Natural Dreamwork For The New Year
This is the time of year in the northern hemisphere where we are experiencing our longest nights as we move from the old year into a new year. During the darkest days of the year, everything is held in a shimmering darkness and awaits the shattering return of the light. It is a time of endings and beginnings…the cycle of unfoldment…birth, death, re-birth.And so it is with our dreams. The dream lives not in the arrow of time but in the great cycle. You can step in anywhere in this cycle and be in the flow, for there is really no beginning or ending. The dream offers ever-unfolding moments, a steady turning and returning, opening and closing, erupting and sinking. It offers you a wisdom against the back drop of a reality that feels increasingly untenable.
In the world today, we have only to look at global climate change, limited resources and the resulting war, the constant grasping for the next thing that will make our lives “better,” conflicts both domestic and foreign, conflicts between two or between many. We all want a first world economy, with all the attendant stuff that goes along with it. We know in our hearts this is not sustainable. What if what is happening to the world is only a reflection of what is happening to our souls?
The natural dream cares nothing for our worldly schemes and machinations. It cares only to bring us back into connection with the sacred in us. Dreams convey upon us both endings and beginnings, making dreamwork the perfect way to step into the cycle of your life. No matter where you are in your life, you can step in now and your dreams will immediately begin to offer you real wisdom that you can use in your life today.
What if your New Year’s resolution was to give your dreams a chance? As you traverse the time-space-feeling experience of the dream, you will find a unique and evocative combination of contemplative images, gestures and revelatory feelings.
Laura Smith-Riva is a Natural Dreamwork Practitioner and Priestix of the Green Mountain Druid Order in Vermont. She works with dreamers from many parts of the globe and in her personal work is interested in the connection to the natural world through dreams and vision work and offers expressions of her journey using art, poetry and prose.