You are at a zoo on a Sunday afternoon. People are wandering about, snacking and chatting as they inspect the animals and birds. As you approach the big cat enclosures, you are uneasy because you know that big cats don’t belong in confinement.

When you come to the lion pen, you are disgusted because people are mocking the great beast, pulling faces – until someone screams that the gate is open and the lion could get them. Now all the people are running away.

Instead of fleeing, you step through the open gate, into the place of the lion. The great beast runs towards you and leaps up…and his great paws are on your shoulders…and he licks your face like a friendly dog. He wills you to turn around and look at the scene in the zoo in order to understand what is really going on here.

When you look back, you see that it is the humans that are living in cages. In the comfort of their suburban houses and malls and supermarkets they have failed to notice that they have walled themselves in places of confinement. When you look beyond the lion, you see there are no walls, only an open horizon of wild freedom and possibility. The lion says to you, in his gravely lion voice, “You see, my dear, humans are the only animals that choose to live in cages.”

I have made this dream a gift to you. Originally, it was a gift to me, the gift of the Lion. In a spontaneous night dream, I found myself in that zoo, and stepped through the gate, and saw that the rules of life are different from the viewpoint of the Lion. In some of my workshops, I offer this dream to a whole group and invite them to go right inside it and re-vision the world. This is a dream of power, and to transfer such a dream to others is an ancient shamanic way to share gifts of the deeper world. My new book, Active Dreaming, is all about getting to the Place of the Lion.