big things about dreaming that are deeply relevant to all our lives in these troubled times: 

* We have natural contact with the deceased in our dreams.
* We dream the possible future, scouting challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
* Dreaming, we can travel without leaving home

 

Dreaming by the Book

I am often asked where do you start if you are new to my books. The linear answer is: with Conscious Dreaming (my first and still my foundation book introducing my marriage of shamanism and dreamwork) and/or The Three "Only" Things (easily accessible, with lots of games I developed later, including the Lightning Dreamwork process and fun ways of navigating by synchronicity).
    The history professor in me says: start with The Secret History of Dreaming. The healer in me who loves to see the light of returning soul in the eyes says: go for Dreaming the Soul Back Home. The part of me who walks close to Death, and to dead poets, nominates The Dreamer's Book of the Dead. The dream teacher who wants to see circles of active dreamers growing everywhere, now, says: Active Dreaming. 
    The poet in me says: start with Here, Everything is Dreaming, filled with poems and stories that stream straight from the dreaming. The novelist in me says: go read the three novels in my Cycle of the Iroquois, Fire Along the Sky, The Firekeeper, and The Interpreter. These flow from my dreams and "far memories" and are a window into the shamanic dreaming practices of Native Americans as well as the life dreams of pioneers on America's first frontier. 
    The frequent flyer in me says, if you are already feel at home in the multiverse, and want more travel itineraries, go for Dreamgates. The fellow whose life was turned upside down, and is still turning, after an ancient Mohawk/Huron woman shaman called him in dreams and visions, says, go for Dreamways of the Iroquois. The man who succeeded in staying alive in this world by reading and acting on dreams of the possible future picks Dreaming True.  
     If you like audio, you can go for my Sounds True series Dream Gates: A Journey into Active Dreaming. (This is not a book on tape, and please don't confuse it with Dreamgates the book, which was written later and has different content). If you like video, play with my video series The Way of the Dreamer (Psyche Productions) in which I not only talk but demonstrate the core techniques of Active Dreaming with the help of a lively circle of dreamers. This is now available for digital download. My recording of shamanic drumming for dream travelers, Wings for the Journey, is available for audio download.
     I can't pick a favorite, and yet I must admit I have special fondness for The Boy Who Died and Came Back, a memoir of my adventures in the multiverse since I literally died and came back as a child in my native Australia. 
     And I am excited by the publication of my latest book, Sidewalk Oracles: Playing with Signs, Symbols and Synchronicity in Everyday Life.  This is all about dreaming wide awake, full of wonderful games - like playing Sidewalk Tarot - and the 12 Rules for Becoming a Kairomancer. 

To practice death is to practice freedom

We do not know where death awaits us, so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom. A man who has learned how to die has unlearned how to be a slave.

This wisdom comes from the great French essayist, Montaigne, and I count it as one of the essential rules for living.

    To live today to the fullest, we want to be ready to die. When we approach life in the knowledge that Death is at our left shoulder, we find courage and clarity that may otherwise fail us.

.    I have known this since I was a child, when I died and came back, as the Melbourne doctors put it, not yet possessing the term “near-death experience”. In my books and workshops, I encourage people to make Death their ally rather than their dread, and to be ready to meet him on any day, on any corner.

     What does it mean, to “practice death”?

     An art of dying adequate to our needs and yearnings today must address at least these five key areas:

1.   Practice in dream travel and journeying beyond the body. By practicing the projection of consciousness beyond the physical plane, we settle any personal doubts about the soul’s survival of physical death. This is not really an exotic or esoteric assignment. Every night, in your dreams, you travel beyond the body quite naturally and spontaneously; it’s a matter of waking up to what is going on and learning to use your natural gifts as a dreamer,

2.      Developing a personal geography of the afterlife. Through conscious dream journeys, we can visit the deceased — and their teachers — in their own environments. We can explore a variety of transit areas and reception centers, adapted to the expectations and comfort levels of different types of people, where the recently departed are helped to adapt to their new circumstances. We can tour the “collective belief territories,” some established centuries or millennia ago, where ex-physicals participate ins hared activities and religious practices. We can examine processes of life review, reeducation, and judgment and follow the transition of spirits between different after-death states. We can also study the different fates of different vehicles of consciousness after physical death.

3.      Helping the dying. We can use dreamwork and the techniques of Active Dreaming – including vision transfer, which means growing a dream or a journey map for someone who needs one – to help the dying through what some hospice nurses describe as the “nearing death experience.”In many of our hospitals (where most Westerners die) death is treated as a failure, or merely the loss of vital signs, followed by a pulled-out plug, a disconnected respirator, and the disposal of the remains. As we recover the art of dying, many of us in all walks of life — not only ministers and health care professionals and hospice volunteers — will be able to play the role of companion on the deathwalk, helping the dying to approach the next life with grace and courage and to make the last seasons of this life a period of personal growth. The skills required in this area include the ability to communicate on a soul level with patients who are unable to speak or reason clearly. A vital aspect of this work is facilitating or mediating contact between the dying and helpers on the other side — especially departed loved ones — who can give assistance through the transition. Dream sharing and dream transfer are invaluable tools in helping the dying to prepare for the conditions of life beyond the body.

4.      Helping the departed. We pray for our dead in our churches and temples, and no good intention is ever wasted. However, you may have a hard time finding a priest who is willing to take on the role of psychopomp, or guide of souls, and provide personal escort service to spirits of the departed who have lost their way and gotten stuck between the worlds, causing pain and confusion to themselves and sometimes to their survivors. Yet the living have a crucial role to play in helping to release earthbound or troubled spirits. For one thing, some of these “ex-physicals” seem to trust people who have physical bodies more than entities that do not, because there is comfort in the familiar, because they did not believe in an afterlife before passing on — or quite simply because they do not know they are dead. Sometimes our deceased need help from us in dealing with unfinished business, passing on messages to survivors, and getting their story straight. I have become convinced that an essential stage in the afterlife transit is the effort by the departed to understand the full story of the life that has just passed, in order to be ready to choose the next life experience.

5.      Making death your ally. Finally, we are challenged to reach into the place of our deepest fears and master them: to face our own death on its own ground and re-value our lives and our purpose from this perspective. When we “brave up” enough to confront our personal Death and receive its teaching, we forge an alliance that is a source of power and healing in every aspect of life.

My books that explore these themes in greatest depth are Dreamgates: Exploring the Worlds of Soul, Imagination and Life Beyond Death (New World Library), The Dreamer's Book of the Dead (Destiny Books) and The Boy Who Died and Came Back (New World Library).

Photo: Nurse stump at Mosswood Hollow (c) Robert Moss. The dead tree giving life nutrients to a new one is a great metaphor for death and rebirth.