In this short story about intuition, synchronicity, and dreaming—excerpted from my current work-in-progress—I share two entirely unexpected and equally unforgettable experiences of “dreaming while awake” that left me stunned, inspired, and full of questions, as well as curious about shamanism and shamanic journeying.
The story won Gold in the Travel and Transformation category of the 2020 Solas Awards.
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For many years I had wanted to attend a workshop at Esalen, a personal-development retreat center overlooking the Pacific Ocean from high atop Big Sur’s stunning cliffs. Also known for its natural hot springs, the center is surrounded by spectacular unspoilt coastline. Otters play in the kelp forests in the ocean below. Condors circle on thermals overhead. People come from all over the world to explore, question, and grow. I’d spent a weekend there on my own, but I’d never attended a workshop. When there were ones that interested me, I wasn’t free. When I was free, there weren’t ones that interested me.
Having just returned from six months overseas, it occurred to me to give Esalen another shot. I was glad I did. Not only was there a course I wanted to take, it worked with my schedule. I snagged a spot without giving it a second thought.
After registering for the first workshop, I noticed another. It started the evening of the day mine ended. I had no trouble justifying the expense of the first course, since it tackled major life questions with which I was already grappling. The second seemed like more of an indulgence. It was about dreams. And, rather than a weekend, it lasted an entire week.
Should I really spend that much time and money on my dreams?
I’ve always had a very active dream life. There was a period where I frequently needed an hour or more to write down dreams from the night before. I once woke up and recorded fourteen of them. I even went through a beguiling period during which, while meditating, I regularly had—for lack of a better way of putting it—visions. I came to think of the experiences as “dreaming while awake.” After six months, maybe a year, finding the visions curious but unsure what purpose they served, I returned to my traditional meditation practice.
Presently, my dreams weren’t something I was giving much thought to exploring further, beyond mustering the discipline to write them down each morning. And yet I couldn’t pull myself away from the dream workshop description. It went well beyond dreaming as I knew it. So much so, in fact, that parts of what I read seemed far-fetched. Spirit guides. Power animals. Revisiting the past and peering into the future. Adventures in the multiverse.
I was intrigued. I was skeptical.
I clicked on an interview with the workshop leader.
I’m not sure what I expected; but, it wasn’t the man in the video. Where was the calm, enlightened demeanor of a guru? The flowing robe? The crystals, candles, and feathers? Had I clicked on the wrong link?
In his 60s, the man was conservatively dressed, with silver hair and a peculiar accent. He was a shaman, someone indigenous cultures believe communicate with the spirit world to facilitate healing and practice divination; but he looked like a proper British gentleman. His manner of speaking, on the other hand, sounded more—but not exactly—Australian. He talked fast, with a confident smile and self-assured authority. He seemed surprisingly rational, his answers making perfect sense—even when asserting claims that, coming from most anyone else, might have sounded nonsensical.
My rational mind resisted. My gut insisted.
The gut has all the answers.
I signed up for the workshop.
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The course at Esalen had barely gotten underway. About forty of us, men and women from their twenties to seventies, were gathered in a big white tent. We sat in a circle on the floor, the gentleman shaman seated in a chair. At his feet was a drum.
He wasn’t going to waste time on explanations or theories. He wasn’t going to satisfy our intellectual curiosity by providing some sort of rationale for what we were about to experience. We were just going to do it. Right then and there.
He began describing a scenario that we would soon be asked to visualize. A trail. A cliff. An animal. He was setting the scene, like in a guided meditation—except he was giving us the guidance beforehand, as opposed to during the exercise. There was another key difference: once we got to the end of what he described, we’d be on our own. From that point on, we would each have our own individual experiences. What we were about to do, it turned out, was essentially a shamanic journey. No matter than none of us were shamans.
We got comfortable, most of us lying on the floor. The shaman began beating the drum. Our journeys got underway.
No sooner had I gotten beyond the initial guided imagery and ventured off on my own, than I was blindsided. I had done this before. Many times, in fact.
I was dreaming while awake.
The journey wasn’t merely reminiscent of what I’d done years earlier on my own; it was the exact same thing. I was astonished. I was excited.
Once the exercise was over, the shaman instructed us to share what we had experienced with whomever was seated on either side of us.
I turned to my right to face an attractive, olive-complected woman in her 40s, attending the workshop with her boyfriend. After quick introductions, I invited her to share her experience first.
I was in for yet another surprise.
It was almost as if she were recounting my own journey; we had gone on essentially the same one. We had both been subjected to violent rituals where our hearts were ripped from our chests, undergone a renewal ceremony, and put back into our bodies. A woman performed her ritual, a man mine. We had different animal guides. But the central narrative, the essence of each waking dream, was the same.
It was inconceivable. Nothing in the shaman’s set-up for the journey had alluded to the heart, never mind a heart-renewal ceremony—whatever that was exactly.
I was stunned. We both were.
Similarly, the discovery that, unbeknownst to me, I had signed up for a workshop about my waking-dream meditations was nothing less than a revelation. It wasn’t the only one. Not only the heart-renewal journey, but others that followed left little doubt: what I was experiencing was not “just in my imagination.”
One journey illustrated that better than any other.
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I have only a vague recollection of the exercise the shaman asked us to do; something about perusing a room full of objects until coming across one that resonated. That object would then serve as the starting point for a journey.
When it happened, I had already completed my own journey. I no longer remember it. It was what came next that mattered.
As the shaman continued beating the drum, I remained on my back with my eyes closed. I felt relaxed, despite there being nothing between me and the hard floor. I was happy to wait patiently for the exercise to come to a close.
At first my mind wandered freely. I listened to the sound of the Pacific crashing at the foot of the cliffs a short distance away. I looked forward to hearing about the other participants’ journeys and sharing my own.
Out of nowhere, something flew into my mind’s eye.
A globe.
Where had it come from, I wondered. And why?
The globe spun quickly round and round. It stopped somewhere in Central Asia. It took me a second, but then I recognized it: Mongolia.
Before I knew it, I found myself in a large tent. I was sitting at a simple wooden table, facing an old woman seated on the other side. She looked the part of a stereotypical developing-country villager: dark skin riddled with deep lines betrayed hardship, tenacity, and wisdom. Her intense eyes were dark, too, but only in color. Her silver-streaked hair was pulled back.
It occurred to me that the tent was likely a yurt. I didn’t get any additional impressions. Perhaps that was because I was so bewildered.
When the vision struck, far from letting my imagination run wild, I had been engaged in random thoughts of seemingly little consequence. What I was experiencing now had come at me out of the blue. All the same, was I just imagining things? Was I making it up? I gave it some thought.
If, for whatever reason, I were to visualize myself somewhere, Mongolia was an unlikely choice. Spain. France. Turkey. Other more far-flung places I’ve traveled or with which I at least have some sort of connection or interest. Those might have made sense. But not only did I know almost nothing about Mongolia, it wasn’t somewhere I felt particularly drawn.
Then there was the woman sitting across from me. The shaman.
Were there shamans in Mongolia? Not unlikely. Again, though, I knew very little about Mongolia. The same was true for shamanism. Apart from the Native Americans, I couldn’t say which cultures elsewhere in the world had shamanic traditions.
As for this particular shaman, she was a woman. Were there women shamans? It wouldn’t have surprised me, but I didn’t know that for sure either. Asked to imagine a shaman, I was sure to visualize a man.
If the old woman sensed my doubt and confusion, she showed no signs of it. Instead, she took out a small cup that reminded me of ones used to play Yahtzee. She then threw some dice out of the cup and onto the table. They were made of bone.
Still at a loss to explain what I was witnessing, I again looked for a logical explanation. I was vaguely familiar with Celtic runes. Was I somehow projecting what little I knew of them into the vision unfolding before me? Unlikely. My rational mind was grasping at straws.
The journey continued, the imagery that followed making less of an impression. What I had experienced up until then, on the other hand, could hardly have made more of one.
When the workshop ended for the day, I ran to a computer. Given how improbable it was that I would have unwittingly concocted what happened in the journey, I had to see if I could corroborate any of it online. I entered “woman,” “shaman,” “Mongolia,” and “dice” into a search engine.
The first article I opened was about a Mongolian shaman woman who used bone dice to diagnosis illness.
I struggled to believe my eyes.
How was it possible?
I knew in no uncertain terms that I had no prior knowledge of what I’d seen during the journey—one I hadn’t even intended to undertake, no less. Yet I had seen it all the same.
Apparently I also had just taken my first trip to Mongolia.
Have you had powerful experiences with your dreams? Share below! 👇