Читать книгу Active Dreaming - Robert Moss A. - Страница 25

Here’s an example of Lightning Dreamwork as informal everyday practice. A neighbor who works in state government stopped me on the street when I was walking my dog. John wanted to know if it would be okay for him to share a dream with me. I invited him to meet me at my house when my dog had done his business. Twenty minutes later, he told me the following dream:

I have taken on the role of a very important man. I have to find something of tremendous importance. I can’t get to it until the earth opens, and I am hurled into a kind of primal experience of earth changes over millions of years. I watch mountains rise and fall, and oceans grow and recede. I am in the magma of the living planet.

I find what I’m seeking. It’s doesn’t look like all that much. It’s an animal skull, not that big.

Then I’m back in the house as the important man. People jump to follow my orders. I tell them I know where exactly to dig. I point to the spot in the yard. They start digging, but their tools are no good. I tell them to go get better tools to do the job right.

I asked John the essential first question: How did you feel when you woke up? He said he didn’t want to leave the dream. He was having such a good time. He felt powerful and on track.

While running the reality check, he said he didn’t feel very powerful at work. His boss was unpredictable, and he sometimes felt vulnerable. He wanted to know how he could embody the sense of power he found in the dream.

I told him that — if it were my dream — I might think it was coaching me to take on a more important role in my work. He allowed that this was a distinct possibility. I remarked that I’d draw from the dream the practical counsel that I might need to bring other people along. The big thing that struck me was how, in the dream, my neighbor felt closely connected to primal energy, to earth changes — and I added that I would want, in whatever I chose to do, to bring that energy and connectedness to bear in my life.

He vigorously agreed. “That’s what I want to do. I feel I need that connection to feed my soul.”

I was intrigued by the animal skull. What kind of animal was it? “Maybe a dog or fox.”

I got goose bumps, because when he was recounting the dream I had had the distinct impression of a fox. I talked about the fox as a shamanic ally in the oldest shamanic traditions of Europe, and about the nature of the fox as an animal legendary for its cunning, required to know when to hunt and when to hide — renowned, of course, as a trickster.

John teared up. He explained that he had recently done his turn-ofthe-year personal reading of the I Ching. He had cast the last hexagram, named “Before Completion.” The judgment evokes the need for extreme caution, to act as a wily old fox on thin ice, not as a young fox that might fall through the cracks.

I suggested that, in any future work dramas, I would pause to ask, “What would the wily old fox do?” before adopting any course of action.

He grinned when he came up with a bumper sticker that he could use, “I’m a real fox.” He said he would honor his dream and keep in touch with its energy by putting a small figure of a fox on his bureaucrat’s desk.

The conversation juiced both of us. Everyday dreamwork is soul food for everyone involved.