It's All in Your Dreams
The Great Spirit has many ways of communicating with the human being…through dreams, imagination, intuition, inspiration, or a hunch. We need to pay attention to our dreams. Don’t cast them off as being silly or useless. Be respectful to our dreams and feelings.
~White Bison-Elder
Most people don’t associate spiders and spider webs with the notion of having sweet dreams…unless you are from the Ojibwa Nation. The Ojibwa (a Native American tribe) are the ones who first created the “Dream Catcher.” Admit it, if you haven’t bought one for yourself, I bet that you’ve gifted one to someone else, or received one as a gift from a friend.
According to the Ojibwa, spiders carry “dream medicine” and if we honor them and their story our dreams will be blessed. You’ll think twice about smashing a spider next time you see one, won’t you?!?
According to tradition, a Dream Catcher is meant to hang above the bed of a sleeping person and protect them from bad dreams. The good dreams filter through the web, sliding down the feathers, into the mind of the dreamer. Meanwhile, the bad dreams get caught in the net, and dissolve in the light of day.
There are, however, other legends that say the nightmares pass through the holes and out the window, while the good dreams are caught in the web, then slide down the feathers to the dreamer. This is the perspective I personally resonate with. I don’t like the idea of anything unpleasant staying stuck, even if it is just until the light of day. I’d prefer it to filter through, moving on with its business as quickly and gracefully as possible.
Like spiders that spin webs to catch their food, our dreams are soul food that could fly right by us if we don’t build a proper net with which to catch them. Recalling dreams is like keeping a spider web intact. If you move from horizontal to vertical too quickly you will break the spider web and your fine thread to the dream world will disappear.
However if your movements are slow, deliberate, and mindful as you transition from asleep to awake, then the nearly imperceptible spider’s web will stick to you, and become nearly impossible to remove from your skin.
What is the most recent dream you’ve successfully caught?
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Excerpted from It’s All In Your Dreams (Conari Press). Once you buy your copy, click here to receive $4,000 worth of free* dreamy gifts throughout the month of May.
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Join the conversation! Post your dream on Dreams Cloud, then tweet it using #DreamChallenge.
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