Kheper

Dreaming - How to access Sacred Sites

Everyone can do it. Its about learning to trust your body’s feelings and your mind’s reaction to a situation.

No, that’s wrong. Dreaming is not about how you feel and how your mind reacts, its exactly the opposite.

To dream you must not let your mind react. You need to accept the feelings that come towards you without any value judgements, without feeling good or bad about what comes. To become one with a piece of music, a sunset, a painting means to reserve judgement. Say, “The sun hurts my eyes” is to loose the magic of the moment.

So to Dream you have to love, and to love blindly. To accept without doubt or question. To have no reaction to a situation. To let the place and the time be “me”.

It sounds like sophisticated Buddhist meditation and it is. But dreaming doesn’t seek the void where all is one and we realise that we are a part of the all. Its aim is much simpler, its the same aim as in village Buddhism – to become one with the nature spirits, the angels and the devas of the location. These are simple achievements, within the daily reach of children … and within yours with only a little effort.

So, the first rule – as we have seen – is non involvement. Forget value judgements, children don’t make value judgements they simply experience.

The second rule is – shut up. There is no way you will hear the whisper of a bird’s wings if your mind is running thoughts. You need a quiet gap to get input. It need only be a tiny gap, perhaps born from boredom, but a gap you must have. The traditional way to do this is focus on something – a candle flame, a mantra or a holy statue. In dreaming one focuses on place, one blends into place.

At this point the reason for non involvement becomes clear … but hold it, blending into a place is involvement … so these directions are contradictory! No, is about non involvement of our feelings. We will never sense the feelings of place if we cover our acceptance of a place with preconceptions.

So shut off your feeling valve and just let the feelings of place arrive, accept them without thought, just let them be. Once firmly established you can begin to analyse your body’s and your mind’s feelings. If you are a talker you may use words in your description. Artists translate their feelings of place into paintings, sculpture, music, dance, poetry or theatre. You may prefer words, I do.

Most dreamers see pictures. Which is why it is called ‘Dreaming’. This is particularly true in the Australian bush where the spirits, the Devas, the thoughts of the countryside have been in relationship with Aboriginal people for thousands of years. Don’t expect verbal out pourings from the Australian landscape; you may find them at a church meeting in Canberra but not in the bush.

Well, that’s it. You are ready to dream Canberra. You will be surprised at what you can find hidden in a place or even a photograph. Use the photos and sketches in the book to practice your dreaming. Soon you will be better at it than you now believe possible. Don’t be frightened by the strength of your results. Dreaming is safe and amazing, it can bring joy and explains the world without the need for words.