E33 | Toko-pa Turner | Dreaming with Earth: On Courtship, Shadow, & the Imaginal Realm
“Without dreams we could not survive, and although it is possible to get by without remembering our dreams, a life guided and shaped by dreaming is a life that follows the innate knowing of the Earth itself.”
Here is an audio version.
A video version can be found below.
Toko-pa opens a doorway into the deep imaginal world, reminding us that dreams are not mere fragments of the thinking mind, but mysterious and meaningful expressions of Nature herself. In this conversation, Toko-pa invites us to remember the ancestral art of dreaming—an embodied, reciprocal practice that has long guided the human spirit.
Together, we explore what it means to live a dream-led life in a culture that prizes the measurable and dismisses the mystical. Toko-pa shares powerful insights on the loss—and return—of Sophia, the archetype of embodied wisdom, and how reweaving a relationship with the dreaming world can help us recover the parts of ourselves exiled by modernity.
From the forgotten art of daydreaming to the radical courage it takes to step into the unknown, this episode moves through symbol, shadow, and silence with reverence. Toko-pa reminds us that the dreamworld is not something we own or interpret for gain, but a living realm we are meant to court with wonder, humility, and love.
A Year to Live
Find Thematic Show Notes Below
Connect with Toko-pa:
Website
Instagram
Belonging Book
The Dreaming Way
Connect with WHR:
WHR Instagram
Coyotei Counsel Instagram
Tei’s Instagram
Email - whr.link@gmail.com
Thematic Show Notes
Dreams as Nature Expressing Through Us:
“Dreams are nature naturing through us.”
Dreams as living expressions of Earth’s intelligence.
Breathing, dreaming, and creating as acts of belonging.
Moving away from extractive dream interpretation and toward relationship.
The Sacred Art of Dream Courting:
“Every dream has a longing to thrive.”
Five gestures of dream courtship: embodied presence, wonder, reflection, relating, and synthesis.
Collaborating with our symbols rather than solving them.
Releasing the idea of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in dreamwork.
Reclaiming the Mystical & the Archetypal Feminine:
“It’s deeply embedded in our culture to dismiss anything we would call the mystical, the feeling-life, intuition, or dreaming.”
The cultural exile of Sophia and the resurgence of embodied wisdom.
The courage to value what cannot be measured.
How mystics and shamans have always entered the dark unknown.
Shadow, Symbol & the Invisible Life:
“Dreaming offers symbolic images of the invisible aspects of life.”
How shadow work and dream work walk hand-in-hand.
Metaphor as a bridge to the soul.
The role of gratitude in integrating and honouring dreams.
Dreaming in Community & Ancestral Practice:
Reimagining dreaming as a communal, relational act.
The dangers of outsourcing imagination and storytelling.
Dreaming as a way of remembering our place in the larger story.
Reviving the Practice of Daydreaming:
“Bring back daydreaming.”
The necessity of mental spaciousness for creativity and wholeness.
Daydreaming as a radical reclaiming of presence in a productivity-driven world.