“We are hungry for the sacred, for meaning to return to our lives. And this meaning is waiting within us–the sacred is present in the symbols of our dreams. But first we have to create an inner space that is not corrupted by outer desires, purify ourselves and our intention. In the Native American tradition the individual often had to fast and be purified by a sweat lodge in order to be ready to fully experience the inner world. Any dreamwork, but especially spiritual dreamwork, requires a continual attitude of inner attention and a commitment not to use the energy of the inner for personal gain. Dreams can reconnect us with the sacred but only if we learn how to be receptive and respect their symbols and images.”

Robert Moss describes himself as a dream teacher, on a path for which there has been no career track in our culture. He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer’s Book of the Dead, The Three “”Only”” Things,The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole.

When we discover any possible power animal connection, we want to (1) study the natural habits and qualities or the animal (2) track it through folklore, mythology and spiritual traditions (3) learn from the animal itself, by journeying to it, and then with it (4) feed and honor the animal in our bodies and our lives. I want to let one of my great teachers on this subject speak to you on this subject. She is a true “wolf woman”. Born Huron, she was adopted by the Mohawk as a child and became the mother of the Wolf Clan of the Kanienkehaka (People of the Stone, as the Mohawk call themselves in their own language) and a powerful atetshents (dream shaman). She called me from across time….

Bertha Huse, a teenage mill girl, goes out for a walk in the cool morning mist of a New Hampshire fall. This is her habit, but her family worries when she does not return for breakfast and does not show up for work. A few hours later, a full-scale search is in progress. She likes to walk a Shaker bridge across Lake Mascoma, and it is feared she may have fallen into the water and drowned. The mill owner sends for a diver. There is no sign of Bertha above or below water.

On Wednesday, July 23rd, Robert will present a FREE teleseminar called: “The Power of Active Dreaming: How to Use Your Dreamtime for Healing & Transformation”. Many think of dreams as barely remembered, passive nocturnal entertainment. But around the world, shamans have pioneered a more powerful, valuable and fascinating way to approach dreaming: as a time for transformation, healing and getting guidance from higher levels of reality. In dreaming, our souls speak to us and we open portals to multidimensional reality.

Lick the Sky and Rule China: Dreams and Shamans in Imperial Chinese History From the Robert Moss Blog at www.mossdreams.com The imperial future of a dowager empress of ancient China was foreshadowed by a dream in which she rose to the sky and drank from it. The crucial role of dreams and shamanic experience in imperial China is another chapter in the history we weren’t taught in school…

Robert Moss writes, “True shamans are dreamers. They are typically called to their vocation in dreams, and dreaming strong — traveling in lucid dreams to help souls find their way, to diagnose and treat illness, and to scout out the future — is the core of their practice. Anyone who dreams, as the Kawahiv, an Amazonian dreaming people say, is ‘a little bit shaman’, so we stand on the brink of claiming this power when we remember our dreams and start to develop the practice of working with dreams and traveling with intention into the dreamspace.”

“…the easiest way to become a lucid or conscious dreamer is to spend more time in the twilight zone between waking and sleep, or between sleep and waking. The learned name for images that come in this liminal state is hypnagogia It is a state of relaxed attention in which it is possible to embark on grand adventures, make visits or receive visitations and forge creative connections that are elusive to the everyday mind. If you can develop the ability to enter and remain in a state of relaxed, free-flowing awareness before or after sleep, images will come.”

Here’s an open secret about dreaming. It’s not fundamentally about sleeping. It’s really about waking up. In ancient Egypt, the word for dream, rswt, meant an “awakening.” Those Egyptians were onto something. For starters, dreams wake us up to what is going on inside our bodies and what we need to do to stay well or get well. Mary Agnes, a registered nurse in Baltimore, dreamed she traveled inside her body and found it was like a boiler room in danger of blowing up. Waking, she realized she had been given a tour of her digestive system. She went to a doctor and found she had an ulcer that needed treatment.