{"id":3205,"date":"2011-10-28T04:57:01","date_gmt":"2011-10-28T08:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=3205"},"modified":"2011-10-26T05:10:50","modified_gmt":"2011-10-26T09:10:50","slug":"the-gods-love-to-travel-in-disguise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/10\/the-gods-love-to-travel-in-disguise.html","title":{"rendered":"The gods love to travel in disguise"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Gods at the house of Philemon and Baucis, by C.E. Brock (1870-1938)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Greeks say the gods love to travel in disguise. Zeus and Hermes once appeared as dusty travelers in a village where no one would welcome them except an elderly couple named Philemon and Baucis, who realized their guests were no ordinary beings when a pitcher of wine remained full however much they drank. In Greek folk tradition, it\u2019s good policy to be nice to strangers, and to pay attention to what they say, because you never know who is traveling behind their masks.<\/p>\n

On a visit to England, I landed at Heathrow on a red-eye flight, exhausted and burdened with financial worries. I was carrying too much baggage and had to wrestle an oversize suitcase down the steps to the Underground.<\/p>\n

As I collapsed onto a seat on the train, a roly-poly man, bearded like Santa Claus, winked <\/em>at me from the seat opposite. He said with a broad grin, \u201cThe Buddha says \u2014 walk on the bridge, don\u2019t build on it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The words slapped me in the face. They stung me awake. They were exactly what I needed to hear. Caught up in my immediate worries, stressed out and overtired, I had been forgetting one of the secrets of living the Incredible Journey: it\u2019s the journey, not the destination, that counts.<\/p>\n

The stranger on the London Tube was an example of how we play everyday angels \u2014 even gods in disguise \u2014 for each other. There is a provocative Buddhist text on this theme entitled Entry into the Realm of Reality<\/em> (in the Thomas Cleary translation).<\/em> It describes how authentic spiritual teachers \u2014 even the greatest who walk this earth \u2014 can appear in any guise, as an exotic dancer or as a monk, as a panhandler or a king, as a scholar or a warrior.<\/p>\n

We are most likely to run into them when we are in motion, especially when we are crossing a border into unfamiliar territory, when strong emotions are in play, and when we are facing the greatest challenges. They take the forms we can perceive and receive.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For more on this theme, please see The Three “Only” Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence and Imagination<\/em> <\/a>by Robert Moss. Published by New World Library.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Greeks say the gods love to travel in disguise. Zeus and Hermes once appeared as dusty travelers in a village where no one would welcome them except an elderly couple named Philemon and Baucis, who realized their guests were no ordinary beings when a pitcher of wine remained full however much they drank. In…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,25,26,36,8],"tags":[713,714,715,711,712],"class_list":["post-3205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-coincidence","category-conscious-living","category-life-direction","category-myth","category-synchronicity","tag-baucis","tag-chance-encounters","tag-gods-in-disguise","tag-hermes","tag-philemon"],"yoast_head":"\nThe gods love to travel in disguise - 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\/10\/the-gods-love-to-travel-in-disguise.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The gods love to travel in disguise - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Greeks say the gods love to travel in disguise. 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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\/3205","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=3205"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3458,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205\/revisions\/3458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}