A major part of my shamanic journey has been dreaming myself up. Many people find dream work a potent part of their spiritual practice.

In my dream two nights ago, I was at a large dinner party event. Part way through the event a few of the group members, including myself, began to channel some information from Spirit realm of the nearby woods. We discussed some of our findings at dinner, which prompted more of the group to notice and share their findings too. After spending some time with the group, I eventually packed up my things and drove to a beautiful place on Lake Superior. Suddenly, I noticed my friend’s dog on the road. He was barking and I knew something was wrong. I immediately saw a large bear just passed him, charging toward the lake where I was standing. I quickly grabbed my cat and climbed into a tree, but once I got in the tree I realized I didn’t know where my dog was. Panicking, I looked around and saw him tied up nearby. Shit. I had to climb down and somehow scare the bear off. I jumped down to my dog and stood up calmly and confidently. I began to yell and scream at the bear. I looked it in the face, connecting to its energy, eventually standing it down. I awoke after hollering for some time to further ward it off and in celebration.

Slowly, I am beginning to speak my truth from a deeper place in my waking life. It seems the more I do this, the thinner the veil gets between the worlds. For years, one of my repetitive nightmares was finding myself in a situation where I need to scream, but there is no sound. You can imagine my excitement when during my dream, the simple sound of my voice was enough to alter a bear attack, saving myself and my loved ones. I’ve been working on this edge for a long time. What is so beautiful is this IS how I feel in ordinary life AND the more self-assured I am of it in waking life, the more it is true in my dream life. At the same time, when I see the patterns actually appear in my dreams, it feels as real as it gets. When something you do makes its way into your subconscious, patterns are actually changing. The re-programming is working. The two realities inform each other simultaneously and in a way that I desire. That feels pretty damn inspiring.

One of the most direct ways to cross into the dream world consciously is through intention and repetition. What you focus on during the day, you also focus on during your dreams.

I’m coming up on almost a year saying out loud, daily, I am a healer. After a few months of this affirmation, I began to feel it more in my body AND it began to show up more in my dreams too.

I’ve been doing healing work for years, but it is only in the last year, really, that I have gotten comfortable using that title. The discomfort for me was about humility and the stereotypes I had about healers. I was afraid if I claimed it, that people would think I thought I had some special power that others did not possess. I thought that it would look like I wanted attention or was doing it just for the money. I thought saying that I was a healer somehow made it shallow. That speaking who I am is wrong.

While some people misuse the title, this is true for almost any title. Wouldn’t I still call myself a lawyer (if I was one), even if some lawyers are egotistical or greedy? It’s funny it took me so long to be okay with calling myself what I am, a healer. There is more at play here than worrying about what others think. On a deeper level, I had and have a lot of fear around meeting the world as who I really am. As I work away on this edge and take steps towards truth, I am beginning to see dream me do the same. Her confidence encourages me to keep going even when I have to summon a lot of courage to move through my fears. My strength is showing her that even in my dreams, I can be the truest form of myself. I am safest when I am me and I am already safe.