Dreams as Doorways: How a Decade of Lunar Discipline Shapes My Spiritual Practice

Right around June 21st, two things happen at once. The sun hits its highest point of the year ushering in the longest day, and we step into Cancer season. Cancer is the cardinal water sign ruled by la Luna herself. It’s the sign most associated with home, intuition, roots, and ancestry.

It might seem a bit weird to think about how maximum light and such an introverted sign match up… but it makes sense when you break it down. Sometimes the most illuminating moments aren’t huge and loud. They’re subtle, quiet, and can be detected the strongest when our eyes are closed.

For a curandera like me, that’s where dreams come in.

A Decade of Listening to the Moon

For over ten years, I’ve been building a relationship with the Moon. Not as a metaphor, but as an actual practice. I have spoken to her and seen her face shimmer on cool October nights. Wept under her soft light in my garden, praying for my sister’s labor to be safe for both her and my nephew. New moon and full moon rites. Curated dream altars and meditation practices as I drift into sleep. Treating my dream life as a real place (because it is!), a place with its own relationships, pitfalls, blessings, responsibilities, and ongoing conversations.

Over time, this became less like “having spiritual dreams sometimes” and more like maintaining a second set of duties. Tending relationships with spirit guides and ancestors, learning how to develop my own unique language with them, and paying attention to how their guidance comes through.

This isn’t something that happened overnight, and it’s not something I’d describe as a “gift” that was neatly handed to me. It’s truly a discipline. And like any reciprocal and sustainable relationship, it took years of consistency to build trust (both mine and theirs).

Dreams as Information

One of the most reality shifting dynamics this practice has brought me is the ability to recognize when a dream isn’t just a dream. There’s a specific quality to these sorts of dreams. A crisp visual clarity, a weight that you can feel in your dream body, and sometimes a physical signal beforehand when you’re awake. For me, this is a pressing need to nap, the kind of intuitive pull your body gets when you know someone is about to reach out to you with something important.

When I notice that signal, I’ve learned to listen. More often than not, what comes through in that dream is information about my own life, about my spiritual work, or sometimes about people I haven’t yet met but will soon.

A Story From My Practice

I want to share something that happened last year, because it’s one of the clearest examples I have of how this works.

One afternoon, I was hit with that specific kind of sleepiness, the kind that means a message is coming through. So I listened to my body and settled in for a nap.

In the dream, I walked into a public bathroom and saw a young woman who looked overwhelmed, almost frozen in place. When I went to check on her, a viejita burst in and started bullying both of us, though her focus was clearly on the younger woman. For a moment, I got swept up in her energy too, and found myself quickly overwhelmed by the feeling of being rushed and dominated. But I centered myself. I then noticed a broom in the corner, which I quickly retrieved and started sweeping at the older woman with real force until she got fed up and let the wind I was creating push her out of the dream.

As soon as she was gone, the entire room transformed. I turned to see the young woman smiling at me. Even the bathroom itself seemed brighter and cleaner than before. I woke up not long after and assumed it was a kind of energetic “thumbs up” related to a limpia session I’d done for a client earlier that day.

About 24 hours later, I was in a session with a mother and daughter, where the daughter was translating for her mom as I am unfortunately not fluent in Spanish. I’m working on it, grandma, I swear! As I shuffled my cards and tuned into the mother’s energy and spirit guides, images from the dream started flashing through my mind. I noted them but didn’t say anything at first, since the young woman from the dream wasn’t in the room.

But the face of the viejita kept resurfacing. So I paused, described the old woman to the daughter, and asked her to explain to her mom that I wasn’t sure but felt like my dream was connected to her.

Her mother’s eyes widened. She knew exactly who I was describing: someone from her youth, back in Mexico, who hadn’t wanted her to marry the man who became her husband. She’d been told this woman had worked brujería against her to prevent the marriage, and had never let go of her anger that it didn’t work.

I was able to tell the mother this had all already been addressed, in a dream, the day before. By the time we got to the limpia and barrida portion of our session, everything moved smoothly. The work had already been done, after all. My client’s beloved mother was able to receive the spiritual medicine her ancestors had been holding for her for years, ready and waiting for her to be in a state to receive.

Why I’m Sharing This

I don’t share this to be dramatic or to convince anyone of anything. I share it because it’s a real example of what a decade of spiritual curiosity and discipline looks like in practice. This isn’t a spectacle, but a quiet surrender to the unconscious that leads to the magic of divinity. It’s how Cancer shows us how to bring light to the deep, dark recesses of our hearts. It may be a dangerous realm to traverse alone, but there are many treasures waiting to be revealed if you follow the compass of your heart and guides.

This is also why dreams show up so often in my work, not just in spiritual sessions, but also in my art and the products I make. A lot of what I create starts as something I saw or felt first in a dream. It’s my way of making real what is shown to me in spirit.

Cancer Season Is a Good Time to Start Paying Attention

You don’t need a decade of practice to start noticing your own dreams differently. Deeply intuitive Cancer season is a good time to begin. It’s a wonderful time to deepen your ancestral practice, too.

A simple way to start: upon waking take 30 seconds to notice how your dream felt. Or if you can’t remember your dream, how you feel as you’re waking up. Was there a different quality to it? A clarity, a heaviness, a sense that it mattered? You don’t need to interpret it yet, just acknowledge it. Do this before you reach for your phone, that is how to lay the groundwork towards discipline.

If you’ve ever had a dream like this, one that felt like more than “just a dream”, I’d genuinely love to hear about it. And if you’re curious about what a session with me looks like, where this kind of work often shows up, you can find more on my Services page.