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reclaim ancient tools of healing and seership such as the construction of webs of dreaming by intentional families to scan the environment and scout out the possible future in order to help whole communities to thrive and survive someone at the bookstore commented on all the bear energy he felt i had brought into the space so i was cheered after driving through a snowstorm to denver the following afternoon for another bookstore event at the tattered cover to be welcomed to the downtown area by a huge blue bear saluting his double in the glass facade of the conference center the weekend workshop was held on the naropa campus i was reminded how the night before i first traveled to boulder twelve years ago i dreamed i had a delightful dinner conversation with an asian man i regarded as a shaman in a business suit he had a great sense of humor enjoyed a drink or three and had the aura of a true magician we talked about life and death and the larger reality when i got to boulder and reported my dream to people at naropa university they were convinced that my shaman in a business suit was chögyam trungpa the tibetan buddhist teacher who founded naropa enjoyed alcohol and once greeted the governor of colorado by saying welcome to my kingdom chögyam trungpa had died long before my visit but it would have been very like him so one of his former students said to appear in nonordinary reality to welcome a visiting teacher in the active dreaming workshop i was struck by the depth of our shared experiences in dream tracking and group dream travel a swiss woman in the group shared a dream in which she is on the deck of a cruise ship at night the moon grows bigger and bigger until it fills half the sky to the right of the boat as she nears the moon she is amazed and thrilled to see that it is covered with lush green vegetation that reminds her of scenes from her childhood in the french part of switzerland she is eager to reenter this dream and so of course are we we set the intention to travel together and explore this moon of grass people arrange themselves comfortably in the space and i drum to fuel the journey i find it unusually difficult to enter the dreamscape as it was described to us i can get on the cruise ship easily enough and feel the rhythms of the waves but however hard i try i cannot visualize the moon on the right side of the boat it continues to hang in the sky on the left so i try a path i have used before the path of moonlight on water now the moon of my vision is straight ahead across the ocean laying a path of light along which i travel into the realm of luna there is no sign of the lush green vegetation the dreamer described instead i see locales familiar to me from previous journeys something inspires me to go through this lunar scenery i travel rapidly through a series of doors and passages and come out in a lush green garden on the other side of the moon the high grass and the flowering trees are full of eyes the eyes of boys and girls who are living here i understand that this is a place of lost children who came here when the world was too much or too little i think about how to bring them home to the grown ups in the world who are missing their beautiful moon children as i turn around i see that the moon the moon of grass is now on my right the swiss dreamer s report of her own journey was extraordinary in the realm of the moon she found a tool of vision an abalone shell filled with water as she looked in this mirror of water she saw a second self looking in an abalone shell at another smaller self looking at a yet smaller version and so on all the way down then she sensed a larger self viewing her in a mirror or water and so on all the way up from this lovely and simple vision of nested realities her consciousness expanded and she began to perceive something of the possible shape of the multiverse dream reentry and tracking with a navajo elder later in the workshop i was privileged to work with a navajo elder named abraham who had driven up from flagstaff because he had heard that i dream in the way of the ancestors and can teach others how to do that he wanted to reenter a dream from many years ago in 1984 he told the smaller group of dream trackers we formed for this exploration he dreamed he was riding a paint across the desert with his deceased gradfather and a famly friend who had also passed on they were riding hard towards a great rounded sandstone boulder rising above the dunes he knew there were important teachings to be received at this place but the dream was interrupted and he was unable to get back to that place when i drummed for the journey i enjoyed galloping across the desert on a cream horse with a white mane rattlesnakes sounded a warning as i neared the great sandstone boulder i could see no obvious way either to enter the sandstone using it as a portal or to move beyond it i began to feel that perhaps this was sacred territory reserved for the navajo and that i was not welcome within it then i sensed something above me and looked up to find a giant eagle an eagle as big as a mountain hovering overhead its wings were striped in horizontal bands of bright rainbow colors i looked down at the ground and saw the same rainbow eagle depicted in a sand painting at my feet in that moment i realized i had stepped through the sandstone portal and been received into a navajo imaginal world i walked by water and saw abraham walking there too with an animal ally at his heel i heard the long blessing way chants of his grandfather and witnessed some indigenous ways of healing when we shared journey reports the deep grooves on abraham s face opened into a smile of delight as i described the rainbow eagle he proceeded to tell us how he had found a place of sacred teaching and healing by water inside the world of the sandstone boulder and had been followed everywhere by a gila monster regarded by his people as a great diagnostician that he would now work with consciously as an ally in healing work he pronounced gila the spanish way so it sounded like he was speaking of a healer monster later i was privileged to have abraham as one of my trackers when i shared a dream from the saturday night in which on my way to giving a lecture on sir william johnson and the iroquois in a huge auditorium i found myself on top of a soaring mountain inside a security fence and had to jump down in order to give my presentation abraham saw the mountain becoming an eagle with the area at the crest within the security fence as the head of a bald eagle and then saw the mountain sized eagle wrapping itself around me to guide and protect thea another of my trackers had a very down to earth vision of my dream she advised me to remember not to make mountains out of molehills and to remember to come down to earth in order to reach all my audiences where they live i loved both messages which were nicely balanced and again demonstrated how we always benefit from multiple perspectives on our dream material my journal entry for april 21 2009 posted by robert moss at 7 00 pm no comments labels active dreaming dream workshops group dreaming tuesday august 26 2025 crossing a bridge of dreams from a thousand years ago in a slim i novel gusting with moonlight and desire we have a dozen dreams of an anonymous japanese woman who was born in kyoto in 1008 the book itself is untitled sometimes it is called the sarashina nikki literally the day record of sarashina the translator of the penguin edition ivan morris decided to import a title from an even older poem as i crossed a bridge of dreams the author whose name is unknown belonged to a remarkable group of japanese women writers of the tenth and eleventh centuries we know almost nothing of their lives not even their names a modern editor ivan morris suggests that their extraordinary accomplishments produced an unconscious resentment among male scholars with the result that these talented ladies were permanently condemned to anonymity one of them was this author s aunt who wrote a searing tale of jealousy kagero nikki gossamer years by convention the anonymous author of bridge of dreams is called lady sarashina a name borrowed from a mountainous area she probably never visited the daughter of a minor provincial governor who resented being posted outside the capital she led a secluded life mostly behind garden walls in kyoto until she became a lady in waiting to a princess at thirty one her court connection may have helped her to marry at thirty six very late in her day she had children her prose style was lovely the poems that punctuate her recollections an epistolary mode of the time are mostly forgettable she told no one her dreams and failed to take actions suggested by the early dreams in the series she later regrets failing to act on her dreams realizing that they could have steered her life on a better course she loved stories and romances and the first dreams she records one features a handsome priest came in the midst of her binge reading of women s writing like the tales of genji some dreams were experienced at temples to which she journeyed on pilgrimages that were sometimes cherry blossom tours sometimes belated efforts to honor dream directions japanese classical scholar ikeda kikan says that the author of sarashina nikki can be regarded as the first person in japanese literature to have discovered dreams her dreams are not fortuitous interludes but are consciously grasped as having a definite inevitable meaning this is the first japanese book in which dreams play a central role life itself has the quality of dream a flimsy bridge between different shores sarashina nikki resembles the modern japanese genre known as the sh shosetsu the i novel in which the author weaves facts of his life together with imagination illustration toyohara chikanobu viewing maple leaves in the tenth month 1897 posted by robert moss at 10 06 am no comments labels as i crossed a bridge of dreams i novel japan japanese dreams sarashina nikki lick the sky and rule china the future of an empress of ancient china was foreshadowed by a dream in which she rose to the sky and drank from it the crucial role of dreams and shamanic experience in imperial china is another chapter in the history we weren t taught in school deng sui 81 121 ruled china as dowager empress in the later han dynasty as a young girl she dreams that she rises up to the sky it is beautiful flawlessly blue she touches it moving her hand lightly across the smooth rounded surface her exploring fingers find something shaped like the nipple on a bronze bell she puts this in her mouth and sucks on it like a baby feeling herself fed and nourished when she tells the dream to her parents her father a high official and royal tutor calls in a dream interpreter the professional draws on precedents he recalls that two of the legendary sage kings of ancient china dreamed of rising to the sky before they rose to take the throne yao dreamed that he climbed up to the sky tang dreamed he rose to the sky and licked it both dreamers became emperors ranked among the sage kings because of their wisdom and innovation the dream interpreter declared that deng sui s dream was unspeakably auspicious for a second opinion a face reader was called he studied deng sui s physiognomy and pronounced that her features closely resembled those of the sage king cheng tang therefore her destiny would be tremendous as the dream seemed to promise still in her teens deng sui was selected as a consort of the young emperor he a slightly older consort yin was raised to the status of empress jealous and scheming yin hired sorcerers to attack deng sui with black magic when this was discovered yin was deposed and deng sui took her place on the throne when the emperor died she became the regent for his child successor and ruled china as dowager empress for several years fulfilling the dream prophecy my source for deng sui s dream is an excellent scholarly study of shamanism religion and poetry in early china gopal sukhu the shaman and the heresiarch a new interpretation of the li sao albany state university of new york press 2012 this is the first book length study in english of the chinese poetic classic the li sao attributed to qu yuan a high official of the kingdom of chu in the 3rd century bce who lost his position thanks to the jealous intrigues of rivals the title is translated here as encountering sorrow it might also be rendered as departing from sorrow in his sorrow the poet contemplates suicide according to tradition qu yuan drowned himself in a river in 278 bce an event memorialized by the duanwu or dragon boat festival yet the force of the poet s violent emotions is also the departure lobby for vividly described shamanic journeys between the worlds he rides on dragons and phoenix like birds summons elemental powers talks with gatekeepers of heaven worlds i sent wangshu the moon s charioteer ahead as my herald and feilian the wind god to the back as rear guard male huan birds were my fore runners and the lord of thunder would warn me of the unforeseen the long poem is full of challenges for modern readers especially in its elaborate floral codes have as many flowers and herbs ever been named in another poem and in the gender twisting narrative voice gopal sukhu deftly traces the rival paths of interpretation and contributes a new translation with detailed notes graphic chinese postcard depicting deng sui in han dynasty hairdo posted by robert moss at 10 00 am no comments labels china chinese dreams deng sui dream interpretation gopal sukhu han dynasty history of dreaming li sao shamanism wednesday august 20 2025 yggdrasil a place to stand the red fox stands beside the tree gate i m never at ease when he shows himself but he is flanked by the black dog ever watchful and reliable a true guardian and there seems to be no conflict between them this is new i could take the open door down through the roots of the world tree but i am distracted by the frisky moves of a squirrel that is running down the trunk he is as big as an elephant perfectly in scale with the tree that rises into the clouds and could contain cities his presence confirms i am at the place where a shaman god hung for nine days and nine nights sacrificing himself to himself rattling his nuts the squirrel of mischief plunges into the lower world ahead of me he is playing his old game wake the dragon fire and stink rise from the roots of the tree earth shudders the squirrel snickers in glee ratatosk ratatosk ratatosk here he comes back again he scurries up the tree all the way to the top telling tall tales to anger the heaven bird that keeps watch over all the worlds dragon rises branches of the world tree creak and groan as the eagle shakes out its wings and comes down talons eager for battle between them on a ledge in the tree world i see a man in a grey robe with a broad brimmed grey wizard s hat there are bi...