{"id":2217,"date":"2011-04-14T08:30:35","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T12:30:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=2217"},"modified":"2011-04-11T12:39:19","modified_gmt":"2011-04-11T16:39:19","slug":"finding-your-bigger-and-braver-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/04\/finding-your-bigger-and-braver-story.html","title":{"rendered":"Finding your bigger and braver story"},"content":{"rendered":"
\u00a0\"\"<\/a>A story is the shortest route between a human being and the truth.Consciously or unconsciously, our lives are directed by stories. If we are not aware that we are living a story, it’s likely we are stuck inside a narrow and constricted one, a story bound tight around us by other people’s definitions and expectations. When we reach, consciously, for a bigger life story, we put ourselves in touch with tremendous sources of healing, creativity and courage.?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
When we know the bigger story and are burning to tell it and to live it, we are driven to create, and make creative life choices. If you know your life Work, then it is no longer work; every day is a play day.<\/span><\/div>\n
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Knowing the bigger story gives us courage. If you know you are living a deeper drama, it becomes easier to cope with the ups and downs of your everyday dramas.<\/span><\/div>\n
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How do we find that bigger and braver story?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n
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Dreaming, we wake up to aour bigger stories. The moment of awakening may come in a sleep dream, when we get out of our own way and it is easier for us to encounter something beyond the projections of the daily trivial mind and the consensual hallucinations that weave much of our default reality. <\/span><\/div>\n
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The awakening may come in the luminal zone between sleep and waking that the French used to call dorveille,<\/em> which literally means sleep-wake. It may come in a flash of illumination during a walk in nature, perhaps at the moment when the sun rises above the mountains and opens a path across a lake across a lake. <\/span><\/div>\n
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The awakening may be hard-won. It may come at the price of illness, defeat or despair, of events or recurring disappointments that push us down and back so hard we have to re-vision and revalue everything we once held to be givens. We may have to go through a dark night of the soul before the sun shines at midnight, as ancient initiates described the moment of entry into the full experience of the Greater Mysteries.<\/span><\/div>\n
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We don\u2019t really need to go hunting our power; our power is forever hunting us. To awaken to the Guide in our lives, the one who does not judge us and is with us always, we don\u2019t have to cross the desert and fast on the mountaintop unless we have forgotten that the soul of the soul is always near, and is lost to us only when we are lost to him.<\/span><\/div>\n
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\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Take a step beyond the tame lands of the imagination, outside the picket fence of routine habits and expectations. Venture a few steps into the borderlands where your dreams can find you, and you may be seized by your bigger story. When that happens, your life will be different, braver and brighter, I promise you.<\/span><\/div>\n

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The right story can help to heal our bodies. The latest research in biochemistry and neuro-immunology confirms what shamans have known for millennia: the body believes in images, and does not seem to distinguish between a physical act and an imagined event. Give the body a story it can believe in, and the body will respond accordingly.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0A story is the shortest route between a human being and the truth.Consciously or unconsciously, our lives are directed by stories. If we are not aware that we are living a story, it’s likely we are stuck inside a narrow and constricted one, a story bound tight around us by other people’s definitions and expectations.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,25,26,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-active-dreaming","category-conscious-living","category-life-direction","category-story"],"yoast_head":"\nFinding your bigger and braver story - 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\/2011\/04\/finding-your-bigger-and-braver-story.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Finding your bigger and braver story - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u00a0A story is the shortest route between a human being and the truth.Consciously or unconsciously, our lives are directed by stories. 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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\/2217","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=2217"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2225,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217\/revisions\/2225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}