As stated in my initial post, anyone wishing to anonymously send me one of their dreams with the e-mail title “My Dream”—I will randomly choose one per month to apply different decoding tools, to explore the imagery in the dreamer’s story. Please try to make these dreams on the shorter side, rather than the epic side.

In this dream, I will use Grandmother Twylah’s Wisdom Wheel teachings from the Cycles of Truth. These teachings and corresponding charts are based on the Medicine Wheel, a circle, having 12 spokes meeting in the middle at the center or 13th point. When we are in our center (what she labeled our Vibral Core), we can gain clarity by moving in any direction within the wheel, although each of the placements represents a different teaching, lesson, or choice. The Cycles of Truth, as discussed in the last blog post, can be a bridge between waking and dreaming life, so I have used it to offer this  ‘dreamer’s dream’ some alternative considerations.

DREAM picked for February, 2016:

I had to walk by 5 boys fishing. I asked if I could run by before they cast their line again. It was a narrow peninsula. I’m always afraid of getting hooked.

I then found myself with 3 other women in what appeared to be a Wee House. It was small but neat and everything in its place. (I recalled that it was next to another Wee House in a forested area outside the city.)

A fourth woman showed up. I had just seen her paddling in a on a canoe. She had scored a couple of joints. LOL The four women each had their own tiny joint. I did not partake. I think it was because I didn’t have my own weed.

Anyway, after I left the woman’s house, I went to a place like Faneuil Hall. This couple came up to me distressed.

They said they were trying to get to Rt. 91 but were lost. They named the town but I can’t recall it now. I thought it sounded like some place near Brockton, but I wasn’t sure. I asked for the address so I could look it up on my phone. The woman put her iPad on top of my phone and waited a second. She said she was giving me a library app so I could get free stuff.

The husband was crying. The woman told him to stop crying. I said, “it’s OK. He needs to release his emotions. I asked for the address again, but she didn’t say anything. She was standing so close I thought she was trying to pick my pocket.

I woke up.

If a client came to me with this dream, these are suggestions I might offer based on the imagery in this dream, combined with the symbology and descriptions from the Cycles of Truth teachings. The imagery in any dream, is the dreamer’s alone, but if any of these suggestions resonate with the dreamer, then they might prove helpful.

I have to walk 5 boys fishing.

There is a part of you that feels obligated to deal with the needs of boys, not men.  They are “always fishing for something.” There are 5 of them. #5 on the Cycles of Truth wheel is about listening to Self and the need to bring balance and harmony into your life. The #5 placement guides one to align their inner and outer cycles, both personal ones and those of nature. These cycles inform the Self providing a deeper knowing that can only come from hearing one’s own inner voice. The dreamer clearly asserts she is afraid to get ‘hooked’ by these immature masculine symbols. She also feels she is “walking a narrow path.”  

Questions: Do you feel that men try to hook you? Are men in your life always fishing for something you have? Do you surround yourself with men who act more like boys than men? What would happen if you broadened your path so it did not feel so narrow?

I then found myself with 3 other women in what appeared to be a Wee House 

The #3 placement on the Cycles of Truth is about discipline, understanding, and knowing your truth. The type of house you dream about is significant to something emotionally, mentally, or physically affecting your situation. The Wee House is small, but neat….it gives me the sense that you try to keep yourself small around a situation perhaps to keep something ‘neat and tidy,’ but possibly confining. And yet the 3 women, your “inner trinity” (the inner maiden, mother and wise woman—each also representing discipline, understanding, and knowing), are there to help you find your authentic self-expression. To Know Thyself. The biggest challenge of the #3 is uncertainty or boredom. The house is in a forested area outside the city. I get a sense of isolation, where you keep things/feelings/thoughts ‘tidy’ and away from a place where you may feel the excitement and challenge of more options, the city. The down side of the #3 is not making a decision.

Questions: If you listened to these inner parts of yourself, how might they each counsel you, so you could see “the forest for the trees” or gain a wider perspective of yourself and your self’s needs? Again, is there a need to isolate from possibly a more active, involved place (within or without) that you wish to inhabit? 

A fourth woman showed up. I had just seen her paddling in a on a canoe. She had scored a couple of joints.

Everything in the dream is what it is, and refers to an aspect of self. A canoe represents a state of balance to be able to ride in it; it’s also traveling on a river-water, emotions. A river can either take us easily forward, or feel like a struggle if we are padding upstream. She seems to be a more fluid part of yourself, as I do not get the sense she is struggling with her canoe. Although a 4th party has the potential to bring stability, or a firmer foundation (4 being more stable than 3) this aspect has brought joints, which she offers the ‘trinity of women,’ as they all partake of ‘a tiny joint.’ Look at word play in dreams, a ‘physical joint unites something; in this case the ‘herbal joints’ instead distract your forward movement and the inner maiden, mother, wise woman—or the need for discipline, understanding and knowing—and she herself is no longer a stabilizer. Note, she’s out of the canoe, no-longer in balance and not moving forward.  

Questions: Are you trying to balance and control your feelings, distracting what you feel emotionally, instead of delving into those emotions which may challenge a belief ? What would happen if instead of getting side-tracked, you united those aspects of your deepest knowing, to pursue a more stable forward moving path? What emotional desire or need, are you trying to suppress?

This couple came up to me distressed. They are lost and trying to get to Rt. 91

I see this as the sacred couple, or the ‘sacred marriage of the Self,’ but they are distressed and feel lost—they are not working together nor supporting each other.

They don’t know which direction to go in or which road to take. If you do the numerology for #91 and only use the resulting placement on the Cycles of Truth chart, the vibration comes out to #10, which signifies that you wish to reveal a deep truth to your self, or trust your insights. If you allow those insights or intuitive whispers to be honestly revealed, you can creatively give them expression to enhance your daily life.  

 

Questions: Do you feel lost in your inner process trying to figure out which direction you wish, or need to go in? Does this mirror some confusion in your life to figure out how to balance the Sacred Self? What deeper truth or insight about your self, is this dream trying to reveal?

She said she was giving me a library app so I could get free stuff. She puts her i-pad on my phone.

Your Divine Feminine feels she has freely provided you a wealth of information (the library app) about yourself and your needs, but how do you access or apply what you have learned? She also put (word play again), her I-pad (the I of yourself) on your phone. She’s trying to communicate with you.

The husband was crying.

Your Divine Masculine aspect feels grief, possibly because you do not acknowledge his skill set as an equally important part of your path (logic, discipline, right will)/or you may feel men in your life have been weaker or needier than you. The wife tells him to stop emoting, appearing to be the one in control. There is a part of you, that even as you step forward and give him permission to emote, fears that bringing these two aspects of yourself together, bringing the closeness that you long for together, will rob you of something, hence: I thought she was trying to pick my pocket.

Question/s: Do you struggle to maintain balance between your Eros, intuition, and creativity with your logic, discipline and right will? Does this show up in your outer world as a struggle between the logic of your choices with partners, verses the choices of your heart’s content?

Conclusion:

There is a part of you that sees the masculine as possibly weaker than yourself (perhaps even your own Divine Masculine), however you still give the “outer men” in your life power over, as they have the potential to hook or ensnare you. So that result can be felt with men in your life, or not having any relationship with your balanced Divine Masculine energies to feel its strength and discipline. Perhaps your inner awareness (the 4^th woman) feels men are either too weak or non-protective, so she uses escapism and steps out of her center to escape her real needs?  When she does that, she takes the “trinity” with her (discipline, understanding and self-knowing). Although you have strong inner guides (the 3 women in the Wee House), and much you have learned along the way (library app), you still tend to keep yourself small and/or distracted by denying the potency of embodying your empowered self. Your path, although moving forward, still sometimes feels too constricted or narrow for you. You might tend to suppress or deny your needs or desires, glossing over those emotions, or counter-intuitively falling prey to them, thus distancing yourself from the real emotions you wish to experience with another, and within your-Self. Moving into more supportive cycles where you reveal a deeper truth to yourself, something perhaps that your ‘inner knowing’ has been telling you right along, but you have feared, and give voice to those needs for a stronger, more unified relationship (first with yourself, before you find it in other), may help you to bridge a balance between Eros and Logos moving forward in life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There have been volumes written on dreams from a psychological, mythological, indigenous and/or cultural perspective. At their most basic, I feel dreams are sacred tools we give our self for greater self-awareness and self-expression. They are ordinary in the sense that we all have them; but they become extraordinary when we become informed by their metaphorical gifts.

The gifted psychoanalyst, Carl Jung, felt that psychology was similar to physics in that we are primarily dealing with energy, both its measure of intensity and its greater than or less than quantities. Dreams too, have both energetic intensity and a quantity of information. Dream analysis was a big part of Jung’s psychological tool bag. He related that the ‘feeling’ of the dream is what carried the dream’s energy, and that the alchemy of the dream process, is the psyche developing its relationship of the ego, to the unconscious.

From my indigenous mentors, I have likewise been taught that dreams provide a form of communication between the unconscious and the conscious. The vital function of one’s dream-state is to uncover the messages of the Greater Self, without the confines or entrapment’s our conscious awareness has the propensity to limit us to, empowering us with the strength and purpose of our inner knowing.

My primary mentor, the late Grandmother Twylah Hurd Nitsch of the Seneca Wolf Clan, held that dreams are both sacred and informative and that they offer each of us a more empowered life experience. The energy, symbology, and/or the emotional content of the dream, even our nightmares she said, is the information our Greater Self is always trying to impart to our waking self, to resolve or solve issues. She felt Great Mystery (Swen-i-o, the Seneca word), offered the gift of the dreamtime to every creation as a gift of peace.

Gram Twy counseled that there were many categories of dreams (which will be discussed in a future blog), and that we should learn all we could about this boundless gift, which was given by Great Spirit as an important link to our inner and outer world. She explained that in her lineage, the Seneca—who are part of the original Five Nations Peace League—that dream sharing amongst the People was an important beginning to each day. It afford the family, and the extended family, a time to nurture, guide, teach and understand each other.

The People in most traditions I have worked in, believe the dreamworld is your home. That your Spirit came from the dream world before you had a corporeal body, and will return the dreamworld, the un-manifest, once you die. The dream’s goal therefore is to enlighten consciousness, which is why in many traditions it is called “the little death.”

In an effort to teach others, not just about the dream time, but cycles that keep one attuned to their Earthwalk, she and her mother, Blue Flower, constructed a series of charts
to be used as teaching tools based on the teachings entrusted to Twylah by her grandfather, a well-known Medicine man, named Moses Shongo. The charts are used to illuminate completeness. One of these charts was the Cycles of Truth, and another was the Dream Chart; both were laid out in the form of the Medicine Wheel, which she called wisdom wheels of teaching.

The Cycles of Truth is based on the universal principles of truth that becomes the adventure that we each have to participate in when we come into physicality. It honors the cycles of life and the cycles of Nature, and is essentially used as a spiritual tool to align with the Mystery. To walk the wheel is to view life from various perspectives and she taught that it provides us with a doorway through which we can access the lessons Creation offers.  You can apply these concepts to waking life scenarios and/or to enrich the messages of your dream journeys.

On the Cycles of Truth, each placement (think of a clock) holds a specific color, number, month, form and function. On the Dream Chart each quadrant refers to a different stage of clarity for your dream’s symbology—both the feelings and attributes, or the questions it asks you to explore for a more meaningful connection to its counsel. When used in combination these two charts become a powerful psychological tool to bridge the greater unconscious Self with the waking manifest self.

Gram suggested that when we learn to control the gift of the dream , “We will realize we have choices in our outer life for a more empowered and conscientious Earthwalk.” Thus our dream’s gifts are our soul’s way of making our deepest desires known, so we can remember the promises to ourselves, and act to fulfill them.