Tag: Sacred Contract

Dreaming Awake in the Great Turning

The Great Turning is described by Eco-psychologist Joanna Macy, as the shift from an industrial growth society to a life sustaining society. There are multiple ways this shift is happening around us as a society, and within each individual, in the midst of undergoing social change and transformation.  Moving into the Great Turning, we encounter stages of Holding, policies, direct actions and legal actions, which help stem the tide of destructive policies and actions harmful to life systems. The second is Structural Change, where we can envision and create new systems. A transformation from Patriarchal systems of “power over” to more Matrifocal systems of “power with”, rooted in sustainability practices, equality, community, and the web of life. The Third focus is Consciousness Shifting, which includes an awareness that we are all in this together, there is no separation (Brown/Macy pg. 5-6). We are all part of this Great Turning, and dreams connect us to the web of collective consciousness, and continue to awaken and inform my actions, of what is mine to do.

In the midst of the changes surrounding us, grief and healing are part of transformation. It is for me a process of honoring and grieving what has been lost, to be able to more fully embody a vision of the future. In 2017, my dear friend Baba Ifayomi was tragically murdered in Dallas, Texas. An African American Civil Rights Leader, initiated as a West African Yoruba Priest, he and I stood shoulder to shoulder many times protesting on the streets, or playing drums and singing sacred songs, or honoring the ancestors with prayers. The night after attending his “Homegoing” Ceremony, Baba appeared in my dream. 

Valley Reed with Civil Rights Activists, Charles Hillman and Olinka Green at Baba Ifayomi’s “Homegoing” Ceremony 

Photo by Andrew Buckley/Special Contributor  Dallas Morning News

Sacred Contract 

I held in my hands a contract, which read at the top, “Civil Rights”. Baba approached and took the contract from my hands. He said, “You don’t have to do this anymore” and gave instead another contract, which read at the top, “Healer”. This dream set my focus more clearly, on what direction I must take to honor my Sacred Contract. I had the sense that my previous contract, was the completion of an ancestral contract, started generations ago, by an abolitionist ancestor whose home was part of the underground railroad. 

The Healing path has shown itself to me in many ways over my life, for my own healing and that of others. The following dream, showed me a deeper realization for my path as a dreamer and healer. 

The Dream World is the Real World

I am in the hypnagogic zone, or the twilight zone as I like to call it, I see a horse very near to me, so close I could touch it, and hear it breathing as we stood together under the night sky. 

I see it’s bushy sorrel colored Winter coat. I am amazed how real this conscious dreaming experience is, and say to myself, the dream world IS the Real World! I know I have said this many times to students as a Dream Teacher. This time seems different, I am getting this deeper awareness and experience of what this means. Now I am standing before the cave of the Goddess, and two frog headed nymphs with luminous blue faces guard the entrance. They hold either end of a Turkish looking sword, between them. They tell me, “Pick up the sword of truth to gain entrance to the cave of the Goddess”. I hear an inward voice ask, “Still the real world”?  I respond, “Yes!”  I pick up the sword of Truth to enter deeper into the wisdom of the Goddess. Now I am walking through a forest hugged meadow along a narrow dirt footpath. I see at my feet, an egg shaped stone in the middle of the path. I pick it up and hold it in my left hand, and find it fits perfectly in the palm of my hand. It is covered with moss, and has the seal of the Goddess embedded on its surface. It holds the ancient powers of the Goddess. I now bring my awareness inside the stone, where a golden light streams into the cracks and crevices of this ancient universe. I hear the voice of the Goddess speaking, “You must open up more, and stop being so guarded, let go of your fears.”  I can feel all the places where I have become guarded, from pains of past betrayals. I open myself completely to the Goddess, and allow her golden light to permeate all the cracks and crevices inside my being. I have stepped more deeply onto the path of wisdom and ancient truth of the Goddess.

  “Oweynagat” entrance to the Otherworld, sacred to the Celtic Goddess Morrigan Photo Credit: Valley Reed County Rosscommon, Ireland 2019

Healing the Stories Held in the Land 

I am in an adobe house located in New Mexico, I am standing in the living room, and a beautiful blue crane flies in and hovers just in front of me, and changes into a native grandmother. She asks, “Will you help heal the stories held in the land ? ”  I look at her directly, and see the look in her eyes, and reply, “Yes, I will”. I then question myself inwardly, do I know how to do such a thing? As if hearing my thoughts, the grandmother responds, “You already know how to do this, because you know how to listen”. 

The Blue Crane is the National Bird of South Africa

I took council from this dream, and when I was asked to organize an International Women’s Summit on Nonkilling Cultures, held in Sarajevo, Bosnia in June of 2019, the answer was…Yes, I will. You see, I had been dreaming also of ancient Slavic bird Goddesses and grandmothers. My presentation in Bosnia, was on Healing the Stories Held in the Land, where I shared a dream of collective soul recovery on sacred lands in a place impacted by genocide, located in the Altai Mountains of Kyrgyzstan. I returned to Bosnia in 2025, at the Kolo Memory in Motion Women’s Summit I helped organize, and taught a workshop on healing the stories of the land for transgenerational trauma. I was also invited to teach a retreat in Ireland in 2019, where I offered, “Dreaming with the Speaking Land and Entering the Otherworld”,  this year I am teaching a retreat in Georgia on Earth Dreams, and how are always dreaming, and the Earth Dreams us into being, we are part of her Dream.

“We are all of us, dreamed into being. For the Earth lives in a dream”. (Pg. 373, Buhner) 

Shifting Energies

Much is shifting in the Great Turning, including the places on the Earth where sacred vortexes of energies are held. One evening during an intense lightning storm, I was going to bed and noticed a massive lightning storm outside my window. I went on and slipped into bed, tired from my day, and as I closed my eyes, I noticed a presence trying to reach out to me from inside the storm. I was in no mood to open myself to some unknown energy, and declined to respond, kind of like not answering your cell phone, when a call comes in marked unknown.  

I suddenly found myself lucid, inside a massive thunderhead, standing before a vortex of blue lightning. A portal through which a dream visitor was about to step through. The famous 19th century Inventor, Nikola Tesla  (who was born during a lightning storm) arrived to tell me,  “The sacred sites on the planet are changing, and this storm is a transfer of energy, from those sacred sites to Dallas.”  

Blue Lightning – Getty Images

I understood this to be a good thing, and much needed in a place like Dallas, which is known worldwide as the place of the Kennedy assassination, and perhaps a lessor known history as having the largest KKK chapter in the world in 1920.

This transfer of energy from sacred sites around the world, seemed an important way to shift consciousness. I then opened myself fully to the energy in this conscious dream state, and was filled with a blue light of sacred energy, which streamed through my crown chakra and down through the rest of my body. I have an inkling, I am now a receptacle of this sacred energy, and fully open to the shifting energies on the planet. 

When I wrote this essay to present as part of a Dream conference, I wrote this last line, in a coffee shop in Dallas, the electricity has just blown out for no apparent reason, on the entire block. I guess I need to get the hang of this better, or perhaps my dream Tesla, is having a bit of fun with me, he was known to blow out the circuits of entire communities with his experiments! (PBS News Hour)

 

This tesla coil snuffed out the power in Colorado Springs when this photo was taken. 

Photo by Dickenson V. Alley, photographer at the Century Magazines via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Bibliography

Brown Molly; Macy, Joanna. “To Choose Life.”The Work that Reconnects, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, B.C. Canada, 2014, pg. 5-6, Kindle edition.

Buhner, Stephen Harrod; “Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm.” Beyond the Doors of Perception into the Dreaming Earth, Bear and Company’ Rochester Vermont, 2014, pg. 373.

“8 things you didn’t know about Nikola Tesla” https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/5-things-you-didnt-know-about-nikola-tesla 

 

The Ever Flowing Spring

“You will be like a well watered garden, like an ever flowing spring.”  Isaiah 58:11

I dream I have found the location of a sacred spring, there is a man and a buffalo there who are guardians of the spring. They have a story to tell about the water, and the sacredness of this place and it’s importance. It is not being used currently, for what it’s purpose was designed. It is located on private farm land and the water is being pumped and used to water the fields. This sacred place and the healing waters there, are meant to be used as a place of initiation and healing, not for commercial profit.

 

GrizzlyBearAdamsThe man has reddish dark hair, mustache and beard and perhaps English or Scottish ancestry. He was a hunter or trapper in the area, and now his spirit remains as guardian of this sacred spring. He is a big, burly looking mountain man, and it could also be a bear with him, Yes a Grizzly. I see the Grizzly who stands behind the man at a safe distance away. She stands on her hind legs with her shabby, sun drenched, blonde fur. She growls fiercely toward me, protecting her man. I recall looking at a trail map which had grizzly bear indicators for the trails they may frequent. I was looking at the trail map to see which trails I may want to follow. I am aware of the danger, but not afraid of the Bear, in fact in looking at the map, I see several trails grizzlies may frequent that I may be willing to go down. I know the area on the map where I am looking is near the Sierra Nevada Mountains of N. California and Nevada and perhaps further up into Montana. In researching this grizzly guardian, I discover he is in fact, the mountain man & trapper John Grizzly Adams, who lived in this area during the 1849 gold rush.

He lived in the wild and trapped and trained a number of Grizzly Bears over the years. One of his first was a she bear he trapped and trained who would follow him around just as I saw in my dream. Adams was attacked by a Grizzly in 1855,’ but saved by one of his Grizzly Bears who fought in his defense. He died 5 years later after the attack, never fully recovering. It would make sense that he would return to the places in the wild he loved as a guardian. It appears he would like to tell more of his story, or perhaps he is unhappy with how he has been portrayed.

I understand the spring and it’s purpose is connected with the deep well of soul, and it’s connection to ever flowing emotion and creativity. There are stories in this spring that want to be told, but before having access to them, I must listen to and tell the story of the guardian of this sacred place. I am impatient with him and want to bypass this process. I want to go around him and go deeper, I feel I have already heard the story of the gatekeeper and understand him, but I am here for a different purpose, the purpose for which this spring was created. Each time I try to go deeper into the sacred spring, I encounter the guardian, and he begins to tell me the story of this spring. In this telling, I am also paying attention to the buffalo and the story it has to tell me. The tragedy of the loss of the abundance of the buffalo, because of the greed of man. The story of how this affected the native people and how much they relied on the buffalo for not only food, but clothing and shelter. The Buffalo was at one time as numerous on the plains as the waves on the ocean, and as deeply honored in sacred ceremony and myth, as an ever flowing spring. The Indigenous People took care to honor the Buffalo and when hunted, they used every part of this sacred animal. They never imagined that it could become extinct and their way of life with it, because of the greed, guns and colonization by the white man.

Buffalo_skulls

I try once again to connect on a deeper level with the ever flowing spring, and again I meet the guardian of the spring who has his story to tell. He is focused on the physical water and location of the sacred place and the story surrounding it. The need to protect the environment and sacred places upon the earth, which are being used up for temporary financial gain. I want to go deeper into the healing power of the spring and encounter the soul energy that resides there. It is the soul energy of the earth, and holds great healing power. I want to delve in deeper with this ever flowing energy of soul and connect my life with it, and realign with my own inner vast resources of the ever flowing spring. It is restorative, and creative and from it stories spring forth, bubbling up from the depths of soul, swirling through time and into the present.

Spinning-VortexFinally, after the third hearing of the stories of the gatekeeper, I am able to delve deeper into the ever flowing spring. I enter the movement and see the spiraling flow of the water, it takes me ever deeper to the source of the spring. I am aware that this inner reality is the much sought after discovery of the elixir of life, or the fountain of youth, the alchemists spoke of in myth and legend. I have only just stepped into this flow of these sacred waters, and I know they will carry me ever deeper. I am blessed by these waters in dreaming on the cusp of a new year.

My prayer is to honor the earth dream and protect the sacred, within and without. May the ever flowing spring reveal my sacred purpose and bigger story.

For more information on sacred sites at risk, all around the earth please visit – www.sacredland.org