fly awake

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.

I have published Dreamtime Pamphlet vol. 3: A Pocket Guide to Inner Time and Space. It is available in my etsy shop. The booklet gives varied ideas and exercises for getting more in touch with time and space on a personal and bodily level. I hope you like it.

I also just added some blank dream journals that I have been working on.  I bound the books, printed the titling with letterpress, and collaged the covers with dream imagery.

Dream: I keep turning, facing the different directions. East South West North…I face them and feel their domain: Air, Fire, Water, Earth. I find a brown satchel and open it. It has wands in it. There are three groups. The top row is one of the groups, I look at the two groups that make up the bottom row. One group of wands is made from seems to be made from vegetables, some are withered from drying out. The other group of wands are made from the woods of two different plants each. Underneath this set, it says “for herbalist/healers”. One of these wands is part Agrimony and part friend. Funny, I didn’t remember agrimony having a woody part. I start making my own wands on these models. I wonder how exactly I will be able to make the two woods join seamlessly.

Wake: Agrimony makes me think of work issues.* It seems like most people I work with are frustrated with their jobs, me too.  I took some agrimony flower essence and kept the bottle in my pocket all day at work. Things seemed to go better, and there was more friendliness too.

Dream: I am thinking about the directions. I am in the summer of my life. When I die I hope it will be like falling asleep, where I feel my senses peeling back from the blackness and inner peace. I remember that feeling. I hope that it is peaceful.

Wake: I was so exhausted last night, I could hardly think. I was aware as I fell asleep. That familiar feeling of letting go, where the senses become dimmer and the quiet and stillness envelope. When you are aware of that moment you have to make the choice to let go. Letting go of control and awareness. It is such a precious transition. It reminds me of death. In the dream I remembered the exact feeling of falling into asleep.

East Air Spring Youth

South Fire Summer Adulthood

West Water Autumn Aging

North Earth Winter Death

—————-

*Incidently the dream job I got this summer did not work out. Within a couple weeks it was obvious that I was in a difficult situation. It seemed so weird that it wouldn’t work out, after all the dreams. But within a couple months I quit and went back to my old job, where they were happy to have me. I was perplexed by this for a long time. Finally I had a dream about it. The dream showed that, while it looked like a spell that brought the job, it was just a coincidence that the agrimony,etc happened at the same time that I got that job. This made me feel less confused, but I am still working through all my employment issues, etc.

Dreams:

2/6/09

1. Time traveling with Kevin, a la Lost. We go to different times without our controlling it. We go to a cafeteria where there is a craft fare. I am hoping this is the future, because things that should be $5-10 are $30. We run out the back hand in hand. Someone is after us. When we get to the jungle gym, she has exited the building behind us. I fly, but Kevin runs. Somehow he is always a little ahead of me in his running and he is has a very steady pace. Whereas my running is smooth and exhilarating for a short time and then I get tripped up, and have to start refocus.

I wake before we are caught.

Wake: Time traveling is not much of a surprise, because we did just watch Lost the night before. What intrigued me most was Kevin’s running. I realized that running is difficult in dreams because we try to take our bodies with us. Next time I am dreaming and trying to run I must not try to bring my body–I am free when I dream simply because I do not have to take my body.

2. I am in love with a vampire who lives in my building. My friend likes him too, although she is not cool enough for him, and I think he likes me. Still, I feel like I need to compete with her, and I don’t like that.

Later at night I fly out along the street behind our large dark brick apartment building. I love the dark and cool of this night. I see an angel a down the street. I can see her halo. It is beautiful. I fly up to her. I tell her, “I could see your halo from all the way back there,” gesturing back where I came from. She is busy making out with a young lesbian to make her feel better about her sexual identity. She is a Jewish angel.

I see my mother down on the street, and I really want to chase after my vampire, so I bring Coco down to her. She’ll take him home. I fly off to find my vampire, he’s far from here now.

Wake: Higher beings helping us to come to terms with ourselves. Even seeing this being done for someone else makes me feel better about myself. As in, yes it is okay to be you, exactly as you are.

3. My two friends Laura, from childhood, meet and they actually have a lot in common. I wake up from this dream and I go to tell Scott about it. I show up and he’s in the bathroom. He peaks out and sees me. He looks a little embarassed to come out. I go into a little room on the edge of the room. This tiny room has glass wall on top–it reminds me of an office inside an old library. I go in there to give him space to come out. The room is full of my stuff. It calms me to be around my old fractal game and other relics of my mind. My being in there also takes the pressure off Scott. He comes out and I start to talk to him. Almost immediately other people come in and interupt. It seems like it’s always this way with him.

Wake: I love this little library within the library. That’s how it feels to me. A little personal library inside a more public one.

Although it is not obvious from the themes in these dreams, (well maybe from this room in 3), but there was a general sense of gathering myself inwards. It seems like I have been spread out–in my relationships, and at work–and because of this I have not been following my heart as much. The dreams seemed to be about defining myself as myself. A little vague, I know, however I think these ideas will become more concrete soon enough.

2/9/09

Dream:

1. Something is going on in the building I am staying in. A lady who is kind of a friend/acquaintence to me decide to do some dry run military thing in my area. My friend and I leave before things get crazy. I run, easily and freely and fast. The best is when I skim down the stairs–I love doing this. We get out onto the street and that lady drives by. She acknowleges us with a nod. We run a bit further.

Wake: I was a little hot during when I woke up. Which usually accounts for scaryish chase dreams. But I love how I remembered to run! Success!

2. I go with my brother and my friend Nicole to see Ma. We are in a church and Ma is wearing a blue satin nightgown with lace at the top. Ma has made onion sausage fryed balls. My brother is practically salivating over the balls. I am shocked to see them. Then Ma makes some fake (no meat/no onion) balls.

Nicole mentioned she tried to find other DYC people on Ravelry and didn’t have any luck. That seems strange to me, because I can think of several knitters. We go up for prasad and darshan and Ma is giving everyone a ball and/or a hairy, silvery peapod. I tap one of Her murtis with my toe by accident. I bow down to them on the ground to appologize and show my respect. When I do, I feel energy pouring into my head.  I go to Ma and She gives me a hairy, silvery peapod. I try to step around some pillows and She helps me because I am so nervous that I will do the wrong thing. She acts annoyed with me.  I go sit and I am not too worried about it–everyone gets annoyed sometimes.

Wake: The sausage/onion balls for my brother, and the nightgown and church for Nicole. They make me think of all the times I have seen Ma do something to love someone as they are, helping people worry less, or in some way compassionately easing their burden. Like when I saw Her sneeze really loudly into the mic when someone had been sneezing very self-consciously for a while. So, even though my brother is a meat eater and Ma is not, I see Her meeting him halfway.

This dream and the Jewish angel dream remind me that God loves you where you are, and will meet you there if your heart yearns strongly.

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.

I’ve been working on story boards for “Fly Awake”. These are still in formation but looks like water color sketches related to bird visitation dreams. The different ways, for example, that eagle has offered support and guidance. There was a little of that in the original installation, along with the notebook part. I have also starting going back into the notebook area, putting together a new version from my writing and thoughts about flying/lucidity. It’s nice to go back into this part of the show, which I’ve been neglecting for a while. It is really helping me synthesize all messages.

The other day I was reading Vaishali from vol 25/no 4 of Dream Network. She wrote about becoming lucid and asking dream characters questions. She found that the characters weren’t very forthcoming with information. With a little help from some fellow dreamers she found that unconditionally loving the dream characters opened the doorways to communication.
It can be a challenge not to judge the images and ideas that come up in dreams. But they are all parts of ourselves, and if we alienate them, they may do the same to us. It was pretty exciting to get this information. Sometimes hearing things expressed in a new way really solidifies things.

I also saw a new thing in flight. Two crows were on a telephone wire. Instead of pushing off the wire and flapping wings, one leaned off at an angle, falling forward, then opening his wings to be caught by the wind.

Dreams:

1. I am looking for something rather clandestine. Going through a big old building with high ceilings. I enter into the spanish history room of the library and feel like a rocket. The room has shelves of old books, from floor to ceiling, great natural light from big windows and a ladder that rolls along the shelves. I feel like a rocket but am low and slow enough to read the shelves. I feel the crown of my head very strongly and information coming through from the lineage. I am very excited and grateful to have found the room. I bow down again and again to the lineage for their help in the dreamworld.

2. A man and a woman living in 2010 or 2020. She is from 2050, so it could be then. The man is from the past, he came to the future to find the woman. They are together, but not yet. They are in separate rooms. He is looking for something.
Later they are preparing to go back to 1950 (his time). My aunt is trying to get me to take all this children’s furniture, more than I’ve taken already. Her kids are around her (how I remember them–as children–not how they are, adults). She acts like my mother, very bossy, telling me what to do about everything.
They arrive in 1950. There is more natural land and open space, things are less overbuilt than she’s used to. She’s so very happy. She can expand much more in the relaxed environment. I think about how her reaction makes sense, considering the difference in feeling between the two time zones.
We are walking down the sidewalk together. I lift off and fly, I am golden eagle. He is a little behind me, on my left, and a little lower, he is a streak of shining white light–.

3. (two nights) See deer, just looking at me, in nature, briefly.