I mentioned #ActiveDreaming in my intro and I thought I should explain that a little in case others are looking for an approach to #Dreamwork that goes beyond the psychological approach, or the idea of "dream dictionaries" of canned meanings that always apply in every case.

Forty-plus years ago there was an effort to take dreamwork out of the hands of professionals and put it back into the hands of dreamers. Patricia Garfield and Jeremy Taylor wrote, practiced, organized and advocated for dreamers claiming the power of their dreams and they wrote excellent books on the topic. Before encountering them I had delved deeply into Jane Roberts' (and Seth's) writing on dreams and the special techniques they described. Two decades ago I stumbled upon Robert Moss and his writings about his Active Dreaming approach, which has become one of my best dreamworking toolkits. (He is still out there teaching it, too.)

The 'Active' part comes from Jung's idea of Active Imagination. As I understand it this is a technique for using the powers of imagination to converse with the deeper layers of the self. Moss developed a number of approaches for applying this specifically to dreaming. Most importantly, to my mind, using shamanic journeying techniques to reenter dreams, either one's own dreams or the dreams of another. This enables a powerful direct interaction with the dreamer's own dream images. You can go back to a dream and ask that talking mongoose what is it there for!

All of these teachers share the foundation for journaling dreams consistently, building some kind of relationship with your dreams by acknowledging them and interacting with them, and for group dream sharing as a way to deepen understanding of our dreams. With that kind of basis, all kinds of dreamwork can be done. In my current dream group we not only share dreams and work on what they could be bringing us individually and as a group, but we also work with dream incubation, doing group dream travel to places in space and time we'd find hard to visit in waking life. For instance, we did a bunch of dreams to Oumuamua when it was passing through the solar system, which were very mysterious.

All of this dreamwork leads one into interesting personal research. It has led me to #Synesius of Cyrene, student of the legendary Hypatia. Around the year 405 Synesius wrote a book titled "On Dreams" where he goes into great detail on the nature of dreams. To Synesius we are composed of both Mind and Soul, or Matter and Spirit. The Mind contains images of what is, the Soul of what will be. We also have a third part, the Imagination, where dreams occur or exist, a part that connects the Mind to Soul and thus provides a path to the Divine. "The imagination has the senses available, but not the organs of perception. Thus the imagination may be perceiving something more pure. When sleep makes a connection to the soul this brings us close to our source."

I like that he is saying that Imagination is a larger part of us and is the part that connects us to things outside the material world. It resonates with my experience and seems to be a more accurate picture of the world that just the mind/body dualism running around the world these days. Anyway, I'm always open to discussing dreams.

#Introduction

Hi All, my name is Fran and Spirit Bear Dreaming is the label I use for teaching dreamwork and doing things like writing about the things that interest me and which keep me going.

My earliest memory was of picking a tomato from a huge sunny garden with my mother and her mother. We washed it and I bit into in the summer sunshine food, surrounded by loving ancestors. That's my foundation memory.

I grew up in a little village in the laps of the Italian side of the family in the Pennsylvania foothills. I thought their church was goofy from an early age and I looked for more. In my early teens I discovered the I Ching and was blown away by the fact that divination still worked. Later, I had a transformative initiation experience with a tarot reader and then entered into a world of meaning and a living universe, and I've read tarot ever since. Very poorly at first and for years after that, but I've improved a lot over the decades!

I started out working as an artist and ended up doing art production to make a living. As more tech came into the art world I did more tech work and eventually became a developer. A marriage, a family, a home, I hit midlife and realized the trip was half over and that I better get to those things I'd been putting off! A deep dive followed into dreamwork, qigong/tai chi, and then shamanism and now I do a broad mix of those every day.

I read tarot in a small non-public situation and occasionally teach. I've been involved in tarot publishing, including my own intermediate level book on layouts and things. Dreamwork is an lifetime long, ongoing work of imagination in the greater sense. For nearly two decades I've led dream groups and taught dreamwork with a focus on the shamanic Active Dreaming developed by Robert Moss. For a decade I was part of a local shamanic circle build on our leader's Celtic traditions. We worked with spirits, local and otherwise, traversed a lot of interesting realms and did a lot of psychopomp work and clearing, clearing, clearning!

My second Saturn return of a few years ago was very rough, but I survived it. It clearly informed me that I'm in the last few chapters now and that I need to clear up any remaining messes and see if I have anything good to leave for others. I'm learning about that now and frankly, climbing down off the wheel isn't too bad. Lately I have been mostly writing and studying, figuring out what to let go of or get rid of, and finding little tasks to help pay the bills.

The social media scene has been a bit toxic or boring for a while, but as I checked out Mastodon, this site seemed to be full of people interested in many of the same topics as me. So, I did a tarot reading on joining and it told me this would be a good place, if a bit challenging at times. Last night I got a reading that reminded me that I need to get myself out there beyond the gravity of my default introvert self. So I signed in and here I am.

My main topics of interest are:

#Divination in general, including astrology, which I think I will never master, but it pulls at me. Sun in Aries, Moon in Taurus, Sagittarius rising.

#Tarot and especially #TarotLayouts and interesting technical issues in using and reading tarot. I love shared readings where we collaborate and everyone brings things to it.

#Shamanism of the modern kind, using sonic drivers or the like. My teachers all trace back to the Harner efforts to build a system that modern Westerners can use to get back to the foundations of being human after being long separated from their shamanic ancestors. I don't really know much about traditional people's works and I try not to interfere or appropriate things I should avoid.

#BodyEnergetics since that seems to be a requirement for any spiritual efforts. I've worked a lot with QiGong and Tai Chi, but I am always open to learning more.

#Dreaming and #Dreamwork especially using the techniques developed to get more help from dreaming and finding more practical ways to use it in waking life. #ActiveDreaming is very powerful.

I appreciate you reading this whole thing! Cheers!

Since 2007 a lot of my #Dreamwork has centered around the #ActiveDreaming techniques taught by Robert Moss in books and classes and retreats.

Beyond journaling and sharing dreams the focus is on active engagement with your #Dreaming using approaches built upon Jungian and shamanic techniques for working with personal imagery.

Jung's idea of the transcendent function is part of what seems to be going on here, you open a dialog via dreaming and it becomes a way to make choices and changes.

But stuff by Robert Moss was the most powerful thing I found. In fact, I spent a decade taking his courses and getting certified as an #ActiveDreaming teacher.

Now, it is a fundamental way of living for me. I maintain contact with a lot of other dreamers online and we meet regularly to continue developing our #dreaming

This approach is rooted in dream recall, journaling, group sharing, and rentering dreams via shamanic journeying. Ultimately, we seek to act on our dreaming to improve lives.