Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions.
Edgar Cayce
Almost twenty-four years ago, following the birth of my son, I had the experience of being connected through a deep continuum to worlds beyond this one. It was an incredibly profound and peaceful experience.
For the hours and days following Arin’s first breath, I couldn’t perceive where he began and I finished. It was so obvious that separation was an illusion. It was quite a painful experience feeling this state of blissful connection with the wider universe dissolve over time. I came to understand that the codes of this established dream of humankind will draw each of us into its clasp. Although we have always maintained a telepathic connection, the wondrous entrance of Arin to this plane was an illuminating reconnection that I have never forgotten. It has taken me on a determined path to find ways to connect to the wider dreaming space and bring us closer to spirit.
Prior to Arin’s birth, I had rented a room in a town close to the country cottage renovation project I was working on with his dad. On the landing outside my bedroom was a poster. On it were these words:
Treat the Earth well. It was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children.
~ Native Proverb
Well, with my first child in my belly, the sentiment of these words and the synchronicity of the message being outside my door at this time had a profound impression on me. Time seemed to go backwards from what I had previously felt when looked at this way. Becoming a mother, my whole concept of time shifted. The caravan of creation apparently ran back to source not from it! This blew my mind! How could I live up to the responsibility of serving the future ones? The importance of learning this became ever stronger when my daughter Tsen was born a couple of years later. How could I tend to these two beings who had been put in my charge and ensure that they continued to carry the connected space and wisdom that they came through with? I had trained and worked as an educator with young children a couple of years after completing my art degree. I can honestly say that most of what I have learnt about the wider realms and the creative process has been through observing and listening to children. The children have been my oracle!
The Oracle were, as you may know, a group of priestesses who gathered at the place of the Python in Ancient Greece. In Greek mythology, Python was the serpent (represented as a medievalstyle dragon) who lived at the centre of the Earth. The ancient Greeks believed Python’s home to be at Delphi. Its powers were felt through the spring water that ran underneath this place and the steam which filled the temple room that would induce trance. The priestesses were known as the Pythia and individually they took the role of being the Oracle for Ancient Greek times. They divined information about the future and influential leaders would travel miles to consult the Oracle over important matters. The Oracle would work with Python to go into a dreaming space to bring the visions for the age through to the people.
I guess there are so many ways to enter this state of dreaming and travelling through time. Whether it be through child birth; letting go of a loved one at death; spending times at places of opening on the earth’s surface like leys (also known as dragon lines); drumming; playing music; dancing; sleeping; spending time in nature; being in an animated world of play — all of these events and immersions have been recorded to change the frequency of our brain waves to those akin to when we are in a dreaming space and open to visions. As our brain waves move from an everyday chattering beta to a lower alpha (alpha is the natural frequency of nature and that is why we can access deeper peace and have insights walking through forests or by the ocean) and then to the theta and then very slow delta wavelength which is our original state as foetuses in the womb, we can access the imaginal realms and sense ourselves as co-creators, shamanic dreamers and a part of the powerful matrix of creation.
This is what visionaries, priestesses, priests, seers, artists, shamans and musicians of all times have been doing. Artefacts of whistles, shakers and drums showing a practice of opening up through sounds and vibration to an ecstatic space that brings reunion with the ancestors, animal archetypes and many other dimensions have been found on most of the continents of our planet. My favourite is a vulture bone flute, discovered in a cave in Germany and dating back 40,000 years. But the truth is also that our lives and its rites of passage and nightly dreaming space gives us access to these realms too. Our life is a rich tapestry of shamanic dreaming, weaving a reality into being.
Creating future is something that happens because we open to it, care for it and live in service to it. I have found over the years as a shamanic educator, artist and therapist that it is also by holding space for each of our inner calling and aligning to what is the right step in the presence that brings a peace to our lives and these times that can be the steady springboard from which a future can bounce from. Shamanic dreaming can give us the conditions to illuminate our souls and awaken our knowing so that we can act as mindful agents affecting past and future in this theatre of the present.
Carol Day is a visionary teacher, psychotherapist, artist, and director of The Centre for Creative Vision in Scotland. She has trained with well-known visionaries, including shamanic teachers Sandra Ingerman, Franco Santoro, and Stephen Mulhearn and psychologist Marshall Rosenberg. She runs a private practice in systemic story therapy and is involved in projects centered on creating community and connecting people back to the land.
