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January 9 through January 15, 2023

Doors can magically open on Monday, as the Leo Moon urges us to reach for the stars and start pursuing our dreams. Tuesday the Moon moves into Virgo for a three-day visit, bringing out our detailed and organized sides. Watch for criticism or stubbornness over the course of the week, as Virgo can tend to bring out our idealistic sides. Mars will turn direct on Thursday after a two-month retrograde cycle, and officially kick off the new year with action, action, and more action! Get ready to rock and roll! Friday and Saturday’s Libra Moon will be a call for balance, as we clear out the remnants of the last year and start preparing for the new one. If you haven’t hung your calendars, dusted off your day planner, or set up your virtual scheduling apps, now is the time. Sunday’s Scorpio Moon will cast a spiritual vibe all around us, compelling us to stop, pause, and look internally for the balance and intuitive direction we need to move forward.

How to Use Shamanic Practices for Dreamwork, by Mark Nelson

(Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal.)

There is extensive literature on dreamwork, psychotherapeutic applications of dreaming, and, more recently, shamanic dreaming. In this article I explain what shamanic dreaming is and what you can use it for, such as your own development, for purposes such as creativity, or to help others. In this context dreams can include waking dreams or other visionary states, as well as dreams while asleep, all of which you can work with in the same way. Anybody can learn shamanic dreaming, although you still need to learn shamanic practices used in dreams (teaching of these may of course occur in dreams).

A prerequisite for shamanic dreaming (or any other active dreamwork) is to be lucid and to take control of events in a dream. Lucid dreams occur in the final two hours or so of normal sleep, so there are 730 hours each year (30 days) of lucid dreaming potentially available. If you live to be 70 years old, then that equates to 6 years. If you learn to dream lucidly in your late teens, your lucid dreaming may only cover 50 years, so total is 4 years. Let us further assume that you only dream lucidly 25% of the time; that still equates to a full year of lucid dreaming that is available for dreamwork. What could you achieve in that time?

The other consideration relevant here is that your experience of time is different in dream, so an extended period in the dream may occur in a shorter time in physical reality, increasing the "actual" time available for lucid dreaming.

Two particularly useful approaches that authors often mention to help lucid dreaming are prospective memory and reality checks.

Prospective memory is remembering to do something in the future. A usual way of using this is via a trigger question. When you notice an object, person, or event that you are likely to see routinely (but that is unusual encouraging you to notice it), you then ask a question such as, "Am I dreaming?" While awake the answer to this is obviously no, but the act of asking the question encourages you to also ask it while dreaming if you notice the same trigger, which may prompt the realization that you are in a dream and lead to a lucid state. Examples of such triggers may be seeing something of a particular color, noticing a specific animal or animal behavior, seeing the Full Moon, or hearing a particular phrase. Knowing that you are using this technique may also encourage spirit to put the trigger into your dream.

You can also perform reality checks to confirm that you are dreaming. A good example of this is being able to do something that you cannot usually do in physical reality, such as passing your hand through or into a solid object or jumping in the air and seeing if you float rather than fall again.

There are common signs that you are in a dream, such as devices or vehicles not working as they normally would, a location that you know being different to your knowledge of the location in physical reality, or your appearance being unusual (people often notice the appearance or reflection of their hands, feet, or facial appearance being different). These may also trigger lucidity.

In addition, you can also set a specific intention before going to sleep that you will be lucid in the dream, such as, "I intend to be lucid in my dream," and can also use an affirmation such as, "I am able to dream lucidly" in combination with your intention.

Like anything else, lucid dreaming becomes easier and more frequent with practice. The other problem for beginners is preserving the lucid state within a dream once you achieve it. This requires focus on the dream and again becomes easier with practice.

You can direct events in a lucid dream or allow your unconscious or higher self to be in control, or to guide you, so that you are more of a witness to events. This opens new possibilities that your conscious mind may not consider. You may also of course receive guidance from spirit in a dream.

A key to dreamwork is dream interpretation. People often do this with reference to a dream dictionary, but it is important recognize that symbols and metaphors that you see in dreams have specific meaning to you, which may be different from general interpretations. It is also important to ask yourself how a symbol or dream event makes you feel, noting your emotional as well as mental reaction. If you do not understand the meaning of a particular symbol, you can take a shamanic journey while awake with the intention of meeting a spirit to ask them to explain this to you.

Important symbols include archetypal and personal symbols. Archetypal symbols are cross-cultural and span time, such as certain spirits that have an accepted meaning. Birds are archetypal messengers and certain animals (such as rabbits, spiders, foxes, and coyotes) are tricksters. If you see a frog wearing a crown, you might consider kissing it. Personal symbols are ones you already recognize and associate a meaning to. Spirit will tend to communicate with you in dreams using these archetypes and/or teach you the interpretation to use for a symbol or allowing you to infer it from dream events.

You should write dream intentions in a dream journal, as well as the experiences of a dream and your interpretation of it, together with any follow-up work that you perform. Using a dream journal also helps you recollect dreams and in learning to interpret symbols in future dreams. If writing dream contents is not that practical, or will interrupt your sleep too much, you might consider using a phone or other device to record a memo in which you describe the dream content, which might be a more effective method.

Having learned lucid dreaming, dream recollection, and dream interpretation, you are able to do shamanic dreamwork. So, what is shamanic dreaming and how is this different from normal dreaming? The following are differences that help distinguish "shamanic" dreams from "normal" dreams:

• Recognizing that dreaming is not something that happens in your mind, but that dreams occur in spiritual reality, the same three level cosmology of lower world, middle world, and upper world that shamanic journeying occur in. Dreams occurring in the middle world aspect of spiritual reality is one reason they often appear to be confusing and strange.
• Realizing that spirits can be present in dreams, including power animals, other helping spirits or teaching spirits, or ancestral spirits, as well as the spirits of live or dead people who may need your help. Such spirits may provide you with teaching and healing (or even initiation) in the dream.
• Understanding that you can do shamanic work in a dream, including where you intend to change physical reality, in the same way you can use such an intention in a shamanic journey.

In shamanic cultures, people believe that dreams as sacred and real, and that people can dream physical reality into existence, with the dreamworld being the true reality.

As well as normal dreams there may be significant dreams, what Michael Harner and others call "big dreams," which may recur and that may hold guidance that has potential to change your life. Advanced dreamwork aims to try to incubate such dreams.

The following are the sorts of activities that you can do in shamanic dreamwork, which can form the basis for intentions set before you go to sleep:

• Explore the dreamworld.
• Experience activities such as flying or shapeshifting into an animal.
• Do things that you may not usually do as a way of experimenting, or to rehearse future activities that you will perform in physical reality, such as public speaking.
• Fulfill fantasies.
• Take more direct control of your dreams.
• Face fears, phobias, anxieties, grief, or past trauma that you have not fully resolved.
• Resolve issues with past relationships amicably if you meet a former partner in a dream.
• Receive empowerment or recover energy that you have lost.
• Release or return energy or power that you have taken from others.
• Face nightmares, transform them and release their energy.
• Get creative inspiration or input from people or events in a dream. If you are working on creative fiction people in the dream may be characters, and events part of a plot outline.
• Receive or give teaching, or gain or impart knowledge or wisdom, in a dream.
• Learn divination of potential future events, what you can do to avoid them, or how to co-create a desired future with spirit.
• Receive or give healing in a dream or learn healing techniques.
• Learn healing techniques in dreams to use in physical reality.
• Meet the spirits of dead ancestors to engage in ancestral healing or other ancestral work.
• Gain information about, work with, or heal, past (or future) lives.
• Have spiritual, mystical, and ecstatic experiences. This can include experiencing union with the cosmos, the divine, or an equivalent based on your belief system.
• Make changes in the dream with an intention that this leads to changes in physical reality. You can learn rituals to affect this from teaching spirits and will eventually be able to design your own.
• Receive initiation from spirit.

Dream initiation is an advanced topic but can occur spontaneously, even in people new to shamanic work. During a shamanic dream initiation, a person usually experiences symbolic (not actual) suffering and death within a dream including the following motifs:

• Experiencing illness, animal bites, or near-death experiences that change the person and provide them with knowledge or enhanced abilities.
• Descent to the underworld or your being swallowed by an animal and their return with gifts, or ascent to the upperworld to receive divine guidance.
• Symbolic dismemberment such as having your body cut up, boiled in a cauldron, or reduced to ash in a fire) followed by rememberment and your resurrection or rebirth as a new person. Rebirth is an initiation element in all traditions.

As always, we need to consider the ethics of work that we do. Any entity that you meet in a dream may be a suffering being who needs help. You should treat people that you meet in dreams the same way that you would treat a person in real life.

You should also adopt a serious attitude to dreamwork, so it is not just an opportunity to engage in frivolous pursuits, which misses opportunities to undertake work of benefit to yourself and others.

By changing your approach to how you experience and work with dreams, and learning your true potential, you can produce beneficial changes in physical reality, for yourself, for others, and for the world. May you be empowered and guided to do so.

Further Reading:
Moss, Robert. Active Dreaming: Journeying Beyond Self-Limitation to a Life of Wild Freedom (New World Library, April 2011).
Sumegi, Angela. Dreamworlds of Shamanism and Tibetan Buddhism: The Third Place (SUNY Press, May 2008).
Tuccillo, Dylam et al. A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming (New York: Workman, September 2013).
Villoldo, Alberto. Courageous Dreaming: How Shamans Dream the World into Being (Hay House, March 2008).

Article originally published in The Llewellyn Journal. Copyright Llewellyn Worldwide, 2022. All rights reserved.

Since childhood, I have had the same dream about two or three times a year. I appear to be a peasant with long dark (Asian?) hair, working in a field of some kind in a wooded, mountainous area. I can't tell my gender; it seems to be unimportant. I see myself in the third person. I am near a village when I become aware of an army of enemies preparing to attack my village. I begin to run toward the village to warn them of the impending assault. I am spotted so I run in another direction so as to lead them away from the village. I am chased by the invaders. It feels as though I run for several miles through dense woods and undergrowth. I experience the feeling of crashing through the brush and the tearing of the skin on my arms. I hide in a small wooden structure and am discovered. I am crouched under something and receive multiple blows to the head and bleed to death. I do not feel the blows or experience any pain during the assault. I do not see the faces of the attackers or recall any describable objects. I always wake up exhausted and sweating. I am not disturbed by witnessing my death. The dream was always exactly the same until about three years ago. Now the situation is the same, but I am on a horse and the village has become a community that lives in some sort of a bunker underground. I do not hide but am knocked off the horse and killed. Logic tells me this is a past life memory of a death, but the feeling I get from the dream is that it is future tense - not past - and has not yet occurred. There is the sense that this is a warning of some kind; I feel compelled to warn others but I don't know what I am warning them of.

Linda

Susyn:

I feel these dreams hold memories of a past life, for the common details and events you recall are too specific to not involve an event you actually lived through. When past life memories come up, we can often see clues to them in our current lives. For example, though you are not an Asian peasant this lifetime, you may have always had a fascination with Asian culture.

When we recall the moment of death in a past life, it can influence our health in some way in this lifetime. For example, many people who lost their lives due to blows to the head experience inexplicable headaches, while those who were killed by hanging may be uncomfortable with having anything around their necks like ties or scarves. The crashing through the brush and tearing of the skin on your arms could manifest as rashes or skin irritations in this life that crop up for no apparent reason.

I see a couple of different ways to interpret these dreams that seem to be of the future. Sometimes we can tap into Collective Memory and dream of a past life experience of another person we've been close to in both lifetimes. This could explain why you dream in the third person; perhaps this dream is answering a question you have long held about what happened to someone you loved well in another life. It is likely that you know or are related to this person in your current lifetime.

The second interpretation is that you are indeed dreaming of a future event, though without having more information, it is impossible to predict the time or place of its occurreence or to warn others about it. Premonition dreams can be particularly upsetting, for seeing the future can make us feel like we are responsible for preventing or influencing it whether that is possible or not.

As a Gemini born in May, you could find it particularly difficult to distinguish past life memories from current life issues. You carry the imagination and intellect of a Gemini, but because you were born in May, you also have the earthy, physical influence of Taurus in your astrological makeup. This can make your dreams seem more intense and make it harder to determine whether they are past events, future events, or symbolic of something you are currently going through.

Though there are lots of movies and ideas out there that suggest the End Times are near and that people could indeed be hiding out together in bunkers in the future, I strongly feel that this second dream is arising from Collective Memory, by which I mean that you are dreaming the experience of someone close to you and not an event you are doomed to experience in the future.

*****

Oceania:

There are some clear themes in your dreams: trying to evade harm, being attacked, and yearning to spare others from suffering. These could be things you personally experienced as a child or something you witnessed. It's important to note that the Vietnam War was taking place throughout your childhood, so you may have been exposed to disturbing news footage without consciously remembering it.

Along with real life experiences, children can be traumatized by upsetting news and fictional violence in books, games and movies, especially if they're not allowed to talk about it. Children can survive most trauma emotionally intact if they have an opportunity to process it with a loving witness. Damage can be done when children are forced to push upsetting feelings aside, but it's never too late to heal.

Your mind may be using elements in your dream to contain some of your own feelings. Seeing ourselves in the third person is an element of dissociation, where the mind leaves the body and observes events from a distance, detached from pain. Trauma victims often describe this phenomenon of observing from afar in a detached manner. While this is a valid way to cope and survive at the time, to find freedom, we must consciously acknowledge repressed feelings and express them in some therapeutic way.

We go through life much like bellhops, pushing a cart of baggage. While we might manage to ignore the baggage most of the time, it's always there, taking up psychological space, sapping our energy, even popping open to spill out into the present. The only way to free ourselves is to stop and sort through it in a safe setting.

Because your dream happens two or three times a year, it is likely triggered by something in your life today that is reminiscent of your original trauma. Start keeping a log of these nightmares and think about what happened and what you were exposed to just before they occur. With some good detective work, you can decipher why you keep having these dreams.

What was happening for you last year? Did you do some personal growth work, expand your circle of support, or undergo a spiritual awakening? That may be when the dream symbolism changed for the better. Instead of running on foot, you began riding a horse, which suggests that you began to feel carried and assisted by a higher power.

You're also no longer alone, and you don't go into hiding. That the community you are hoping to protect has moved underground suggests that it is better defended. These changes suggest that you've been feeling more empowered for the past three years, and are progressing through a healing process.

Astrea:

Many times in life we hear, "You will always have what you NEED, but not necessarily what you WANT." Your spirit must have needed to experience the feeling of leaving your human body, and the suggestion in the next chapter of Sylvia Brown's book was all it took to get you there.

Even though you hadn't read it yet, your SOUL recognized the title of that chapter as something it had been seeking, and your soul, knowing that you had that reference to read after your experience, got with it and out you went!

While I don't usually recommend her books, Sylvia Brown has a wide reaching and powerful effect on lots of people. A Gemini like you would be able to relate easily to her writing and put it to good use. Synchronicity - you gotta love it!

I like your description of "getting caught." That's exactly what it feels like, isn't it? One minute you're free and hovering above the room, and the next minute, ZAP! back down into your corporeal form you go!

As a little kid, I loved that "feeling of return." With practice, most of the time we can control that event, but sometimes, when our physical ears hear a distracting noise or something else occurs to knock us back into reality, back we go. With practice you will be able to control your return better.

I find it interesting that you were visiting your mother-in-law and not someone in your own genetic family. Evidently, you and your husband got married for reasons that are even deeper than love. His family's interest in "psychic stuff" will nurture your children in such matters and help them to grow into their own abilities.

You'll never have to be concerned that when your daughter visits them, she'll be discouraged from exploring her own psychic life and power. My parents encouraged me to develop my psychic senses in a time when it wasn't nice to even discuss such things in public. Heck, it's STILL not considered a great topic at the dinner table in some families!

Your kids will get to talk about it ALL and ask questions and read and study. This is going to give them such an edge in life! Talk with your husband about how you want to present this to your kiddos, so that you are united in your approach and ready to tell them their experiences are all natural and okay.

A word or two of warning: Geminis often have difficulty staying grounded in REAL LIFE. Don't get so strung out on your ASTRAL life that you neglect what you're doing here on Earth.

You are at the beginning of a long journey to learn where your power really lies. Try to be patient with this process and take your time.