An experience I had over my birthday reminded me of this. One day I was happy, hopeful, fully trusting that my book will find the right publisher and all will be well. The very next day I'd fallen into a trough of despair. Everything felt hopeless.

I did all the energy-shifting practices and meditations I write about. I sat with the ocean in stillness. I couldn't lift the heaviness. It clouded my vision; it obfuscated all the positiveness of the previous day.

This is a problem all of us face frequently: How do we get out of the see-sawing emotions? How do we get unstuck? What can we do to find equanimity?

When you have regular spiritual practices, as most of you do, the answer is: Trust them. Keep doing them.

When you don't have regular spiritual practices, the answer is: Find what works for you. Practice. Practice until your body knows, till you have imprinted whatever helps you move through the waves.  

When you have tried but not found what works, try energy releasing and filling. 

Stories

The stories we tell can trap us in repetitive patterns of response. Just this week I overheard a 60+ man at the doctor's office telling the clerk, "My parents hated me. They named me Tommy on my birth certificate." How often had he told this story, I wondered, imprinting the idea over and over that his parents hated him? How much might that weigh him down and feed his self-doubt?

To change our stories, we need courage. We need to believe it is possible to shift our energy. We need to want to alter our beliefs and nudge our consciousness.

From a shamanic healing perspective, looking at how we perceive and tell the story of a situation is helpful. Rather than trying to "fight" or "get rid of an illness, for example, we would ask for advice on how to perceive the gifts and lessons of the illness. We might make friends with the spirit of the illness. We would certainly do the best we can while remaining unattached to "outcome." We would search for meaning rather than resolution, guidance on our path rather than the competitive edge.

These ways apply equally to personal and global challenges that need a new story, a new dreaming.  

Such dreaming, particularly one incorporating attitude and behavioral shifts, is a huge challenge. As Rudolf Bahro writes, "When the forms of an old culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not afraid to be insecure."  

Or, as Marianne Williamson put it, "Creating the world we want is a much more subtle and powerful mode of operation than destroying the one we don't want."

Dreaming

To dream a new design for our world, we have to develop belief in our internal authority. In a culture dominated by top-down, do-not-think-for-yourself strictures, we all have to find and release a lot of unconscious assumptions and beliefs, replacing them with other kinds of energy that feed our internal courage, confidence, and compassion. Such self-empowerment helps us be and act in ways that honor the heart. It increases our spiritual competence, what we might call inner divinity or spiritual muscle. It grounds us in ourselves so we can connect with others in confidence and ease.

Dreaming the world into being, we feel better. It helps us find our true paths, our individual destinies. The energies of imagination are more fun than the energies of complaining (think of a child in those two states). Visioning helps us step closer to what the Navajo call "the beauty way."

As the Old Ones say, dreaming affects the collective. Reality follows our expectations and our visions. We do create what we perceive. When a vision is magnificent, our hearts sing with the universe and each other, and we are empowered to live more fully. When a vision is terrifying, we learn how to let go of outcome and focus on doing all we can; and it takes us into deeper communion with the original creative energies of the cosmos.

Dreaming together feeds our vision and helps us manifest. Dreaming together, we create a field of energy around our vision, a vortex.

Dreaming together in ceremony guides us into noetic, direct, experiential connections with the living universe. It brings us back to the heart. It changes our perception. Join us on Summer Solstice--from afar or in person--to dream a new dream for ourselves and the planet.