{"id":129,"date":"2010-11-02T01:45:15","date_gmt":"2010-11-02T01:45:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/2010\/11\/bear-sightings.html"},"modified":"2011-06-16T22:12:19","modified_gmt":"2011-06-17T02:12:19","slug":"bear-sightings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2010\/11\/bear-sightings.html","title":{"rendered":"Bear sightings"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Thumbnail<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

You stood in the middle of a country road<\/p>\n

to make me stop and listen.<\/p>\n

I got round you and said, when my heart slowed,<\/p>\n

that a bear in the road is just coincidence.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So you came over in the middle of the night<\/p>\n

and stood between me and the moonlight<\/p>\n

and scared me so bad with your size and the surprise<\/p>\n

I jumped out of my skin.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A fox barked in the woods and snickered,<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you thinking of?<\/p>\n

In your body or out of it,<\/p>\n

you are now in the dream of the Bear.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So when you came again, taller than my ceiling,<\/p>\n

I made myself enter your embrace.<\/p>\n

I thought I would die in your arms;<\/p>\n

instead, I grew to your size, and we danced.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You showed me we are joined at the heart<\/p>\n

as an unborn child is joined to its mother<\/p>\n

by a thick umbilical pumping life juice.<\/p>\n

You told me to call on you for healing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

There are days when I still forget you.<\/p>\n

One night, from a hilltop, I saw you on the road<\/p>\n

like a walking mountain, dwarfing the cars.<\/p>\n

I feared you would crush them like matchbox toys.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Fox barked again, and I saw you were the shadow<\/p>\n

thrown by the moonlight from my shoulders.<\/p>\n

I had not known your power with me had grown so big,<\/p>\n

and that I must choose whether it will harm or heal.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I am still remembering you. I remember now<\/p>\n

that I knew you when I was a soldier in leather armor<\/p>\n

fighting under the banner of the Bear Goddess.<\/p>\n

Weary, I went to die in wild country, but you healed me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I remember that when the Real People laid my body<\/p>\n

in the blanket of mother Earth, I found rest<\/p>\n

in the heartwood of an oak until, stirring from my long nap,<\/p>\n

I sought life in a newborn cub that could fit in a pink palm.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

You are healing. I have seen you open yourself<\/p>\n

as a medicine chest, offering all you contain.<\/p>\n

You are protection. I have seen you gather your kind<\/p>\n

to form an unbreakable circle of defense against the dark.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Behind all your forms, you are the Mother.<\/p>\n

You made me find the right song<\/p>\n

to open a door in the roots of the Life Tree<\/p>\n

and receive your blessing in a world beneath the world.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I bring others here, to be nursed and healed<\/p>\n

in your generous lap, and be joined to their dream selves,<\/p>\n

their wonder-children, their powers of healing and creation \u2013<\/p>\n

that fled from them when they fled from you.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

You stood in the middle of a country road to make me stop and listen. I got round you and said, when my heart slowed, that a bear in the road is just coincidence.   So you came over in the middle of the night and stood between me and the moonlight and scared me…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,19,40,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animal-dreams","category-healing-dreams","category-poems","category-shamanic-dreaming"],"yoast_head":"\nBear sightings - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2010\/11\/bear-sightings.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bear sightings - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"You stood in the middle of a country road to make me stop and listen. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2696,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129\/revisions\/2696"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}