Dream telepathy, with bears

I spent Saturday at Stillpoint, a wonderful small retreat center in the woods near Saratoga Springs, New York. It's been my habit, over many years, to lead a playshop here at this time of year titled "Dreaming at Midwinter", in which we honor the ancient traditions of the First Peoples of this area, who were the Kanienkehaka, or Mohawk Indians. We opened the circle by offering tobacco to the spirits of the land and by singing (in English) a traditional Mohawk song for calling in the Bear, as guardian and healer.

The Bear was very much with us in the initial sharing. One woman spoke of a close-up encounter with a large mother bear and her cubs during a hike in the woods. Others spoke of how bears had appeared in their dreams. I thought of how many times Bear has played the role of protector and medicine animal in my own life and practice since I first came to North America.

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It felt right to lead the group on a shamanic journey, into the realm of Great Mother Bear. In a standing meditation, I had everybody find their connection with a special tree, a tree that knew them. I suggested that during the drumming, we would all travel down through the roots of the tree, down into a Cave of Earth where we would encounter Mother Bear and receive healing and life direction. This journey prospered. Every member of our circle returned with thrilling narratives and great gifts.
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The woman who had previously met a bear on the trail reported that Mother Bear received her into a loving embrace and later combed her hair, with gentle care, with her great claws. After this, she felt energized, able to move forward with clear direction on a new phase in her professional and creative work. I was struck by how closely her experience of Bear combing her hair matches a Mohawk tradition of cleansing and freeing the mind. In the real Hiawatha story, when Hiawatha (as agent of the Peacemaker) at last overcomes the tyrant-sorcerer Tododaho, instead of killing his adversary he cleanses and heals him by combing the snakes of evil intention from his hair, and then raises him up to join the council of the "men of good minds".

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Among the journeyers who met Mother Bear was a wonderful man whose father had been born and raised in Kaunas, Lithuania. He was amazed and delighted when I told him that next March I will be leading a workshop in Kaunas, a fine old city that stands at the junction of two rivers. He recalled that his father used to invoke the name of Perkunas, the fierce Baltic god of thunder, in an ancient curse - "May Perkunas blast you!" I told him about the remarkable work of the Lithuanian artist Arvydas Kazdailis, who has been bringing the mythic past and the tragic history of the Baltic alive. In one of Kazailis' etchings for a beautiful edition of The Chronicles of Prussia he depicts Perkunas as a cosmic bear, with lots of action going on within his giant form.
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When I drove home, I found an email message from my friend in Lithuania who is coordinating my workshop in Kaunas. "I dreamed you were wearing dark blue," she reported. "You grew huge, like a storm god or a Tibetan wrathful deity. Your features changed, and I realized you had turned into a giant bear, a dark blue bear. You were surrounded by people dancing in the woods." I checked the time difference and noted that she dreamed this while - unknown to her, outside the dream - I was leading our group journey into the Cave of the Bear, dressed in dark blue. Not bad for dream telepathy across the big pond.

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The graphic is an etching of Perkunas by Arvydas Kazdailis in his edition of Prusijos zemes kronika ("The Chronicles of Prussia").

Blueberries and crack

I spent the weekend leading a playshop in a wonderful octagonal meeting house amidst blueberry gardens in Ashton, Maryland. Of course, the berries were not on the bushes in mid-January. The absence of blueberries inspired me to recount an incident that took place in high summer on the other side of the continent, when the berries were ripe and full at Mosswood Hollow, the magical retreat center where I lead some of my longer adventures in Active Dreaming.
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During our lunch break that August day, I ranged with delight from bush to bush, grazing on red huckleberries and fat juicy blackberries and salmonberries and wild raspberries, always coming back to the perfect blueberries. As I was picking and munching, a stranger's voice carried across the bushes. It was slow and sweet, dropping the syllables like honey from a pot. "I see you like the berries."

I had to stand on tiptoe and tilt my head to one side before I could see the speaker. I found a man with honey-colored hair and a soft honey-colored beard. His shirt was also the color of honey, and on it he wore the figure of a bear, hanging from a thong.

"I do like the berries, very much."

"Which ones have you had?"

I rattled off the list.

"Have you tried the salal berries?"

I had not yet tasted these, and was interested, because I had heard that salal was a staple for the first peoples of the Pacific Northwest and for early settlers.

The honey-colored man offered to show me where the salal berries were growing. He led me along a track beside the deep evergreen forest, and pointed out the purplish berries. I tried a couple and found the taste somewhat bland and woody. I turned to thank my guide and found he was gone. The moment before, he had been as near to me as my shadow. I looked between the red cedars, to see if he had gone into the woods. Surely he could not have gone more than a few paces. He had vanished out of the sunlit day as if he had never been there.

I went back to the house and described my guide to the owners of Mosswood Hollow. They disclained any knowledge of the man I had met on their land.

Reflecting on this, as I gobbled a few more blueberries, I remembered the native stories of animals that can appear as humans, and humans who turn into animals. If a bear wanted to show himself as a human, maybe it would be like this, as a honey-colored man with a great love of berries.
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Near the end of our story-swapping last weekend, an Irishman with a dry sense of humor and a poet in his soul clapped me on the shoulder and said, "Great crack."

"Are you accusing me of being a drug dealer?"
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"Not crack," he laughed. "C-R-A-I-C. It means you tell a fine story. Grand entertainment."

Craic Dealer. I see you can buy a T-shirt with that inscription in Irish pubs. I've been called worse. Craic addict is another T-shirt choice. Well, craic addiction can be no more dangerous than bibliophilia, and I'll be happy to supply the necessary even when that requires me to talk the stars out of the sky.

The Locket

I’m in no hurry to greet the day, and the wan light of the wintry morning is not summoning. My dreams have slipped away, so I decide to slip into a conscious dream, in this drifty, liminal state the French used to call dorveille, which means sleepwake and is not to be confused with reveille, its angry bugling cousin.
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But where shall I go? I think of childhood scenes of frights and delights, of old romances, of island lagoons, of the path of moonlight on water, of a library where flying books must be kept in birdcages when not in use.

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I decide to go to the Bazaar of Lost and Found Souls. This is a great open market, rich in scent and color, where you may find many surprises, even parts of your soul you didn’t know were missing. At once I am in a sunny space, bright with the tentlike hangings of the vendors. Shall I go first to the passage of the book antiquaries, or the concourse of the bird-sellers?

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The bare earth underfoot is dry and powdery. Each footstep raises puffs of dust. Looking down, I notice I am not wearing my regular boots. My shoes are made of soft padded stuff and they curl up at the ends. I realize that my clothes match. They are loose and baggy, capped with a turban. I have a great curved dagger with a wide blade tucked into a silken sash around my middle. I also have a dark pointed beard. I touch the stiff hairs on this unfamiliar, sharp-featured face. In this stranger’s body, I am accompanied by his people, a giant African bodyguard, and a pair of young women, one slim and one round, whose charms can only be imagined behind their veils and concealing garments.
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This is mildly intriguing, but I feel that wandering the market as this fellow – I sense his pride and power – will interfere with the experiences I look for in this bazaar of memory and desire. I notice a small dog, a bundle of energy and excitement. I follow the dog as he runs to a pile of rubble beside a wall. There is a small opening there, much too small for a man. But the dog is eager to go down, and I go with him, moving bricks and stones to widen the tunnel until I find this is no longer necessary. I lose awareness of the dog; perhaps I have become the dog. At the end of the vertical descent, the passage widens, leading gently down to a large, bright-lit area that seems to be a workspace. Men in white aprons and coveralls are arranging things on large tables. They do not seem to be aware of my presence.

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A lady in a blue dress comes tripping lightly down a flight of steps to the left of the men. She is very lovely. Her auburn hair is tied up under a little hat that is the same blue as her dress, the blue of a perfect summer sky. Her dress is buttoned to the throat and has puffed shoulders as well as a high collar. It belongs, I suppose, to the Victorian era. The lady in blue looks at me, and holds out her open palm.
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Her smile is like sunrise.

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“We must put you somewhere safe.”

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She is holding a locket. I don’t much care for the idea of being trapped inside, but it is impossible to distrust this lady. It seems to me that her name is Miss Morningstar. She reminds me of a lady in blue I met once before, when I traveled to a spiral galaxy on the other side of the obvious.

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When I enter the locket, I don’t feel confined at all. I am in a place of wonderful light. Can I be inside a jewel, or a crystal, on the front of the locket?

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The light grows and grows. I am carried, with it, into the shape of a man. He is handsome and well-formed, and dressed in a style that matches the lady.

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“Daur,” she whispers, touching the side of the face I now inhabit. This sounds like a name for the fellow with curly shoes.

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We are standing in an airy room with a terrace overlooking an elegant square. I notice horse-drawn carriages outside.

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I don’t yet know who I am, in this scene. I don’t even know whether she projected me from her locket into a body that lives in this time, or conjured a form for me to inhabit.
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These Victorians know a thing or too. Wait a minute. The gardens and the house fronts outside the window are quite familiar. Can this be Tavistock Square, in London? If so, can it be that –

[interrupted by workaday events in the world of January 15, 2010]

The Synchron-O-city Beast

Shhhh. If you're quiet for a moment, you'll hear him snuffling and padding around the room. Most grown-ups can't hear him or see him because they are too busy. Whatever age you are, you don't want to miss him. When he's around, things happen differently. You can finish something before you started it, which is really cool when it comes to doing chores.
     He is, of course, the Synchron-O-city Beast. I shall tell you exactly how he got his name and his shape. There was once a very clever professor in Switzerland who woke up noticing what you and I know but most grown-ups forget: coincidence matters, terribly. But it was very hard for him to explain this to respectable adults in a country of bankers and cuckoo-clocks, so he made up a word that sounded scientific.
     The word was "synchronicity", which he defined as "an acausal connecting principle." He was talking about meaningful coincidence. You and I know that coincidence always means something. It's through coincidence that we discover that the world inside us and the world outside us aren't really separate. It's through coincidence that we discover the secret doors to the world-behind-the-world that open in our dreams but often seem to be bricked over in the daytime, as if they were never there. Through coincidence, we discover that there are players involved in our games of life who live on the other side of the curtain between the worlds, but can reach through that curtain to move a piece on the board, or tickle us, or muss our hair.

     The Swiss professor got serious people - the sort who would never listen to talk of "coincidence" - to sit through his lectures when he substituted the word "synchronicity." He also go them to listen because he told good stories about how synchronicity worked in his own life, about how a solid cabinet cracked with a loud BANG when he was getting into an argument with his own teacher, or how a fox appeared on a path when he was talking to a lady about a dream of a fox.

     I have never liked the word "synchronicity" as much as that good old word "coincidence". But alas, "coincidence" has been horribly ad-justed and only-fied by all the people who have long been in the habit of saying, "just coincidence" or "only coincidence". It has even been not-ified by people who insist "it's not coincidence" when they really mean that it is, but it's something real and important and meaningful, and they don't understand (because of the bad talk they've learned) that coincidence is all of those things.

    So I've been using the word "synchronicity" in my own classes. But in one of those classes, there was a sweet lady artist who could never say it quite right. It always came out "synchron-O-city" with a great big O where an I should be. I thought this was rather cute, and couldn't bear to correct her. So, month after month, following her homeplay assignments, she would bring us tales of synchron-O-city, to our smiling delight.

    One evening there was a newcomer in the class, a serious person and a stickler for accuracy in everything that can be looked up.

    "I have another synchron-O-city to tell," said the lady artist, eager to share.

    "You mean synchon-I-city," said the newcomer. "You should get it right."

    Crestfallen, the artist tried to correct herself, but faltered.

    I quickly intervened. "Please don't ever change the way you say that word," I implored the artist. "Every time you say it, I sense a soft snuffly animal - the Synchron-O-city Beast - coming into the room."

    I paused. In that moment, I believe we all heard and sensed something like a plush baby rhino, snuffling and snorting. The first peoples of the country where I grew up, Down Under, say that to name something is to bring it into the world. The Synchron-O-city Beast is now alive and ever so busy in this world.

    I can prove this because a writer named Maureen has just reported a most delightful dream in which she is one of a team of counselors helping me to run a camp for children where we supervise sleepover parties and dream together. Padding and snuffling all over the magical house in the woods where we are gathered is a creature she describes as a "baby rhino", soft and cuddly.
     I don't think Maureen ever heard of the Synchron-O-city Beast from me, at least not in an ordinary way. The Synchron-O-city Beast just went ahead and introduced himself. I hope they are feeding him well in Maureen's dream camp. He thrives on giggles and slips of the tongue. He likes to exercise by shredding the curtain of solemn people's expectations, and butting holes into Outland and Fairyland and other lands big enough to be doorways for anyone with a child's sense of wonder.

An expanded version of this little essay appears in my book Active Dreaming, published by New World Library.

Why swim

In the Subtle City, a teacher of the Way sees five of his students returning from swimming in the Great Pool. With a twitch of his lips, he makes them stop in midstride and sit with him under a flowering tree. He tells his students, "I wish each of you to tell me why you swim."
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The first student leaps up wihout shyness, muscles rippling. "I swim to beat all the others. I swim so I will be made captain of the swim team, and sent to swim meets in the City of Milk and the Archipelago of Delight. I swim so all will respect me and my name will be inscribed on our city's rolls of honor."

The teacher nods. "It is no bad thing for a young man to want to win. The spirit of competition in your spirit makes you excel. No harm. You may keep doing what you are doing."

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The second student says, with quicksilver in his smile, "I swim because I love the water, I swim so I can feel like mer-man, at home in this element." He blushes just a little because he is in love with a water sprite.

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"It is good to know your element. You may continue to play with the water spirits."

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The third student is round-faced and solid and a little slow in his body and his speech. "I cannot deceive you, master," he says at last. "I swim so I can eat and drink whatever I like and laze around the house when I am not in your classes."

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"It is good to recognize the dynamic harmonies of life. You are seeking balance as best you can. You may carry on."

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The fourth student is very serious. His high forehead and little round glasses suggest he is already devoted to a life of study and austerities. "I swim as a mental discipline and a mode of meditation. Sometimes, as I swim laps, I go through the sixty-four hexagrams of the Book of Changes and then through the changing lines, observing the laws by which one pattern turns into another."

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"You are enlightened. Please continue."

The teacher of the Way inspects his fifth student.
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A drop of pool water is slipping down this student's inner thigh from his wet bathing costume. When it reaches the ground, the fifth student says, "I swim in order to swim."

The teacher of the Way rises from his seat among the roots of the ancient flowering tree. Using his staff to help him bend his aged knees, he squats before the fifth student.

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The teacher says, "I sit at your feet. You are my teacher."

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Note: I heard a similar tale, long ago, about a Zen master who asked his students why they rode bicycles. Swimming in a pool today, it came to me that a wonderful teaching story has been woefully distorted in its retelling by pedalheads. The authentic version can only be about swimming.

Road Work Ahead

A recurring theme in my dreams, over many years, is that my road is blocked by construction work. In one of these dreams, I found a road completely impassable with great hills of rubble and huge bulldozers ahead of me. I woke frustrated, and decided to try to get back inside the dream and find a way forward. When I reentered the dream, I discovered I had a companion I hadn't noticed before. He looked like an impossibly beautiful, radiant double of myself. He wasn't blocked by the construction, He shot up something like a storm drain, flying Superman-style. Then it hit me - I'm dreaming and I can fly. I flew up the tunnel after him, and entered one of the most powerful life-changing experiences of my life.

Since then, I still find my road blocked at times, in my dreams, and often don't remember that I can fly. Sometimes I have to turn back, or wait my time (as we have to do on a highway when there is literal construction and flagmen determining when we can stop or go). Sometimes my dream self does something as cool as flying, like picking up my vehicle and carrying it over the obstacles.

A variant is coming to a point where the road is unfinished, or the bridge just stops halfway across a body of water or an overpass. Those dreams make me want to look very carefully at what direction I'm following in my work and my life and check whether that's really the way I want to go. If it is, then I'll consider what roadwork I need to do in order to go forward.

What's Cooking in the Book Kitchen

Jung dreamed of a library of rare books, heavy on tomes of medieval alchemy, bound in rich morocco leather. Twenty years later, in his private study, he realized he now inhabited the library he had dreamed.

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I'm enjoying a similar moment of recognition this morning. For more than twenty years, since long before I moved to my present home, I've dreamed of a kitchen that is also my creative center, and is as likely to be full of papers - book drafts, research notes, journals, binders and folders of every size - as the things you would normally expect to find in a kitchen. Sometimes books and papers are covering every surface, even the hotplates on the stove. I realized just now that this scene is fully manifested in the kitchen behind me.
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Let me hasten to explain that my work space is the basement apartment in my house. Long ago my papers and files vastly overflowed the double living room that is my office and working library, so we created an archive in the guest kitchen, which is not used for cooking. Half the kitchen floor space is covered by documents boxes on industrial shelving. This winter I've been "decanting" those boxes, pulling out old book drafts and raw materials for my current writing. This morning, trying to contain a developing avalanche of paper, I started stacking files and drafts mentally tagged for imminent review on top of the hotplates on the stove.
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My dream kitchen has taken over the physical one.