Bear's Den: "A Midwinter's Night Dream... Ain't Always Sweet"

Ahh, yes, the Severe Moon. The mid-winter time of harshness and cold – winter´s last big hoo-rah. Yes´um, and the full te-bethto-kish-thoe (moon) of this time is the largest and brightest of the year. Uh-huh, and thus it´s the zenith of the power of papoonwi (winter), eh. Yeah, and supposedly… the winter goes downhill from here. Yet, I freeze to death every day – half-way point or no. So, whenever I can, I´m make´n like my namesake – the bear – and hibernating. But, therein lies another problem. ´Cause when you sleep, you dream, and dreams… they ain´t always sweet… know what I mean?

According to American Indian tradition, from this point on the days will remain longer and will begin to warm more with each passing kesathwa (sun). Um-hmm, and this is traditionally also one of the best times to dream. To my mind, that´s mostly because… it´s too dang cold to do anything else but sleep, eh. But, that´s just my take. The reality is that dreams have great spiritual meaning to American Indians. You bet´cha they do. In many ways, dreams are considered a guide to our lives. In days past, they were used to dictate choices in regard to tons of everyday stuff: war, fishing, hunting, marriage, dancing and other such important things. For example you always, ALWAYS… ´listened´ (paid attention) carefully to dreams that folks of the village had prior to war and hunting. Heck man, a war party might even turn back if one of its members dreamed of failure immediately before, or even during, the fight. Boy, General George Patton would´a went ´slap happy´ if he was commanding a bunch of Indians, wouldn´t he? But as goofy as it seems, that´s the truth of it.

See, traditional Indians believe that dreams are sent from the Great Good Spirit to the morally right. If you´re doing what is right – not wrong – then He, and only He… has the power to enter your dream world and send you messages. If you´re dancing with darkness, then it´s His opposite… that invades your dreams, eh. But as long as you´re on the up and up, then these messages are considered to be from your soul, where the Master of Life resides inside of you, and they can be both powerful and helpful. After all, dreams have helped to cure some two-legged diseases and even a muddled mind or two. Now, these mental muddles can run from resentments and unmet needs, to moral responsibilities that have been shunned by the two-legged so affected, eh. Yes´sir, and these things may stem from the two-legged´s personality to secret longings of the soul which might, at times, be at odds with the person´s conscious intentions. And all of this occurs in the dream world. Now, a modern day shrink might call this psychic locale… the ´Id´. But I don´t know an Id… from an id-iot. Still, I do know this from a traditional American Indian perspective: to ignore important dreams is akin to encouraging forms of illness, lunacy and flat-out tragedy, and it is opposing the messages of God. Sure, and being an elder, I´m often asked to interpret some two-legged´s dream. Deciphering these reveries isn´t always easy, cheering or… meaningful, either – nah. Don´t believe me? Well, okay. Here´s a case in point.

The other night, I had a dream where my mom was helping me out. It was weirder than folks actually watching these reality TV programs. In my slumbered trance, I jumped back and forth between being 14 and 30-years old. I was intermittently in junior high, my military service and jobs I´ve held in law enforcement. Pretty odd, huh? Now, when I was a 14-year-old kid, there was a girl that I had a bad crush on. But, in the dream, because I had to go to football practice at school, active-duty in the military and to conclude an arrest in the job, I just didn´t ever seem to have time to call this girl? So, my mom stepped in to help. She called this chick for me, and when I came in from one of these many-faceted – multi-aged events, she told me that she had talked to Wendy and that the girl had agreed to go out with me. Wow! Was that great or what? Moms are wonderful! But the really peculiar thing… was that the lady depicted as my mother in my dream… was my present-day wife of 34-years? Um-hmm, bizarre, eh? Kind´a disturbing, too. Well, after a full and in-depth analytical analysis of this dream, from an elder´s point of view, I have determined, conclusively… that I´m nuttier than a Planter´s Plantation.

In all seriousness, though, this dream probably doesn´t mean much. It´s akin to those inane previews that we used to see in the theaters when I was a kid. You´d go to the food-drive matinee because all you needed to get in was a can of corn, peas or green beans. There was always an intermission, and, in-between the cartoons and commercials for the "Piping Hot Popcorn and Ju-Ju Fruits", they´d show silly mish-mashes of current news events, old movies and the like, while the guy changed the reels above your head. They, like my dream, didn´t mean much and were just time fillers, until the good stuff – the feature (valuable dreams) began again. That said mid-winter is a great time for sleeping, eh. But just the same, that snooze can be a tad disconcerting, too. ´Cause when you sleep, you dream, and dreams… they ain´t always sweet… know what I mean?

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David Walks-As-Bear is an Inter-Tribal Elder and Kispoko Shawnee Indian. He works as a private game warden and detective and is a novelist and syndicated newspaper columnist living in Northwest Michigan. Contact him at his home paper The White Lake Beacon: 231-894-5356 or visit his website at: www.Walks-As-Bear.com