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A Spiritually Enlightening Online Magazine ISSN# 1708-3265
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LifetalksDream People Awakening with Dawn Baumann Brunke Very early in the morning, around 2 am, on the day my old canine pal Barney died, I woke suddenly knowing that he was thirsty. I was in that semi-waking, semi-sleepy state of consciousness in which I did not question the feeling. I simply knew I had to get up to bring my friend some water. Since Barney was very weak, my husband Bob had been picking him up and placing him gently at the end of our bed each evening. As I pushed back the covers, I wondered if I had been dreaming, but Barney raised his head and I saw he was awake. Maybe he did want water. There is a pale, blue-grey Alaskan twilight which bridges late evening to early morning hours in the middle of August. It is a beautiful, dreamy light, thin yet veiled, as if it is made of the palest of shadows. It filled the room and leaked out the door, spilling itself around me as I moved through the bedroom and down the hallway. At the end of the hall, I turned into the kitchen and noticed the chairs around the dining table had been pushed outwards, as if people were sitting there. The big picture window behind the table had no curtains and I naturally turned my eyes there, as I did each morning to greet the trees and mountains. I realized then that people actually were sitting around the table. I blinked, in that still-sleepy way of just waking up, and saw with my inner eye the 'people' more clearly. They may not have been of the physical earth I was familiar with during the day, but they were real people all the same.
I realized they had been talking and suddenly stopped, for I was aware of the abrupt hush in the room. They turned their heads to look at me, expectant perhaps, or maybe curious. They were clearly not physical people, but they were not what I'd term ghosts either. Spirit people perhaps—people who exist on another level of being, or in a different dimension. At the time this did not occur to me as strange—rather, it was like being awake in a dream in which things that happen do not seem strange. And so I merely waved to them and asked who they were. They said they were friends of Barney. This seemed funny because it was obvious—as if I should have known it all along. I told them I was getting Barney some water and they nodded in encouragement. When Barney died later in the day, I forgot all about the dream people. Although I wrote about the incident in my journal, it wasn't for many years until I recalled them again. This occurred as I was rereading my journal entries while adding a chapter about Barney's death to my third book. Even though I made mention of the dream people in the book, I again forgot about them. One rainy afternoon not so long ago, however, I found myself sitting at the kitchen table reading a final draft of the book manuscript. It was a quiet, unhurried afternoon, and I had been enjoying the pleasant comings and goings of the many animal and spirit beings who contributed their insights, humour and wisdom to this book. Looking back to the beginning, all these events seemed to have happened a long time ago. And yet, reading about it again, it also felt totally new, totally now. Time is funny that way. As I took a short break, gazing out the window, pondering nothing in particular, I felt myself drift. With a flickered shift of perception, I saw myself sitting at this very table on an early morning, many years before: Coming into the kitchen from the hallway to fetch Barney a bowl of water only a few short hours before he died. I saw again the dream people, the spirit-friends of Barney gathered around this table, where now I sat, as one of them. I felt myself present in both these places, both these times—here and there, then and now—but also joined, linked in a free-flowing stream of awareness. With a small laugh, I felt the palpable truth of what Barney so often shared: that as we begin to live a more centred moment of being, we see that all is available in the ever-present flow of here and now. Indeed, the more intimately we acquaint ourselves with the mystery of Being, the more finely we attune ourselves to that pulsing hum of oneness which permeates all beings. Consider this an expansion into the limitless possibility of form and a deepening into the larger presence of who you are, said my old dog-friend Zak as he joined my thoughts from one of his favoured places on the floor. Did you know that humans are now at a point of evolution where this deepening and expanding may be possible in a new way? That there is an opportunity for the human species to open to the unconscious in a much more conscious way, to embody spirit so as to see this—know this, be this—in a much more profoundly human way? I nodded in recognition. Many have noted this stepping up of awareness—the sense of an imminent, massive shift in the shape of global consciousness: a grand revolution in planetary evolution. Earth is ripe for this, agreed Zak with a sweep of his tail. It is her next transition. And it is happening now. As Zak paused—for emphasis, perhaps—I turned to look at him. And as our eyes connected, our I's merged. Brown eyes ablaze through mine, Zak woofed, and I jumped back in delight. 'Be here now' is the gist of who we are! I realized: now is a feeling state which blossoms inside of us as we discover that every moment, every instance, is a point in which we may open to the fullness of who we are. As we dream ourselves awake, we shift not only the shape of our own conscious awareness, but the very nature of reality itself. This is when the fun begins, agreed Zak, for Earth is suddenly seen for what she is: a grand, great experiment full of wonders and delights. Grounded in your suchness, you may enjoy the illusion for what it is; you may participate to learn more about creation and destruction, about the power of your mind, body, emotions and further awakening of awareness. You needn't go anywhere or do anything because you are already here. This is your life—all of you reading this right here, right now—in each moment, ever-present: a life of awakening unto You.
Dawn Baumann Brunke is the author of Animal Voices, Awakening to Animal Voices and the upcoming Shapeshifting with our Animal Companions, due out in August 2008. Her books explore the deeper nature of our relationship with animals, nature, each other and ourselves. For more, see Dawn's website.
Be sure to read the reviews of her book "Awakening to Animal Voices" in our May 2005 Issue and her book "Animal Voices" January 2006 Issue.
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