Thursday, October 21, 2010

Giant grey sheep opens the way to a guide



I am swimming in a very clean canal with green meadows to my left. I've been told that if I keep going this way I can swim directly to the great country house where a meeting will take place; the name of this house is something like "Cairncross".

I see a grey sheep grazing. It must be the size of an elephant. It has a black face, curly horns and black legs and the head is quite small in proportion to the vast body. I guess that sheep of this kind are bred for meat rather than wool. I remember being told that my hosts would roast an animal for dinner; maybe it will be a sheep like this.

The canal is getting quite shallow. Soon I can no longer swim without scraping my chest or belly against the gravelly floor. I get out and notice a large body of water to my right, perhaps a lake. I can just slide down the bank and continue my swim there.

Interruption: My 11-pound puppy wakes me up, barking for me to lift him back up on the bed.

Feelings: Intrigued. Frustrated at being pulled out of the dream.

Reality: I recall that in the Celtic immrama (voyage tales) you know you have reached the Otherworld when there is a dramatic shift in scale. For example, the voyagers come to an island with ants the size of calves.

Action: When my puppy is settled, snuggled down in the small of my back, I decide to reenter and continue the dream.

Reentry experience:

Easy to get back to the giant sheep and the canal. I go down the bank into the lake. The water is delightful, but I am soon aware that there are other inhabitants. I catch a glimpse of them. They are giant eels the size of treetrunks, armed with many rows of spiky teeth. They are blind, but are drawn to movement. I decide it's prudent to continue my journey along the edge of the lake.

I come to a rise and see, through woods, another body of water below me. A giant yellow fish, the size of a marlin, breaks surface and I decide that perhaps I won't be swimming here either. There's the back of a house visible through the trees. Maybe this is my destination.

I come to a gate in a high wire fence, and step through. This must be the back entrance. I pass a group of people eating what may be Thanksgiving Dinner. In contrast to the giant sheep, these people are smaller than ordinary human sized. The men are all dressed alike in longish black coats that remind me of butlers' livery. The woman are wearing copious country clothes, patterned like tablecloths.
They don't seem aware of my presence and I don't feel I have anything to learn from them.

I enter the house and find myself in a huge room that looks like the builders left it unfinished. The walls are untreated plasterboard and plywood. There are just a few sticks of furniture and a kitchen nook with very basic appliances and cupboards.

I become aware that a guide is present. I don't see him distinctly, but I sense he is larger than normal human size. However, even his gender is indistinct. I receive his thoughts directly. Our dialogue begins like this:

Why is this room unfinished?
It's waiting for you to choose the design and decor.

I think: I'd like a blue room. Instantly the walls are powder blue, hung with gilt-framed mirrors and set off with gilded boulle tables, very rococo French, with touches of Fragonard. I find the effect cloying, and substitute library colors and features, deep greens and cordovans.

This fooling around with room design is not why I am here. I remember now that I am seeking to learn more about how we can keep in touch with multiple personalities - all related within the multidimensional Self - who are living and acting in different times.

The Guide produces a sphere. It floats in midair, soft white and opaque.

Go inside

It's as simple as thought. I project myself into the center of the sphere. Around me, in every direction, scenes from different lives in different times are playing, as if on multiple holographic movie screens. Sometimes an element from one of these life "movies" will bleed through into another movie. Sometimes what is going on in one of the lives can touch and influence all of them.



Photo: Gotland sheep

14 comments:

  1. I love the imagery of the large Sheep and consider it's gentle presence as a blessed welcome to explore other realms, if is were my dream. These other realms are not without some degree of danger, but are easy to navigate around.

    I am hosting this event and have felt a stirring within my self(ves) for over a week now. This morning I had a dream fragment where I am reading a book about the moon and it says that I should not believe that the Moon has only one face, nor that it has a healthy latitude. (?!) I read the word 'self' and it becomes highlighted and I see it morph into something else. I see the words 'you are so much more than self.'
    Unfortunately I am awoken at this point by a phone call. It is an intriquing dream and one that I will re-enter this weekend!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Susan - I don't recall whether you have taken part in one of the group shamanic dream journeys I have led to the astral realm of the Moon. It is a region that is problematic and requires special discernment and screening. My favorite book about the astral realm of Luna is an ancient one: Plutarch's treatise "On the Face that Appears in the Orb of the Moon." Among recent works, Jules Cashford's book on the Moon is well worth a look.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I love the observation about major shifts in scale. Recently, I dreamed I stood on a shore, about to enter the water. I looked down at my feet and saw a tiny woman barely taller than my big toe, standing by my toe. The dream ended. It may actually have been a hypnagogic flash.

    I had forgotten this powerful imagery, and now hope to revisit it. Coincidentally, I was just reading (again) the instructions for dream re-entry, which I have not tried, at least without giving up easily.

    I am sorry to miss this coming week-end's workshop in CT. I hope to be able to take a longer one, perhaps a 5-day one in the summer, when my schedule is less demanding.

    Meanwhile, thanks for your blogs and Facebook posts.

    Diane Bonds

    ReplyDelete
  4. Diane - Lewis Carroll got this so right when he has Alice grow bigger or smaller in relation to what is around her. I, too, have many dreams and hypnagogic impressions of improbably small people and these often provide portals for grand adventures in conscious dreaming. If I had dreamed of the little woman by my foot, I would certainly want to make it my game to reenter that vision and maybe shrink my dreambody to her scale in order to enter her realm. Do please check out my events calendar at mossdreams.com for my ever-expanding schedule of events. I'll be leading a 5-day version of the new "Dreamgates" program at the Esalen Institute, one of the dreamiest locations on the planet, in February.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I just posted a response to this dream on your forum, not realizing you had mentioned a multi-dimensional lecture on this post. In the forum post, I noted that this might be a fabulous dream for exploration or discussion in your next lecture and certainly in the next opportunity for group re-entry. I would love to explore your dream, especially since I have been dreaming recently into Scotland, possibly in the area where one of my great grandmothers originated.

    On giant sheep, if this were my dream, I'm intrigued by Savannah's use of the term "wooly mammoth" in her forum post since there is a giant sheep in Yorkshire which has set records of weighing "20 stone and getting bigger by the moment." They call him "the wooly mammoth" - he is an Oxford Down - which are the biggest sheep in England; but this one is a giant even among the Down Sheep!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wonder if there is any reason as to which events bleed over into all the other lives? Maybe puppy was warning you against those toothy fish in the lakes.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Ann - I am very intrigued in the possibility of "bleedthroughs" from other lives to which we are connected, and from our possible lives in parallel realities. This is actually quite central to my current explorations of the multidimensional self.

    As for the puppy, he was sound asleep while I was avoiding the toothy giant eels. Cute thought that he was playing watchdog, but not this time :-)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Wanda - That does indeed sound like a Woolly Mammoth among sheep that you've turned up. Yes, themes and elements from this dream will certainly provide a focus for exploration in the workshop this weekend. I should add that I am also currently re-reading the Jane Roberts books I first picked up in the 1980s, especially for their account of the interplay between related personalities in different lifetimes and between parallel "probable" selves.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Dear Robert, would you have any recommended readings concerning the Celtic immrama. I recently had a dream in which I experienced considerable scale shift and I've been wondering about this (aspect of dreaming that I've never before explored). ... I will be going to Ireland, home of my ancestors, during Toussaint this year to participate in a "Tribal Mirrors" workshop and I believe that much of my current dreaming is preparing me for this voyage. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  10. I'm finding as of late that it truly is, "as simple as thought."

    The trick - I think - is not to get distracted by the appetites / temptations of all the world that exist--as the Lamas of Tibet say.

    Especially, to not be buried by personal history to any one lifetime, patterns of behavior (or thoughts) that are limiting and restrictive to the ground (or space) of being in which our souls nestle in for the long haul....

    ReplyDelete
  11. Irene - You'll find a good introduction to the voyage tales in chapter 11 of Caitlin & John Matthews' "Encylopaedia of Celtic Wisdom." I recommend Caitlin's "The Celtic Book of the Dead" for a vivid introduction to the imagery of the Celtic Otherworld journeys, which you can lay out as a card game. For me, the most important text is Kuno Meyer's translation of the Voyage of Bran, quoted in another recent post on this blog. You can find this online. I write about my own possible encounter with Kuno Meyer (in a visitation) in my "Dreamer's Book of the Dead".

    ReplyDelete
  12. Sal - Thoreau said it well: "A man who stands in his own way will find that the world stands in his way."

    ReplyDelete
  13. Thank you for the kind post. I certainly want to re-enter the dream I reported.

    I found my original notes, which I quote because they are even more tantalizing than what I recalled yesterday. After some vague unrecalled dream action in a boxy house, I reported: "Then, little short of a hypnagogic flash, two people or animals slip under water. This is right at the shore edge, land and sea meet. Then a woman is supposed to slide down under. I look down at the sand. She is a tiny female figure, barely bigger than my big toe."

    These sound like marching (or journeying) orders to me! Amazing how explicit a momentary dream experience can be.

    I will definitely keep an eye on your workshop calendar for possible dates when I could participate.

    ReplyDelete
  14. I was dreaming of being at a toll booth or gate and I saw you there checking everyone out. I wasn't sure if it was you but when I woke up and said to myself "dreamgate" I knew it was you. Also glad that wikapedia now has your complete story which you gave me crap for talking about. You are the favorite poem of my consciousness. David

    ReplyDelete