Читать книгу Dream Your Self into Being - Bonnie Bahira Buckner - Страница 5

In Australia, in the springtime, the constellation Scorpio crawls across the sky on a lazy journey through the night. As it gets dark, it appears first in one corner of the sky, fierce and brilliant. Night after night it appears, but it is always a surprise because of its fierceness. Around two o’clock, it’s a little past overhead. If the moon is out it is a battle over who will shine the brightest. In the dark before morning, in that moment of stillness and quiet before the curtain raises, Scorpio makes it to the other corner of the sky. Then it’s time to wake up.

Right now, though, it’s around one. Scorpio is directly overhead. I watch it, as I have every night this week, lying on my back on a piece of weathered green canvas laid out in the red dirt. The dirt I lie on is, to me, in the middle of nowhere and an eight-hour drive from the middle-of-nowhere outpost where we started. To someone else, though, it is somewhere, and it is sacred.

It is September of 2010, and I am in the Australian outback with thirty Australian Aboriginal elder women. The land I rest on belongs to them, and it is theirs alone—even the men from the tribe are not allowed here. The land is for them to enjoy; it is for their secret ceremonies. It is for dreaming together in their Dream Time. This land is also their responsibility. It is sacred, and so they have come to it; it remains sacred, because they are the stewards of it.

There are also thirty non-Aboriginal women here who have come from around the world. We have been invited on what is called the Sacred Women’s Journey, which itself has been born from a dream. Years before, one of the Aboriginal women had dreamed of a white woman they would share their knowledge with, and through her to other white women, and then to women around the world. Around this same time, a non-Aboriginal, white woman had dreamed that an Aboriginal woman would call to her, and that she would learn their ways and bring them to white women, and to women around the world. Both she and the Aboriginal woman had known of the other specifically in the dream. So, when they finally met, years later, it was both certain and already known.

With me are three companions. One is my dreaming teacher; she was invited on this trip and asked to bring three students. The other two companions are two dreaming students I have known for several years, and I am the third student.

Overhead is Scorpio. To my left are my companions. Before me is the first tree, thirty paces. This is where I can stand, in the long shadow made by the afternoon sun, and listen to sounds I don’t know. Beyond that, forty paces more is the second tree, where I can relieve myself each day in relative privacy. To my right, two paces, is a patch of scrub where I lean my pack. Twenty-five paces more is the cluster of another group of women, whom I now call friends. And behind me is a still-roaring fire, around which the Aboriginal women sing. They are talking to the sky, which has told them it will rain. They are singing so that it will not be so.

At the first breakfast we were told that the land looks flat, but it is not. There are rises and dips, and for us, strangers to the land, we could easily walk fifty yards away and be utterly lost. We were told the land looks the same, but it is not. There are rocks and trees, felled branches and scrub, places where things have happened, others where they have not. There are places to collect water, and places to rest in a shade. There are places where people have gathered, and places where animals lie. Today, a small yellow snake is to the west of the camp. But to us, strangers to the land, we don’t see this.

That first day, we did nothing. We roamed the camp and wondered when things were going to get started. None of us walked out of eyesight.

The next day, they took us to a sacred site on the sacred land. It was another long drive. Mile after mile of red dirt, some scrub, and an occasional tree. The elder women, though, moved us there with a certain hand, pointing with sure fingers, “turn here, now there, go forward.” I did not see anything different about any tree they used as a marker, or scrub that signaled we were close. When we arrived, though, we could tell the place felt different. It was a rock.

We made a wide circle around the rock and listened as they told us the stories of what had happened here. Layer upon layer they talked their unwrapping, going back until we reached the history of the rock itself, further still until the rock was born before us, at the beginning of the world, and inside us, at the beginning of our selves. They celebrated the rock, adorned it, and gave thanks to it, for all the memories that had happened here, and added our memory to it. Our circle grew closer to the rock, and we dared to touch it. Many of us cried at this moment of union with all that was now and all that was before. The rock looked different to me, then, distinguishable amidst the vastness. I liked it, and would recognize it if I returned.

After this we went to a place where water ebbed miraculously in a slight depression in the red dirt and the rocks. They told us of the memories of this place, unwrapping it to when it had called to their people, and their people had called to it, and there it is. They told of the moment of union when their people had found it. Later, we went to still another place, and then another. Each time we heard of the now and the beginning, the always so and the becoming of it.

The third day they walked us to a place and marked off a long rectangle, about seventy-five paces long and thirty paces wide. We worked to clean it, picking out all the rocks, pebbles, branches, and sticks until, in the late afternoon, it was perfectly smooth, as if it had been raked. Then, they prepared us, stripping us bare of outer coverings and painting our skin with lines and symbols of the energy of the land and being. Finally, in this space, they made a fire and performed ceremonies and let us join them.

In the sacred space, we celebrated the comings and goings of the human way, of yearning for a partner and finding one. In this space that had been swept clean and made separate, with our daily face and clothing exchanged, we reached down with our dancing to the center of the earth for something deeper, to connect to the Great Mystery. We celebrated the now and the beginning, the always so and the becoming of it.

That night I looked up and found Scorpio again, and watched him in his crawl across the sky. I watched and saw where he was when the moon rose, and again when the moon was high. I watched where he was as I began to get hungry, and when the first bird started to sing just before dawn. I lifted my gaze to the vertical and knew he did this before me, and would do it long after I turned to dust. And I celebrated it.

Through all of that week in the desert, between the sacred sites and the ceremonies, between the eating and the cleaning of it, the women sang. They sang, they painted, and they wove beautiful baskets. Their songs and their creating was the thread that wove the tapestry, binding together the singular events. Their baskets were woven from grasses on the land. Their paintings told the stories of it. Their songs were their conversation, among each other, and with the land and the Universe beyond it. They were the stories of the land and of their experiencing of it. They were songs of the memories and of the now. They were the songs of their dreaming.

Each of us lives two landscapes. One is the linear reality. This is the causal, expected march through life that usually follows a path of being born, growing up and going to school, getting a job, finding a partner, maybe having children, retiring, and then dying. It moves rather one-dimensionally on a flat line of A to Z. It follows social conventions, and often parental expectations. It offers few choices. And, just as we wondered when things were going to get started with the elder women in the outback, living in the linear reality is to have a feeling of always waiting for something to begin. But there is also the vertical reality.

The vertical reality is the inner landscape. It is our deepest place, wherein all of the mysteries of the Self originate. It is the place of God. It is the place of our dreams. Because the vertical reality is born from a dreaming place, it leaps and jumps, presenting synchronicities, possibilities, choices, even future events, and many other playful expressions of creative living. It is not linear, and it is often not expected. It is alive and purposeful, and leads us to wholeness.

As a dreamer, the duality between these two landscapes—the linear and the vertical realities—are erased. Living as a dreamer, life itself becomes a dream—the inner begins to mirror the outer, and the outer becomes a reflection of the inner. No longer a one-dimensional trudge, life as a dreamer springs into being, becoming multi-dimensional, vibrant, and creative; choice is ever present and we are led to a deeper and deeper unfolding of our true Selves. When we open our eyes to this landscape, we realize “it” has been happening all along—there is no more waiting, because life becomes truly lived.

My entire life’s trajectory has been drawn by my quest to understand my dreams. I have lived my life as a dreamer, beginning with a question prompted by my first ever remembered dream at age three, through to my life today where I teach dreaming to people around the world. The dreaming I teach is a specific lineage I was called to by my dreams, and it is through my dreams that I was led to my dreaming teacher. My dreaming teacher is Dr. Catherine Shainberg, and it is she who brought me to the desert to dream with the Aboriginal women.

The dreaming lineage taught to me by Catherine is a Kabbalistic practice and part of a long lineage that continues through Catherine from her teacher, Madame Colette Aboulker-Muscat. Colette was a renowned Kabbalist from Jerusalem, and the lineage traces back on both her maternal and paternal side through an ancient line of Sephardic Kabbalists that includes Rabbi Isaac the Blind of Provence (the first recorded medieval Kabbalist) and Rabbi Jacob ben Sheshet of the Gerona circle of Kabbalists. It is an ancient lineage and the most ancient form of Kabbalah, whose practices of the visionary process were recorded as far back as the first century.

Unlike other Kabbalistic methods, Colette’s work is pure Kabbalah (Kabbalah means receiving)—the receiving one does when looking within. It is the Kabbalah of Light. Colette brought these ancient methods forward to teach them to people from around the world. Catherine has further developed these methods and continues to teach them today, as she has now taught me to do.

Meeting my dreaming teacher, Catherine, was a significant signpost in my life’s landscape. I studied intensely with her for eight years one-on-one, in formal classes, workshops, and in casual together moments—in every moment she teaches. I spent hours fastidiously doing imagery homework she would prescribe. I took up her challenges of creating a dream group, thinking about how this work could directly apply to the world of business and to creative professionals, and at her word I went to school to earn my Ph.D. in psychology.

My relationship with Catherine is completely unique and difficult to put into words. It is the very special relationship of master to student, and such a relationship is too unique to be compared to any other, and far greater and richer than description allows. Catherine’s generosity toward my development extends beyond naming and description, and I will spend lifetimes expressing my gratitude for it. With her I learned what real love actually is. She is my True Teacher and my spiritual mother. It is to her that I dedicate this book.

This book is organized into two parts. “Part I: Experiencing Dreaming” details experiences from my personal life as a dreamer.

Just as the Aboriginal women led us through the landscape of their dream world, I will lead you through my dreaming landscape, pointing out signposts and markers, telling you their origins and their unfoldings, their beginnings and their now. I come from a family of dreamers, and begin with two chapters from my childhood describing the dream teachings of my father and my grandmother. Chapters three through seven detail my adult experiences with dreaming, where I was nudged ever forward on my path to find my dreaming teacher and finally become the teacher of dreaming I am today.

By walking with me through my dreaming landscape, you will see how dreams have mapped my life experience and what living as a true dreamer in the vertical reality looks like. As you take this walk, you may remember moments of your own dreaming story, and discover significant signposts of your inner unfolding that have been waiting to be recognized and responded to. In “Part II” of the book, I give exercises to prompt this reminding and help you develop your dreaming dialogue.

“Part II: Learning the Dreaming Language” is a guide to understanding your own dreams. In this section I will teach you how to open your dreams using a specific method that can be done by yourself and with a group. I will give examples of these openings, as well as a guide for forming a dream group of your own. In addition, you will learn specific imagery exercises to help you map your own inner landscape and begin to live a vibrant life of authentic Selfhood in the infinite possibilities of the vertical reality.

But first, this story begins in another middle-of-nowhere place, in a small town in the remote, far north of the Texas Panhandle.