{"id":4009,"date":"2012-01-04T03:46:27","date_gmt":"2012-01-04T08:46:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=4009"},"modified":"2012-01-04T05:51:57","modified_gmt":"2012-01-04T10:51:57","slug":"what-makes-me-dive-in-headfirst","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/01\/what-makes-me-dive-in-headfirst.html","title":{"rendered":"What makes me dive in headfirst"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Sedna, Inuit sea goddess, sculpture by Joan Relke<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Among the Inuit, the strongest shamans are also the most gifted poets. One of the reasons their spirit helpers flock around them is that they are charmed and exhilarated by the angakok\u2019s<\/em> poetic improvisations.<\/p>\n

The Inuit say that we need “fresh words” to attract help from the spirit world. The spirits get bored with us, and withdraw their energy from our lives, when we keep saying and doing the old things.<\/p>\n

Inuit shamans have a language of their own, which is often impenetrable to other Eskimos. It is a language that is never still. It bubbles and eddies, opening a whirlpool way to the deep bosom of the sea-goddess, or a cavernous passage into the hidden fires of Earth.<\/p>\n

My favorite Inuit shaman-word is the one for “dream”. It looks like this: kubsaitigisak. <\/em>It is pronounced “koov-sigh-teegee-shakk”, with a little click at the back of the throat when you come to the final consonant. It means “what makes me dive in headfirst.”<\/p>\n

Savor that for a moment, and all that flows with it. A dream, in Inuit shaman-speech, is something that makes you dive in headfirst. Doesn\u2019t this wondrously evoke the kinesthetic energy of dreaming, the sense of plunging into a deeper world? Doesn\u2019t it also invite us to take the plunge, in the dream of life, and burst through the glass ceilings and paper barriers constructed by the daily trivial self?<\/p>\n

~<\/p>\n

The wonderful sculpture of Sedna, the Inuit sea goddess, is the work of \u00a0Joan Relke<\/a>, who was inspired by a dream. She recalls, “this\u00a0dream came at a time when I was struggling over a decision to stop or continue a project. I was under water and saw coming towards me a shiny gold sea creature with one fin and long hair. She swam by me, her eyes fixed straight ahead with an air of complete self-sufficiency and containment. \u00a0 I knew she had deliberately swum past me to display her demeanor.\u00a0The next morning I went straight to my studio and carved her before the vision faded. A year later a friend told me the Inuit myth, and I named my sculpture after Sedna.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Among the Inuit, the strongest shamans are also the most gifted poets. One of the reasons their spirit helpers flock around them is that they are charmed and exhilarated by the angakok\u2019s poetic improvisations. The Inuit say that we need “fresh words” to attract help from the spirit world. The spirits get bored with us,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,78,34,3,42],"tags":[508,417,912,1826,506,916,913,392,914,915],"class_list":["post-4009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-active-dreaming","category-ancestral-traditions","category-creativity","category-imagination","category-shamanism","tag-angakok","tag-dream-art","tag-eskimos","tag-goddess","tag-inuit","tag-joan-relke","tag-kubsaitigisak","tag-poetry","tag-poets","tag-sedna"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat makes me dive in headfirst - 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\/2012\/01\/what-makes-me-dive-in-headfirst.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What makes me dive in headfirst - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Among the Inuit, the strongest shamans are also the most gifted poets. One of the reasons their spirit helpers flock around them is that they are charmed and exhilarated by the angakok\u2019s poetic improvisations. The Inuit say that we need “fresh words” to attract help from the spirit world. 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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\/4009","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=4009"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4009\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4015,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4009\/revisions\/4015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}