Dream Your Self into Being. Bonnie Bahira Buckner

       Introduction

      In Australia, in the springtime, the constellation Scorpio crawls across the sky on a lazy journey through the night. As it gets dark, it appears first in one corner of the sky, fierce and brilliant. Night after night it appears, but it is always a surprise because of its fierceness. Around two o’clock, it’s a little past overhead. If the moon is out it is a battle over who will shine the brightest. In the dark before morning, in that moment of stillness and quiet before the curtain raises, Scorpio makes it to the other corner of the sky. Then it’s time to wake up.

      Right now, though, it’s around one. Scorpio is directly overhead. I watch it, as I have every night this week, lying on my back on a piece of weathered green canvas laid out in the red dirt. The dirt I lie on is, to me, in the middle of nowhere and an eight-hour drive from the middle-of-nowhere outpost where we started. To someone else, though, it is somewhere, and it is sacred.

      It is September of 2010, and I am in the Australian outback with thirty Australian Aboriginal elder women. The land I rest on belongs to them, and it is theirs alone—even the men from the tribe are not allowed here. The land is for them to enjoy; it is for their secret ceremonies. It is for dreaming together in their Dream Time. This land is also their responsibility. It is sacred, and so they have come to it; it remains sacred, because they are the stewards of it.

      There are also thirty non-Aboriginal women here who have come from around the world. We have been invited on what is called the Sacred Women’s Journey, which itself has been born from a dream. Years before, one of the Aboriginal women had dreamed of a white woman they would share their knowledge with, and through her to other white women, and then to women around the world. Around this same time, a non-Aboriginal, white woman had dreamed that an Aboriginal woman would call to her, and that she would learn their ways and bring them to white women, and to women around the world. Both she and the Aboriginal woman had known of the other specifically in the dream. So, when they finally met, years later, it was both certain and already known.

      With me are three companions. One is my dreaming teacher; she was invited on this trip and asked to bring three students. The other two companions are two dreaming students I have known for several years, and I am the third student.

      Overhead is Scorpio. To my left are my companions. Before me is the first tree, thirty paces. This is where I can stand, in the long shadow made by the afternoon sun, and listen to sounds I don’t know. Beyond that, forty paces more is the second tree, where I can relieve myself each day in relative privacy. To my right, two paces, is a patch of scrub where I lean my pack. Twenty-five paces more is the cluster of another group of women, whom I now call friends. And behind me is a still-roaring fire, around which the Aboriginal women sing. They are talking to the sky, which has told them it will rain. They are singing so that it will not be so.

      At the first breakfast we were told that the land looks flat, but it is not. There are rises and dips, and for us, strangers to the land, we could easily walk fifty yards away and be utterly lost. We were told the land looks the same, but it is not. There are rocks and trees, felled branches and scrub, places where things have happened, others where they have not. There are places to collect water, and places to rest in a shade. There are places where people have gathered, and places where animals lie. Today, a small yellow snake is to the west of the camp. But to us, strangers to the land, we don’t see this.

      That first day, we did nothing. We roamed the camp and wondered when things were going to get started. None of us walked out of eyesight.

      The next day, they took us to a sacred site on the sacred land. It was another long drive. Mile after mile of red dirt, some scrub, and an occasional tree. The elder women, though, moved us there with a certain hand, pointing with sure fingers, “turn here, now there, go forward.” I did not see anything different about any tree they used as a marker, or scrub that signaled we were close. When we arrived, though, we could tell the place felt different. It was a rock.

      We made a wide circle around the rock and listened as they told us the stories of what had happened here. Layer upon layer they talked their unwrapping, going back until we reached the history of the rock itself, further still until the rock was born before us, at the beginning of the world, and inside us, at the beginning of our selves. They celebrated the rock, adorned it, and gave thanks to it, for all the memories that had happened here, and added our memory to it. Our circle grew closer to the rock, and we dared to touch it. Many of us cried at this moment of union with all that was now and all that was before. The rock looked different to me, then, distinguishable amidst the vastness. I liked it, and would recognize it if I returned.

      After this we went to a place where water ebbed miraculously in a slight depression in the red dirt and the rocks. They told us of the memories of this place, unwrapping it to when it had called to their people, and their