The Roadmap of a Small Dream
For example, I recently had a dream about Green Olives.
I am at the buffet at Whole Foods. I am piling my plate with green olives. One pile is for my lunch. The pile is stacked maybe 8 inches high in a prominent mound. I have a secondary pile of green olives that is maybe half that size that I plan on saving for later.
End dream.
My reality check in this dream is that I do enjoy olives. I also am a Whole Foods shopper. So, that all makes sense to me.
Moreover, the second I woke up, it immediately occurred to me that money is also green and saving money for later is a good thing. I had recently spent a little more of the green stuff than usual, and I could see how I was being guided to put a kibosh on the spending situation. However, I had the strongest notion that eventually deepening layers of meaning would be revealed. I simply had to pay attention. Even though at first appearance this olive dream seemed to be a pretty small, if not a banal dream, I had the sneaking suspicion there would be more information that would unfold in due course.
I was right.
Those olives would not release me just yet. The synchronicities with olives began to roll in and pile up—one after the other, after the other—initially like a tumbleweed slowly crossing the desert with the light wind as its guide, but ultimately, that light tapping of my awareness became an all out insistent voice from the Universe. I saw olives on signs. Olives in books. Olives in movies. Pictures of olives. They were everywhere.
I then watched an episode in season 4 of Manifest, where one of the characters is named Olive, but in this particular episode, it felt like they said her name 400 times in a 40 minute show. Yes, that is of course a hyperbole, but that was the feeling I had. It seemed like the characters in this show were insistent that I pay attention. Everywhere I looked, olives were almost constantly being pushed into my mind.
After that Manifest episode, I decided to take action. I had already looked up olives in dream dictionaries, but they always referenced olive branches symbolizing peace. That resonated. I could always use a bit more inner peace in my life, and certainly our world as a whole could do with some peace, but this meaning with regards to the dream did not resonate at the core of my being. It felt like only a very minute inkling of my answer. I needed to put on my detective cap for a deeper sense of what this dream meant. The synchronicities were guiding me forward to where I needed to go next. Ergo, I ambled to Whole Foods, the place in my original dream, in order to find some green olives.
What were these olives going to teach me, I wondered? When I arrived home, I ripped the plastic protection shell off from the jar. I lifted the first olive with a fork and placed it inside my mouth. The result was pure heaven. It was one of the most amazing olive experiences of my life. The tangy salty flavor burst in my mouth. I am a foodie and good foods always take me to my happy place. I was a happy camper indeed.
I thought that the Olive messages were now done. The Universe had guided me to have this marvelous gift from Mother Earth. Surely, I could move onto the next thing. Alas, that was not the case. The Universe had another idea. More plotting on the dream and synchronicity roadmap was required.
The next day, I pulled out the same jar. I lifted up the first olive with my fork, only this time, I sensed my inner child coming out to play. As a young girl, my maternal grandmother would place pitted black olives on my finger tips. I loved wiggling my fingers while looking at the seemingly magical jewels on my hands. The playful energy I remembered with those childhood black olives bubbled up inside me as I looked at the current green olives. The green olives had pits, so I couldn't place them on my fingers as I once had in my youth. Nevertheless, I chose to step into the state of wonder that my young self had. I swayed where I stood like a young girl might. My body moved to the beat of my Soul's heart and I embraced this magical moment I was now experiencing.
I thought after inviting my inner child to play that now I must be done with navigating this dream. I bought the olives. I ate the olives. I tapped into my inner child self. What more could there be? However, once again, I was being led to my next stopping point on this roadmap I was creating.
I played a video from dream teacher, Robert Moss, who mentioned soul loss. It was a recording and in this case that was a good thing, because the second he said soul loss I stopped the video. I didn't even listen to his explanation. I just needed those two words, for the light bulb in my mind to be lit. I had a deep knowing what my next step would be. I could finish his recording later. For now, Robert Moss became a messenger for me. I had some work to do. I am a shamanic practitioner myself and in that moment, I felt that the olives might actually have a deeper meaning of soul loss for me. I had some further exploring to do on my own.
What is Soul Loss?
This may not be a familiar term for non-shamanic practitioners, but Soul loss is quite familiar to shamans and to indigenous peoples around the world. Soul loss occurs when trauma becomes too great for the Soul to handle. A piece of our Soul may decide to leave the body in order to protect itself from whatever trauma is occurring. Additionally, Soul loss may also take place because of an unfulfilled calling or passion that due to fear, is not expressed. The bottom line is that fear plays a significant role in Soul loss.
When we are born, our baby self is perfect and whole and remembers his or her connection with the Divine, but as we grow up, the world can throw us some curve balls from time to time. When that happens, and if it's too much for us to handle in the moment, the Soul part will leave and go to what is shamanically known as non-ordinary reality. If this happens and if the Soul part is not brought back, it can stay there indefinitely, leaving the person feeling somehow incomplete.
In indigenous cultures a person who is not doing well may take a couple of days before heading to the healer. The shaman then goes to non-ordinary reality to see what the underlying issue is. If they find a lost Soul part, they will then retrieve the Soul part and merge it back into the body of the patient, so that they may feel whole once again.
Since most Westerners do not do this, we have a variety of soul parts missing from various times in our life. We don't feel complete. We don't feel like ourselves. We feel like we are missing something. We may be tired. We may have a physical, mental or emotional malady. There are a plethora of possible symptoms. These are just a few.
Even though I didn't yet understand why, I felt an energetic nudge that the olives were trying to show me something about Soul loss and it was up to me to do something about it.
I chose to begin by re-entering the olive dream through a Shamanic journey.
The Shamanic Journey
Shamanic journeying is similar to meditation and dreaming. In fact, from my point of view, if meditation and dreaming had a baby, it would be shamanic journeying.
In journey work, a person has an intention of what they want to know. In this case, I wanted to go to my olive dream. The person moves into a relaxed state of awareness, while listening to the sounds of a shamanic drum beat. This unvarying drumbeat helps to put the practitioner into the theta state of awareness. One begins the journey state with the imagination and then allows the journey (or dream, if you prefer) to take over the experience. I imagined the olives in my mind's eye, and then the journey took over.
In my mind's eye, I saw the green olives in two piles sitting on a plate, just as they were in the original dream. A little girl of five with a ponytail high up on her head stood in front of the plate eating one after the other. I stood behind her, but off to the side by maybe a half a foot so that I could easily see the plate of olives. Even though as an adult, I am taller than a child, I was somehow at her level.
At first, I was so engrossed with the olives and then the little girl's ponytail, I didn't pay attention to the girl's face, but I quickly decided to join her at the plate of olives. That's when I saw that the little girl with the ponytail was me at five years of age. I recognized that this was the missing Soul part I was looking for, and she had been gone for over five decades.
Little me didn't pay too much attention to older me, as she was busily munching away on her delicious treat. I greeted her in my mind's eye. I asked her what the olives meant for her.
"They are my connection to my (maternal) grandparents."
"How so?" I asked.
She now had black olives on her fingertips and she slowly removed them to show me the honey-like glue underneath that was connected to their Souls.
This set of grandparents always treated me like a queen. I had forgotten that until this moment. While they treated me as though I was truly God's gift to Earth, they treated their daughter—my mother—at the opposite end of the spectrum. When I was five, my mom had had enough and took my brother and me out of their home—never to return. At five years old, I was cut off from this set of grandparents. I, of course, always took my mother's side. I completely understood. However, this little Soul part, had a different relationship with them. She did not want to leave. The trauma of this leaving, meant she was going to stay "glued" to them in non-ordinary reality.
After I understood this part of the story, my young Soul part moved onto the next thing and I found her playing with her Light Brite. The Light Brite was one of my favorite activities at her age.
I shared with five-year-old me, "You know, I love Light Brite too."
She looked at me with curiosity.
"Do you know why?" I continued.
She shook her head no.
Because each light reminds me of the stars.
As dreams and journeys go, we found ourselves instantly outside, lying on a grassy clearing that was surrounded by a copse of trees. We looked up in awe at the starry night. The stars were unencumbered by street lights, so there were an endless amount of twinkling lights in the sky.
"You know that there is also a star inside of you." I pointed to her heart chakra as I said this.
She looked where I was pointing in wonder.
"Your inner light is always shining brightly, even if you are unaware of it. If you like, you may merge back with me and you and I together will have a greater sense of our inner light."
No further convincing was required.
She immediately wrapped her arms around my now standing legs with the strongest bear hug a young girl could muster. I did some healing first before merging her with me and then she came back into me. What fascinated me is that normally Soul parts enter the current body through the heart and crown chakras, but she entered in me in the side body, at the exact spot where I have been hurting for over two years. Lo and behold, the pain went away. I hugged myself and felt a deep sense of gratitude for her return. Tears of joy filled my eyes—and I was grateful for them.
Once again, the roadmap seemed complete, but there was still one more step to be taken.
Later that night, while taking my shower, the memory of love—genuine love—for my maternal grandparents came flooding back in. I had already done healing work on my relationship with them over the last several years. They have both been deceased for some time, but through shamanism, healing work can always be done. With those previous sessions, I felt an intellectual love for them—really, more of a sense of gratitude for being a link in my being born, but this was different. This was a true memory of feeling love for them.
In the end, this so-called small dream was not small at all. It was a very BIG dream in so many ways. I am grateful I followed the roadmap of clues that the Universe laid out for me to uncover.
Interestingly, after this healing, the next episode of Manifest that I watched, the character, Olive, was simply called "Ol". The olive message was now complete.
💚
In Conclusion, dreams and synchronicities often work in conjunction with one another. It is important to not only write up the dreams in journals, and to decode them, but it is equally important to navigate through the process. By allowing the synchronicities to flow in, the conscious mind will pick up on them. The more action in response to the dream and synchronicities that is taken, the bigger the gift there will be from the dream. In this case, the healing and merging of my young Soul part helped to remind me about love.
And love is a good thing.
Thank you for reading. Sleep well. Dream Well.
~Lisa
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