The Shaman and his assistant each took half of our
group of 15 and stood before us in turn with a coffee can filled with pulsing sage
smoke. They waved the vapor under and over us using a large feather, doing
something a little different for each person. The Shaman applied a sweet and
spicy oil to my forehead, neck and palms. Later he asked if any of us had
dreamed of eagles. Several had. I had a Golden appear in the green way behind my
house, watch me from a distance. He said he had felt them while smudging us.
Dreaming
was an important part of indigenous culture, woven deep into tradition and spiritual
practice. Natives respected the guidance given in dream messages, because
they believed they contained information that defined one’s destiny and
indicated the route that should be taken. Children were taught to remember
their dreams from an early age so they could decode and extract guidance from
them.
There are two types of
dreams. One type is literal (seeing something that will happen in the future).
The other is symbolic, intuitive messages being told through the story of the
dream.
One of the pressures of hanging out with a group of
seekers was others’ reports of dreams, voices and visions. With none to tell
about I began to feel underdeveloped or flawed. But I arrived at the first pre-breakfast
dream interpretation session without a dream. I figured I could learn from
others’ “readings.” My favorite dream that day came from a guy who told about
his wife and grand daughter both getting an outlandish haircut and how upset he
was with their choice. It gave our Shaman some pleasure to tease him about the
message from the spirits—“let go of your need for order and control, and let go
of others’ actions."
Ancient legend speaks of the Spider Woman, caretaker
of the children and the people on the land. Eventually it became impossible for
Spider Woman to reach all of the children, so the mothers and grandmothers wove
magical webs for the children, using willow hoops and plants ties. The “dreamcatchers”
would filter out all bad dreams. Even infants were provided protective charms.
At the end of the 30 hours of isolation on the
land—a mini vision-question-- I asked Pacha Mama for a sign. “Bring me a dream.
Show me that you hear me.” Sure enough that night I dreamed! The first dream
was disjointed about a flamboyant long-time male friend who in the first scene
was playing some unknowable musical instrument with a child I knew. The next scene
was this friend and I entering an apartment building where he was trying to charm someone out of a cat. He mounted the stairs in mud-caked tennis
shoes to talk to the cat’s owner but I was unwilling to go upstairs because I
didn’t want to mess up the white carpet with my own muddy boots. I waited on
the main floor with a woman who seemed to be the apartment caretaker and who
was obviously in love with my friend. The next scene was me waiting for my
friend in the back of an open-air jeep, and realizing as he approached and I
could see his face in the moonlight, I too was in love. Just as he jumped up into
the open air and was about to kiss me, I awoke. The Shaman told me that my muddy
boots friend was a more flamboyant me, the me I long to be when I let myself
tromp around in my muddy boots.
The next night I dreamed again, a dream I had had before.
When I try to leave my house my street that leads to the
highway that leads to my teaching job, is filled with furniture, to the extent
that I cannot move my car. When I seek out who is responsible for the chairs,
tables, buffets, desks and hall trees in my way I am directed to ride in an
SUV with a woman and two men to a separate location. The creepy
balding guy sitting in the backseat with me tries to ask me out on a date,
while the driver runs over a refrigerator standing in the parking lot of our
destination. I never saw the perpetrators but I remember my plea about a class
I was going to be late for if they didn't clear the street, and a postscript
reminding them that the City was wasn't likely to approve the clutter either.
Then I awoke. When I repeated my dream to the Shaman he said, “You've had this
dream before?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“That’s easy. Spirit is telling you to
quit teaching. You may go back to it, but right now your path is to quit.” His
eyes were serious. His words made me cry. I knew, had known for some time, I
needed to change directions.
No comments:
Post a Comment