How Shamans Dream the World into Being

Thank you so very much for contributing this article to the world. For me it comes at a time when I sorely need to remind myself of my own power to dream my reality into being. I'm actually familiar with the process and consciously use it quite heavily. Of course, as with so many people, I sometimes backslide into the nightmare when circumstances get particularly stressful, as they are now. Still, the more I dream things into being, the easier it gets.

 

This is the second year I will be involved with The Vagina Monologues here in Chicago at our own Apollo Theatre, where the production first took place when it landed here in Chi-town (my cast performs this Sunday—sold out—and another performs on Monday) and it's the tenth anniversary of the original production. The author, Eve Ensler, has written a letter that will be read at the end of the performances, which always benefit women's advocacy groups, shelters, and the like and are sponsored by Vday.org. In the letter, she invites the audience to come to New Orleans on April 11th and 12th to “plant marsh grass, dance in the streets, turn the superdome into superlove, hear stories, honor the earth and women's bodies, fight for racial justice, demand equitable housing and healthcare, support men in being vulnerable, eat great food, and conjure revolution.”

 

I tell you this because it, too, is about dreaming a new world into being. V-Day's spotlight campaign for this year is the women of the Gulf South and New Orleans who “live daily the universal plight of women in conflict zones—high levels of violence; economic hardship; racism; and public structures that failed to protect them.” The spotlight piece itself that will be read at both shows ends with this: “New Orleans is the vagina of America. If we honor her, if we heal her, if we praise her, we can change her story and the story of women.”

 

I, too, am changing my very painful story each day, dreaming it into the glorious existence that is also a tool for healing not only myself but others. This is the second year that I've come to the Vagina Monologues, a most powerfully transformative piece of art that is based on real women's stories.

 

Tonight I read your entry here on RS and realized again that, not only am I dreaming myself into a higher state of being each day but the world is meeting me half way by dreaming me, too. The Universe truly is great! So are you. Thank you for this article...and your book, Shaman, Healer, Sage, which, along with Daniel Pinchbeck's Breaking Open the Head have been given to me by friends at just the right time and have led to various other books and experiences that have been part of my steady awakening to the dream of real life...and the life of my dreams! I am truly, profoundly grateful for all that is my life.

 

Again, thanks for this article.

Bless you tenfold!

I thank you for a wonderful article discussing a practice that all people should become more awakened to and aware of in their daily lives.

Now to "Zezt" I must speak of my opinion to you my friend. Those victims of real oppression are souls that have come into this world to learn lessons. We have chosen every piece of life that unfolds before us, they are playing their part perfectly. Hatred is not a natural feeling my friend, how often have you heard of the Buddha feeling hatred? Those oppressors you speak of are only as real as the reflected global consciousness makes them be. Their is much despair, much negative intent being sent out, in this world today. You see that it is as if each thought or feeling we have is a stone being cast into a pond of possibility. It enters the pond in one place, yet it causes ripples from that spot outward to every edge of the pond and of course back to you as well! These are simple truths of this universe we live in, feeling "hatred" will only bring hatred back to yourself. Those people suffering are you my friend! And the oppressors too! You are part of everything, it is the nature of duality! Yet how can you have no trust for a Guru or shaman and yet ingest psychedelics? Are you to say that Sathya Sai Baba is to not be trusted and loved? This is only a reflection of lack of trust and love for yourself. Be careful with the shamanic medicines you ingest, depending upon what they be they have high costs for their knowledge they bestow. The spirits within them will certainly play to your innermost desires. So to you dear one, please send your positive and loving intent to those starving in the desert. The less pure and loving intent you put out the more and more somewhere someone is being oppressed by this. Perhaps you should try this practice of dreaming before you claim that it is nonsense. I bless you and wish you well upon this journey, may the divine creator be with you. Namaste.

 

"This is It and I am It and You are It and so is That and He is It And She is It and It is It and That is That." Alan Watts

You say it so well, C.Y. Still, I feel moved to put my two cents in just so there is another perspective that may help people understand a bit more about how this whole dreaming the world into being works. For those who use little more than the rational mind to conceive the world, what is being discussed here makes no sense. It's as if we're asking people to look at a magic eye picture. It's a question of soft focus, which is something that not everyone is able to achieve. For those who believe that the world is concrete, that what you see is what you get, rather than the reverse, they can only see the fractalesque squiggles on the canvas and think that everyone is lying about seeing a dolphin splashing about.

Re-membering the world is a kind of magic, a kind of alchemy, that must first occur inside the heart and be assisted by the mind and spirit. If we can expand our vision of things, of concepts, in a kind of soft focus way that allows for more definitions of things, more possibilities of them, then we can understand change, activism, in the same way that we understand involuntary motions of the body, such as scratching an itch, that have been repeated so often since infancy when we learned our motor skills that they occur almost purely by intention now. How many of us have driven home from work and not remembered the route? We've come home so many times that we don't have to think about how to put the key in the ignition, how to press pedals, how to stop at lights, where to turn. It's automatic, as if in a dream we're having. We got home purely because we wanted to...and that wanting is so strong that it drives the body to create the situation of us getting there.

That's the mechanism of activism. Because the desire of the activist to "act" is so strong and is based on such a strong belief that action changes things, it produces their own actions, which draw like-minded people to them. If the group's strong desire reaches an internal critical mass and their personal actions, combined with those of others, also reach a critical mass, then the world does change to fit the dream, moving from an intention or dream act to a speech act to reality. It's about dreaming harder, pushing our way through the slag of old paradigms together, reaching a critical mass with other like-minded people so that the new dream can dissolve the old ones. That's what change really is. The dream starts it all.

How can anyone who lives in the U.S. under this dream of a constitution that we have, which was produced against such massive odds doubt the factual nature of this process of dreaming things into being?

And by the way, things happen to people. Victimhood, however, is a mentality that depletes personal power. A responsible person would not suggest that someone is a victim because that meme keeps people down and denies their power to change their own lives for the better by creating a new story for themselves. It keeps them from the important work of the now, where they always have the power to change things, by keeping them stuck in the past.

I've had several things happen to me; but I still have the power to dream things into being. No one can take my now away from me. So, I'll never be a victim. I am the magician. I am the alchemist. I am the transformer of my life, and an actor in this world. As long as I exude the confidence of these things that I am, they affect how people see and treat me...and I become these things in other people's minds. Then they reinforce them in reality. Isn't that what we mean when we speak of the world? Isn't the world the people in it? Because I believe I'm strong, I project strength into the world. Then people talk about how strong I am and I get respect. Because of the respect I get good things start coming my way. It all starts with my dreaming myself into being.

As far as dreaming others into being, that can work, too. American Idol. I've told people that they're beautiful so that they can feel that way. If enough people tell you something about yourself, positive or negative, they can wear away your layers of disbelief.

As a result of the very unusual time we are in and the press of dreaming that is happening, the veil between dreaming and action is very thin now. We can take advantage of this time and use it to change the world for the better by changing how we see it (see the dolphin in the waves) and, therefore, act in it, or we can keep looking at the picture the way we have all along, thinking that we are really activists when we actually believe that there's nothing we can do because it is what it is, which has nothing to do with how we conceive it in our dreams. So it's out of our hands. What's the point of being an activist if you really can't believe in your own dreams of change?

'Nuff said.

what you say shaman tastes very good, but i think it is dangerous to the uninitiated. You have too much faith in humans. You know how many people go around repeating cliches they heard from "the secret" and don't manifest a dime? ...Shells of the Absolute. You said it yourself, "To end the nightmare, to reclaim our power of dreaming reality and craft a better reality, we need more than an intellectual understanding of how this process works. We need to have a visceral understanding of our dreaming power and experience it in every cell of our body. " This visceral understanding comes from the transfer of shaktipad from the master to the disciple. True, sometimes the master can be found within. the rational mind should be fed as many contradictory truths as possible in order to help get OUT. therefore here is some william blake: "The Giants who formed this world into its sensual existence and now seem to live in it in chains, are in truth the causes of its life & the sources of all activity, but the chains are the cunning of weak and tame minds which have power to resist energy, according to the proverb, the weak in courage is strong in cunning. Thus one portion of being is the Prolific, the other the Devouring: to the devourer it seems as if the producer was in his chains, but it is not so, he only takes portions of existence and fancies that the whole. But the Prolific would cease to be Prolific unless the Devourer, as a sea, received the excess of his delights. Some will say: 'Is not God alone the Prolific?' I answer: 'God only Acts & Is, in existing beings or Men.' These two classes of men are always upon earth, & they should be enemies; whoever tries to reconcile them seeks to destroy existence. Religion is an endeavor to reconcile the two. Note: Jesus Christ did not wish to unite but to separate them, as in the Parable of sheep and goats! & he says I came not to send Peace but a Sword. Messiah or Satan or Tempter was formerly thought to be one of the Antediluvians who are our Energies."

It's interesting to watch what one does day-dream about - sex, money, fame or Utopia?

Enjoyed this thread folks!

My experience of both a shaman and guru has lead me to ponder what criteria could be applied to determine the veracity of either:

1. Did he charge?

2. Did she ask you to believe?

3. Does he laugh?

4. If asked would she hug you?

5. Is he pointing to AWARENESS?

Aum

Some cannot see the dream for the dreamers, Will not see that we do dream our reality, WE dream our reality, it is we who dream. when the individual tries to dreams alone, separately, he separates himself from the dream we dream, yet his dream can become reality - though we all dream TOGETHER, no one can ever UNDREAM another's dream.

When people stop wanting to share their dreams with others and cannot honestly communicate with each other, there is suffering and hatred.

Hitler had a dream.

Martin Luther King Jr had a dream.

For both men, their dreams became reality by the force of their wills. Whose dream do you wish to share? You can choose your dream, and you can choose with whom you wish to share it.

As Jerry B. Harvey says, honest communication is the sincerest form of prayer, communication that shares dreams, and allows people to come to harmony in pursuing their own individual dreams. When individual dreams become out of harmony with each other,when a CEO dreams of the mansion and the yacht and doesn't share with the dreams of the workers who dream of a secure retirement, there is suffering; when a leader dreams of a legacy, or to make money and power for himself and his friends, rather than sharing the dreams of the people whom his power will affect, there is suffering.

To return dreams to harmony, energy must be expended, in the suffering of blood, sweat, tears, and treasure, to bring things right. As long as people continue to dream that they can profit at the expense of others, they will inflict suffering, forcing those whose dreams have been stifled to strive for the free expression of their own dreams.

That we dream our reality, does not mean we are responsible for the suffering caused by others who separate from the All - we are only responsible for the suffering caused by ourselves when we separate from the All.

eee

So much right-sided mental competition... *sigh* Anyone balancing out, pls? Greetings from Here to There!