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www.shamansociety.org 31 Shamanic practitioners and dream- workers can borrow creatively from each other in the cause of real magic which is the art of bringing gifts from another world into this world. Shamanic prac- titioners can learn from dreamworkers how to talk about experiences of a deeper reality in ways that afrm and empower the experiencer they can also learn to harvest spontaneous messages from the night that are a corrective to waking agendas and provide portals for timely and fruitful journeys between the worlds. Dreamworkers can learn from shamanic journeyers how to travel wide awake and conscious into the dreamworld in solo shared or group travel. Dreamworkers can learn from the shaman as performer dramatist comedian and poet of con- sciousness how to embody the energy of dreams and entertain the spirits. Both communities can pool their skills and their raw materials to develop powerful techniques for what I call vision transfer which means growing and transferring a dream to someone who is in need of a dream a vision for life an image for healing even a road to the next world. Three Shamans of the Breakfast Table There are many ways of approaching spirit but we never want to be closed to the spontaneous gifts of our night dreams the ones we dont ask for and often dont want. They hold up a magic mirror in which we can see ourselves as we truly are. They serve as a voice of conscience. They preview challenges and opportunities that lie in our future. Sleep dreams show us what is going on inside the body diagnose developing com- plaints before medical symptoms present themselves and show us what the body needs to stay well. We solve problems in our sleep. And in dreams and in the hypnagogic zone our authentic spiritual teachers come stalking us. We can ask for dream guidance any night. I am often content to ask of the night very simply Show me what I need to see. Dreams require action. I like to start the day by journaling my dreams and then sharing them with others who are willing to play by the rules of a game I have invented. I call this Lightning Dreamwork because it is meant to be fast as a lightning bolt and to focus and harness energy. The method is not meant to preempt many other things we may want to do with a dream it provides a way of sharing that can reach tempo- rary closure in just ve or ten minutes exploding any alibi that we dont have time for this. The game moves like this Get the dreamer to tell the dream as a story as simply and clearly as possible. Encourage the dreamer to leave out the background no autobi- ography and avoid any attempts at interpretation and to tell rather than read the dream report. In this way we encourage each other to reclaim our gifts as storytellers. This is hugely important life training. Once we have learned to tell our dreams well in this way we are primed to tell whatever stories we may need to communicate with others. Ask a few essential questions. The rst question to ask of any dream is what did you feel immediately on waking First feelings are in- stant guides to whether the dream is negative or positive and often to whether it needs to be viewed literally or symbolically or as an experience in a separate reality. We also want to do a reality check asking what the dreamer recognizes from the dream in the rest of her life - including from other dreams since dreams often run in series. We need to ask whether anything in the dream could manifest in some way in the future since our dreams are forever rehearsing us for future events. We can now say to the dreamer If this were my dream I would think about such-and-such. In offering feedback according to this protocol we can say just about anything we like. Notice that as we do this we are owning our projections we are speak- ing from our own experience and point of view not purporting to be experts. We may be a thousand miles removed from the dreamers own felt sense of the dream but this can be helpful in assisting the dreamer to home in on what the dream means for her. Last we guide the dreamer to come up with an action plan a way of honoring the dream applying its guidance and harnessing its energy. The action plan may range from researching an odd phrase or location featured in the dream to eating or giving up a certain food to creative expression to dream reentry which means journeying back inside the dreamspace to solve a mystery or move beyond a fear or enjoy more of the adventure. I borrowed the if it were my dream protocol from the great Montague Monte Ullman a clinical psychiatrist who decided to lay down his authority by insisting that dreams belong to the dreamers and no one must presume to lay down the law on what they mean. When we learn to talk to each other this way we are helping each other to become authors of meaning for our own dreams and our own lives. This mutually empowering way of sharing can be ap- plied to any kind of experience includ- ing shamanic journeys or incidents from regular life. Four Journeying Through Dream Portals Eva had training in shamanism and done a good deal of journeying in drum- ming circles. By the end of the rst day of a soul recovery workshop I was leading in France she was also pissed. I dont know what Im doing here she com- plained to me. Im not a dreamer but I have to listen to all these people talking about their dreams. I havent remem- bered any dreams since I was seven years old.