{"id":2702,"date":"2011-06-17T01:35:04","date_gmt":"2011-06-17T05:35:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=2702"},"modified":"2011-06-17T01:37:00","modified_gmt":"2011-06-17T05:37:00","slug":"singing-the-soul-back-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/06\/singing-the-soul-back-home.html","title":{"rendered":"Singing the soul back home"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Soul loss, says shamanic teacher Sandra Ingerman, is a survival mechanism. When the pain of life gets too much, we let part of ourselves slip away. If you are about to have a head-on collision, she likes to say, the last place you want to be is in your body.<\/p>\n

The problem is that the part of soul that goes away may take a very long time in returning. You may need a shaman to help you find it and bring it back to you. Or a poet. In some shamanic traditions, the healer sings the song back home. I have dreamed of an ancient Celtic shaman in a feathered cloak, singing under a tree. As he sings, souls stir like birds waking and spread their wings in the branches, until the one he is seeking flutters down into his waiting hand.<\/p>\n

In order to become shamans of our own souls, we want songs that will call back soul and make it want to stay in the body. On our way to discovering our own songs, we can be roused and inspired by the soul songs of others. We don’t want to forget that Western literature – and popular music – has many to offer.<\/p>\n

I was looking again tonight at a lines in a poem by Federico Garcia Lorca that are lovely enough, even in translation, to stir the heart of the seeker, and call help from spiritual powers, and reach beyond the world to the soul he is seeking. The poem, written in 1919, is the Balada de la Placeta, or Ballad of the Little Plaza.<\/p>\n

The key passage, in Spanish, flows as follows:<\/p>\n

Se ha llenado de luces
\nmi coraz\u00f3n de seda,
\nde campanas perdidas,
\nde lirios y de abejas,
\ny yo me ir\u00e9 muy lejos,
\nm\u00e1s all\u00e1 de esas sierras,
\nm\u00e1s all\u00e1 de los mares,
\ncerca de las estrellas,
\npara pedirle a Cristo
\nSe\u00f1or que me devuelva
\nmi alma antigua de ni\u00f1o,
\nmadura de leyendas,
\ncon el gorro de plumas
\ny el sable de madera.<\/p>\n

In translation:<\/p>\n

My heart of silk
\nis filled with lights
\nwith lost bells,
\nwith lilies and bees,
\nand I will go very far,
\nbeyond these hills,
\nbeyond the seas,
\nnear to the stars,
\nto plead with Christ:
\nLord, may I be given back
\nthe child soul I once had,
\nripe with stories,
\nin his feathered cap
\nwith his wooden sword.<\/p>\n

Notice the poet asks for help, by a name he believes in. Something else to remember as we seek to become whole. There are powers that support our deeper life, and we want to call on them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soul loss, says shamanic teacher Sandra Ingerman, is a survival mechanism. When the pain of life gets too much, we let part of ourselves slip away. If you are about to have a head-on collision, she likes to say, the last place you want to be is in your body. The problem is that the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,40,42,43,32],"tags":[307,306,221,308,309,269],"class_list":["post-2702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-healing","category-poems","category-shamanism","category-soul","category-soul-recovery","tag-ballad-of-the-little-plaza","tag-federico-garcia-lorca","tag-sandra-ingerman","tag-singing-the-soul-back-home","tag-soul-loss","tag-soul-retrieval"],"yoast_head":"\nSinging the soul back home - 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\/06\/singing-the-soul-back-home.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Singing the soul back home - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Soul loss, says shamanic teacher Sandra Ingerman, is a survival mechanism. 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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\/2702","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=2702"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2705,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2702\/revisions\/2705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}