Bioregional Dreaming?
Posted by erin on February 29, 2008What is bioregional dreaming? I don’t know. I’m writing this blog to see if we can figure it out together. I’ll tell you my background and experiences with dreaming as a jumping off point.
My name is Erin Langley, and my people are Celtic from Ireland and Scotland, Anglo-Saxon from Britain and Wales, Frank from France, Ashkenazi Jews from the Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Austria, and Germany, and Cherokee from Oklahoma. Different members of my family settled in Lockport, NY, Indiana, and eventually Florida, where I grew up (on Seminole and Timacuan land). Now I live in Oakland, CA on Ohlone land. Needless to say, this globalization of the tribes has been very confusing for a woman in search of her cultural roots. Embodying a multitude of cultural boons and strife has been a rewarding and sorrowful journey so far. My dreams reflect this melange of people and places, and speak to the ultimate fluidity of the movements of our Earth and its inhabitants. We truly are one people. . . Yet speaking this sentiment without walking through our cultural shadows and ancestral stories professes equanimity prematurely.
When I visited Ireland for three months in summer of 2006, I felt more a part of a bioregion than at any other time in my life. It was a true homecoming. Being on the sacred sites of my ancestors–pre-Stone Age people who walked in their whole minds–activated pieces of myself that could not have otherwise awakened. Here, across an ocean, I felt the positive impact of being with one’s native bioregion. The sacred sites, and especially the Stone People, repeatedly incited out of body experiences and powerful dreams, when I’d return home in the evenings to “sleep.” I dreamed with the bioregion that today’s people call County Meath, and got to enter Her sacred places in the dreamspace, which is light and fluid enough to support both my dream body, my ancestors (who I met inside Bru na Boinne in an out of body experience), and even the Gods of the bioregion. I had an unexpected encounter with Morgan le Fay during another OBE. Her annhilalitive presence still makes me shake in my boots. I’ve never felt such force, and don’t know if I ever want to again. Truly, Her power is terrifying and nearly insupportable.
In short, I feel absolutely connected to my spiritual and ancestral bioregional homeland of Ireland, and I even carry Her name–Erin.
Seminole, Timacuan, and Ohlone land is a different story. Though I am enormously grateful that this land supports me and gives me life every day, I struggle to connect with these parts of Mother Earth. My work lies in dreams, so the spirit of the dream still moves through me, but I wouldn’t say that it comes from the land here. At least, the land and its ancestors do not communicate with me in an abject way as they did in Ireland. Instead, I dream the human story, a piece at a time, across time and space and cultures. Knowing who I am, and having a long backbone provides the necessary grounding for me to hold this information in a sacred and respectful way.
And there’s the dream database. That helps, too. My partner Jake and I designed a solid template to hold the fluidity of dreamtime. It’s a a open source global dream database that is categorized, navigable, and accessible for analysis and hypothesis formation. The intended purpose of the database is to provide a venue for a sacred circle of tribal dreamers to share our dreams in a postmodern way. Dreamers can log and track their dreams by theme against an astronomical ephemeris. Interested dreamers may sign up (for free) at www.dream-people.net
My thesis research informed ten guidelines for dreamers who wish to handle our dreams in a traditional manner. They include:
1. Honor the spirit of the dream. Do not dissipate its power through nonchalance or verbal analysis.
2. Keep part of the dream for yourself in order to protect yourself and retain your power. Trust your instinct about what to
share and what not to share.
3. Respect the privacy of other dreamers. Do not read others’ dreams voyeuristically. Dream sharing is an exchange.
4. Acknowledge your “big dreams” by making offerings those who have come to you. Make art, give a traditional offering from your culture, or say thank you another way.
5. Give your dreams time to unfold. Do not expect immediate understanding. Dreams can take years to unfold.
6. Heed your dreams in waking life. Take action when appropriate.
7. Recognize elements of your dreams that show up in waking life so that these two aspects of life become more seamless.
8. Learn the folktales and stories of your indigenous ancestors. Our dreaming and waking lives can tell us what histories we are enacting if we know our cultural stories and symbols.
9. If you have a dream for another person, share it with him or her when appropriate. Do not be attached to the result of this sharing.
10. Maintain respect for who or what you encounter in a lucid dream or out-of-body experience. The dream world is the real world.
The Earth and the ancestors are speaking through the language of dreams. When we put these pieces together and dream as a community, new information emerges. Our dreams inform each others’. A couple of nights ago, I had a significant dream, which I titled “The Original Wound of the Teutons.” This dream occurred on Teutonic land and showed horrific scenes of Roman colonizers forcing the Teutons to kill one another in a humiliating way. Later, the dream showed how the Teutonic people propagated this wound onto the Jews during the holocaust. True, this dream may not be of my specific bioregion. But it is the stuff of the human bioregion. I find it difficult to share dreams with people who want to psychologize them. This is one reason I want to do a bioregional animist blog about my experiences with dreaming. I know that you can hold the dreams in a traditional and respectful way.
There is so much more to say, and I’ll save it for a future blog. I’ll leave you with the link to my thesis, called Reinstating the Role of Community Dreaming Using Traditional Protocol and Open Source Technology: http://erinlangley.com/images/thesis-1.pdf
Thanks for participating. Dream on.
