{"id":5781,"date":"2013-11-26T01:04:33","date_gmt":"2013-11-26T06:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/?p=5781"},"modified":"2013-11-26T01:04:33","modified_gmt":"2013-11-26T06:04:33","slug":"what-is-your-rescue-story-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2013\/11\/what-is-your-rescue-story-2.html","title":{"rendered":"What is your rescue story?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"_Device<\/a>A rescue story is one that can buck you up and give you strength and courage, or simply warm smiles, when you need those things. \u00a0It\u2019s a story that can get you out from under a black cloud of despair, and move you beyond the belief that you\u2019re not good enough, or worthy enough, or that the world is cold and cruel.\u00a0 There are days in our lives when all of us need to be rescued by a story of this kind.<\/p>\n

I asked members of one of my Active Dreaming circles to identify their own rescue stories.\u00a0 Among those offered:<\/p>\n

– My first boyfriend kissing me so hard he put hickeys all over my neck and then sat with me for an hour with an ice-pack trying to make them go away so my mom wouldn\u2019t notice.<\/p>\n

– leaning into the breeze on a cliff above the sea in Hawaii<\/p>\n

– giving birth to my first child<\/p>\n

– holding a humming bird in the palm of my hand<\/p>\n

– seeing the sun shine at midnight, in a dream of healing and initiation<\/p>\n

– with Grandpa in a laundromat when he magicked a gold ring out of one of the machines and gave it to me<\/p>\n

– having a close-up encounter with my own Death, and coming back with the knowledge that Death is my teacher, not my enemy.<\/p>\n

Sometimes we can borrow a story others have told, and find courage or laughter within it. When things seem really bad, I often think of Viktor Frankl, reduced to a walking skeleton at Auschwitz, growing a dream of a future world where Hitler was a nightmare of the past, in which \u2013 liberated and respected \u2013 he saw himself giving lectures on the psychology of the concentration camps. As he recounts in\u00a0Man\u2019s Search for Meaning<\/em>, one of the essential books of the 20th century, Frankl grew that dream so strong in his imagination, in the midst of constant terror, that he found the strength to survive and was eventually able to manifest his vision.\u00a0That\u2019<\/em>s a rescue story.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Photo: Sunrise on Lake Champlain (c) Robert Moss<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A rescue story is one that can buck you up and give you strength and courage, or simply warm smiles, when you need those things. \u00a0It\u2019s a story that can get you out from under a black cloud of despair, and move you beyond the belief that you\u2019re not good enough, or worthy enough, or…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,34,46,3,26,27,29],"tags":[1675,1439,733,732],"class_list":["post-5781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conscious-living","category-creativity","category-healing","category-imagination","category-life-direction","category-self-help","category-story","tag-healing-stories","tag-mans-search-for-meaning","tag-rescue-story","tag-viktor-frankl"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat is your rescue story? - 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\/2013\/11\/what-is-your-rescue-story-2.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What is your rescue story? 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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\/5781","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=5781"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5781\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5783,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5781\/revisions\/5783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}