{"id":83,"date":"2010-09-08T07:01:56","date_gmt":"2010-09-08T07:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/2010\/09\/remember-to-play-with-elephant-dung.html"},"modified":"2010-09-08T07:01:56","modified_gmt":"2010-09-08T07:01:56","slug":"remember-to-play-with-elephant-dung","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2010\/09\/remember-to-play-with-elephant-dung.html","title":{"rendered":"Remember to play with elephant dung"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"elephant<\/a><\/span>At one of my lectures, an earnest fellow asked me to “bottom-line it” for him; what is my approach all about? Remember to play<\/i>, I told him. He wrote this down carefully, which suggested that he may not have gotten the message.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
I might have said, Don’t pass up any chance to fool around with elephant dung<\/i>. I’m thinking of what happened in the Laetoli valley in Tanzania in 1976, when a couple of young archeologists in a team led by Mary Leakey were horsing around with dried clumps of elephant dung. Ducking a flying pellet, Andrew Hill found himself prone above three sets of footprints. Closer inspection proved that they had been preserved in volcanic ash, hardened by rain to a cement-like consistency, at least 3.6 million years ago. The way the big toes were set parallel to the others, and the evidence of a “heel-first” mode of walking indicated that the prints were left by proto-humans rather than apes. Mary Leakey was moved by the discovery that the female in the trio had paused in her journey to look towards the left – perhaps to check on the child who was walking in her steps, or to scan for danger, which might include the plume of an active volcano.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
So many great discoveries have their origin in play. The best work, by my observation, is done in a spirit of play. This requires us to forget the consequences and do what we are doing for its own sake. You may not find the Laetoli Footprints, now regarded as one of the greatest discoveries in the history of archeology, every time you fool around with elephant dung but – hey – it’s odor free and (nicely dried) a great substitute for a beach ball. <\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At one of my lectures, an earnest fellow asked me to “bottom-line it” for him; what is my approach all about? Remember to play, I told him. He wrote this down carefully, which suggested that he may not have gotten the message. I might have said, Don’t pass up any chance to fool around with…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conscious-living"],"yoast_head":"\nRemember to play with elephant dung - 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\/2010\/09\/remember-to-play-with-elephant-dung.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Remember to play with elephant dung - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"At one of my lectures, an earnest fellow asked me to “bottom-line it” for him; what is my approach all about? 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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\/83","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=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}