{"id":5052,"date":"2012-08-20T13:45:50","date_gmt":"2012-08-20T17:45:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=5052"},"modified":"2012-08-20T18:10:47","modified_gmt":"2012-08-20T22:10:47","slug":"soul-loss-and-after-a-short-qa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2012\/08\/soul-loss-and-after-a-short-qa.html","title":{"rendered":"Soul Loss and after: a short Q&A"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Salvador Dali, “Girl with Curls”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Why does the soul have a hard time staying in the body?\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

We suffer pain or abuse, grief or shame, and part of us finds the world so cruel that we want to go away. Soul loss is also caused by wrenching life choices: we decide to leave a relationship, a home, a job, a country, a lifestyle \u2014 but part of us resists that choice, sometimes to the point of splitting away and withdrawing its energy from our lives. We also lose soul energy when we give up on our dreams and settle for a life of dull compromise, refusing to trust ourselves to love or to take that creative leap.<\/p>\n

Where does soul go when it leaves?\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes we find that a part of ourselves is stuck in the old place, in Grandma\u2019s house, or in the apartment we shared with our first love. Sometimes a soul part we lost seems to be living in a separate reality, like the land of the Lost Boys in Peter Pan. When we wish ourselves dead, a part of our soul may go far way, as far as a Land of the Dead.<\/p>\n

Are all aspects of soul recoverable?\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

There are parts that are so damaged we don\u2019t want them back. Sometime they appear burned or charred, dark or addicted. Sometimes our life choices are so radical that a part of ourself simply cannot be persuaded to share our present situation. For example, my inner businessman is quite disgusted with the choices I have made, and won\u2019t stay close to me unless I make money more of a priority than I am likely to do!<\/p>\n

What is the first step that someone who would like to experience more soul in their life to take?\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

You do some cleanup, and you ask for help. In my book Dreaming the Soul Back Home<\/em>,<\/a> as in my retreats, I offer practical guidance for psychic cleansing and release. One of my favorites is a very simple fire releasing in which we cast out any heavy energies that are holding us back and clear a space for vital soul to come back in. It\u2019s very important to remember that we have help available, including from our spiritual allies and our own Greater Self, and that it\u2019s always a good idea to ask for help nicely.<\/p>\n

What role does addiction play in soul loss?\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Addiction can be both a cause and an effect of soul loss. Part of our brighter energy may leave us if we fall into habits and company it doesn\u2019t like. When we are missing a part of ourselves, things come in to fill the gap, and we reach for things to fill that gap. From a shamanic viewpoint, addictions are often worsened by spirits of the dead who are seeking to feed their own cravings through a living person. I have never met a true alcoholic, for example, who has not (from my viewpoint) been accompanied by dead drunks. In the book, as in my programs, I offer practical guidance to create healthy psychic boundaries between the living and the deceased, in The Dreamer\u2019s Book of the Dead<\/em> <\/a>as well as in Dreaming the Soul Back Home<\/em>.<\/p>\n

You have developed an original approach to healing through what you call \u201csoul recovery\u201d. What are the key elements in this approach?<\/strong><\/p>\n

We use the core techniques of Active Dreaming to bring more of soul into the body and help others to become whole. By learning to share dreams with others in the right way, we create a safe space where our younger and brighter selves can draw closer, and we start to build communities of soul friends. By learning to use a dream as a doorway through which we can travel \u2014 in shamanic lucid dreaming \u2014 into a deeper space, we can go to the places where lost souls can be found and reclaimed, and we help each other to do this.<\/p>\n

You say that dreams not only show us what the soul wants, they also show us where it has gone.\u00a0 Please elaborate and provide an example of this.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Our dreams can tell us which parts of ourselves may be missing, and when it is timely to bring them home. Recurring dreams in which we go back to a scene from our earlier lives may indicate that a part of us has remained there. Dreams in which we perceive a younger self as a separate individual may be nudging us to recognize and recover a part of ourselves we lost at that age. Sometimes we do not know who that beautiful child is \u2013 until we take a closer look.<\/p>\n

A middle-aged woman approached me for help. She told me, “I feel I have lost the part of me that can give trust and know joy.” As preparation for our meeting, I asked her to start a dream journal, although she had told me she had not remembered her dreams for many years. When she came to see me, she had succeeded in capturing just one tiny fragment from a dream. She remembered that she was standing over a table, looking at three large-size “post-it” notes. Each had a typed message. But the ink had faded and she could not read the messages.<\/p>\n

Slowly and carefully, I helped her to relax and encouraged her to try to go back inside her dream. Quite quickly, she found herself inside a room in the house where she had lived with her ex-husband prior to their divorce, almost twenty years before. Now she could read the typed messages. The first read in bold capitals, “YOU CAN DO IT.” They were all about living with heart, and trusting life.
\nShe realized that she had left her ability to love and to trust in that room for nearly twenty years. I asked her what she needed to do. She told me, “I need to bring my heart out of that room and put it back in my body.” She gathered up the messages and made the motion of bringing them into her heart. As her hands crossed over the place of her heart, we both saw a sweet and gentle light shine out from her heart center. She trembled, eyes shining, and told me, “Something just came back. Something that was missing for twenty years.”<\/p>\n

Related workshops with Robert Moss<\/strong>: Dreaming the Soul Back Home at the Omega Institute<\/strong><\/a> in Rhinebeck, NY, October 19-21<\/p>\n

The Temple of Shamanic Dream Healing at the beautiful Kalani<\/strong><\/a> retreat center on the Big Island,Hawaii, January 27-February 1, 2013<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why does the soul have a hard time staying in the body?\u00a0 We suffer pain or abuse, grief or shame, and part of us finds the world so cruel that we want to go away. Soul loss is also caused by wrenching life choices: we decide to leave a relationship, a home, a job, a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,10,46,19,27,22,42,43,32],"tags":[1436,276,309],"class_list":["post-5052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-active-dreaming","category-conscious-dreaming","category-healing","category-healing-dreams","category-self-help","category-shamanic-dreaming","category-shamanism","category-soul","category-soul-recovery","tag-addiction","tag-inner-child","tag-soul-loss"],"yoast_head":"\nSoul Loss and after: a short Q&A - 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\/08\/soul-loss-and-after-a-short-qa.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Soul Loss and after: a short Q&A - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Why does the soul have a hard time staying in the body?\u00a0 We suffer pain or abuse, grief or shame, and part of us finds the world so cruel that we want to go away. 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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\/5052","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=5052"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5055,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5052\/revisions\/5055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}