Book Release on Jan 13, 2026 on Amazon.com
“Boat on Water of Soul takes readers on a mythic journey into a world animated by dreams, where nature is kin. Through dreams, poetry, and active imagination, Jaime L. Prieto, Jr. explores a contemporary soul path shaped by lineage, grief, devotion, and awe. This book invites readers to remember a way of knowing rooted in relationship, wonder, and the living Earth.”
— Rebecca Wildbear, author of Wild Yoga: A Practice of Initiation, Veneration, and Advocacy for the Earth
Intention
Some of my elders say the Earth is dreaming us, and that your Soul, the voice that is uniquely yours, speaks through dreams in mythopoetic language compassionately tuned to your heart.
They say the one who weaves dreams is known as MuseBeloved, a guide to your Soul.
My intention is that Boat on Water of Soul inspires you to cultivate a relationship with MuseBeloved through the deep imagination window of knowing.
Book Foreword
I encountered Boat on Water of Soul at precisely the moment I needed it. Three months into a move to Guatemala, a return to the land of my Mayan ancestors, undertaken in hopes of understanding myself and my lineage more deeply, I found myself holding this book that seemed to recognize where I was before I did. Jaime’s story of sensing into his Taíno heritage through dreams, active imaginations,
and poetry mirrored the very questions stirring in me:
Where do I belong?What is my place in the village?
From the very firstpages, this book feels like an invitation to sense more deeply. It asks nothing
of you except attention, curiosity, and a willingness to let images rearrange something subtle inside. Though autobiographical in texture, the book is more like a doorway, rather than simply the story of one man’s journey. By exploring the terrain of his own soul, Jaime quietly invites the reader into their own.
As I moved throughthese pages, I felt the unmistakable sense that the author needed this book. Needed to unburden, illuminate, and place pieces of himself into the world in a new form. Somewhere along the way, I realized I needed the book too. When Jaime writes about his father’s crossing, I felt my own father’s presence rise to the surface. Not in grief, but in recognition of the unfinished conversations between us.
Jaime establishestrust early, grounding the reader in the “ordinary” before gradually guiding us toward the imaginal, toward what Western culture often dismisses but ancestral cultures have always known: that there are many ways of receiving information. Storytelling opens the door, dreams reveal hidden rooms, imagination brings us into the deeper chambers of soul.
One of the delights ofthis book is its careful use of form. The poetry breathes through line breaks that feel like small revelations. New characters (Flower, Roots, Water, Ceiba, SoulWoman, etc.) emerge organically, as if we are witnessing the gradual arrival of beings who have always been present, waiting for the right moment to appear. The motifs accumulate. Patterns take shape. A dream becomes a portal, then a
guide, then a teacher.
Reading Jaime’s activeimagination sessions (his willingness to enter dreams while awake and conscious and converse with them, to let them shape his understanding) expanded my sense of what human experience can be. His relationship with Water especially awakened memories of my own recurring dreams of waves and rising tides, inviting me to revisit and reinterpret dreams I had long forgotten.
What comforted me mostwas the tenderness with which the book unfolds. It is not meant to be consumed in one sweep. It wanders, pauses, circles back. At times, passages feel as if they drift aimlessly, until suddenly and subtlety, everything before them falls into place. This nonlinearity of time is a beautiful demonstration of soul language, revealing itself in spirals.
Throughout Boat onWater of Soul, Jaime models a regained innocence, an openness to mystery,play, and wonder that becomes rare in adulthood. His dreamworld becomes a village of its own, populated by characters who evolve alongside him. It left me hoping that someday I too might experience a dreamworld as fully inhabited as his.
This book offered metechniques I didn’t know I needed, like exploring a dream from another perspective through active imagination. It demonstrated how creativity, memory, ancestry, and the unconscious converse with each other. It showed me how one can live a life guided not only by thought, but by image, intuition, and the subtle movements of spirit.
As I read, my ownshadows sat beside me, echoing Jaime’s courage in confronting his. Again, the timing was uncanny, as I settle into a small Guatemalan mountain town, beginning a new chapter of service with the PeaceCorps, allowing my imagination to blossom in ways I hadn’t expected. It truly felt as if this book found me.
This book is acompanion for the inner journey.
Read it slowly.
Read it more than once.
Let it speak to the places in you that are ready to be seen.
Of the many numinousquestions presented, the one that’s engrained itself into my psyche is:
“¿What if miracleswere so common that they’d be hidden by their frequency?”
Robert Castillo
November 24, 2025
Chinique, Guatemala
MYTHOPOETIC INTRODUCTION
Welcome!
Welcome all!!
Welcome to my Boat!!!
We’re embarking onto living Water
reflecting what matters most.
You’re invited to swim underwater
and to breathe there.
The deeper you swim the darker it gets,
becoming easier to see your shadow disguising treasure.
If you are willing to close your eyes,
your in-sight will show you shades of many colors,
the feelings behind them,
and the flow of life-energy in all beings,
human and more-than-human.
This first Boat,
in which many souls travel together,
is the mythopoetic tale of Dreaming Salamander’s search for Soul,
the one who knows why he was born.
~~~///~~~
A never-before-seen Bird hatched from an egg
bigger than hands can hold
stands on a platform in the middle of a church
where all voices sit quietly,
sings her song in the natural ways that birds do
while listening to Roots of the Tree she is perched on,
voicing the parts that matter most.
~~~///~~~
If a tree falls in the forest, those all around her feel her fall
as they receive a life-force she gives back.
There are many trees that fall that no human ever knows.
~~~///~~~
Once,
I wandered East of Road 5 in the Ventana Wilderness
stalking a surprise,
and came upon a solitary purple flower,
long green stem leaning on one side.
I asked it,
“¿Why did you come out of the ground?”
A bee landed on it like it belonged,
and then it flew away.
~~~///~~~
One night,
near the edge of Aravaipa Creek
in a rhythmic space held by one known as SalmonKing,
a salamander image came to me as an ally
of the West window of knowing,
the one between day and night,
offering perspective from below Roots.
Weeks later,
as I wandered the Sunol-Ohlone Wilderness,
Salamander recognized me,
slowly crawling under my left boot.
I asked many questions,
but he remained in place in following his ways.
I realized my standing upright didn’t match the flat world he knows.
So, I joined him hands on ground, elbows bent to gaze eye to eye.
Salamander,
without hesitation came directly toward me
following my right arm’s inner edge
continuing down my torso,
taking a sharp turn,
crossing my belly confirming his allyship.
~~~///~~~
Embarking on a solo fast with a cohort of wanderers,
dreaming while in Beauty’s Mesa, Utah
I died, and woke up without a name
as one who’s apprenticing to the maker of dreams,
guiding Souls onto Water.
~~~///~~~
No one knows the metaphoric meaning of dreams,
except the dreamer brave enough to explore and embody the images,
helped by Boulder, Tree and River.
~~~///~~~
Open the door, go outside toward the places where Trees grow together.
Explore, listen, feel.
Notice the places that call you closer.
Some will be off the main path.
Follow the nudge, even if a bit uncomfortable.
Say “hello” to the beings there.
Listen.
Perhaps a tree, a bush, or a rock calls to you.
Respond! Tell it what matters most right now!
~~~///~~~
One time,
a boulder in the shape of a whale reached toward me
from an outcrop in a canyon.
He let me lay hands on his head.
I closed my eyes and recounted a dream that was heavy,
painful for me to carry.
A loved one was lost.
I needed his help in reaching her.
¿Would he be willing to help out?
Instantly,
the grounded network he was immersed in activated.
All this was natural.
I saw his connection to all Earth beings
reaching the outcroppings of life nearest to her.
Sadly,
his influence reached the limit of concrete, rebar and mixed rock.
My loved one needed to open the door
and walk towards the woods,
away from the machine noises
and confusion of her routines
so she could receive the invitation to converse,
the hand of love extended from the heart.
My rock friend
then held my tears and my wailing,
telling me not to despair:
“All my Earth friends will remember the invitation for all time.
She just needs to meet them in the Woods.”
(Dedicated to Mary Flower)
~~~///~~~
COPYRIGHT © 2026 Jaime L. Prieto, Jr., All Rights Reserved.