Have you ever wondered just how important your dreams are?
While some people write off their dreams as just the crazy things that happen when they sleep, there are others who are very attuned with the dream world: Native Americans. And dreams are a highly important factor in their culture.
Young Native children are taught to remember their dreams as best they can, so they might use them as guidance, and as a window into their own mind.
Dreams are incredibly significant to Native American culture because they believe that part of the soul leaves the body when one transitions into the dream world.
According to Natives, every person on Earth has three souls, not just a single one. The first is the ego-soul, which manifests as breath.
Then, there's the body-soul, which is what gives our body life and energy when we are part of the waking world.
Finally, we have the free-soul. The free-soul is believed by Natives to leave the physical body when one dreams.
This is the part of one's soul that travels to other dimensions as the other two stay back with the physical body.
The Dream World
Native Americans maintain that our minds do not actually dream in the capacity that we think they do. The body doesn't either.
Instead, the free-soul disconnects to travel an entire new realm where it can come in contact with other human souls. In this world, we can speak to non-humans as well.
The dream world exists just as the physical world does, and we can learn more about the other by opening up to the experiences of both.
A large theme in Native philosophy includes the understanding that all of life is one giant dream.
To Natives, the dreamworld was just as important as the physical world; both of them reminders of the impermanent nature of life.
The spirits and souls that guide every person can communicate with us in the dream world, and they often do so through symbolic interactions and events.
It is during our dream state that we are able to both receive and transmit spiritual and psychic information. Natives regularly seek insight into their dreams from Elders.
Elders interpret their dreams and offer advice as to what their spirit guide is trying to tell them, just as we use therapists and other medical professionals to help us understand the problems of the physical word.
Understanding dreams differently
Dreams are where we find guidance and connect with the spirit.
Dream world is just another plane of existence that our souls travel to when we sleep, but we use it to further our understandings of ourselves so that we might grow.
Our spirit guides cannot directly influence the growth of one's soul. So, it is in the dream world that they use symbolism to communicate the messages of guidance they want to send.
If we choose to believe what the Natives believe, then there is no denying the importance of one's dreams.
We should do our best to remember them, and reflect on them, because they serve a purpose: to help guide us through the hardships of the physical realm.
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