In our last article we wrote at length about the collective dream that has enveloped the planet and how that dream in many ways has become a nightmare for people everywhere. We talked about how the collective dream functions like a forest fire sucking up everything in its path to feed itself and continue on its relentless path.

It feeds on beliefs, dramas, human suffering, and intense human emotions that it tends to provoke in each person for the purpose of self-perpetration. Without realizing it consciously, people are programmed to feed the nightmare (called everyday reality) with their own fears and furies. To wake up from this hypnotic dream is an act of great courage and discipline. Not only is it possible, it must be done in order to create a new dream that serves essence and spirit, rather than a set of painful dragons.

In this article we will go deeper into the dynamics of the collective dream and then into the workings of individual dreaming that contributes to the big dream. Bear in mind that when we discuss the collective dream we are referring to the local dream on this planet. There are other different dreams that govern other parts of the universe that are not our concern at this time. Simply know that there are dreams being dreamed by collectives of beings that are more loving, more beautiful, more delightful, and more fun than the collective dream as it stands on this planet today. At times those dreams can be visited for inspiration and ideas by those who know the techniques.

The collective dream is made up of many different aspects that together feed it and lead to its unique character. One major aspect of the dream is the fact that the Earth is a warrior planet, run and dominated by warrior mentality. Although the population is divided up among the seven different role types, and warriors make up only twenty-five percent of the population, they are the ones who determine the overall game plan for the most part. Why? Because here on Earth the dominant life form is simian, an aggressive mammal with opposable thumbs perfectly suited for the warrior approach. Again this is not a bad thing but simply a local experiment.

Warriors are producers and action oriented people that are happiest when there is a physical project to be carried out in an organized fashion. With powerful independently mobile simian bodies to work with, warriors are able to organize, direct and produce an almost infinite variety of things out of the resources of the planet. Thus the dominant societies of the world have come to value production, organization and development as their chief accomplishments. One could say then that warrior dreams have had an easy time being realized because the environment has been so conducive to manifesting them.

Now let us introduce another influence and strong motivator for the current collective dream that people like to call reality. Earth at this time is heavily influenced by a young soul mentality that is in many ways akin to the desires and wishes of a ten year old—the mentality that has dominated the world for the last several millenniums. That mentality is a me first, he who dies with the most toys wins, value system. Remember also that this is not a bad thing but simply a developmental stage of humanity that has outlived its useful life at this time. This ten year old maturity level represents the third stage of development after having completed the infant and toddler stages. This child stage has now virtually run its course and the planet is ready to enter the fourth stage, the mature or adolescent stage of development. It is worth noting that the third stage now being completed corresponds with the warrior role and the fourth stage now being entered corresponds with the scholar role.

When you combine the production, development and organization of the warrior role with the fantasies of ten year olds you can see what has happened to the collective dream. The dominant dream has become about voraciously consuming what is produced so that more can be produced and consumed, etc. with the additional ten year old’s fantasy that through this dream one can achieve the grand prize of being the absolute winner: king of the mountain, top of the heap, controller of the game. This then becomes a dream about competition for power to control and win. Production of material things, selling them and their consumption is what their life has become about. These goals have become the gods and everyone is harnessed to serve this mass end. The fallout of that dream is that only a very few can win and most will be in various stages of losing all the time. The winners fear that they will be pushed off the top of the heap at any time and thus they can only guardedly enjoy the spoils. This state of affairs is called suffering since winning in this fashion can never satisfy the needs of essence with its awareness that all is one. For essence, if one person suffers then everybody suffers the pain of that.

Thus the time has come to transform the dream in order to enter the fourth stage of development, the scholarly dynamic of understanding and the exchange of ideas and philosophies. The old dream then must be starved so that everyone can wake up to a new transformed one. The warrior productive orientation will not go away so it will have to be incorporated into the new dream. Warriors will still want to produce, organize and build so the dream will have to find ways for these things to be done in a more mature, Earth-friendly way. Perhaps goods can be produced that use fewer resources and are more invisible so that they serve without being intrusive. This is already manifesting technologically with advances in the speed and size of computers, electronics and communication devices. There is no limit to the possibilities in the evolution of mature warrior ways.

Now let us discuss some more of the dynamics of individual dreaming that contributes to the large dream. We are distinguishing here between the dreams that occur while asleep and the dreams creating your everyday waking reality. Here we are focusing on the latter. Let us distinguish further among the various types of mental activity that contributes to dream material. There can be a difference between desires, wishes, fears, hopes, fantasies, and dreams. In undisciplined and immature people these things tend to all run together, one contaminating the other without any knowledge of how to separate them out. In younger souls, there is no awareness that their dreams are actually what they are manifesting into physical reality. They tend to believe that life is happening to them as if by magic or by delivery from gods and demons. Older souls are more likely to be aware that they are creating their reality through a dreaming process but they do not always understand how to dream without fears and fantasies contaminating their dreams.

The process of separating fears from dreams takes lifetimes of training and discipline and is eventually learned by everyone until mastery is achieved.

Everyone has little wishes and desires that crop up based on the pursuit of pleasure and the avoidance of pain. For example: an employee might wish their employer would just get sick for a week so the employee can be less stressed; a minister may lust after a parishioner, perhaps a married woman; an athlete may fantasize death or injury for an antagonistic rival; a driver may hope another driver who cut them off on the road will crash and so on. Normally these fantasies are fleeting and amount to nothing but when they are prolonged and intensely wished for they can turn into destructive dreams that are karmic in nature. These hopes and wishes can become dreams and unless the other person is well protected, they will manifest creating harmful effects in the environment and severe consequences for everyone involved.

Most people have heard the expression, “Be careful what you wish for, you might just get it.” This piece of wisdom tries to warn people about the necessity of examining wishes and hopes to see if they are in the best overall interest of essence, or merely feeding a private wish for gratification that will create huge costs in the long run. Older souls become cognizant that not all wishes and hopes should be brought about in reality because they would go against what essence has in mind. Older souls learn to discipline themselves not to indulge in fantasies that do not serve essence because they have learned by experience that there can be horrible consequences to getting everything they want in the moment.

Fantasizing about having an affair is usually much more fun than having the consequences of a real affair, something that can come with enormous stress and suffering. The minister who fantasizes the affair with the parishioner does not realize at the time that a real affair may cause them to lose their entire career and marriage in one fell swoop.

A dream differs from a wish, fantasy, hope, or fear in that it is the product of repetitive thoughts and feelings concentrated over a longer period of time with intent to be realized. The others mentioned are fleeting and often lack the intent that propels them into full-fledged dreams. They may lack the intensity to grow into a dream. Fears and worries can become dreams when they are chronic, repeated and intensely visualized even if they are not strongly intended. A good guideline for older souls then is to concentrate on and to dream about that which brings what is needed by essence when it is needed. Mature souls and early level old souls with life task to take care of can dream of that which helps them fulfill their missions and agreements. Very old souls, wanting nothing, usually don’t dream about anything but just being blissful and bringing balance and harmony into the world around them.

How you perceive yourself, your dreams and the dreams of others strongly affects how you dream. If you perceive yourself to be powerless, then your dreams will reflect that. If you perceive yourself to be a lucky person with strongly attractive features then your dreams will reflect that. If you are afraid of what others have manifested then you will feel so intimidated by their dream that you give your power away to it. On the other hand, if you perceive that their dream, no matter how fearsome is simply a dream creation and nothing more, you can feel the courage to change that dream or replace it with a dream of your own. The nightmare dreams of Stalin and Hitler gave way to other more interesting beneficial dreams by others.

Healers and shamans become proficient at dreaming of healing for others. They use breath to propel intense intent into the harmonious integration of a person who has fallen out of balance, become ill or who has developed a dysfunction. They learn to dream of wholeness and this dream matches the deeper wholeness of the sick person. Their dream of wholeness breathed into the patient reminds the sick person to dream of recovery themselves and they are healed through faith. Thus faith is extremely important in the dreaming process. Consider fire walking for a moment. The fire walk is successful if the person conducting the ceremony can effectively bring each person to firmly believe they will not be burned by walking on the hot coals. The greater the faith, the more successful the event. People with great faith in themselves, in their ideas and in their support teams are people whose dreams rapidly and intensively come about. By contrast those with little faith are not effective dreamers. They can spend years of their life with doubt and skepticism not manifesting very much of what they want at all. When it comes to dreaming, faith is everything.

Unfortunately faith in anything can be sold and sometimes the faith is in something that results in harm. The reason that the collective dream is so successful is that it has been and is being sold exceptionally effectively by individuals, universities, corporations, societies, and cultures that have absolute faith in it. Younger souls have successfully sold the idea that more is better, that in amassing and consuming unnecessary material things lies happiness, that in science lies all the answers, that controlling nature is desirable, and that winning over others is what is important. These concepts are spread twenty-four hours a day through a media that is completely caught in the dream itself and doesn’t know it. Anyone at odds with these concepts is invalidated including all those societies of the world labeled third world because they are not producers and consumers at the same level as the big guys. They are seething in anger at being invalidated so they fantasize destroying the first world countries and at the same time they buy into the dream by wanting to emigrate there to make their fortunes. This second desire has more power and intensity so it more often becomes their dream.

We have raised the concept of power, another important ingredient in dreaming. It takes more faith to propel an idea into a dream that manifests. It takes power, the energy to manifest it and the focus of intent. The curious thing is that power is something that is dreamed up just like everything else. So you have to have the power to dream and you have to dream up the power needed to dream effectively. This is like the age-old chicken and the egg dilemma on the surface but really it is just like growing up. You have to do it by yourself but you can’t do it without help. In other words both are entwined or inseparable and there is no one source. The original power to dream comes from the Tao, and the spirit dreamed it all up anyway.

Local dreams take enough power to manifest in a limited environment. With enough power behind it a single person’s dream can spread out to affect thousands, millions, even billions of people. There is no limit to the power of one personal dream. Therefore dreams penetrate everything everywhere just like lubricating oil. You cannot dream and keep it from influencing the rest of the universe. Before you know it, it will be everywhere so watch what you dream.

Where do you get the power to dream? You get it by first stopping up the power leaks in your life, the negative thoughts, the fearful worries, the depressions and anxieties, and the distractions of false personality and the seven obstacles. Next you take care of yourself and honor your body and your health with good food and exercise. Then you follow practices that magnetize power to you; meditation, service, teaching what you know, contemplation, silence, prayer, being in nature, practicing true rest, true play, true work, true study, and discovering the exalted forms of your true home, your true path and your true teacher. We will discuss these in a later article

How do you dream effectively? First you have to know what you want, not just what you want to avoid. In order to know what you truly want you may need help from sources of inner guidance to help you realize what is important. You may vision quest, journey within, meditate, or practice any number of personal guidance techniques readily available through shamans, wise transpersonal teachers, spiritual guides, books, tapes, and seminars. Then, according to shamanic lore, you need to empower the dream you want to manifest it by: