image by NickFitz: Summer Solstice at Stonehenge
In honor of solstice, either the first day of summer or the first day of winter, depending on where you live, we’re inviting you to join us for a week of cyber-group dream incubation.
Here’s the back story:
When the DreamTeam started reflecting on the global appearance of whales – in waking life and in dreams – we pondered the possibility that whales are trying to communicate a message us (not us personally, but the world in general). If they are, we wondered, how might we discern what they are trying to say?
In order to find out, we decided to invite you and the greater DreamTribe community to join us for whale related dream incubation. Our goal: to try and hear the whales’ message, if there is indeed one.
With this in mind, I went to bed Saturday night wondering whether or not we should all try to incubate the same question and if so, what might it be.
The idea of asking “What message do the whales have for us?” came to mind and as soon as I thought it I fell asleep. I woke the next morning from this dream:
My black cat Angus is sitting on a bed with his jaw wide open. I see an odd white, bone structure inside his mouth and I realize it’s a whale rib cage. It’s tiny compared to an actual whale’s rib structure, but it’s slightly bigger than my cat’s mouth and he can’t close his jaw. I feel distress and anxiety because I don’t know how to help him.
That’s only one part of the dream; the rest was equally bizarre!
Anyway, I realized later in the day that I’d unintentionally incubated a dream. Might this imagery have something to do with the whales’ message? Possibly. But how will we know for sure? Group exploration may be the key to finding out.
So, if you’re interested in joining us, here’s what we’re doing:
For the next week we’ll try to incubate whale message dreams.
Why a week? It can take that long for dreams to reflect the questions asked during dream incubation.
But as you may have noticed, I had an immediate response when I asked my question so it doesn’t always take that long.
Regardless, you can do the incubation for one night or every night for a week.
However you do it, though, be sure to record all of your dreams because even those that lack literal whale imagery can be part of the message.
Then over the next week I’ll add an area on the DreamTribe blog where we can post our dreams. You can post one or all, or give a summary. Then we can do some group dream reflection and look for common themes and messages.
How to Incubate a Dream
- Long before going to bed, develop a clear question you want to ask your dreams. For instance, “What is the whales’ message?” or “Why are whales appearing more frequently?” You can ask anything that feels right.
- Make a talisman or object to represent the question. As you make it, keep the incubation question in mind. You can make an art collage or use a stone from the ocean. Make it detailed, make it simple. Have fun and be creative. (And post a picture of it below if you’d like to show us what you did.) Hint: if you make a charm for a necklace or something small it will be easier to wear or carry with you.
- Keep the talisman or object with you all day and when you go to bed hold it while stating your question. You may want to add the affirmation, “I will remember my dreams and record them in the morning.”
- Keep a journal next to your bed in case you wake in the middle of the night.
- Upon waking, record whatever dreams or fragments or feelings you have. If they seem unrelated to your intention, don’t worry. Your dream imagery may simply hold symbolism you are not seeing (that’s why group dreaming is so useful!)
- Stay tuned for instructions on where to post your incubated dreams.
If you have any dream incubation questions feel free to post them below. Also feel free to post photos of your talisman/objects.
Are you as curious as I am to discover what message(s) awaits us? Can we indeed be the voice of the whales?
This is a fascinating idea. I like the idea of using dreams as a way to communicate with nature. I just wrote a post about feeling as though my spirit would be a dolphin spirit if I gave it that kind of structure and a wonderful woman named Tracy shared this link. I’m so glad she did – this was fascinating to think about. Thank you!
[…] what’s happening? Did you have any luck hearing messages from the whales? Post your dream incubation experiences below so we can all learn from your inner […]
I love your project of incubating whale dreams! Unfortunately I heard about it after the fact. However, I do have a whale dream I’d like to share from 2/21/10 in which orca seems to be saying “hello”.
“I find myself swimming in the ocean with my wife. The place seems like a tropical location. Suddenly we experience a large, dark creature coming up out of the ocean underneath us. We both realize it is an Orca. It pushes us a little bit and surfaces. I see it big eye first, then its body half submerged. It is looking directly at us and it seems to be smiling. I know it is saying hello and it seems very friendly. We swim around with the whale for a while.”
It is interesting to note that it was a few days after I had this dream on 2/23/10 that the news hit that a trainer at Sea World in Orlando, FL was killed by an orca. If you recall, this was big news at the time and I think caused a lot of people to ask questions about our treatment of whales in captivity.
Hi Patrick,
Thanks for sharing your dream. There is something magical about whale eyes. They seem to hold a great deal of wisdom.
There’s still time to incubate dreams. We’ll be doing it as a group through Tuesday (6/28).
Happy dreaming!
In my dream last night, I stepped off a bus directly into a large puddle. It was as if there was a sudden flood but only one foot got soaking wet. Then, I heard the phrase, a circle of wolves…and a card, like the Motherpeace cards shaped in a circle…showed up with wolves all around the edge of it, facing in.
“Killer whales” or Orca’s are considered the wolves of the sea. This morning I wondered, if I had been visited by the whales?
Hi Amy and others,
I also just found out about this group incubation event yesterday, so I will do what I can in a short time. I have been staying on the northern Ecuador coast for some time, so whales are definitely in the theme range for me. I found a very large dark shell which I am using to remind myself about dreaming of whales. And a small smooth deer cowrie shell to carry around for tactile remembering. So far, no dreams about whales, but many dreams about other subjects these days.
Whale mating season happens a bit south of here in the month of June. I haven’t seen it yet personally. But my friend, Shanti, was approached by a group of wild dolphins last week while she was wading in the ocean. One stayed with her for about 3 hours, and she hugged it, scratched its stomach, and even put her hands in its mouth.
My thought was why these large sea mammals would still believe in humans and want to be around us? But this particular woman also happens to really love animals, for example, heals the neighbors’ dogs since the neighbors here don’t really bother, and is an unusually kind person . Perhaps she is an exception to the rule and these dolphins could feel this about her– or they were just taking chances.
Anyway, now I am on an alert for whale and dolphin sightings both in waking reality and dream space reality.
Hello again! I have a new dream that does not involve whales but does involve communication with nature. On 6/29 I went to sleep giving myself the suggestion to get a message from the whales. I than had a dream that humans and trees now have a way to directly communicate. You can read the whole dream at http://www.wholedreams.org. Perhaps the whales were speaking to through the trees?
Wow, that’s cool Patrick. Have you read Malidoma Some’s book, “Of Water and the Spirit”? When he was initiated into the Dagara community, his “break through” back into indigenous mind came when he connected with a tree spirit.
It’s a great book, if you haven’ tread it. Malidoma was removed from his tribal village when he was 4, raised in a Jesuit school, and at the age of 21 returned to his village. He was initiated into “manhood” and in so doing, had the tree experience. Great autobiography.
Looking forward to reading your dream.
Amy, thanks for the recommendation! I will check this out. Sounds really interesting!
This is giving me chills!!!
A few weeks ago, I had a strong urge to visit a forest – not something I usually do and not really the brightest idea considering the area has been inundated with forest fires lately.
I walked through the woods and asked if there was a tree that wanted to speak with me…I went to the one that was calling me and nestled against it and unexpectedly burst into sobs. I felt ashamed that all I had to share with the tree was sorrow and anguish and no sparkly lovelight stuff, and the tree reassured me that it was exactly right, that’s what it wanted and why it called me there.
After I walked away, I heard a song pop into my head I used to sing in church, “all I had to offer him was brokenness and strife, and he made something beautiful out of my life.”
Soon after I dreamed of an ancestral tree that was rotting and dying because of criminal activity of ancestors, there were rap sheets embedded in the tree keeping the branches from attaching to the trunk (I am adopted, and as far as I could tell in the dream it was totally about birth family).
I also had a dream a few nights ago of a woman dressed in desert-tribal robes who was showing me a picture of an eye which was a whale eye at first and then an elephant eye.
Thanks for sharing, Sunshine. Such beautiful waking and sleeping dreams. Dreams can be a great source of information for ancestral work. We’ll be talking more about this in the future. If you haven’t read Malidoma Some’s book I recommend it for you too. It’s very moving, and in a way, it’s about lost connection to ancestors, too.
I just found this blog in an effort to see if anyone else has similar dreams to the one I experienced last night. In my dream, I saw several wales swimming near the cliffs of the palisades along the Hudson river. Their purpose for being there was to bounce sound waves off the underwater cliff (I know there are no cliffs underwater on the Hudson, but there were in the dream). My sense was that they were trying to offset some effect on the earth’s vibration.
Christine, did you read the article about the whales in New York Harbor? I immediately thought of this blog post http://bit.ly/jaGNIt when I read your dream. Ever since we started this whale exploration I’ve noticed whales more and more. We’ve been wondering what the message is. Your dream may provide part of the answers. Thanks for sharing.
I stumbled upon your website and ironically enough have had a whale dream this past week. In it, I was watching this oversized whale in a tiny above-ground pool. The whale lifted itself out of the pool by jumping and landed hard on the grass. I felt intense anxiety as the massive animal hit the ground. It seemed like it wanted to escape so badly that it was willing to sacrifice it’s own life to do so.
Then I came across this website and this incubation. Odd…
I just had the same dream a few minutes ago. It was so real that I had to google it and I came across this website too. Wow.
Wonderful site! Thank you for birthing it. 😉
I was looking for some insight on a very vivid dream I had last night. I was on a trip in Alaska, where my extended family and I had plans to swim with, you guessed it, large Humpback and Blue whales – huge whales! We watched them off the coast, frolicking and jumping in and out of the water in a most amazing display of joy and playfulness. They were even “tail walking” like a dolphin would do, though I know that wouldn’t be possible in reality I’m sure. It was as if they were excited to have us join them, and enticing us. One had a large fin on its head, almost like a horn of some kind, and another whale was pushing it through the water, as a game. It was magical and uplifting to watch, but intimidating to think I’d be out there in the freezing water swimming with them. Which, unfortunately, I didn’t get to do – woke up soon after. But, another interesting aspect was seeing two polar bears run along the shore, chasing each other. Truly, it was like witnessing a celebration of wildlife! (Side note: today during a nap, I had another dream of bears – brown bears this time – running down a road, a mother and baby. What woke me up is they were chasing a large German Shepard dog, trying to escape and it was only when I tapped on the glass window of a large van I was driving in next to them running, did I distract them somehow so that the dog got away- weird only in that I rarely dream of bears…and had two back-to-back.)
Anyway, for me the main dream felt like there was an awakening of some kind happening. A deeper connection to the living library around us – the Akash if you will – where the whales are signaling us to not fear for them or the oceans, but be joyful and project love into them in order to heal them and the planet. I channel the angelic realm, which is why I have a strong connection to the Akash as well, which they refer to as the Light Stream…a living stream of consciousness around us that is constantly expanding. I often “stream” in via dreams, but this one was really a treat.
Any comments/insights would be welcome! Thank you!
I dreamed that there was a huge whale in my community swimming pool. He was very friendly and parents were taking their children to play with him. I also developed a relationship with him. I know that he would not hurt me. Then he became ill and was coughing up blood. He became slow and tired.
Next, I put him in my car and tried to drive him to the hospital. He was arguing with me because he was sick. (I know that part is silly)
As I woke up, the thought of “Sydney 10” came to me. I didn’t know what it meant but I looked it up and there were 10 dead whales washed up on the beach in Sydney.
What does the whale want from me?
Hi Tabitha,
Thank you for sharing your dream. I suggest doing a dream re-entry while awake. For some people it’s helpful to use a shamanic drumming cd or subtle music. Close your eyes and imagine talking to the whale. Ask what s/he wants. You may be surprised at the answer you receive.
Good luck.