When our outer world is chaotic, our psyche often perks up while we’re asleep, providing clues — dream images and themes — that, if we know how to explore, offer important guidance for navigating our waking hours.

 

We all have the capability — like the Indigenous shaman — to look to our dreams to better our lives, says bestselling author and dream shaman Robert Moss.

 

You stand at the edge of this power when you remember your dreams, wake up to what’s going on in them, and take action to embody their healing energy and divine guidance.

 

You grow this power when you learn to journey consciously into deeper realities to encounter soul allies, create places of sanctuary and healing, overcome nightmare fears, or scout out a desirable path into the future.

 

During these uncertain times, you can even use your dreamtime to travel beyond your ordinary reality and be with the people you want to be with in imaginal realms. Such dream travels can be healing in and of themselves.

 

Dreaming you are a time traveler. You can visit past, future, and parallel times. You can play mentor and cheerleader to a younger self when she needs help and encouragement in her own Now time. You can bring home lost pieces of your vital self, so you can live a more fulfilling and joyful life now.

 

And you can dream travel while awake. Active Dreaming, Robert’s synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism that allows you to explore imaginal realms during waking hours, can be highly effective for reentering and dispelling nightmares.

 

Courage to face a nightmare can be bolstered by connecting with one of the many soul allies ready to assist you on your life’s journey.

 

Helping spirits — animal guardians, ancestors, angels, emissaries of the Greater Self or the god/goddess we can talk to — come to us in our dreams. We can ask them to visit us in sleep or in the fertile space between sleep and awake. We can journey, like dream shamans, to places of encounter.

 

Your soul allies can give you strength and courage to use the images that scare you as portals to healing and resolution inside the dream space… and inspire you to take necessary action in your physical world.

 

By sowing seeds of intention before you drift off to sleep, you can use your dreamtime to call on helpful allies — and to discover and help create imaginal realms where you feel safe and self-empowered, and where you can seek comfort, healing, and renewal.