September 2007

Someone who read this column last month accused me of being a ‘dreamer’ (he used the term “irresponsible half-baked metaphysical fantasy”), who thinks connecting to clouds is a responsible way to address global warming.

He’s right, I work in the metaphysical, but it is not a fantasy plane. I hear his warrior-like passion for change, and support him fully. I think the warrior and the dreamer sit at the same circle.

I would suggest that to be able to call in rain clouds, you have probably done a fair bit of personal work to be that harmonious with the earth. But I think it is essential that dreamers and warriors work together. Martin Luther King and Ghandi were Dreamers. They shared their dreams, they held the dream of their ancestors, and they inspired others to hold the dream. They created other dreamers. By embodying the dream they also inspired warriors, who stood in protest, picked up pens and changed the world. For native people the dream of the ancestors is the soul of the tribe.

Hopi Sun Clan Chief Dan Katchongva and his clan were chained and starved for refusing to leave their homes and join in the white man’s dream. They knew if they stopped holding their dream and doing their ceremonies, there would be floods and droughts and the world would end. They were dream warriors, in the sense that they protested passively and held the dream of the future.

In their dream they knew the white folks were coming and that there might be as few as two or three of them, but that the white brother would finally listen to the dream of the earth and there would be great change.

I have also seen myself as an earth warrior for over thirty years so my heart reaches out to those frustrated by the slowness of change, the complacency of some people, the unchecked forces of greed in the world.

We are not all front line warriors, like our friends who made it to Montebello to protest giving away all rights to our water, or the Ardoch Algonquin and Shabot Obaadjiwan First Nations people camped out at Sharbot Lake to protest against Frontenac Ventures Corp (who want to test drill for uranium on the bands' ancestral territory).

I’ve been shot at with rubber bullets during the Basque uprising in Spain, and single handedly broken up a gang fight in Toronto, but now I tend to stay out of the line of fire and use words to make my new dream of the earth a reality. I send letters all the time to people I feel need to know about what I believe is going on, and to those who can do something about it and those who are turning their backs.

We all have something we would fight for and something we believe in, which in a simple sense is where the warrior and the dreamer in each of us meet. It is important that each of us examine those beliefs to see if they were spoon fed to us as children, or if they are in fact coming from the deeper dreams of our own hearts. When we release all the aspects of ourselves that are not part of our core, we will find ourselves becoming more adept at manifesting, at creating the world we want. Thought creates form, so a clear and loving heart that resonates with the earth, whether we see ourselves as a warrior or a dreamer, will have more impact in creating social change.

These days I find my most powerful form of social change is to be an active ‘Dreamer.’

Dreamers may appear to be in a state of inaction, ‘avoiding fights,’ but they are evoking change on many dimensions. I have observed that the deeper the stillness at the core of the dreamer, the more powerful their energy and impact in the world.

What I call dreamers are people who know life is sacred, that each of us is an expression of the divine and that we are being called to dream the earth awake, planting the seeds of change by holding the vision, creating the form.

As if by way of confirmation, an e-mail arrived this morning from Stacey Robyn of the "go gratitude" experiment with a story of her recent experience in the Hopi land, where she learned we are here to dream ourselves awake into a new prophecy. She refers to this as waking into our own Self Fulfilling prophecy and offers a quote by Rainier Maria Rilke, which is also on my own desk: “The future enters into us, in order to transform us, long before it happens” It requires taking the time to listen, the ears to hear and the courage to follow our hearts, while we release the dreams (expectations) of others (society) that no longer serve us. As we step into our heart’s vision, we will begin to manifest the new world. The wonderful part is that we keep discovering others doing the same, and as our dreams of a green and healthy earth meet, they connect, and social change begins to take place, one heart at a time.”