Storytelling - Walking out of our Shadows

Shalini is telling her story http://shaliniwithpoems.gaia.com/blog. She frequents this space and we got to talk about dreams. I have been ‘dream catching' for over 27 years.  In the beginning I was asked to recollect my dreams during my childhood.  I could recollect flying down the mountains and over the peaks. As I grew up or down with a bloated ego I lost my skills to fly, grown heavy bogged down by gravity. Then I picked up the feathers one by one, assembling my wings to fly again. Shalini is a dreamcatcher and a storyteller as well. She gathers feathers and then gets a wing in her dreams. There is lot more to her story that unfolds. We collect dreams in our stretch workshops to show how the day's process spills into the night, to bring to attention of the participants that the process goes on  beyond the hours that we work together,  that the learning continues in sleep and that the unconscious our best friend works for us nonstop. Just listen and learn the language in which it speaks to us. In the process the unconscious becomes conscious and we walk out of our shadows 

Here is one from our collection of dreams. Dan's mother had passed away a few years ago. He wanted an arranged marriage. The father went on the hunt with his son to meet prospective brides and their families. 23 visits ensued and both were becoming desperate. Then the father had a dream of his dead wife holding hands of a beautiful girl and walking towards him against the backdrop of mountains, hills and valleys. Then the 24^th interview took place and the marriage was fixed. She was from the exact locale that was in the dream.  The unconscious can be our best friend, a mirror, which can see the past and the future since it is not boxed into such divisions.

Dreams, Story, Fiction, Myth and Transformation- From the Unconscious to Conscious Evolution

Myths are immortal. We fail to forget them. So are the classics and the epics. To forget them we need to make it part of us, connect, understand and experience them. I saw the Pretty Woman again. We keep reinventing the myths, Pygmalion and his hoary audacious expectation, imagining, intenting and manifesting Galatea out of stone.  When we keep expecting the impossible, the impossible is delivered because we are much more than what we have ever dreamed of. In Ramayana, the Indian epic, Ahalya a beautiful woman is turned to stone and remains a stone for a long long time. When the catalyst appears (Rama) she is transformed to the beautiful woman that she once was. Every seed is a potential tree and every stone a potential statue but all seeds do not become trees and all stones turned to statues. The stone comes to life just as the idea house becomes the house- abstract to concrete. Dare to dream, imagine, intent and then the manifestation happens. The setting needs to be in place.

Aligning with the unknown,  walking out of our shadows and the death of heroes

Our shadows are most faithful to us. They hide behind us, afraid of the sun. There are other shadows, of the past, habits, history, death, the unknown and unknowable. They come bundled in one package, FEAR of the unknown, which kills. We can kill the shadows before they kill us. A hero is one who has conquered his/ her fear. When we don't become our own heroes, we go after the celluloid versions or go after the fakes. There are many ways to do it. One is getting connected to the centre in us, getting anchored to our lighthouse positions and to the centre of everything so that there is nothing outside it. That includes habits, history, the unknown and the unknowable.  Dreams bridge the unknown and the unknowable. The unknown becomes our best friend and we walk out of its shadow.

Each of us has a story to tell. Telling it helps to find our voice and to walk out of the shadows. I once re-collected my thoughts into a journal which I called the Autobiography of a Manager on the lines of The Autobiography of a Yogi by Parmahansa Yogananda. It helped me gather my self over the years and sum up my learning from life. I burnt it because by then the purpose was met and since it is not right to dump my garbage in the market. The journey became lighter because the baggage went with the garbage. I started flying in my dreams once again. I found   that all I wanted to say could be summed up in one page of semiotics, the First Discipline Framework. As facilitators we need to find our voice first to facilitate others to find theirs

What is your story beginning from your earliest memories, thoughts and dreams?

Let us RE-collect our SELF to bring together the scattered remnants  and  connect to the ONE

More:http://wanderer7.gaia.com/blog/2008/3/my_story_ages_0_-_10
http://firstdiscipline.gaia.com/blog/2008/6/the_eagle_s_gift_our_models_of_the_world