I don’t know about you, but dreams are a big deal in my world. They have been for a few years now, ever since one morning, sitting with cacao, I heard the call of my intuition saying that I needed to find a way to return to the imaginal space. It felt like there was some kind of nourishment there, something my soul deeply needed.
I immediately remembered about Toko-pa Turner, a dreamworker whose book ‘Belonging’ I had read many years ago, and decided to see what she was up to. Turned out that she had just published a book called the ‘Dreaming Way’. Like literally two weeks ago, after a 7 year pause as an author! A few days later, I was holding it in my hands, as the tiny bookstore in Nevada City, CA where I lived happened to have it.
I turned to read its back and it said: “She guides us in Courting the Dream, a dreamwork method that reverses the idea that we should try to acquire something from our dreams and instead attempt to discover what the dream longs for”.
I was stunned. I could immediately feel the essence of something so familiar and precious to my heart – an approach I knew so well from years of sitting with the Sacred Fire in Guatemala, courting the world of the beings and spirits of nature. That same essence seemed to have bloomed in an unexpected place through Toko Pa’s beautiful body of work, this time holding an invitation to court the beings of our dreams!
A few weeks later I sat in her online group and heard her refer to Martin Prechtel, Mayan shaman and author who lived at Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, as one of her teachers, and quoting him: ‘To court someone is to sit next to them to discover what they love’. Goosebumps. There it is! This is why this work had to find me!
Toko Pa proceeded to reveal the keys that she was introducing as a way to court the beings of our dreams – wonder, embodied presence, relationality… What? Again I was stunned. That sounded like circling, an authentic relating/relational meditation practice that I was deeply passionate about and holding space for for about 8 years that held an invitation to be with another’s world in the present moment. So why wouldn’t those same principles of deep respect and reverence in witnessing another help them be with their dreamworld too?
So much congruence! So much syncronicity!
As I watched Toko Pa demo her approach in the group, and later worked with her individually, I was struck by the incredible power of dreams to bring awareness to our depths. They seemed to offer what felt like an unmatched sense of clarity in what was truly important on a deep soul level in this precise moment of our lives. A way to listen to our inner nature and its guidance in a space the regular patterns of the mind could not control and interfere with. I loved the way Toko Pa spoke to it, saying that dreams don’t tell you where to go, but they show you where you are, which makes it so much easier to see where you are going. Not as a destination you need to reach in the external, but as the movement that is congruent with you on a soul level, which is how we get back in step in our dance with the Divine. Once we do that, everything else flows in miraculous and serendipitous ways, oftentimes beyond what we could imagine in order to ask for.
In addition to the clarity itself, there was also the surprising ease in meeting our soul’s longings and actually following up on the movements, decisions, actions necessary to bring oneself and life back into balance. It felt to me like there was no more confusion, no more resistance, no more procrastination. Like – “oh, this is what I need to do!” Sometimes it was the tiniest little step, like finding an item for my altar to remind me of my new orientation. Sometimes, it was something as big and confronting as needing to share my voice after silencing myself for two years. That too could be a process, but once the direction was clear, the steps came, one after another. And so did the strength to meet the challenges on the way and a deep trust that it’s all coming together in perfect timing, even if the whole way was not clear. Because when the movement comes from our souls, there is more energy behind it, because you are not at odds with yourself anymore. You know it’s true, you know it’s happening, you just show up for it.
The deepest shift for me, however, was on the level of identity. Martin Prechtel speaks about the way that indigenous Mayan people would view our wakeful and dream consciousness as two wings of a butterfly. These two wings need to be moving in sync with one another, otherwise you lose balance and don’t know what’s up or down anymore. When your inner nature and external expression come into harmony, what naturally happens is that you begin to function from a place of wholeness. You are no longer just one wing. You have two wings, and you are the butterfly, deeply attuned and connected to everything else within and around. By becoming aware of the shadows and patterns that might be throwing your flight off, you also remember yourself as the one who listens, attunes and takes care of life within and around you. It’s literally nature’s therapy, integrated within us, helping us disidentify with unconscious patterns that might take control of our lives, and operate from a completely consciousness and sense of self.
As part of this, we remember that our wakeful consciousness too is a dream, a layer of perception we impose on a reality that is actually infinite in its essence. We become much more aware of the dreams we are weaving into being, of how we relate and co-create what we experience with a mysterious Universe. Which in turn influences what we experience in our dreams! They then feed back with more guidance and support for a more free, joyful, creative and expansive movement.
Lastly, dreams come from not just the individual, but the collective unconscious, which means they have a way of working with us even when they are not our own. It’s been surprisingly powerful to sit in a community circle and watch another person being supported in courting their dream. There’s this moment when something clicks – when the first bridge forms that links up a dream with one’s wakeful reality, allowing for the rest of the dream to speak more clearly, with more context in how it relates to one’s everyday world. Even when you are just witnessing that happen in another, the shift is palpable and surprisingly relatable. It’s not just mental understanding. It’s like your soul recognises this movement and understands why he/she is perfectly placed to witness it, as there is medicine for you there. You needed to remember something of that too.
This is why since time immemorial, indigenous people all over the world shared their dreams with their families and communities as a way to invite everyone back into connection with the Divine and its guidance. They knew the indigenous soul belonged and lived in relation with everyone and everything around, hence what the Divine reveals to someone is important for others too. In fact, I have found that for me dreams tend to speak much more easily in the presence of another, when they know how to create a safe and loving environment, than in my own personal space.
This is why I decided to take the leap and create an intimate online group to do that together. It is called DreamWeavers, and brings together dreamwork, authentic relating/circling and ritual to support us in remembering our place in the Dream of the Earth. It starts on Weds, Sept 16th, 9am PST, 6pm CET and runs for 8 weeks, with a max of 8 participants.
I wanted to create a space where we go on a deep journey together not just to learn about dreamwork, but to actually put everything to practice and experience the deep transformation that is possible by coming closer to our own soul’s guidance. In other words, each participant brings a dream each week and has some space to be held in it, and also to hold another in theirs. This makes it a more advanced group – asking those of you who join to be able to hold loving presence for another (eg. a background in circling or other spaceholding modality helps, or we should check in to see if this is a fit). If you are interested in joining us, reach out – we still have a couple of spots left. And for those who don’t have this kind of background, or want a more intimate space to be held – I also offer 1:1 online dreamwork sessions (learn more).
Excited to continue sharing and exploring the medicine of our dreams with you!
0 Comments