We are all familiar with the language of dreams – whether day dreaming of a different present or captured by the magic of our night time visitations – we often seek answers to the dilemmas, hopes and fears that accompany our waking states. Shamanic dreaming is different. In ceremony, we use our intentions to go deep into a trance-like or altered state, beyond our everyday world, to a different reality where we meet our teachers, learn to hear our ancestors’ dreams and find an understanding of our place, time and purpose.
This altered state of consciousness is induced in various ways including through dance, chanting, sensory deprivation and the use of teacher plants. We use a number of instruments, usually the monotonous beat of a drum, to help enable this altered state and assist the dreamer to journey into other realms and encounter spirit guides, power animals and symbolic images which help in understanding, healing and the gaining of wisdom. Some have measured the differences in our brain waves, others have described the intense lucidity and deep knowing that accompanies our entering other realms. However we describe these experiences, we are not in the business of trying to prove anything, we simply state that in using dreaming in initiation, ceremony and ritual we experience a world that is often beyond words, and we meet our greatest teachers there.
Dreaming is the beginning of everything and everything has a Dreaming: the Four Elements of air, fire, earth and water; animals; trees; the land, the seas and, of course, ourselves. We invite you to share in our Dreaming, whilst always remembering that your Dream is yours and yours alone.
