I want to tell you a story about my journey into the world of prayer sticks. I had been aware for a long time of the Native American tradition of winding leather around a stick when praying and planting them in the ground to hold prayers. They were used with the intention of the spring not running dry in the summer in the desert, or at the planting of a new crop so that the harvest would be plentiful.

Several years ago, I was in a gallery in Asheville, NC and saw some magnificent tubes wrapped in beautiful cords, hanging on the wall. The sight of them triggered an immediate response of amazement. I said to Michael, my husband, “Those look like prayer sticks!”. We immediately went to a yarn store and began buying many different kinds of yarn. I decided we could decorate our home with prayer sticks. That never came to pass, but what did happen was truly amazing.

Several weeks after we returned home from Asheville, a friend of mine was being ordained as an interfaith minister. The ordination was in New York and I wasn’t able to go. I decided I would make a prayer stick for her as she was being ordained. So, for the two hours, during her ordination, I prayed for her as I was gluing and winding beautiful yarns onto a piece of bamboo. The intention of the prayer was for her  sacred ministry.

When she returned home, I gave her the prayer stick. She thought it was beautiful and said she could feel the energy of my prayers. A few weeks later, she called me and said she had something to share about the prayer stick. She said, “I had the prayer stick on my dresser, but now I sleep with it, because I wanted to rest in the energy.”

The next week, I made one for a friend of mine who was dying. I made the prayer stick with the intention that she would pass from this life comfortable and surrounded by her loved ones. She died with the prayer stick in the bed.

These experiences made me profoundly aware of the power of our intentions. We can imbue an inanimate object with sacred energy.

If you would like to learn this creative, sacred, meditative practice, I will be offering a program titled, A Day of Spirituality, on May 19. Prayer stick making will be a part of this day of spiritual nourishment. Just go to the calendar page to register.

Many blessings to all of you!

Have you ever had a dream where you are in an expanding house?  In my version of this dream,  I am living in a house (usually not my current residence) and I keep discovering new rooms.  Sometimes I have to crawl through tight spaces. After I get through a tight space, I find myself in a beautiful new room I have never seen before.

This dream is showing me that I am expanding my view of myself, symbolized by the larger home.  In my dreams, it is often about a new insight about the Universe. Essentially, I am in the midst of a pretty significant spiritual expansion. If the dream includes squeezing through a tight space, I may have been through a tough time and see myself emerging into a new awareness.

I usually awaken from this dream feeling affirmed and happy that I am expanding my view again.

Do you ever have this dream?  What is your does your version look like?

Many times when people begin paying attention to their dreams, it is because they have had a terrifying dream of someone dying. They are afraid that someone they love is actually about to die. Very rarely are these dreams prophetic. More often than not, death in dreams is about a deep spiritual transformation occurring in the dreamer.

Something that is no longer serving us is being transformed by our psyche. The old perceptions must die to make way for new ideas. We are beginning to awaken to a new awareness or a new spiritual or psychological insight.

When I am in a period of transformation, I will often have dreams of death. Now that I understand that something is shifting when death comes in a dream, I get excited.

There is a  theory about why our unconscious brings us such a disturbing image when something so powerfully positive is happening to us spiritually. It is really quite simple. We will remember the dream!

Two of my favorite dream authors comment on this. Jungian analyst, Marion Woodman, says, “Our dreams disturb in order to illumine.”  My mentor and teacher, Jeremy Taylor, says, “There is no such thing as a “bad dream” — only dreams that sometimes take a dramatically negative form in order to grab our attention.”

Next time you have a dream of death, or or someone pursuing you, and you think you are going to be killed, celebrate! You are in the midst of a positive transformation.

Well, I’ve finally done it.  I have rented office space!  My good friend, Mary Mooney has a wonderful healing place that she calls Angel Space. It is on a large plot of land with a pond. It is used by several healers and has great energy. I have an office dedicated to dream circles, spiritual teaching, and workshops. I will also have my individual spiritual direction and dream work practice there. The address is 3111 Lake Woodard Dr. in Raleigh.

Getting to this place has not been an easy process. I had some resistance and thought, “what if nobody comes?”. At first, I talked to Mary about renting a space two days a week, but also asked for a price for renting a space full time. Renting part-time would have been like putting my toe in the water. Just last week, on this very blog, I promised to not be sidetracked from my passion to do more dream work.

I woke up on Thursday morning and every ounce of my spirit said, “Go for it!”. I called Mary and rented the space. It has been my experience that when we take that first step toward our highest calling, the Universe comes rushing in to support our “yes”. This was no exception. I checked my email shortly after renting the space and found a note from the editor of a website, AllThingsHealing.com, saying that they are featuring me next week!  She also mentioned needing a co-editor of the Dream Medicine area of the website. We are talking about that tomorrow to see if my taking on that role is a good fit.

This experience has reminded me that we are supported as we make what seem to be quantum leaps of faith. We don’t do it all ourselves, the Divine is there to support us a soon as we have the courage to make the first step.

I have updated the calendar on the uncoveryourdreams.com website with new dream circles and a wonderful class called “Women Living in the Light”. Please contact me by phone or by email to sign up.

I leave you with a quote from Marion Woodman, “Our banquet of dreams is spread each night. We can choose to eat. We can choose not to eat.”

I just spent six weeks teaching a course on dreams to Encore! at NC State University. This is a continuing education program for folks over 50. It was a wonderful experience spending Tuesday afternoons exploring the unconscious with 26 curious students.
Every Tuesday, I would come home and declare to my husband, “I love doing dreamwork!”. Michael would always say the same thing to me, “Nancy if you love it so much, why don’t you do more of it?” I kept thinking, I don’t have time, look at all I am doing. But then, I thought, this gives me energy like nothing else. It was as if I had 26 muses calling me back to my own creative self and the work my soul yearns to do.
We all allow ourselves to become sidetracked from our real passions from time to time. We owe it to ourselves to be energized by doing the things we love. We owe it to the world to share those things that make our hearts sing.
What have you put on hold in your life? What ignites the fire of passion in your soul? How about we have an agreement, here and now, to put our excuses aside. Let’s love ourselves enough to do those things that energize our spirits!

Now that you have a dream journal and are recording your dreams, it is important to be able to find a particular dream. The easiest way to do this is by giving your dreams a title. There is an art to writing dream titles and I’ll show you how.

What we’re really talking about here is a title that will distinguish this dream from any other dream. You want it to be like reading a headline in a newspaper. From this title, you want to get a sense of the content of the dream.

The most common mistake people make in giving their dreams a title is not including enough information. For instance, if you dream of flying on a regular basis, you don’t want to name the dream, “Flying”. You want to be able to distinguish one flying dream from another. A better example would be, “Flying over the Empire State Building”.

I also recommend listing all the titles on the last page of your journal. Having this little index will be helpful as you accumulate multiple journals and want to refer back to dreams at a future date.

There will be times when an old dream has particular relevance to your current circumstances. The experience of locating that dream will be much easier if you have taken the time to give the dream a title.

Once you get the hang of it, giving your dreams titles will really enhance your dream work experience.

Happy Dreaming!

Many of the sacred texts of the world’s religions contain stories of dreams. Dreams are regarded as holy information. The were honored and recorded as stories worth remembering.

So it is with our own dreams. They are the sacred text of our soul. Record the story of your soul by recording you dreams.

For a long time, I wrote my dreams in spiral notebooks, but lately, I have been using journals that are a little more permanent.  I buy spiral-bound art journals.  They are large, filled with high quality, unlined paper.

The large pages beg for illustrations of interesting images. I leave an empty page between each dream for insights as I work to understand my dreams.
By honoring the dream as a sacred text and treating it as such, I have noticed that I am able to capture many more dreams.

Carl Jung kept a journal of his exploration of the unconscious through dreams and active imagination in what is now referred to as The Red Book. He honored his own dream life so much that the Red Book is actually an illuminated manuscript!

Try honoring your dreams by choosing a quality journal for your dream keeping.

Several years ago, I had a transformative experience I want to share with you.  I was working very hard at my job as well as taking care of family and having  leadership roles in several organizations.  It was all beginning to be too much.

I left my job to relieve some of the stress.  I was still very busy.  It was suggested to me that I cut my activities in half.  I was experiencing so much burn out that I took the advice.

The next week, the friend asked me how it was going.  I listed all I was doing. The friend suggested that I cut my activity in half again!  Miraculously, I took the suggestion.
Now, it had been years since I had so much space in my life.

One day, I took my glass of iced tea out to the front porch and sat, staring at a tree. I didn’t think about anything, I just watched the tree.  Every day, I would show up on the porch and observe the same tree. I sat for at least an hour every day, just being mindful of the tree.

Over several months of showing up on the porch, I began to reclaim my lost spirit.  I found my way back to a place of balance.  Gradually, a new path began to unfold before me.  I was living from my true spiritual nature, not from what I thought I should be doing.

My advice: take time every day to sit and let go of the busy-ness of life.  Find a tree to watch or stare at a candle burning or the same picture.  Allow thoughts to pass through your mind without entertaining them.  Slow down… your patience will be rewarded!

Dive deeply into the depths of the synchronicity of the soul.
Where She is known-  where
She reveals Her-Self.
Where the flood of emotion
Fuels the creative fires of alchemy
And the golden, pure Self
Gives birth to a new world.
To Love.

This is the poem that appears on the welcome page of this website.  Let me tell you how it happened.

First of all, you must know that I am not often inspired to write poetry.  There are many other forms of creativity that call my name, but I have never claimed to be a poet.

I was having some pain and couldn’t sleep, so I decide that a warm bath might help. So, at 1:30 am, I crawled in the warm bath and promptly went to sleep.  About half an hour later when the cool water woke me up, I heard the words, “Dive deeply into the depths of the synchronicity of the soul.”

I went and got my dream journal to write down the words, hoping to remember the content of the dream. Instead, the poem flowed from me just as it appears above.

Here is the best part.  I was looking for something that would help me capture the essence of what I want this website to be.  There it was! It came straight from my unconscious.

As we pay attention to dreams we uncover our true spiritual nature.  Will I ever be a poet?  Before that night, I would have said no.  Now, I am not so sure.

Be open to the flow of inspiration that comes up from the unconscious.

Spring is Here

When I think of spring, I think of awakening to new possibilities.  Our dreams can point us toward new possibilities, if we pay attention.  Remember, the dream often  comes to show us something we are not aware of in our waking life.  Sometimes, the dream comes to affirm what we are experiencing in waking life, but may not be ready to accept.

Let me give you an example. A couple of weeks ago, a person in one of my dream groups shared the following dream.  “I am at my computer working on a flyer for an upcoming workshop. I am in MS Publisher.  As I am trying to merge the two images, another screen appears with the words, “truth” and “love”.   I try to get back to my original flyer and am not able to.  I can’t find an image that connects truth and love.”

We all did our projections on truth and love and the fading flyer about the workshop.   It was suggested that the dreamer look at the words, “MS Publisher”.  Someone said, “If it were my dream, I  think that it is time for me to publish my book.”

The dreamer almost fell off her chair.  She said, “That is the fifth time this week that someone has asked me when I was going to write a book.”  Upon further exploration with the dreamer, she confirmed that she did want to write a book, but had been avoiding it.  It was clear that her unconscious was giving her a resounding, “YES!” to take on this project.

When we observe the synchronicity of our waking and dreaming world coming together to give us a message, it is time for action!