One of the greatest gifts of dreaming is that it puts us in touch with soul.

It
takes us beyond the limited understanding of the everyday self and shows us who
we are, what our soul s purpose is in this life experience and what our heart trul
y yearns for. There is a word for this vital function of dreams in the language
of the Huron, a dreaming people of North America. The word is ondinnonk, and it
means a "secret wish of the soul", especially as revealed in dreams. This expres
sion takes us to the heart of healing. By connecting with our dreams, and celebr
ating and acting on the information they gift to us, we bring the energy and mag
ic of soul into our daily lives. As we allow our big dreams to take root in this
world, we become whole and well, and start living our deeper story. As we help
others to honor and celebrate their soul guidance, as revealed in dreams, we bec
ome healers and dreambringers.

Ancient dream healers understood that we are often out of touch, in our surface
minds, with our deepest truths and our heart s desires. Not knowing who we are, fo
rgetting our soul s purpose, we do terrible harm to ourselves and others. Dreams i
nvite us to get back on the right track, the soul s track. I learned about this ma
ny years ago when I asked for dream guidance in support of a narrow, ego-driven
agenda. I wanted inspiration for a commercial potboiler, a thriller that would f
ollow the formula of a successful previous novel I had published. In my dream, I
found myself in a banquet hall where a lavish feast for hundreds of people was
being prepared in my honor. But there was a problem. In the dream restaurant, th
e master chef had walked out in disgust because he was bored with my menu. The m
essage, on waking, was clear. If I persisted in repeating myself
in using my cre
ative gifts for a limited purpose
my deepest creative energy (the "master chef"
of the dream) would bow out; the soul and its magic would be missing. I abandone
d a major book project because that dream showed me it wasn t "major" in the ways
that serve the soul.
Dreaming not only renews our understanding of the soul s purpose; it can literally
bring the soul back home. From the shaman s perspective, soul loss is the root ca
use of much illness and affliction in our lives. We suffer deep grief, heartbrea
k or abuse or trauma and maybe then succumb to negative habits and addictions
an
d a part of our vital soul energy goes away. Chronic depression, lethargy, memor
y gaps, low resistance to illness and emotional numbness are among the most freq
uent symptoms of soul loss.
Our dreams can tell us which parts of ourselves may be missing, and when it is t
imely to bring them home. Recurring dreams in which we go back to a scene from o
ur earlier lives may indicate that a part of us has remained there. Dreams in wh
ich we perceive a younger self as a separate individual may be nudging us to rec
ognize and recover a part of ourselves we lost at that age. Sometimes we do not
know who that beautiful child is until we take a closer look. There is a marvelo
us story in my book Dreamgates about what happened when a woman went back into a
dream of a beautiful five-year-old in a red coat, and found herself fusing at t
he heart, in a blaze of light, with the part of herself she had lost at age five
through family trauma.

Unfortunately, a common effect of soul loss is dream loss. Indeed the absence of
dream recall is often a primary symptom of soul loss
as if the part of the suff
erer that knows how to dream and travel in deeper reality has gone away, out of
pain or disgust. It is fascinating and deeply rewarding to observe what can happ
en when people who have forgotten how to dream start dreaming again. This can am
ount to spontaneous soul recovery.
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 rememb
ered her dreams for many years. When she came to see me, she had succeeded in ca
pturing 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 no
t read the messages.
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 w
here she had lived with her ex-husband prior to their divorce, almost twenty yea
rs before. Now she could read the typed messages. The first read in bold capital
s, "YOU CAN DO IT." They were all about living with heart, and trusting life.
She 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 th
e messages and made the motion of bringing them into her heart. As her hands cro
ssed 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."
In the most literal sense, dreaming can make us whole. It not only connects us w
ith lost or buried aspects of ourselves. It connects us with our larger identity
our Higher Self
and our larger purpose.

Honoring the secret wishes of the soul, as involved in dreams, requires us to le

arn some simple and powerful strategies that are central to my dream workshops:
Opening to dream guidance
Start a dream journal, if you are not keeping one already, and resolve to catch
your dreams and write up your dream reports, giving each dream a title. You ll fin
d it very rewarding to dream with intention. Before going to sleep, write down a
question or issue on which you would like some guidance. This can be specific (
"Should I change my job?") or general and open-hearted ("I open myself to the po
wer of healing"). If you remember dreams from the night, se how they might relat
e back to your intention.
Learn simple steps to clarify dream messages
The all-important keys are (a) trust your feelings (b) run a reality check and (
c) go back inside your dream to get more information. Your feelings, on first wa
king up, are an instant and usually impeccable guide to the general quality and
urgency of the dream. Running a reality check means checking how elements in the
dream relate to your waking life and
especially checking to see whether the dre
am may be giving you a window into possible future events in waking reality. We
dream future events quite often, though few of us pay attention and fewer still
are alive to the interesting possibility that if you can see the (possible) futu
re you may be able to take action to change the future for the better. (This is
the theme of my recent book Dreaming True.) Finally, the best way to understand
the full meaning of a dream is to learn to go back inside it, as you might step
back into a room, take a good look around (while fully alert and conscious), and
maybe talk to someone in the scene or dream the dream onward to healing or reso
lution.
Open a safe space to share and celebrate dreams with others

When we know that dreams show the wishes of the soul, we will surely want to sup
port each other in honoring this guidance. Start sharing dreams with a friend, b
y email if necessary. Never presume to tell the other person what his or her dre
ams mean. Start by encouraging your partner to tell the dream as simply and clea
rly as possible, give it a title. Ask what the dreamer felt when she first woke
up. Ask her to run a reality check to see whether there are messages about curre
nt situations in waking life, or possible future events. Then offer your own tho
ughts and associations in a gentle way by always saying "if it were my dream" ra
ther than laying down the law. Finally, ask your partner what she can now do
in
a practical, positive way
to honor the dream and act on its guidance. With a lit
tle practice, you ll find safe ways to bring dream-sharing to larger groups and st
art building a dream community. An office that starts the day with dream-sharing
is a vastly more lively and creative space!
Always do something with your dreams!
Real dreamwork is about energy
about bringing vital energy from a deeper reality
into the daylight world. In my workshops, we turn our dreams into stories, draw
ings and songs; we stage spontaneous dream theatre; and we agree on action plans
to work with the guidance of our dreams and the powers that speak to us in drea
ms. Sharing a dream with another person is already a step towards action. Writin
g yourself a personal motto inspired by a dream
a bumper sticker is a further st
ep. Buy the red shoes, make the phone call, plant those flowers, study the trans
formations of the Goddess or the Bear in myth and art, as your dreams may guide
you, and you are taking a longer step on the road of soul, the only road to walk
.