Analyzing dreams as a way of life
Yellowknifers explore Minneapolis-based dream-religion
Evan Kiyoshi French
Northern News Services
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Tears were shed at the Yellowknife Public Library during a workshop focused on remembering dreams, interpreting their meaning and using them as life guides on Sunday.
Carole Lane and Marlene Chappelle, followers of Eckankar, a religious group which uses messages inferred from dreams as a way of life, held a dream-interpreting workshop at the Yellowknife Public Library on Sunday.
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Local followers of Eckankar - a movement founded in the US in 1965 which borrows terminology from eastern traditions like Sufism, described as the inner dimension of Islam, but packaged in a contemporary-western form - met to hear Yellowknife Eckist Carole Lane and Marlene Chappelle, an Ontarian "checking Yellowknife off her bucket list," speak about dream analysis and to share stories.
The group's founder Paul Twitchell has been criticized for allegedly plagiarizing other spiritual texts in writing the books upon which Eckankar is based, but the small group gathered in the library's meeting room focused on the teachings of dream interpretation rather than the controversy surrounding Twitchell's works.
Chappelle said she started recording her dreams 40 years ago and has used them to understand and prepare for the loss of loved ones, to help make life decisions, and to feel in touch with her spirituality.
"I've found when times are tough dreams can show you how to navigate your life more easily," she said, adding that she feels messages about the future are revealed in her dreams. "It's easier to prepare in the dream state . if you're told inwardly it isn't such a big shock."
She said when her marriage ended in 1996 she felt she must have been warned prior in a dream. She consulted her dream diary and found an old entry entitled 'Many Changes'. She dreamt her husband was walking away down a city street, she said. At the time it didn't appear to foreshadow the end of the union, said Chappelle.
"But I realized this symbolized the end of the journey with this man," she said.
Lane said it's important to write entries in a dream diary the moment you wake otherwise important details are forgotten.
"I have entries in my diary where I haven't written the year," she said. "So when I look back through them I wonder 'which year was this'."
She said it's a task that becomes an enjoyable habit.
"I find I'm joyfully picking up that dream journal and I just write something," she said.
The pair listed the types of dreams and described how to identify them. In past life dreams, said Chappelle, the dreamer sees themselves as though looking in a mirror and can be identify by the presence of old-fashioned clothing and architecture. Reoccurring dreams represent unresolved issues, she said. Nightmares force the dreamer to face one's fears, premonitions help to prepare for future events, day dreams are the provocations of the imagination while waking dreams can be interpreted as a spiritual wake-up call, she said. She said waking dreams come while conscious, when an object or piece of scenery prompts esoteric thought. She described a waking dream she had once when a shed-snakeskin floated toward her beside a cottage dock.
"And I thought this process is now complete," she said. "So I began to think what in my life has come to a conclusion. What am I doing that I don't need to do anymore."
Lane said everyone can remember their dreams if they follow proper dreaming etiquette. It's important to wake up immediately after a dream to record details. Memorable dreams occur best when a high-vibration word is chanted while lying in bed before sleep, she said.
The dream guides showed video testimonial Eckankar's soft-spoken dream guru, Harold Klemp, of Minnesota, and put attendees through an exercise chanting hu (pronounced hue), a word used in Sufism described as "a love song to god". Lane said Eckists aren't partial to any particular god, and don't discriminate between faiths.
One woman teared-up after Chappelle showed her how to interpret a dream she had about following a group of women dressed in white walking into a building while Northern Lights danced in the sky.
