{"id":3845,"date":"2011-12-20T00:01:42","date_gmt":"2011-12-20T05:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=3845"},"modified":"2011-12-21T02:28:13","modified_gmt":"2011-12-21T07:28:13","slug":"why-we-dream-2-a-southwestern-version","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/12\/why-we-dream-2-a-southwestern-version.html","title":{"rendered":"Why we dream #2: A Southwestern version"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
mask of Naay\u00e9\u00e9' Neizgh\u00e1n\u00ed, one of the Hero Twins<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We dream to wake up to our larger Self: to the memory of who we are and what we are meant to become.<\/p>\n

There is a wonderful Dine (Navajo) teaching story about this. \u00a0In the Fourth World, the Hero Twins traveled the earth slaying monsters. \u00a0They killed Big Giant, and Horned Monster, and the demons of old age and cold and poverty.<\/p>\n

When they attacked the demon of Fatigue, he begged them, “Don’t kill me!\u00a0 If you kill me, people won’t get tired.\u00a0 And if they don’t get tired, they won’t sleep.\u00a0 And if they don’t sleep, they won’t dream.\u00a0 And if they don’t dream, how will they stay in touch with the spiritual world?”<\/p>\n

So the Hero Twins let Fatigue live — so people would sleep, and dream, and return in dreams to the deeper dimensions of reality where the events of our waking lives have their source.<\/p>\n

This simple story contains a better answer to the question, “Why do we dream?” than any speculation you are likely to read about brain processing. \u00a0 Dreams are both the language of the soul and experiences of the soul.\u00a0 If we did not dream, we would be soul-gone, something less than human.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We dream to wake up to our larger Self: to the memory of who we are and what we are meant to become. There is a wonderful Dine (Navajo) teaching story about this. \u00a0In the Fourth World, the Hero Twins traveled the earth slaying monsters. \u00a0They killed Big Giant, and Horned Monster, and the demons…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[78,10,35,5,20,12,36],"tags":[217,865,864,216],"class_list":["post-3845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ancestral-traditions","category-conscious-dreaming","category-dreaming-in-religion","category-dreams","category-history-of-dreaming","category-meaning-of-dreams","category-myth","tag-dine","tag-fatigue","tag-hero-twins","tag-navajo"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy we dream #2: A Southwestern version - 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\/12\/why-we-dream-2-a-southwestern-version.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why we dream #2: A Southwestern version - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We dream to wake up to our larger Self: to the memory of who we are and what we are meant to become. There is a wonderful Dine (Navajo) teaching story about this. \u00a0In the Fourth World, the Hero Twins traveled the earth slaying monsters. \u00a0They killed Big Giant, and Horned Monster, and the demons…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/12\/why-we-dream-2-a-southwestern-version.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-12-20T05:01:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-12-21T07:28:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Robert Moss\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Why we dream #2: A Southwestern version - Dream Gates","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/12\/why-we-dream-2-a-southwestern-version.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Why we dream #2: A Southwestern version - Dream Gates","og_description":"We dream to wake up to our larger Self: to the memory of who we are and what we are meant to become. 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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\/3845","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=3845"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3849,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3845\/revisions\/3849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}