Greetings, dear Family and Friends,
How are you today? I do hope you had a relaxing time over the Festive Season. It is such a lovely time of year to celebrate and be with your family and friends. This experience of relationship is wonderfully nourishing to our wellbeing.
After the fullness of this year, we also need time to be still, go inwards, and revitalise ourselves. Like the image below, we need to let the brilliance and wisdom of the winter Light guide us into our New Year. This Winter Dreaming series of newsletters offer you gentle guidance to honour and make the most of your inner seasonal cycle.
We are now in week four of this Winter Dreaming Series.
In our first week, we listened for a question that would guide this personal exploration time. Then in week two, we reviewed this year to get a sense of what unfolded for us. We travelled through each month, revealing the highlights and lowlights of our experiences. Then we translated our insights into a beautiful image that captured our remembering. In week three, we did a little housekeeping. We discerned what we wished to give away and decided what we would carry forward into next year.
In this next part of our journey, we will enter the cave of our inner awareness to dream into 2022. All the preparations over the last few weeks bring us to the point of readiness for this beautiful experience of entering the Dreaming Time. Our dreaming sets in motion a powerful vortex of desire out into the Universe, saying ‘I am here’ and ‘I am open to receive.’
'Anyone who thinks that gardening begins in the spring and ends in the fall is missing the best part of the whole year. For gardening begins in January with the dream.'
~Josephine Nuese
The Beauty of Dreaming
The cave is a place of stillness, spaciousness, and silence to touch into the wishes for next year that are stirring within us. In the safety and darkness of the cave, we will open a powerful dreaming space where we will sense into our wishes for 2022. I love the word wishes as it captures the intensity of connecting with our deepest heart's desire. It also reminds us of the gentleness needed to nurture such wishes into their fullness.
The metaphor this week is to see these wishes as Dreaming Seeds. Like the seeds within the earth, our wishes are being nourished in preparation for the new season coming. The 'dreaming seeds' hold all the possibilities and potential for our life. They are waiting for us in our inner cave.
Below are suggestions on preparing for and entering your inner cave to dream.
Preparation for your Dreaming Time
Pick a spot you love, set it up with a blanket and cushions to be comfortable,
Make sure you are warm and will not be disturbed for a while,
Have your notebook and pen by your side so you can journal when you come out of the cave.
Entering the Dreaming Cave
Turn out the lights and put on an eye mask if you wish,
Settle back into your cosy space,
Clear your mind as best you can by letting ‘distracting’ thoughts float away,
Try not to grapple with distracting thoughts; just breathe into them,
When you feel settled, feel yourself expanding, opening, and opening………….,
There will be a point where you feel ready to touch into your dreaming time,
Invite insights to come to you about your wishes for 2022,
Don’t feel that you have to grasp anything, relax, and relax...
You may fall asleep, and this is fine; you will still be dreaming.
Completion
When you feel ready slowly come back,
Feel free to write in a free-flowing manner in your notebook,
Keep going until there is nothing left to write,
Don’t review your notes. Just let them ‘be’ for a while,
Have as many rounds of dreaming time during the week as you have space for,
When you are complete with this time of Dreaming, you can begin to look for themes that you will craft into intentions for 2022 —more on this next week.
Wishing you a powerful time. I love this dreaming time, and with a smile, I say:
‘Prepare to be surprised at the wishes that are revealed to you’.
You are a very special manifestation of creation, no one else has your dreams, and your contribution to the wellbeing of Life is so needed in these challenging times.
As always, I would love to hear from you.
Ann
Thank you for this invitation, Ann, and the very lovely words at the end of your letter. The other night, I entered my dreaming cave (a little early). I put a crackling fire video on the tv and settled back under blankets with my eyes closed. Sweet Larry snuck in and lit some Palo Santo and waved the smoke my way to enhance my faux fire experience! This is love! Looking forward to more dreaming this week!
Dearest Ann, I am so grateful to journey into the concept of the Dreaming Cave, and be able to explore the safety, beauty and depth it yields to each of us. Thank you fir this amazing gift! Happiest year ahead to you—May it bring you all the gifts of life and adventures and new doorways! xxo Dirje