Bio Regional Animism Dreaming Project

Fishbowl asks, “Could dreaming be used to collect and receive new narratives being shared with us by our Bio-Regions? And if so, do we not have an obligation to start sharing these narratives?”

I really want to share my dreams, and have been taught by elders to hold back. Know what to share and when. I have a backlog of powerful dreams with no outlet. Fishbowl’s post reminds me that times have changed, and perhaps so have responsibilities. Where else would I share these dreams but in a forum designed to hold them? Sharing here requires a certain amount of trust that the right people will stumble upon the dreams and hold them in a respectful way, as I am doing with the dreams that everyone has shared on here so far.

What do we do with the dream sharing? I envision dream-weaving by sharing a dream and finding out that it reminds people of dreams they’ve had, and then they share those dreams until we dream a bigger and more informative picture. That said, I will share a recent dream that I had because of the comment that lizard made on the LLB Dreams post. I clicked on her webpage and saw an image there of a lizard that took me viscerally back to this dream:

Two women volunteer to mate with a giant sea serpent with the head of a tiger. They are scared, but willing. They are going to have half human/half sea serpent offspring. They go underwater and are enveloped by the serpent as it mates with them. The women have tranquilizer darts in their legs so that the “fire of the serpent” doesn’t hurt them during the mating process. The serpent also has tranquilizers in its back. The women walk out of the water when it’s over. I step into one of their bodies and feel what’s going on. My legs are numb and it’s hard to walk. I start crying because something big has just happened and I am scared.

Next scene:

I’m in a cave with other people. A giant sea serpent is in a pool in this cave. Her name is Pachamama. A bunch of children are in the cave. You sing a special song [which I have written down] to the giant serpent, and then you proclaim the day of your birth. She will swim the length of the cave, back and forth and then rise up so you can pet Her head, and this is Her blessing to you. My turn comes. I see that the Pachamama the serpent is tired. Nonetheless, I sing the special song and give my birthday. She just keeps swimming the length of the cave, back and forth, but doesn’t come up. A caretaker of the serpent says She must be tired. The woman hands me some very large, very strange looking fish to feed to Pachamama, which I do. Other very strange and scary sea creatures come up to me because I am feeding Pachamama and they want food, too. A little boy didn’t get his turn with Pachamama because another boy took his place in line. The first boy’s father says it would be best if the other mean boy ate some soap, for the balance of things. But someone who works at this cave says it is actually best if Pachamama blesses the boy who didn’t get his turn, as She’s been doing for thousands of years. There are stones strung along the exit wall of the cave. Children have strung them. One looks like a tongue. Others look like shells and rocks.

Those are my dreams. Please protect them. Now let’s weave.

xo,
Erin

Mycelial Earth Dragon by Marie Cee
http://www.paleoshaman.com/art.htm

Years ago I had a very bad case of pneumonia, at times I felt I might even die from the terrible fever I had from this affliction. At one point during a particularly bad part of the fever, I remember sitting in the study with my room mate at the time, a very accomplished shaman. My fever was very bad at this point and i was shaking, and my bones and muscles and joints hurt so bad I couldn’t take it any more. I decided to just take a step back from my body, I had never done something like this but I was delirious and thought with a fevered mind why not?
So I did I felt my consciousness just fall back into the back of my head. I could see in a 360 degree radius. like a sphere of awareness. I could just observe the pain and my body as well as my surroundings from this point of view from a very objective stance.
It was a sort of fever dream which occurred next, I could see in the room around me that I was surrounded by spirit, by beings and animal spirits and energies. I heard a voice tell me that this was the dreaming of the world, of the life place I lived within. That this space was what our minds become aware of when we sleep but that this dreaming of the land is receptive to our own thoughts and that the dreaming world can be shaped by our unconscious mind. I saw that one could see this dreaming of the world objectively if we stood back from our projections and unconscious molding of this dream space, and allow the dream world to give us its gifts and wisdom freely.
At this point I saw a Moose walk in front of me and into the body of my friend who was typing at his computer. My friend did a daily medicine card spread every day to see which medicine animals were influencing him through out the day. I snapped out of my dream state and asked him if he had drawn moose today. He said “Yes why?”
“Because I just saw a Moose walk into your body.”
“Mmmmhmmm, cool.” He said matter of factly.
Since this moment I have been left with the notion that our minds our dreams are but the dreams and mind of the life place we live, of the totality, the whole of existence, but starting where we lay our heads first and for most, where we live.

Whether we bring our selves into this dream of the world via the smoke or tea of various plants and chemicals, through fever delirium, trance methods or just dreaming itself. I believe that the world we observe in these states are the dreaming of the land and that it has information that is essential for us to communicate with and have relationships with the land. Being aware of our part in the dreaming of the land and in seeing that it too is our dreaming puts into a co-creative stance which allows wholistic problem solving which would not be available to us via just our rational daily waking state.
Actively being a part of this dream allows us to co-creatively participate in what the life place itself dreams into existence, its own creative process and inspiration.

-llb

I’ve been thinking about dreams and I have been thinking about narratives. what do the two have in common?

I’ve heard it say that dreams are our subconscious acting out when we sleep. I do believe that many dreams are just that, dreams. But not all dreams are that simple to dismiss. As a animist I feel that there are many layers to our existence beyond the physical mater; in fact, I make no distinction between the physical and the metaphysical and spiritual. This in turn applies to my dreams.

The subconscious is a mysteries thing which continues to fascinate the scientific world and societies in whole. The ancient Kelts, who where animists themselves, believed the seat of the soul rested in the skull. As a result the skull was a powerful symbol, much like the western heart is today. The Kelts where not the only ones who held the skull as a powerful symbol, such as the Mayan, and many African culture. This admiration for the human Skull indicates a reverence amongst animist cultures. I believe they understood the power of the human mind on emany levels. Some levels modern science is only know catching up to.

With the subconsciousness being that mysteries part of our brain that generates fantastical imagery and scenarios when we sleep, I believe it deserves a name more suiting to this function. In metaphysics the term Subliminal Gnosis is often referred to the part of our mind (and soul) that seeks out communication beyond the surface layers of what western thought considered the “real world”. Could it be, through our dreams, we are witnessing our Subliminal Gnosis communicating on other levels?

The Ancient Kelts held inspiration in high regards. They had special names for it, Imbas in Gaelic and Awen in Welsh. Their society prized the bards and poets who could channel this divine inspiration into narratives. In almost every society significant narratives have been used to to tell the stories of what that culture valued and how it saw it self. These narratives where a preservation of world view and often handed down orally in many animist societies. In theistic societies who developed written word these narratives where preserved in volumes of text. When this happened the narratives lost their fluidity and where frozen in a particular place and time. However oral narratives remained fluid and changed with time, place, and circumstance.

I suspect that our dreams our not only narratives of our selves being shared with us through our Subliminal Gnosis, but are also narratives being told to us through the Subliminal Gnosis by our life-place, the bio-region we live. Could dreaming be used to collect and receive new narratives being shared with us by our Bio-Regions? And if so, do we not have an obligation to start sharing these narratives?

– Fishbowl

This morning, I was so excited because I dreamed of my bioregion–three times. The first dream signaled an initiation or upheaval of understanding. The second was pretty sobering. The third simply happened to occur in Berkeley. I’ll tell the first two here. To understand the first dream, you’ll need some backlog.

Dream number one, called “The Next Installment of Mo’o”, involves a familiar dream spirit, the alligator or crocodile who has come in previous dreams to initiate me and many others in my dream circle. She comes in many forms. Sometimes a lizard, sometimes a dinosaur, sometimes an alligator or a crocodile. The reason her meaning (at least one of them) is so clear among us in our circle is because we have all done ancestral remembrance work in Maui, which is protected by the Mo’o, a giant lizard goddess. Two of our elders, Apela and Keola, live where the chiefs of Maui once dwelled, right next to the King’s Pond, where the Mo’o still lives and protects the stewards of Maui. She’s a 36-foot black lizard, now called the Kihawahine after a princess who tended the Mo’o and merged with the lizard upon her death. Today people in Maui say that the Kihawahine can assume the form of any lizard-like creature. When we encounter her, we know she’s bringing us a message.

I have had several dreams of the Kihawahine. The last powerful encounter with Her occurred before I went on my ancestral journey to Ireland. Here is a summary of the dream, in which a giant crocodile devours me:

Ravens are flying by. The formations they make are amazing! They are doing it just for fun. One is sitting on another’s back. One is flying with wings down, one with wings outstretched, there’s a group of about nine of them flying. I tell my roommate, who is familiar with Ravens flying just for fun. I tell him he’s not seen anything like this, though, and I describe it. Then I am outside again on the deck. There is one big Raven, and I say, “”It was YOU!”" to it because I recognize it as the one who gave me the medicine in a previous dream. It gets bigger and bigger and lands on the deck with a thud. Then it transforms into a giant raven chick and falls to a lower story of the deck. Then it transforms into a giant black crocodile, HUGE, at least 30 feet. It is going to eat me. I get very afraid. Then I remind myself that I am dreaming, and if I wasn’t dreaming just then, what would I think about myself running from being eaten. I knew I would want myself to have courage, so I allow the croc to eat me. But because of the fear introduced, I can no longer see it. I can only feel as it chomps down on my arm, then stomach, then leg, and then I know I must be completely inside it.

A couple years before this, at the inception of the Indigenous Mind program when I just started learning about traditional ways, I had another terrifying encounter in which a T-Rex wanted to devour me. That time, I ran.

Last night’s dream had similar themes, so I know that big changes are happening. (My Saturn is returning, I’m getting married, I’m embarking on a new career, I’m having children soon. . . I don’t need the lizard to tell me I got changes on the horizon, but I still rely on her to show up as a hallmark of initiation into new life.) Here is the dream, which takes place at the base of the nearby Mt. Tamalpais:

My fiance Jake and I are trying to capture an animal in a lake by Mt. Tamalpais. I’m speaking French to someone about this. Underwater, Jake and I are trying to capture an animal, but the black-gray alligator keeps swimming too close. I have a spear in my hand, which I jab at the gator to get it to back off. We get out of the water as fast as we can. Somehow a small gator gets into mom and dad’s bathroom, where Jake is. I am freaking out and yelling for Jake to watch out. It keeps growing like wild. I pick it up and have it captured in a towel, temporarily. Then it gets into the living room, where my black dog starts barking and chasing after it. I’m so afraid he’ll get eaten. I shout for the dog to get out, and then realize it’s better if the alligator gets out. I point and yell for it to get out and it does. Then an old high school friend comes out in a tee-shirt. She’d been sleeping. I explain that we were having alligator difficulties.

I didn’t handle that one so smoothly, now did I. Sorry, Kihawahine.

Now for the final dream I’ll share, which also happened last night. It’s called The Transaction that Never Happened:

I’m giving Natives money in exchange for living here. I’m handing them a small bundle of money. The sentence comes, “This transaction never happened” (between we who live here and those who once did).

How do I handle this information? What do I do? I will pray and make offerings to start. Advice is welcome, and so are dreams that may link up with any that we’ve shared here in this blog.

Dream on,

Erin

I had a dream;

I was standing next to one of the river along a mountain side where I live. The sky was thick with gray clouds. I watched as they moved across the sun and blocked its light. As the sky was getting darker a flock of Crows flew overhead. It began to rain. Someone called out for me to come inside. I turned around and there was a women I know standing on the porch of a house. I went inside with her and we sat at a table near a large window and watched the rain. Shortly afterworlds, a group of men dressed in black military uniforms marched pass us. Trailing behind them was a coyote.

End of dream.

That morning, as I was driving, a crow was picking at the dead body of a coyote on the side of the road.

– Fishbowl

What 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.