Two years ago, March 2022, I was scheduled to attend a Shamanic Dreamwork advanced weekend workshop in San Diego. Then we all know what happened. In the intervening couple years plus, I have had the great pleasure and blessing of meeting and working with others in shamanic practice online through the Advanced Healing program and drum circles here in the US, and the Change and Transformation and Peace Laboratory through the European Foundation. And finally, we were all able to meet in person again.
Two weekends ago I was able to attend that Shamanic Dreamwork advanced workshop in San Diego in person! And the timing could not have been better. Not only had I been blessed with two years to meet and get to know other practitioners- and my teacher better- but participating in this experience with people I already knew made the entire weekend even more rewarding and valuable. There is much to be said for patience. Even in dreaming.
Shortly after the workshop I had a Big Dream I have not had before. I will not share that dream here, but its significance is profound. Six years ago a vision of a previous life pounced into me as I waited for a late night plane out of Anchorage, Alaska. The vision was so disturbing and important that I bounced it immediately off an old friend who is a medium, and by the time I'd landed in Seattle early in the morning, she'd supplied additional, even more disturbing information. There are several things to consider here:
First, entering an altered state, or Non-Ordinary Reality, can occur under various circumstances, not only to drumbeat or rattling while eyes are covered, or while under the aid of plant medicine or other substances, but during times of extreme sleep deprivation or physical discomfort, for instance. In this case, the time was the advent of Summer, when the days are longest, and I was far enough north that the sun shined well into the night, affecting my sleep pattern, which was also altered by the need to be actively awake at midnight to catch a plane.
Over the next several months I explored this vision with my friend and with other professional practitioners in Ordinary Reality. And slowly it faded into the recesses of my life- an event I accepted but stopped analyzing. Then, the Big Dream arrived- also disturbing and directly related to this vision- or waking Big Dream- I'd had several years ago. And now I am in a position to work with this experience again, in both OR and NOR. The time is now.
The message here is that we sometimes wish for something so hard, want something to happen so much, even something as simple as understanding why an event happened, that we rush through what we think are the steps to manifest, without giving full consideration and respect to timing. Not time; timing. There is a difference.
Midsummer is here, Lammas, Lughnasah, a time to pause and bask in the warmth of the sun midway to Autumn, and to be thankful for the bounty provided at this time of year. While celebrating, paused in this moment, may we remember the cycle of the year, that all work, all life, all that happens is a cycle, and may we maintain the patience to allow these cycles to unfold in their time.
Many blessings at this bountiful time.
