fly awake

Here are two dreams from this week from opposite ends of the spectrum. In the end they are both positive, which underlines the importance of how we react to situations.

7/3/10–Dream

I am at the crossroads near our house. I have been thinking about how Shannon and I have been looking for a quiet place to meet, a park or green. We have looked for a long time and found little. Now I see, it is right here. The crossroads are filled with lush green grass that is about a foot high. A bird with a long white neck–a swan?–is moving through the grass.

A car comes through the intersection, it is very loud and I worry about the bird’s safety. After the car passes the bird is still there, but there is still noise–coming from the man hole, I think. I see the bird bobbing about. Another car comes and goes. The bird is across the intersection now. It rises to standing position and I see it has a smaller grayish white body–maybe it is an egret. The bird has a crystal pendent hanging around its neck on a very long chain. As she stands, she turns into a beautiful woman with long curly brown hair. She is wearing a simple dress. She has a very feminine body, but thin rather than round. She crosses the street to me–walking through the grass slowly. I am in awe of her presence and beauty. She is holding the ends of the chain with her arms spread wide as if to present the necklace to me. As she comes close I open my hands up to receive all she has to offer (not the necklace–I want to receive her), and say, “what can I learn from you?” I want her to know that I am receptive and show her my awe. When she’s only a couple feet away my eyes close in response to her energy. I don’t actually feel the necklace going on. I feel her vibrations strongly for a bit, then I begin to see pictures. I see little metal containers, about the size of lighters. They are handmade with different symbols on them. Inside are sets of tiny vials filled with liquids. Now I am in the living room/our future shop space. There are tiny white shelves mounted on the walls. Each one has one of the little metal boxes on it. This is a great idea for oils. Someone is hanging out and reading in the front room. There are some lavender and pink piles that need to be sorted out. We have to leave to do some errands. I tell the woman we are not really open for business yet (it’ll be a couple months), and we set out.

Wake: I loved this dream. I felt so blessed. First of all I was excited about a place to meet my friend Shannon, who is moving in a couple blocks away from me. There has been some tension between us, but this dream made me feel at ease about things.  This dream brought up some new ideas about the dream shop my husband and I are hoping to open in the fall/winter. I have mostly been thinking about dream and sleep teas and snacks, herbs, books and other literature. I love the magical quality of the little tiny bottles inside the handmade metal boxes. It reminds me of the dream and sleep oils I like to smell before bed. Shannon gave me one of my favorite ones (one that I sniffed right before the dream below). Shannon also once told me that she was a duck–seeming calm above the waters, but paddling away underneath. I wonder if she is a bit more majestic than that.

7/9/10 Dream: Someone has been behaving like Hitler. He is not Hitler. But there is violent discrimination, people are being shuffled into the dark cellar room. They have their heads covered as they run. I think, “It is only natural that we would feel fear and get caught up in this drama.” As I think this, he turns to me and sees me. He puts his arm up and out and our palms meet as I put my hand in the ‘fear not’ mudra. I immediately begin saying the protection mantras I was taught by my teacher. I concentrate intensely. After about the fifth verse everyone vanishes into a pale golden light.

Wake: Another Hitler dream. This has become the symbol of evil in my dreams. I used to have a lot of dreams with killing, but they didn’t really worry me so much–it was easy enough to see it as a metaphor. Hitler is more stressful for me. I tried to think of something this could be related to in the waking time–Arizona’s new immigration law came up, but there are many others. Most importantly, in the dream I am secure in the protection that my Guru has given me. I have used the protection mantras in waking time and in dreamtime many times. In waking time the mantras dispell negative energy and provide physical protection. In dreamtime they usually break the spell of the dream. There is so much negativity in the world. Some of it is very compelling, drawing us into a nightmare. For me it is important to remember that I participate in manifesting reality, (it is a group project,) and that projecting the most positive energy possible will do more than being drawn into a nightmares and nightmarish situations. This doesn’t mean that I think such negative situations should be ignored. It is an alternate way to react to the negativity.

Shannon’s oil blend “Medievel Mix” is what I sniffed before I went to sleep and had this dream. The oil contains dream herbs: lavender, thyme and rosemary. Thyme is good for nightmares. It’s funny because it seems like I have a bad dream whenever I take it, but somehow I have a really great attitude about the nightmare and get a lot out of it. So…I guess it improves nightmares, or perhaps helps process nightmares. It is purported to be great for kids with terrors. Lavender is good for insomnia, especially for sensitive people. Rosemary is for remembering and protection.

Well…a lot has happened in the last couple months. Major shifts in the waking time. Realizing the dream trailer was not going to happen any time soon, my husband and I bought a house. Our plan for the house it to make it into a dream venue…a place where people can come to share their dreams, interact lucidly, and do more commercial things, like purchase information, herbs and items related to dreaming.  It has been really awesome getting moved in and starting to paint the house and prepare to open shop–we’re thinking sometime between fall 1st, 2010 and spring 1st, 2011. The house has lots of beautiful garden space full of many awesome herbs and berries, and birds! I didn’t think I’d get to be close to birds in Portland but, here they are.
Today I was out walking my dog and I heard a couple crows screeching so, naturally, I screeched back. The pair came with me the rest of my way home as we cawed back and forth. It was great to make loud wild noises, and it was so nice to connect with the crows! It has been a while for animal connections, and it tells me I am in the right place.

Now that we are situated in our house, more dreams to come.

Dream (3/29): I am in a top floor room–the walls are white and slanted towards the top–the light is tungsten/yellow. I’m standing with Hitler’s brother. He has him–a semi-conscious Hitler–tied to a chair facing away from us. I thought that Hitler was dead. For that matter, I thought his brother was too! Being so close to evil is making me uneasy. Hitler’s brother wants me to write the bible verses: “The Lord is my shepherd”, and the next line after that (”Lord hear my prayer”?), above his knees. Very uncomfortable to be interacting with Hitler. I pick up my special black marker and write “the Lord is my shepherd” in nice script above Hitler’s left knee. I look up to find Hitler standing where his brother was.

“Ha! It’s a fake! They’re fake,” he says, gesturing to a box full of tubes, “He’ll never get me.” The tubes are ‘fake knees’ that have been written on. Hitler’s brother has replaced Hitler and is now tied in the chair, semi-unconscious, looking like a prop. Apparently his brother has been trying to pull something over on Hitler for a while. Hitler has a tube in each hand.  I have to get out of there. I grab the cardboard box containing the rest of the fakes. I wish I could get all of them, but realistically, I must protect my life. I run out the door, into the next room which has two fires in it. I go to the closest fire and start putting the tubes in it. One tube is too long and I am having trouble getting it into the fire. I say to myself, “This is a dream–now bend”, it bends and I get them all in the blaze. I run out the door and find myself at the top of a stairwell.

I am excited about this because I am good at stairs in dreams. I love to do big jumps down them. I do this for a flight or two, but it is not fast enough.  I try a new technique, I put my big toe on the railing and slide down to the next landing. This is awesome. I go down an extra flight of stairs because it is so fun.

It is time to exit the stairwell. I jump over the partition, run by a woman, and out into a small hallway. One direction shows me I am in a large building, like a hotel, there are many people there and I am worried that people will see me, and that Hitler will catch up with me. The other option is a door to my left. I go through the door and down a few steps into a large room with no furniture or drapes. It reminds me of a dance studio. It is not well lit–most of the light comes from the two large windows (moon light and street lights coming through). There is a woman in the room. She is eying me as I run across the room to check the windows for an escape. My running is slow dream running–I say, “this is a dream, I will run fast now,” and I do. The windows are both locked. I think about breaking them to escape. I run back across towards the door I came in through. The woman says something about what I am doing–she’s suspicious of me. There is another door, a door to the outside. I fly across the room to it. Surprisingly the lock is loose and the door opens. I am outside now, still flying. On the grounds there are a couple large trees. I fly between the branches of closest one. The lower branches are as big as trunks. I wish to land there and be with the tree. Floating up I manage to grab on to one of the smaller branches higher in the tree. I lay on my tummy straddling the branch. The branch below me is so beautiful with patches of orange and green lichens and mosses. I want to take a picture, but I don’t think it will come out–the light is dim and orange from the street lights.

I take a step back mentally. I haven’t really seen Hitler since I left the room. I need to let go of my fear and commune with this amazing tree out in the calm, cool night. I start to relax, breathing in the night.

Wake:

This was a nightmare related to being overheated. I like several things about this dream. It seems like it is easier to become lucid in a nightmare because there are many tip-offs that you are dreaming, like: scary situations, having difficulty performing simple tasks and dream running. Plus, you’re scared and that is motivation to change situations, whereas you might not want to change more pleasant dreams.

I have not been thinking about Hitler lately.  What I was thinking about: Last night I was working on an essay about the importance of language in manifesting reality. One point being that saying directly what you want is an excellent technique. I use that technique in the dream a couple times. And Hitler’s brother is perhaps hoping to use that by editing Hitler to ask for God’s assistence on his knees.

It seems like Hitler’s brother wants to redeem him, by making him pray on his knees–a prayer admitting and requesting God’s help.  Incidentally it looks like Hitler had three brothers, but they all died within the first few years of their lives. Apparently he only had one sibling that he would have known, a sister who outlived him. (Some people think that Hitler didn’t die, regardless I bet he’s dead by now.) Somehow Hitler one-ups dream brother every time–he is not interested in redemption. I wonder how helpful it is if you are coerced into redemption.  The evil is thick in the room, it really did not feel good. The right thing to do seems to get rid of the fakes. Does it lessen his evil power to have his past successes at evading God taken away? It feels more like Hitler’s brother is casting spells of surreptitious goodness and Hitler is casting spells back at him.

I know I am dreaming many times, though I still am engaged in the nightmare until the tree.  I get lucid three times: 1. fireplace 2. running 3. (most importantly) letting go of my fear in the tree.

The bible reference I found thanks to Google: Psalm 23. I’ve been to church now and again throughout my life, but was raised with more Eastern philosophies. Number 23 (a special number to me) is an awesome psalm and very apt I must say. It certainly deals with holding fast to God in the presence of adversity and evil. Not happy to be in Hitler’s presence but, at least I am trying to elevate him/connect him to God. Remembering God in the face of evil. Asking evil to remember God in the face of itself. If only I had been able to live inside the words of the psalm “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil” when kneeling before him and painting on his knee. Then I would have felt the peace in my heart that I began to realize at the end of the dream. That was more of a “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters” moment. Much easier to be at peace in a peaceful situation.

………….later

I knew some piece of information was missing so I didn’t post right away. Last night (3/30) I dreamed of crossing the deserts using hawthorn (heart opener). I was beginning to suspect something religious was going on. My buddy Rachel called and informed me that last night was Passover. This lent new light to the dreams. So it seems to be a reference to Judaism (unfortunately making much more sense now with the Hitler thing). Is this a dream about forgiveness or facing our fears in order to redeem the worst parts of ourselves to find release? Unfortunately dream Hitler appears to have evaded transformation/redemption. Although maybe I slowed him down by getting rid of his fake knees (false prayers?). Still, by the end of the dream, I am closing to the essence of psalm 23. Releasing my fear and being with nature/God. So…despite this coming in the form of a wretched nightmare, it is a beautiful message of God as savior and guide.

Our dreams have different roles, and different ways to teach us. I find that my dreams often provide me the reassurance of protection, love and hope that I may not see, or allow myself to feel in the waking time. Somehow these messages are very easily received while asleep, and yet awake, my fears and insecurities, or ‘rational thought’, obscures them. Dreams such as these serve as a reminder of the benevolence and support that we are forgetting/ignoring. We may take a lesson to endeavor to cultivate deeper relationships with such forces of good in other waking dreams.

On the other hand dreams can sometimes be filled with horrible fantasies or, even worse, metaphors of the unpleasant side of waking time. I tend to look at these dreams one of two ways (well…three). Either they are a wake up call saying, “Hey, are you the dreamer or the dreamed? Time to be lucid and make some changes.” Alternately, bad things may happen in the dreamtime so that you don’t have to experience them in waking. “Well…three”, being that sometimes we have wretched dreams because we are out of balance physically, for example: extremely violent dreams often occur when people are overheated.  I find it best to consider the dreams from various perspectives. Such as, if this dream is a metaphor for my life, or warning, I might do such and such. Or taken on more literal level it might mean… For example: I dream that I need to eat a kidney soaked in dandelion. Well, on one hand it might be suggesting that I need to do some work on my kidneys (water processing system/grief organ) which may involve taking dandelion which is both a strong diuretic and great for deep inflammation/anger, not to mention investigating the role of that organ and plant in my life, and what it would mean for me to eat meat. Or, on an even more literal level: perhaps it would be good if I eat some kidneys saturated in dandelion–getting both the meat and the dandelion (I am a vegetarian, and at the time I had this dream I had had others about eating meat).  Dreams act on many different levels, and I find it very helpful to write your dreams down, you may get a great first impression of a dream, only to look back with a year’s perspective to say, “Oh my goodness–that dream was about that thing I was thinking about, but…it was also so obviously about the loss of my relationship with X”.

Just as we have beautiful moments and nightmares in dreamtime, we experience similar highs and lows in the waking time. We can learn a lot by looking at our waking dreams with similar analysis. When faced with a frustrating situation we might ask ourselves, how am I contributing to this ‘nightmare’. Is my pride preventing me from turning this disagreement into a truce? Am I not willing to let go of something bad, and just walk away? How am I limiting this area of my life?  We can take hold of the reigns in a scary situation by manifesting changes through our intent. Rather than allowing our patterned reactions to govern us, we can instead envision our preferred outcome and how it would feel to experience this.  This act can change our feelings about what we think is possible, it can affect the situation physically, and/or it can improve our emotional take on the situation.  By using our intent and imagination, we can ‘dream up’ a preferred waking reality. Because the waking dream is more of a “group project” it may not entirely change the situation, but you may still be surprised by how much your intent affects your environment.

When enriching/spiritual moments occur, it is good to take note: how did my actions contribute to this happening and how can I encourage more moments like these to occur? Regardless of whether the dreams seem positive or negative they are filled with information, in a language written for the dreamer, that can help us to live a better life.  I have learned so many things from the guidance of my dreams: To ask questions of my environment, to interact more freely with animals, crystals, and herbs. To interact with things that scare me too. That it is possible to deeply connect with time and space. That these interactions grow oneness. We can use our intent to encourage these positive experiences as well. This is a way that we can practice lucidity in the waking time.

A bit piecemeal, but here goes:

Dream (12/30/09):  I’m sitting in some sparse, wintery woods with a couple other people. We’re hiding. Some people are coming through the woods to get us. I am sewing poetry along the collar of a dress I designed (rusty red thread on a cream collar). It’s the start of a poem I’ve been working on. “Like as…” it begins.  I sense the people are getting closer. One of my comrades and I run away through the woods. We get round to the other side and I jump off the path into the thick just before they shoot him with a rifle. The enemies back off, and I step onto the path to see him. He’s dead, but a wolf with a hunchback comes to me from his body. I say, “Oh, good, you can help lead me to safety.”  The wolf seems uncertain of this. He’s thinking about going back to the place where I was sewing. I don’t think that’s safe. We run back on the path that led us to the shooting.  The poem keeps running though my mind. I keep thinking of it and working on it. Going all the way back doesn’t feel safe. At one point on the edge of the the woods  the path meets up with the back of someone’s dirty gold ranch house with chain link fence and dog. I think we can get through without the dog hearing us and attacking. I look at the wolf and scoot through the fence and make it through the driveway into the town. The town is old. All the architecture is 1800’s. I touch the curvy molding on a shop, it’s freshly painted–red and white. We run through the streets. My running is fast, but on some level I know I am dreaming and could just be gliding through the air. I run and run and run until I cross the train tracks and get to a motel. I go inside my room, still afraid that someone is after me. I crash on the polyester covered bed.  I wake after hours and am surprised to see the door ajar (not very safe of me). I go and close it and turn around to see that David has slipped through the door and is sitting in a chair in the middle of the room. He’s a bit hunched over. He reminds me of the wolf in his expression.

Wake: Here I am hiding in the woods from all the people I think are after me, crafting clothing and writing poetry. In the place I love doing all the things I love, only problem is that there are too many people and not enough woods. The poem reminds me of Shakespeare’s sonnet 118–starts off, “Like as, to make our appetites more keen…”–confession and getting sick off of preventative medicine (cathartic purging that seems downright sick). The wolf comes when my friend dies.  I think of him as a guide, but he doesn’t really guide me; we do go together. The gold house is very like a house in my childhood neighborhood. The kind of house that has been neglected for 20 years, and has a sketchy/dangerous vibe, bull dogs, etc. I associate the era of the old town with simpler times, which is appealing, although in the dream there wasn’t much feeling about it, just relief at so many fewer things to interface with maybe–no cars, computers, no people on the streets, etc. A motel is the logical place to hide. David…well, I just found out that my friend’s husband, David, joined the circus when he was younger. This changed the way I think about him. The circus reminds me of wolf people (loners in a pack). The expression of the wolf and David don’t really remind me of David. The woods remind me of the woods in Iowa that we used to live by. David and Dee are in Iowa. It’s almost like seeing this side of David makes me think twice about going back to Iowa. I am running from people and memories from Iowa in the waking time, though I yearn to be back in Hickory Hill Park. Dee sent me a Hickory Hill Calendar along with this exciting info about David. I look forward to hear the circus story some day.

Dream (1/1/10): I’m in a dark hall, with a bunch of people, we’re in line to see my Guru–Shri Dhyanyogi. When I am in front of the Guru, he tells me to draw an Om on my third eye. I am surprised that I remember how to do it–it’s in reddish orange ink. I go into a very deep meditation. I can hardly will myself to move. Guruji talks to the crowd, while I am sitting in front of him in my state. I am aware enough that I am blocking traffic, even though I really shouldn’t worry, just meditate. I eventually move to the side, which breaks my meditation. I think of poetry. I hear, “just write the Truth“. I also wonder about my meditations being not so great, and I hear, “soon”.

Wake: Poetry again, I think of my the falcon poem that I wrote for my Guru, but also of my Fly Awake installation that was meant to be poem-like in its construction. A poem you could walk into and feel, between the text and imagery I created. The dream seems like a reminder to organize my art in this way, while working aligned to the highest Truth. Also gives reassurance that my meditations, which haven’t been the best, will become infused with light again. A Day or so before these dreams, I smoked some Calea and asked for help with my art. With Calea I am not surprised to find dreams coming up long after the physical interaction.

It has been a long time since my last post–time has slipped away from me, I guess. The time in between has been filled with some intense changes. Here is a story about lots of herbs, especially Agrimony, pregnancy and dolphins.

A year or so ago I read about agrimony in Matthew Wood’s Book of Herbal Wisdom I thought it might be a good remedy for me. Among other things it’s a good remedy for people who feeling trapped in a situation, or people feel tortured (physically or otherwise), but hide behind a cheery face. It is particularly helpful in work situations that meet the above description.  Agrimony tends to cause changes, for example, losing your job if it’s not the right one for you. Because I felt so trapped in a job that didn’t feel right for me, I was afraid to take agrimony! I needed my job and was afraid of changes that agrimony might bring.

3/30 Dream

There are two blue plastic dolls that are meant to be together. I rub them together like sex. From the female doll’s plastic slit, I pull a lotto scratch ticket.  I am disappointed that I am not pulling a baby out, but I am intrigued by this ticket. The ticket has dolphin stickers on it and, depending on the way that you scratch the ticket, determines your new job. The dolphins make me wonder if the job is in Orlando.

4/22 Wake

I discover that I am pregnant. This is totally awesome, because I have we’ve been trying to get pregnant for so long. At the same time I am deathly afraid/tortured by the thought that it might not work out. My husband and I had been trying to get pregnant for 4-5 years. I start craving raspberries and red raspberry leaf tea like crazy, but I’m tired and I can’t seem to get my hands on either. I’d been taking sumac, cooked rehmannia root and lady’s mantle, all of which really seemed to be improving my health.

4/29 Wake

I see an interesting posting on Craigslist for a job at a clinic that promote a healthy plant based diet lifestyle. Very intrigue, I apply.

4/30 Wake

At only 6 weeks I get tests back from the doctor showing that the pregnancy is not progressing well and I might miscarry.

5/1 Wake

I come to my herb class with Matthew Wood and ask him for his help. One of the herbs he recommends is agrimony. This seems so appropriate and ironic, seeing how I had shied away from this herb for so long. I feeling tortured by the way Western medicine often gives you knowledge of what is wrong with you, but no way to help the problem. Oy vey! While agrimony might have seemed to Wood to be a solution to the an acute problem, I knew that it would be quite transformative. With the pregnancy, and at work, I had been hiding what I was going through, my fears and discomfort were hidden behind cheery smiles.

I went home that night and immediately started bleeding, but instead of normal blood, it is a small amount of blood with lots of clear secretions.

5/1 Dream

Everyone thinks I bled on the pillow, but it came from the soaked cooked rehmannia root I’m holding onto. I try to tell them. But they don’t seem to understand.

5/2 Wake

Cooked rehmannia was something that I had been taking for my anemia. It helps anemia by increasing progesterone. When you prepare the root as a tea, you pull the root out of the water and it drips like old reddish brown blood.  I talked to Matthew Wood about the dream and he thought that perhaps my progesterone was too high and that was in part responsible for the pending miscarriage.

I am not bleeding enough yet that I am totally hopeless, so I look into ways to prevent miscarriage. Turns out that, just like my body wanted, red raspberry leaf is an excellent miscarriage preventative, (as well as a great general women’s tonic), and is also good for excess clear secretions (more often related to running fluids in colds, but in my case it applied to my bleeding). Lady’s Mantle has also stopped early miscarriages. I actually had some Lady’s Mantle, so I did as the success story I had heard told. I prepared a very strong tea and placed the wet leaves on my foreams. I meditated on the plant and my situation.

5/2 Meditation (Lady’s Mantle)

The dose of Lady’s Mantle is so strong, I immediately hear a list of female situations that alchemilla helps with. I ask about my pregnancy though, and response is not hopeful. I feel very soothed and comforted, as lady’s mantle is so good at doing for women. In the end I get the same response to my pregnancy question a couple times: Take St. John’s Wort.

While this was not good news it was practical. In the end I miscarried, but with the help of St. John’s Wort and the comfort of Lady’s Mantle I felt it went as best as it possibly could. I rode the emotional roller coaster that would be expected, but I was able to recognize that a lot of the suffering was chemical.

Back to agrimony and my dream at the beginning, there is a silver lining to this story.

5/10 Dream–Mother’s Day and my late grandmother’s birthday (she was my most comforting relation)

Mistletoe. I’ve been wanting to learn more about it, a guest lecturer comes to talk on the subject. She’s staying with Scott, or she know’s him best. She’ll give an exclusive lecture. She might have some to sell too. She will not tell how to gather the plant. She wants to the knowledge kept secret. The event is expensive and may be sold out. I see the baskets of necrotic looking mistletoe berries that she’s gathered, but I don’t want them–I want to gather my own. This all takes place in a bookstore like Barnes and Noble.

She leaves Scott’s house on the edge of town. I can tell because he’s setting her six rolled-up acrylic carpets carpets out in the middle of the road, near where she’ll wait for her ride. The are set in a row, at a slight angle to the yellow lines. At first I think they will leave together. But Scott’s not going. I ask him for information about the Mistletoe. Scott and I have gone inside and are on the couch now. He starts to tell me a little but he’s holding back.

I wake up and try to tell the dream and what I’ve learned about Mistletoe to everyone I see. I also repeat it to myself, trying to remember.

Wake

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of mistletoe is that it is an abortifacient.  Even though I just finished miscarrying, I thought perhaps there are some lingering products of conception. I don’t really feel this to be the case. Still I feel there is a message I need to receive from mistletoe. It takes a couple days but I manage to track some down. When I took it, I immediately felt soothed and comforted. I felt like I could release. I read about mistletoe and discover, that in addition to it’s rep as an abortifacient, (maybe the nastier side of the plant), it is also used for loss of a loved one (human or pet), emotional pain, nervous tension, and accepting defeat. This is such a sweet side of the plant, I really felt healed after this experience.

Meanwhile, I had a couple interviews with this awesome veggie health clinic job. The whole thing seemed almost surreal, everything was going really well and just seemed like it had to work out. I recognized this feeling from other areas of my life, but not jobs interviews which have never been something I excelled at. I had been feeling the influence of Agrimony strongly over the last couple weeks. It had become difficult and undesirable for me to hide my feelings. In some situations this was unwelcome, like situation where I normally poured all my energy into protecting and supporting others. But, in the case of this job it was very helpful to have a side of myself that I normally keep separate from my work self come through–my creative/dreamy side. One big unknown, was pay. It hadn’t been discussed. Finally, the night before my third interview I had the following dream.

5/26 Dream

I see a series of big block numbers on large cards, the numbers go up like a calender would go down, in rows, climbing to about 30. Some numbers have pics, or someone holding them. But my eyes are moved quickly upwards as I hear, “Pay attention the last question”. My eyes stop right before the numbers run out. Here we have a monkey in a shriner hat holding a big card with a bold “28″ and dolphin on it.

5/26 Wake

I had been trying to figure out this pay thing, what was too much, too little, etc. But basically my mind had been too busy with this and everything else going on in my life to receive an answer to my query. Finally something clear enough I could understand. I also immediately remembered the dolphin in my dream from March, and was very excited about that.

I go to the interview, armed with my best weapon against any possibility that things could go awry: vegan cupcakes. They discuss many things with me, making sure I really know what the job is about. Finally she says, “I just have one last question…” (and it sounds so dreamlike) …and the question is pay. Well it’s kind of an uncomfortable topic, but I am prepared with the answer, so after some brief hesitation, I get it out: 28?

My interviewers breath a collective sigh of relief as they look at each other. “Good because that is what we wanted to offer you.” I love it when everyone’s happy.

Tee hee. How nice to be part of a dream that ends well. While I didn’t get my baby wish yet, I did get my silver lining new job/dolphin/lotto ticket.

I haven’t had as many momentous dreams in the last couple months. Instead my dreams often reflect the day ahead, rather than events of the recent past. I wake up and remember my dreams–sometimes they are related to my plans for the day, and sometimes not. As I go through my day I often notice how the dream would have made more sense had I had it after that day, rather than before. Perhaps the waking dream is instead a response to the nighttime dream. I have never been too convinced of linear time, never mind the whole issue of waking vs sleeping dreams–so really either option, or perhaps both, are decent theories for this phenomenon.

I consider both the waking reality and our sleeping dreams to be illusory and dreamlike. Both have the potential for lucidity. (Check out my pamphlets for ideas on that.) If the dreams of the day are reflected in the dreams of the night, why not the other way around. Night dreams are a great place to work out daytime troubles–do a trial run, etc.  If we can do this consciously, while dreaming lucidly (at night), should it be a surprise that this should happen unconsciously? I think the surprise is that some part of ourselves has knowledge of what has yet to come. We live in a world that seems very concrete and linear. The more we delve into dreamtime and lucidity, the more we become aware that this concrete, linear world, might not be so straightforward.

I believe that events lie loosely on the time line. As we close in on a particular time or event it becomes easier to experience knowledge and/or feelings that will result from the event. Perhaps you have a strong feeling of dread the morning of the day you get into a bad accident.  Maybe your confidence starts building again weeks before an event happens that will restore your faith in life. There really is no linear/concrete reason to have these feelings ahead of time, but looking back we see that the event had a ripple effect that went out in all directions–not just forward in time.

It can be difficult to know the future. We might be able to know the future, if things go in the manner that we expect. If influencing factors change, the future will be altered as well.  The larger the time frame the more variables there may be. The night before an event may occur, there may be few. It also may be easier to remember the fore-mentioning of events if it is only from the night before. Perhaps many things have been mentioned beforehand, but we’ve forgotten them by the time they arise in waking time. Someone once told me that they believed deja vu was when things happened that he had previously dreamed about.  I wasn’t sure how I felt about this at the time. But, perhaps these recent dreams make me a little more open to this idea. In this case, my question would be–when did this dream occur? Was it one of your nighttime dreams? Or was it a dream that you had of your life before you chose to live it?

The dreams that I have been having, have not been direct images of the things to come. Though some have been more strikingly similar than others. In some ways they seem in conversation with the waking dreamtime.  At any rate, I have chosen to be in conversation with them. I have opened myself up to this phenomenon, and now on waking, I less often think, “wtf?”.  Instead I more frequently take an observer’s role as I go through my day, watching to see how the dreams of night might appear during the day.

In a sense the dreams of night have helped me become more aware of the dream nature of the daytime.  The goal, afterall is to realize this illusory nature, and then to wake up.  Now when I see a similar situation arising in the daytime, I might be amused, and less attached, or I might say, “Hey this didn’t go so well last time–I think I better try a different strategy.” Either way I feel a little closer to the goal.

I also feel less alienated, or alone. I won’t say I felt terribly isolated before. Yet, everytime I have interactions with plants, or animals, or knowledged based in time, I feel a little less separate from the mystery of life. According to Hindu philosophy, our original sin is imagining ourselves to be separate. With each interaction, I guess you could say I feel a bit less a sinner.

Happy Halloween.

Finally my second Dreamtime Pamphlet is complete. This one: “Manifest Your Dreams”, continues where the last one left off in dreamtime and continues on to give some introductory info on manifesting/being lucid in the waking time. Come on, you know you want to check it out. Get one here.

Last night, right before I fell asleep, I caught my mind wandering around. I stopped and thought to myself, “Rather than all this random brain activity, what would I like to dream about tonight?” After some thought, I decided I didn’t really care about my dreams, but rather had some ideas about how waking time could be improved. I dreamed up the following for waking time: My dreams manifest more easily in waking time through my maps and through the dream trailer–my two current Fly Awake projects.

I had been having issues in general getting things going with my maps, (i.e. inertia,) and specifically with PhotoShop. The second I thought up ‘things are going along easily with the maps’, an idea came into my mind about how to do what had been vexing me in photoshop.

I went to sleep and had a mish mash of dreams. Then I spent the day working (successfully/easily) on the map that had been giving me the most grief. Finally! It is so important to pause and redirect the mind when things aren’t going so well.

Dream:

I am in a huge old house–my family’s I think. A friend of mine will move in next door soon. We are walking around looking at our houses, and where they interact. She beats up her soon-to-be house a bit with the gutters (taking a gutter off and hitting the house with it). I’m guessing that she will be getting new gutters as part of the deal. My neighbors (the previous owners) died a while ago. I didn’t realize this until now. The neighbors had built a play house that covered up the window to our second floor sun room. We have two sun rooms, one on each side of the house, their playhouse totally covers up the large window to one of them. If the awning to one of the bridges was removed, they could still use their playhouse and bridges and we could have sun. I tell this to my friend, since she will now have the power to do this. I think she understands, but maybe she is just going to be renting so she might not do it–she doesn’t seem terribly concerned.

Now I am in an attic where the floor is sometimes dirty old wood and sometimes water–deep wavy water, that a whale surfaces from periodically. The water is pink and sparkles, and I am so happy to see this. I take my friend Rachel, holding her arm I bring her to the whale. The water doesn’t look pink anymore it looks greenish and a bit dirty, but I know that it is still pink, the dirt is just an illusion. I ask the whale to tell her why the water is pink. The whale says, “Oh, it’s not pink, it’s just dirty shore water.” I can tell she just doesn’t want to say why in front of Rachel, and is being a bit coy. She goes under and surfaces again. I really want her to tell Rachel about the water. The whale finally tells her, “It’s because the stars are communicating.”

The floor is wood again, and Rachel is laying, facing away from me, on an oriental carpet. An older person is sitting like a yogi where the whale was. She tells Kevin and me that we can go through the door now, to go to the attic. I don’t know if She means me and Kevin, or all three of us. I keep asking her, but my ears are fuzzy and I can never understand what She says. Finally, She says, “go and I will take care of it.” So, Kevin goes first and I go behind him. We go through the door and down some steps to a landing. There is a door on the right that Kevin reaches out to open. I see a door off the side on the left, it is a half-sized door, I go to check it out. When I turn back to tell Kevin about it, he has already gone up to the attic.

I go over to the attic door and open it. I can see that Kevin opened the door to a different space. I climb to the stairs to enter “my” attic. I slosh up the wooden stairs that are covered in photo chemicals. I imagine that Kevin had to move through his own pollutants to get up the attic. I get to the top, there is window light coming from the left side and many people sitting on the floor cross-legged. This is a lucid dreaming room, and it is very familiar to me. I am sure I have been here before. They offer people drinks (water), but they explain that you must chew on the water at the rim of the glass before you drink it. When you do this they ask, “What do you see (in the water).”

Things are happening that are of a magical/mystical nature. I am sitting close to the window, near Gordon and Kate from work. I had hoped I would be there with Rachel, but this is okay. I guess that Kate is someone I just have to accept in my life. Everything is magical but my eyes are fuzzy. Someone comes over to me and offers me a drink and I drink most of the water before I remember that I am supposed to chew first. There is hardly any water left when I start chewing–the man asks me “What do you see?” I am thinking, “Hardly any water.” He kind of rolls his eyes, and then he tells me what I couldn’t see for myself, “Your Mother will protect you and your Father will save you.” It’s a good thing that I think of myself as having other parents besides my biological parents, because I don’t think that they are capable of this.

Finally my eyes clear up, but the magic seems to go away when I start making small talk with these people I know. I realize this and that I am lucid and I decide to wake up. And, I wake up, not in the dream, but from the dream.

Wake:

This dream was pretty interesting to me. In the first part I am trying to affect the dream, by unblocking my source of sunlight. In the second part I am talking the whale, who seems very much like my Guru. The water is pink and this is very nice for me. I was actually starting to get my period, days early, which means that I will be able to participate in the meditation retreat that I am going to this weekend. I want to explain the magic of this to my friends who are not familiar with this kind of magic. But this is maybe not something that is good to share, maybe it is something they would not understand. My ears and eyes have difficult time understanding, but this is normal for me–my subtle eyes and ears are not as clear as I would like–or maybe that is just me doubting the messages I am receiving.

The stairway to the attic with the photo chemicals makes me think of the 5th chakra–the chakra of purity, or impurity as the case may be. The attic is a lucid space. However, I lose the magic when make small talk, thinking that is what I should be doing. I think this is very much the case in waking time. There is the lucid dream, but I try to do what others expect of me–like making small talk–which does not seem very useful in general. This dream brings up a lot of lucid dreaming issues–such as how to interface with the waking dream. I think that I often interact in the waking dream, when it is really not necessary, and I could instead be holding my own center. Such as with Kate, my lovely, but argumentative coworker.

As far as my mother and father, this could be my bio parents, or my Guru and Her Guru, who is no longer with us, or perhaps this is my New Year’s resolution talking to me. It was: to come into awareness that “the Earth is mother and the Sun is my father”. Regardless, I am feeling safe. Thank you dream speakers.