Dream Experience

A Dream Experience is a type of Connection Experience that occurs in a dream while the Physical Unit is asleep. Dream events are marked by their "abnormal" character, and the transmission of useful insight, awareness, and information.

List of Connection Experience Types

Connection Experience > Activation Experience, Aesthetic Experience, Birth Experience, Clearing Experience, Completion Experience, Death Experience, Deep Flow, Diminutive Experience, Dream Experience, Flow Experience, Forced Connection, Healing Experience, Nadir Experience, Peak Experience, Plateau Experience, Push Experience, Rebirth Experience, Restorative Experience, Union Experience, Unity Experience, Zenith Experience

Notes

Psychologist C.G. Jung gleaned many "radical insights" from his many dream experiences. "Day after day we live far beyond the bounds of our consciousness....Without our knowledge, the life of the unconscious is also going on within us ... communicating things to us ... synchronistic phenomenon, premonitions, and dreams.

Harold Johson of the Woodlands Cree notes that the Cree had institutionalized the pursuit of dreams/vision as Connection Events. "In our traditional society, each person is allowed to experience being a spirit in a physical body and to grow their own understanding of what that means. We don’t tell each other how to be. Everyone is free to go up on a high hill or some other isolated place to fast and pray and develop their understanding....the understanding that we receive is uniquely our own. The dreams and the visions we sometimes receive are given to us to help us along our path."

Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota have a special place for dreams/visions. "The word 'dream' is used to describe visions, but visions are more intensely real than ordinary dreams and can come to people when they are awake or asleep. Most male visions granted powers to heal and defend. Female visions enabled healing and skill in the arts."

The Ojibwe have (had) institutionalized the connection dream experience in the selection of "Dreamers," or girls with a special ability to connect in dreams and draw insight.

One morning in the summer of Oona's seventh year there was a piece of charcoal by her morning meal. She knew the time had come when she must take serious thought of life. She must either pick up the charcoal and go into the forest to learn whether she had a special gift, or she could ignore the charcoal and eat her morning meal. This was the custom of the people, to learn which girls would be Dreamers or Medicine People."

The Maori give space for spiritual communication in dreams. In dreams, they may receive warnings, visit dead relatives, identify and assess threats, and so on.

The Maori's arrival in New Zealand is predicated on the dream of an Irakewa whose spirit (wairu) travelled to New Zealand during his sleep and returned with instructions on how to move from Tahiti to New Zealand.

According to Maori tradition, one Irakewa was an influential man of the land known as Tawhiti, some 500 years ago, a land that lies far away towards the rising sun. And, as Irakewa slept, his wairua came from that far land and traversed the great seas to Aotea-roa (New Zealand), and then returned to Tawhiti. When Irakewa awoke, he said to his people:—“There is a land far away which is a good land for you to go to. There is a waterfall there, and a cave on the hill-side, and the rock standing in the river there is myself.” That rock was the kohiwitanga of Irakewa. Then the vessel Matātua came from that land and brought many people to Aotea-roa. And they found the waterfall, the cave, and the rock at Whakatane, in the Bay of Plenty, where they settled and where their descendants have since dwelt, even twenty generations of men.

Wiccan Starhawk provides several anecdotal accounts of significant and meaningful dream events, carrying personal messages.

Footnotes

References