Hope for the Future: a Dreaming Society

What a wonderful year of learning this has been. My adventures in the dream world have taken on more dimensions, literally. Lucid dreaming and OBE experiences have heightened my passion for dreaming as a daily practice, as if I needed more reason to love my time in the dream worlds. I promise to keep sharing anything I find out that might prove valuable to you, too.

I want to comment about the year that’s dawning because it’s accompanied by mythical apocalyptic doomsday fame, even for people who aren’t practicing Mayans. Why is it so much easier to imagine the gods doing away with us than helping us? Why do so many religious paradigms consider a terrible, gruesome end to this beautiful world the only way out? Why does their deity deem this a fitting punishment for the wicked creatures He supposedly loves? I think we risk creating self-fulfilling prophecy scenarios when we adopt doomsday religions or beliefs.

So, at the dawning of this auspicious new year, the year of the Black Water Dragon in Chinese astrology, I propose that we set our intention on realizing our best dreams and that we view whatever crisis we might face as an opportunity to make beneficial changes.
And most of all, let’s set our expectations on good things happening; let’s collectively dream the future we want into being.

Many authors and teachers I admire share the opinion that we’re experiencing a spiritual revolution, a revolution in human consciousness. Perhaps the next evolutionary shift for humankind is not about technology but about paradigm: who are we, where do we come from and where are we going? In such a climate, inner exploration and personal change can manifest as positive ripples in our communal circles. We can each make a difference, even if it’s just by changing ourselves, expanding our own awareness. Of course, to me, dreaming is each individual’s portal to self-awareness and personal development.

Recently, I had an ultra-vivid dream that I wake up, get out of bed and head down the hall to the bathroom. I see through the bathroom window at the end of the hall a spectacular morning sky. I’m filled with excitement and know that I want to be down at the beach with my camera. I decide to get dressed and leave Jim a note telling him where I am. As I’m writing the note, I wake up again, this time into actual waking time and realize I’m still in bed and it’s raining outside.

When I woke up the morning of November 28th, just before dawn, the memory of this dream guided me to the beach, allowing me to honor it with these pictures.

I wish everyone continued adventures, insight, entertainment and blessings in both the dream and waking worlds throughout 2012.

Revelations and Everyday Dreaming

Recently I met a lovely new friend who is awaiting the birth of her first child, a son. We talked about names and she mentioned she was considering Samuel, but didn't like the nickname, Sam. A dream from March of 2006 snapped into my consciousness. Today I searched and found it. I also found a previous dream incarnation of my little boy in this drawing, a blond version, but otherwise, much the same.

I'm sharing it as a gift to her and with you because it illustrates well what I mean when I say that my spirituality is fed by my dreaming.

Sam My Son

A friend of mine has a baby, but she doesn’t want to or can’t keep him, so she gives him to me.

I get him at party. I learn his name is Sam, a name I wonder at, Do I like calling my son Sam? Who named him? At the time I’m introduced to my son at this party, he’s about 2, but he could be younger.

The woman who raised him until this age took care of him very well. Now, at this party, I’m introduced to him and my new role as his mother. I’m in awe of just how beautiful he is. He has large dark eyes and beautiful wavy brown hair. He’s wearing a short set with a short sleeve shirt; I instantly fall in love with him and accept the responsibility.

He’s playing with other children as I’m talking to a woman about becoming a mother; I can’t remember his name. I ask someone and they say; it’s Sam isn’t it? I wonder who named him and if I have to keep the name. I’m talking to Sam and I ask him; do you like your name? Is there another name you’d like more? He says he likes Sam but he would also like a name that means “ONE WHO LOVES’ I’m amazed at this and feel very blessed that this is my child.

Then I’ve left the party, talking to a friend. All of a sudden I remember that I forgot Sam and left him at the party, I know that it’s a group of good friends that I know are taking care of him, after all, it’s where I got him, but I go rushing back to get him. I feel badly that he’s a little chilled, not feeling well and hungry. I cuddle him and carry him home and realize that I’m going to have to get used to being a mother.

I wake up feeling joy, sure that this dream is a gift and recognizing my little boy from other dreams.

The next day, Jim tells me that he Googled for the meaning of “Samuel” and it means “I Am God”. My knees went weak and a big smile spread all over my face. I met “I Am God” who doesn’t mind being called “One Who Loves” either.

This seems like a fitting Christmas story, too.

Movie Magic

I don’t know if Martin Scorsese is interested in dreams in particular, but one of the things I enjoyed most about his fabulous new movie is the key part dreams and dreaming played in it. Treading carefully to avoid a spoiler moment for anyone, I’ll try to explain why.

First, there is a marvelous focus on the history of cinema. Sir Ben Kingsley is stunning in the role of one of the early great artists in the field, Georges Melies, who used the inspiration of dreams for his images and film plots, at least this is the picture Scorsese paints of him. Seeing excerpts of his actual films in Hugo, it’s easy to believe that it's the case. Besides Melies’ work, it’s wonderful to watch classic clips of original old footage of the great silent movies and stars from the cinema’s nascent days. All this great film history is woven into the main story of a little orphaned, abandoned boy and the young, orphaned, adopted girl who befriends him.

But the icing on the cake for me comes in the dream sequence, Hugo's dream, that leads to the climax of the movie. Bravo, Martin! Whether you meant to or not, in my opinion, you got it right. Plus, it was absolutely fabulous cinematography, everything!

The 3D did give the movie more of a “magical” surreal and, yes, even dreamlike quality, but I’m still annoyed by it at times. As Jim puts it, “Even with the glasses, some things are still slightly out of focus so your eyes have to work to adjust.” My eyes were strained after 2 plus hours of it. I don't think the technology is there yet, so it doesn’t add enough viewer value to justify the expense or the wear and tear on my vision.

I wish I could talk more about Hugo’s dream, but there’s no way I want to lessen the impact or the pleasure of the experience for you. I recommend the movie. I think it has its corny moments, but the acting was superb all of the time. There was drama, humor, tragedy, love and redemption; most of all there was the heart, courage, imagination and curiosity of two children, Hugo Cabret and Isabelle. Both roles were superbly played by Asa Butterfield as Hugo Cabret and Chloe Grace Moretz as Isabelle.

When the movie has been around a while; I’ll probably write about Hugo’s dream more specifically. I'm interested to hear what you think of it, if you see the movie.

Watcher Dream

In my dream last night, I watched a scene from a movie; that’s how it felt.

A woman lies in her bed. She’s wearing panties and a tank top and has a lovely, young lithe body. Her straight, shoulder length light brown hair floats around her on the pillow as she lingers in that dreamy in between of sleep and waking. It’s a double bed, from the look of the covers, she didn’t spend the night alone.

Into the room walks a man, obviously older than her by at least ten years, her lover. He’s dressed in a red flannel shirt and jeans. He’s not a handsome man, really rather ordinary looking with thinning blonde hair and workman’s features. He’s telling her that he’s leaving, for good. It obviously comes as a painful surprise to her. She does a languid backward somersault off the side of the bed, which is near a wall, and stands to face him.

It’s as if that incongruous physical gesture allows her to register her emotions. She stands, back against the wall and speaks her truth to him. I don’t remember the dialogue in detail, just the tone of it. She’s recounting their brief affair and what it meant to her. She’s describing him, his behavior, lamenting his inability to grasp the depth of emotion she opened to him. At one point I’m amused to hear her say sadly, but without bitterness or irony; “the truth is, you’re not that smart.”

Then another man is in the room; he’s a friend of the other one, stockier, white haired and definitely hostile. I got the impression he’s the impetus for her lover’s departure. He is physically aggressive towards the woman and lunges towards her, as if to attack her. I think she’s either going to kung fu his ass or get hurt herself. Instead, she embraces him, pinning his arms to his side, and unleashes her grief in a torrent of wails and tears. The man is helpless in her arms.

I wake up. The feelings that lingered for me were wonder and satisfaction. I witnessed the power of true emotion expressed. I honor the power of women to channel emotion and perhaps to open that door for men. I also take home the beauty of speaking my truth, however emotionally messy it might be.

My training in psychotherapy leads me to ask what does this dream mean about me and my emotional life and my relationships to the men in it? But recently I’ve been reading a fascinating book by Jurgen Ziewe, Multidimensional Man, in which the author relates his many journeys out of body, (OBEs) into other dimensional worlds. He believes these very dimensions are the places we’ll all travel to after physical death. Here’s a thought provoking quote from his book regarding ordinary dreams:

“I was talking to people in my dream, becoming fully awake and aware while maintaining my conversation…I was distracted only briefly from our conversation by the realization that many dreams are probably as real as waking life, except for our lack of awareness. I wondered how many dreams were real.” Pg. 173

Robert Moss frequently states that a dream is a place, one that the dream self, free of the physical restraints of our three dimensional world, explores and experiences, just as the waking self explores and experiences events in daytime life. A psychological interpretation of dreams is what our Western, rational oriented world accepts as the most plausible. As Robert recently reminded me, it’s not the approach favored by ancient and indigenous cultures, nor is it his.

I was there in this dream place, watching the events unfold but not interacting with the characters directly. Are these Shadow and Animus figures acting our a drama for the benefit of my psychological growth; or are these other dimensional people, living out their own dramas, flickering on my dream screen for this one scene? Do they know I saw them? Was I meant to watch, to learn?

Since the beginning of this month, I’ve been absorbed in renewed studies of OBE, lucid dreaming and ordinary dreaming experiences, my own and those of authors I’m reading. I’ve attempted many times to post something meaningful about exploring these dream dimensions and have been daunted by the mind-boggling quality of this subject. This morning, this simple dream experience featuring this brave and honest woman tipped the scales for me. I offer it in its simplicity as the beginning of a conversation I’m eager to entertain, on this dimension and on many others.

What is a dream? A dream is a place.

(FYI: http://www.multidimensionalman.com/Multidimensional-Man/Astral_Travel_and_life_after_death.html)

The Time Is Now

Remember code yellow, orange and red? What would you say the emotional code is on people's fear these days? Dear Turkey, Haiti, Japan, Chile and New Zealand devasted by earthquakes and nuclear leakage, Libya and other Middle Eastern crisis points. Hurricane Irene, here in the East coast, fires in Arizona and Texas. And there is more.

Yet, I am still on my soul's journey here; I have work to do, work I specifically came here to do. How do I feel the world soul and my individual soul at the same time? How do I reconcile the needs of many with just my one person's needs?

The answer is I don't know. But here are my thoughts:

Fear is a black hole best avoided.

In my dreams, I experience time past, present and future out of sequence. Sometimes I'm in Medieval places, the 19th century west, outer space or as I see myself in waking life. What that says to me is that outside of this existence time is different, perhaps it doesn't exist.

All spiritual teachings emphasize being in the NOW, the present moment we are living. In moments of fear or crisis, this is essential. Let me breathe deep, ground and focus on my heart. What can I do now, today, this moment to give and to receive comfort? One step, one act and a focus on hope are the provisions emotionally that bring us through hard times. Bathe fear in love and trust, believe in a divine outcome and move forward, one step at a time.

Our heavily guilted patriarchal paradigms have taught us to imagine the worst and fear retribution from God. Lots of religions gleefully teach about doomsday scenarios that the sinners had coming to them. Well, some God of Love that is.

This is just what happens every so often on the amazing planet Earth; She shifts and moves and causes great upheavals. Is there a Divine Plan behind it; perhaps, but it certainly can't be the mean spirited preemptive strike of a supposedly kind and loving God. It's geology; geology happens.

Unfortunately, we're caught in the eruption, the flood, the tornado or whatever else the elements create that is so much mightier than our human strength. It doesn't mean we're bad or had it coming. It means we mourn and rebuild and we grow stronger in wisdom.

If this is my dream, which it is, I realize that this is the dreamscape I'm in and that it matters what I do, how I feel, NOW. I know that I can dream it lucidly; I'm aware that regardless of how great the monsters, the allies are even greater. If I'm brave and face the monster, it might turn out quite differently than I first expected.

The time is Now. Regardless of the seeming hopelessness; I am the seed of hope. Regardless of my impotence in the face of the present, I have the power of my original purpose. I asked to come here, Now. I trust the little I do, to be just the little bit it takes to tip the scales in favor of the Good.

My dreams confirm this; they are the doorway to the More than Now. They lead to more than this dimension, opening the dream gates to a more certain existence of Love, Truth and Hope than what I can tenuously hold on to in this Earthly dimension.

(The picture is of the harvest from my garden this year. It's simple beauty is stunning; it tasted great. Long may we grow and eat our food on this planet; long may we live to love and defy all odds).

Dream Games With Children

A dear friend told me a story I love, about her grandson's first reaction to the concept of the "tooth fairy." After he lost his first tooth, she said to him, "Honey, if you put your tooth under your pillow, the tooth fairy will take it and leave you some money. He looked earnestly into her eyes and said; "I don't want that woman in my room."

I howled with laughter when she told me this and thought, we just have to pay more attention to the wisdom of children. Frankly, I never understood why the same protective adult who told me not to talk to or go with strangers expected me to be thrilled to sit on Santa's lap at some department store or let a clown hug me.

Children's instincts are usually spot on; the more they're encouraged to trust them, the better served they will be all their lives. Now I'm not talking about letting kids choose their menu or bedtime; I'm talking about listening to their thoughts and reactions and respecting their intuitive behaviors. And of course, listening to their dreams and encouraging their dream play.

Children find Active Dreaming techniques easy to incorporate into their flexible paradigms. They have no trouble acting out a dream character, drawing a picture or making up another ending.

You know from previous posts that I enjoy playing with nightmares; I find little kids can get into that easily. Did I tell you about the little boy (5?) whose big brother, (maybe 10), wanted to borrow the movie, "Jurassic Park" from the library? Browsing the shelves near by, I heard the little one say to his brother, "I always get nightmares when I watch that." Unable to help myself, I stepped up beside him, and said, "I get nightmares, too, when I watch scary movies. But you know, I can sometimes make them not so scary." He was shy, but interested; "How?" he said. "Do you like dinosaurs?", I asked him. "Yeah!" he said. "What's you're favorite one?" I asked him. "TRex!" he said. "Well, if I have scary dreams about dinosaurs chasing me, I would want to draw a picture of my favorite one, TRex, and give him a name and make him my buddy. I'd put the picture next to my bed and I know that if ever any dinosaurs chase me, my buddy TRex will protect me. And, I might even want to draw a story book about what we do together so I can remember and make more stories when I'm asleep." He looked at me, eyes wide, big smile and said, "Thanks!"

Not to be creepy, I stepped away and went on with my own library reverie, but you can bet my smile did not fit on my face.

Let's play dream games with our own dreams and then we'll know how to guide our children.

(The picture was drawn by another dear friend of mine, Allie Leigh, when she was maybe 12 or 13. She'll correct me if I'm wrong. She let me use it for "The Way of the Dreamer" DVDs so I'm guessing she won't mind my using it here. Again, she'll correct me if I'm wrong:-)

Waking Dreams with Bernie Siegel

Once you get the hang of playing with dream images, plots, characters and happenings, you start to play around with your waking life. There are some moments in life that deserve to be viewed from a dream perspective.

I just finished a three part workshop with the wonderful Dr. Bernie Siegel, a great pioneer in the art of integrative medicine, a visionary and a spiritual man. His books are worth reading; his work puts heart and spirit back into medical care. That's why I took the workshop, because of who he is and what he's done. Here's his website; http://berniesiegelmd.com/

In my waking dream, I come into the room, find friends in the group of perhaps 29 women and one man, and sit down beside them. Bernie invites all 30 people to introduce themselves and the reason they're here. It takes the better part of an hour for everyone to speak, but I'm amazed at the stories in the room, the suffering and the hope. When I get home the first night, I write this poem in response:

The Crucible of Our Suffering: Reflection on Class Introductions


Tempered beyond endurance by pain,
we Endure.

What Dreams fuel our will to live?

What Wind buoys our shaky flight?

What Light warms our tattered hearts and
tells our lungs to Breathe.

What do we See?
What do we Know that keeps us going?

The second workshop was about how drawings reveal our unconscious, inner needs and perspectives. I've posted before about dream drawing, how the more spontaneous and fast you let yourself draw, the more comes to the fore from the dream that hadn't been noticed or even imaged quite that way. (I actually just had a doozy of a revelation drawing a recent dream scene and will definitely be sharing that with you in a future post.) Bernie asked us to draw a self portrait and a landscape, the picture above is my self portrait. I like it a lot; it makes me feel happy because I'm dancing.

I believe that images surround us in waking and dreaming that speak volumes to our psyche on a constant basis. The ego, perhaps the part of us that has been schooled in words and logic, balks at simplistic, pictorial communication. With the shield of the Persona, the Ego seeks to keep control with words and theories, but drawing knocks it off it's perch. Imagery is the pictorial language we used when we first hit the planet as a species, or individually, as a baby. Imagery cuts through the subterfuge of mind and goes to the heart of our truth.

The more willing I am to give up ego control and free-fall, the easier it is to navigate the wild waters of the "unconscious", (Ursula LeGuin calls it "inner space"). Robert Moss's Active Dreaming places great emphasis on dreaming, synchronicity, intuition, and imagination, practices that help us bridge the waking and dreaming worlds.

Bernie uses dreams and drawings to help him diagnose illness in his patients, and also to help his patients understand themselves better, giving them powerful tools for spiritual, emotional and physical healing. He may be a reincarnation of some ancient physician who knew that illness is not just a somatic phenomenon, that healing has to address the whole person.

The third meeting focused on some questions that Bernie asked us all to answer. These were questions born out of his personal experience and studies that he's answered for himself and posed to many. Do you want to live to be 100? How would you introduce yourself to God? What would you do in your last 15 minutes of life? There were some 80 questions and 7 essay questions. I did my homework.

In class, Bernie shares with us his own responses and some stories they evoke. Now that I'm not handing my answers in, I think I'll go back and answer them again, even more honestly. The course is thought provoking and soul searching. One mother of a child with special and demanding needs is there also as a professional healer. She asks, "Why is it so much easier to agonize over our failings than it is to accept our accomplishments; why is that so much a part of our human nature?" Indeed.

I like to think of myself as sent to this particular parallel universe with a mission. To me the ultimate freedom is, as Jesus put it, to be my own authority. By who's authority do I believe what I believe? By the authority of my own experience, especially, my dreaming experience. So I think it's the nature of this particular reality level to be in constant struggle to get out of the muck and I trust that it gets better some incarnations on. Still, what that mother/healer said, or rather, the longing to know that I felt from her through her question, leaves me pondering.

In this waking dream, I experience learning like throwing a pebble into water and watching the concentric circles of impact spread across the surface. It's Bernie's intent, I believe, to radiate love, (a fitting metaphor for a physician whose innovative healing practice with cancer patients is legend). "Love is The Answer" is an acronym I've used for years in my jewelry design business, LITA Designs, just to get that thought out there. I think Bernie has distilled from the alchemy of his practice as a healer this very same lesson, and with all his credentials and accomplishments, that simple lesson is what he teaches.