Book excerpt: A revelatory new book about dreams and dreaming from Toko-pa Turner, award-winning author of Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home You don’t need an expert to tell you what your dreams mean. Understanding their language is as natural as grasping the moral of a story or finding beauty in art. In The Dreaming Way, Toko-pa revives an ancient yet revolutionary idea to bring dreaming back to the people. To retrieve, from the psychology rooted in rationalism, our dreaming authority. Through a unique blend of animism, Sufism and Jungian Psychology, Toko-pa introduces us to the friend who lives within and around us: Wisdom. With eloquence and insight, she guides us in her dreamwork method for Courting the Dream, which reverses the idea that we should try to acquire something from our dreams and attempt instead to discover what the dream longs for. Using vivid dream examples and real-life stories, Toko-pa reminds us that we already possess the tools we need to remember, understand, and embody the wisdom of our dreams. Drawing on ancient mysticism, she shows how nature’s animating intelligence is also patterning our dreams. When we learn to follow that wisdom, we discover that it’s calling us toward a unique purpose. A purpose that, Toko-pa says, is nested within the larger intent of nature. As practical as it is enchanting, this book contains guidance on how to: • Improve your dream recall • Understand the language of metaphor • Work with archetypes and other patterns • Engage in shadow work • Discover dream incubation • Practice active imagination • Cultivate synchronicity • Facilitate a dream group