Legends that will bring us beautiful dreams

The Lakotas are an ancient American people, of tribes of origin settled in the center of the continent, who later became nomads.

The lakota legend of the dream catcher, one of his wise elders while meditating, suddenly had a vision. In it appeared Iktomi, the master of humor and wisdom, who before his eyes became a spider.

Iktomi and the old man began to speak in sacred language, and while they did, Iktomi now turned spider, began to weave a net.

This was made by taking a branch of the oldest willow, because by arming a hoop with her, she began her fabric including feathers, horse hair, beads and offerings.

Today this object woven by Iktomi is called dream catcher, and is used in many parts of the world. We have received it kindly from the Lakota culture.

But what does it mean?

While Iktomi made his fabric, he told the old wise man that the circular network that he was showing, meant the development of life. In this one, he explained, we are not going towards a destination, but everything goes back and forth, since as children we move on to strong ones, but over time we become weak again as death approaches.

The old man saw that Iktomi spoke wisely and continued listening. Then he continued his explanation. He told him that the objects he added to the net, such as feathers and beads, meant those things we did in life and that had been fair and good. If we had led a happy life, these things would be many.

But when approaching the center of his work, Iktomi created a hoop in the middle, within which there was no fabric. He said that hole left was for him to go for him all the things that had not corresponded, all the mistakes or unfortunate experiences.

At the end of his work, Iktomi added: If you believe in the Great Spirit, the web will catch your good ideas, while the bad ones will go through the hole . So I left a lesson to the Lakota people: as long as we keep in mind the divinity that created us and lives inside us, our experiences will be elaborated, they will take a good place and our lives They will not have been in vain.

We know that when an idea that you want to carry out is very beautiful, it is usually called sue o . Therefore, the name chosen for the object created by Iktomi was dream catcher .

Interestingly, we also know from our current psychology, that the other dreams we know, that is, those we have at night when we sleep, also sometimes represent our desires. Even when they are longing for a better destination.

The beautiful story Lakota says in poetic words the same thing that our current psychology has taught us: that dreams are not accidental. That these fulfill a function, which is to order our experiences during the day, so that the best of them is fixed in our memory during the night. The dreams of our sleep, like the object created by Iktomi, are like a web that catches the best that has happened to us.

However, despite all this divine plan so pleasing to our dreams, these sometimes become difficult.
Sometimes we don't remember them. Others are not pleasant. Others may even have difficulty falling asleep.

Arriving at the night rest stage does not always happen in the happiest way. For this reason, we must take into account our being and our characteristics. Knowing ourselves will help us have a more restful rest, and with the most appropriate dreams. We must know our personality .

What is this about knowing our personality? She is the whole of our physical, emotional, mental and emotional life. Something that if you look at it this way in such a defining way, it may seem too vast, if we want to understand it quickly.

But we have no hurry. We can now go through some beautiful stories that will help us to work with those parts of our personality, physical, emotional, mental and mood, which make the quality of our dreams, and also our vigil.

The Japanese myth of Baku

Japan has among its legends a particularly beautiful one. Baku is a striking animal with "body of a bear, elephant trunk, eyes of a rhinoceros, the tail of a cow, strong legs like those of a tiger, and a spotted skin . " In other versions it has a lion's face, horse's body, cow's tail, rhino horn and tiger hooves. In short, a fierce creature although with natural and varied attributes such as the Greek Centaur or the Aztec Quetzalcoatl.

“Baku is introduced at night in people's dreams, and devours their nightmares.
He is famous for his ability to devour animals, and can be invoked by man while he is having a nightmare. The creature then consumes the vision and bad luck contained in the dream. It also serves to scare away spirits from diseases and pests. ”

In the West we have few references to myths of fierce animals that do us good. During the nineteenth century it was customary to see the hunting of large animals as something positive, until more recently the ecology rediscovered that fierce animals are essential for the life of the planet. They are highly beneficial.

Baku is an irruption of the most powerful natural forces in the dark voids of the human subconscious, when we fail to bring positive thoughts into our dream life.
And, in truth, it is very true. When we plan to improve our dreams, taking care of our thoughts every day, making sure before going to sleep to keep in mind the best thing that has happened to us, something gets into our dreams.
Something with the force of a great wind, sometimes remembering a hurricane, makes annoying or painful thoughts that had been harassing us abruptly disappear. Baku does his job when we know how to invoke him.

“The history of the Baku actually began in China, but it was taken to Japan in the fourteenth century. From there, the description of the beast changed over time. In the seventeenth century, the physical form of the Baku had become a chimera, it had the legs of a tiger, the head of an elephant, and the penetrating eyes of a rhinoceros. His name changed to Mo, and in order to protect yourself, you had to draw a sketch of the beast before falling asleep. ”

Of course. If before sleeping we draw on a harmonious combination of beautiful animal figures, we will be giving a strong message to our subconscious that we love nature. If in addition we imagine that this creature loves us and will want to help us with our nocturnal thoughts, beautiful dreams will be practically guaranteed.

Brownies, elves and elementals

“In the Scottish tradition, there is a legend about tiny men, called brownies, who enter your house at night and do housework while you sleep. They live traditionally on farmland and, as they are appeased, will help you around the farm. But God help you if you offend one, because his capacity for good is only surpassed by his appetite for malicious destruction. They tear down walls, kill sheep, and do enough damage. ”
“But brownies, on the other hand, tend to be of good character. They do not like to be seen by humans, so they will wait until they are asleep and dreaming before entering. They will work even harder if you leave them some food, and they are particularly fond of oatmeal and milk. ”

It is obviously a type of elementary being, which in more known classifications are called elves .
According to data provided by the universal teachings, the variety of these elementary beings is immense, so saying only "elves" gives us no precision. It is as if to explain what a rabbit is, we say "mammal."

Why did we just say "obviously brownie is an elementary" ? Because it has all the behavior characteristic of these beings. That kind of elementary that is in contact with the human being is usually precisely as it is described there: occurrences, mocking, intervening in human reality, and sometimes a little vindictive. On them there is abundant bibliography, and not only about European elves and elementals, but from all over the world.

Scottish novelist Robert Louise Stevenson, who had a special bond with beings from this plane whom he also called brownies, makes an attractive description of them.

In his Chapter on Dreams (written at his house on Lake Saranac in northern New York State and published in Across the Plains) Stevenson gave a vivid description of his dream helpers:

Who are the little ones? They are connections close to those of the dreamer, beyond any doubt; they share their financial concerns and have an eye on the bank book; they share clearly in their training; they have clearly learned how to build the outline of a considered story and arrange emotions in progressive order; I just think they have more talent; and one thing is beyond doubt, they can tell you a story piece by piece, like a series, and keep it all the time in ignorance of where they point.

And for the Little People, what will they say are not more than my Brownies? God bless you! who do half of my work for me while I am deeply asleep, and in all human probability, do the rest for me too, when I am wide awake and very affectionate I guess I do it for myself. The part that is done while I sleep is the part of the Brownies that is beyond all discussion; But what is done when I stand is not necessarily mine, since everything shows that Brownies have something to do with it even then.
My Brownies are something fantastic, like their hot stories, full of passion and picturesque, alive, with lively incidents; and have no prejudices against the supernatural and have no morals .

Stevenson used his brownies friends to compose his literary stories. This is a fact that minds accustomed to thinking things materialistically, find it a pure metaphor to refer to the imagination, or even an extravagance of Stevenson. But there are many cases of artists who use, more or less consciously, the elemental beings of the energetic world to make their compositions. So much so that, even in ancient Greece, it was said that art came from the Muses, which are precisely inspiring goddesses that govern the lives of beings from that same plane of existence.

What sweet words Stevenson's! With what passion for these beings he tries to describe them! He was undoubtedly one of the literary artists who best understood the reality of life of that level of energy. And it is that nature, also in that energetic world, as in our physical and in all those in which it is expressed, knows how to respond positively. He gives back to those who give love, his own love, and in this case, a Stevenson who knew the value and the need to take care of the night's rest hours, obtained his reward with true literary parties of these beings during Deep sleep, inhabiting your subconscious.
Stevenson was then, in addition to a writer, an artist who created beautiful dreams .

American legends

“ Abenaki is a Native American tribe, lived around the New England area of ​​the United States, with towns that came up in southern Quebec. His greatest legend of the dream is also his creation story. ”

“According to the myth, the Great Spirit initially lived in a vacuum, a world without form or function. So he called the Great Turtle to form the lands of the world, and stacked the clay on the shell of the turtle to create mountains. But then he came to a moment of indecision: What kind of creatures would live in this world? While thinking about it, he fell asleep and began to dream. In his dream he saw all the animals and people that fill the world today, and he thought he was having a nightmare. When the Great Spirit woke up, he discovered that his dream had created all the animals on earth. ”

This myth of the creative turtle is characteristic of several indigenous peoples of North America. As you can see, it refers to a cosmology or interpretation of the origin of the universe, which this people had.

Like the Chinese P'anku (or Pangu), it is a Great Being that creates all beings in the world, plants, animals, rocks and men, from a dream.

It is good sometimes, when for some reason we stop to think about the origin of the universe, try to get a little out of the schemes that we hear frequently such as the Big Bang, Adam and Eve, and others that are very imbricated with our local culture, to listen to the story of other cultures. These other stories were really not inferior in any way.

Myths like that of the Abenaki people are particularly comforting. Not only do they help us understand the origin of the world in a more intuitive way, it contains that kind of message for our hearts, but they also provide us with a rich literature that can also help us better understand the value of sleep.

In that literary beauty, the Iroquois and Algonquians, also American peoples, of the eastern region of the continent are not left behind.

Account in a part of the Iroquois myth of Creation: “The Bearer of the Earth, the Ancient, lived in the world of heaven. In the center of this world grew a large tree full of flowers and fruits that fed all who lived there. The Earth Bearer took the Elder as a wife and she became pregnant when she breathed her husband's breath, but the Earth Bearer became jealous and distrustful and began to consume himself. He dreamed that the answer to his problems was to pluck the big tree and that he did, leaving a hole in the ground of the world of heaven.
The Earth Bearer told the Elder to look through the hole and when she bowed, pushed her through it. While falling he picked up the seeds of the tree with his hand and his tobacco-scented root with the other. The old woman fell into the water that then covered the earth. The ducks saw her fall and joined her wings to catch her, the Great Turtle emerged from the hells and with the curve of her shell created a resting place on the water for her.
A musk mouse dipped into the water and extracted mud, which spread through the shell of the Turtle. When the surface began to expand, the Elder released the seed and the root she carried in her hands. The earth immediately filled with plants and a new tree sprouted from the roots. ”

How many times have we asked ourselves about the origin of everything that exists? Of the world, of the universe? Normally we receive answers to this such as those proposed by current religions (Genesis, Noah's Ark, Adam and Eve) or the most accepted theories of official science (Big Bang). For rational purposes, we could perhaps settle for that. But take a moment to read in a way of enjoyment and not rational, the feeling of tribes like these, which can even connect us to other essences present in us, which were asleep.

Our daily life, they tell us in esoteric philosophy, is like the life of all human history . It happens that the Law of Rhythm, which is the 5th of the Seven Universal Laws, causes no natural event to be isolated. On the contrary, all things that happen in the life of our world have their resonance in smaller and larger cycles.
For example, when a human fetus is formed from the embryo, it grows until it becomes a child in its mother's womb, and all the stages it goes through in that development are very similar to the evolution of the whole life on the entire planet. Earth. At first it looks like a small fish, then it resembles a primitive mammal. Then an evolved mammal, and finally a child. In the span of nine months, the entire history of the world is "repeated" in some way, since this is determined by the Law of Rhythm: there cannot be parts of Creation that do not synchronize with the large scales.

Thus, on an even smaller scale than the duration of a pregnancy, we have daily life. If we look at what our daily life is from our early sleep, until we wake up, walk and hours later we go back to bed, we will see that we repeat the stage of pregnancy, and the creation of the planet. Our daily activity goes from the unconsciousness of sleeping (comparable to pregnancy) to waking up (being born), taking sleepiness away from becoming active (childhood), having our greatest physical strength until noon (youth), and so on. So until the night, where when we go to bed we make a "die in miniature . "

Because of this, because the entire Universe is in our little everyday existence, it is that we can get to intuit what this all means of the musk mouse, the turtle, the Great Spirit, and all the beings that appear in those ancient tales. Our intuition can, if we allow it, make us feel through these stories, in a small way, the same feelings of the entire life of the world through the millions of years.

The great turtle, the great tree of the center of the world, the musk reason and of course also the Great Spirit, inhabit us. They created the world through a dream, and our dreams can, in turn, recreate the world. Reading these comforting stories puts us in an attitude to capture with our thoughts and feel, again, what happened throughout the existence. This also helps us to find ourselves and therefore also, needless to say, to have beautiful dreams .

The Chinese giant Pangu

In the beginning there was nothing in the universe except a uniform chaos and a black mass of nothing. Chaos began to merge into a cosmic egg for 18, 000 years. Within him, the opposite principles of yin and yang were balanced and Pangu came out of the egg. Pangu undertook the task of creating the world: he divided the yin of the yang with his giant ax, creating the land of the yin and the sky of the yang. To keep them apart, he stayed between them pushing the sky up. This task took him 18, 000 years, the sky rising every day a zh ng (equivalent to 3 33 meters) while the earth sank in the same proportion He and Pangu also grew the same length. In some versions, Pangu is helped by the four main animals: the turtle, the qilin, a bird and the dragon.
After another 18, 000 years, Pangu lay down to rest. He was so old that his dream was slowly leading him to death. From his breath came the wind, from his voice thunder, from the left eye the sun and from the right the moon. His body was transformed into the mountains, his blood in the rivers, his muscles in the fertile lands, the hair of his face in the stars and the Vía L ctea. His hair gave rise to the forests, his bones to valuable minerals, the marrow in jade and pearls. His sweat fell in the form of rain and the small creatures that populated his body (fleas in some versions), carried by the wind, became human beings. Thus, Pangu gave rise to everything we know today.

If we get carried away by this story in their feelings, narrowing their eyes and perceiving ourselves as if we were Pangu living through this adventure, it will bring us a slight memory of another myth: that of Adam, because in both cases, there is a man who represents the Creation.

Strictly speaking, Adam is not all the other beings of the Creation given by God (as it does with Pangu), but since he has no children until later history, of some sort does not happen mode also represents the whole generation of life, it is its crown.

Something that is present in many mythologies (understood as the cultural richness of the people and not as lies) is the sequence of the following chain: Creative divinity GIVES PLACE to egg or primary Earth, which GIVES PLACE in succession of beings from less evolved to more evolved, which finally gives PLACE to be more evolved, man.

Modern science may be able to provide us with many data related to everything related to this Generation of the Universe, but something that attracts attention is that the characteristics of the myth are repeated in different parts of the world, in places of the globe completely separated from each other.

It is in our "genes", in our deep unconscious, that truth of the history of the world. The peoples have done nothing but put it into words, through an abundant wealth of lexicon.

We also see in this account of Pangu, how the dream state has a prominent role. There are many other myths of Creation where the dream does not intervene, but as we have seen from the beginning of this reading, there are also many others where it has complete preponderance.

For alchemy, all these evolutionary phases from egg to man are completely clear. They are the same as a tree, for example: first, it is a seed (mineral beings, earth). Then it germinates and is a trunk (energetic beings, water). Then it extends into horizontal branches (astral beings, air) and finally opens into fruits and flowers (mental beings, fire). Man, as a representative of the beings of fire in mammals, is one of the corollas or crowns of creation.

In the case of American myths, instead of an egg we had a turtle, and instead of intermediate beings we had the musk mouse. But the sequence is always the same: from the alchemical element Earth to the element Fire, passing through the other two intermediates.

The differences between the myths allow us to feel the beauty of the experiences that each people had about Creation . Each town knew in its interior what creation was like, and in telling it it did it differently, with different words. Obviously it would have been very boring if all the people had had the same story, since that would not tell us anything about their diversity, their different colors.

Something that will help us to find well-being in our dreams, is to ask ourselves by what colors arise in our heart, when we calm down and meditate on all these myths. What story is for each of us, Creation? If a child asked us how the world was made and we had to tell him through a story, how would we make that story? What would we write?
Perhaps if we wrote it, we would find another story, different from that of all ancient peoples but no less charged than what is inside us. All those beautiful stories transcended time, because they contained a true light. Since they had that real seed, the successive generations wanted to keep them in their memory.

Let us then tell a story of ours to a child. If it pleases you, it is probably because we have connected with the underlying Creation within ourselves. We will have made our being connect with our dreams, and they will become more beautiful.

AUTHOR: Héctor, editor in the great family of hermandablanca.org