7/13/10 Dream:

I am in a rather mundane science class about space travel/astronomy. Interestingly the teacher spends some time discussing how an astronaut began making art during his trips. The teacher described the artist’s process at length. The process involves taking parts of electron/micro scans of dark matter and piecing them together to make a larger abstract picture. It was fascinating to hear, but he did not speak about the meaning/significance behind the pieces. I tell the teacher that I appreciated the discussion–it made the subject more interesting.

We have to take a 42-50 question multiple choice test. There is an opportunity to write an essay for extra credit. I take the test, guessing many times. I’m think I will get a B- or a C+ before the extra credit. I have two ideas for the essay. I end up writing about the three artists I am aware of who became artists because of their space experiences. One woman (not sure what her art is like), the man who paints using moon dust, and the man described in our class who makes the scan pictures.

My handwriting is sloppy and I end up writing on scraps of paper because I run out of space on the test paper. I write about the uniqueness of the experience–the absolute emptiness, quiet, the vision of our home planet–and their complusion to create and communicate. How these artists are outsiders because they are extremely square (being lifelong scientists) who are compelled express themselves creatively. They are outside the community of scientists and the community of artists.

I’ve written a page and a half so far and I’m not done. Everyone is gone including the monitor (the teacher left a while ago). The bell sounds. I think about tracking down the teacher and giving him what I have. I haven’t completed my point yet.  I decide to keep writing. My pen runs out but I find another one that works. I hope he can read my scrawls. I decide to continue writing.  Writing after the bell, and coming towards my conclusion, makes me excited.

I write, “In Carl Sagan’s book ’Contact‘, when the astronaut is faced with a new experience of space she is awestruck, and exclaims: ‘They should have sent a poet.’ Perhaps experiences of cosmic proportions are enough to awaken the artist in us, or a realization of the necessity of creative communication.” I mean to continue: “For the reason of its profoundly inspiring affects I feel there should continue to be space travel, perhaps including artists who can help tell the story.”

Wake:

This dream was interesting to me. It was a bit atypical, as I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about science and space. There have been recent cuts to the space program which, in the waking time, I support.  I feel like the money could be spent other places to have a much more positive effect on daily life. In the dream it seems so clear that the inspiration of space travel and discover is elemental to our wellbeing–our sense of hope and awe. This dream also happened right around the time of the dream group article coming out. It made me think about how most of the articles about dreams that I have seen in the last year or so have been scientific in nature and often belittle the content of dreams. They acknowlege their necessity for health and well-being, but not that they may have more significance. I think these articles are important though because they still make people think about their dreamlife and perhaps the dream group article would not have been written without the other articles preceeding it.

Science is seen as the authority, the truth. If scientists and artists worked together, telling two sides of the same story, they could be seen as supporting each other, not as opposing each other. Scientists could show their objective version of the experience (of space, or dreams, or whatever) and artists could show their subjective experience. It could be a validating collaboration, rather than a dichotomy for their work to be seen side by side.

This dream also came just prior to picking up the book, ”How the Universe Got its Spots” from the library. I’ve just begun, but it looks like it will be a good creative read on things cosmos.

Take a Look Inside My Dream, by Kate Murphy

From NY Times Opinionator a few months ago, an article by Jonah Lehrer on the (science based) necessity and utility of dreaming:

Why We Need to Dream, Jonah Lehrer

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.

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

Dream: I have to suck milk from a thin baby’s nipples. I am uncertain that this will work, but I try, and am surprised when the milk squirts into my mouth. As it does I see that the baby is a neo-Nazi–now he has an army green outfit on (shirt open so I can nurse) with the red, white and black swastika armband. He looks rigid and pigheaded–I am leery of his evil. I suck on his other nipple and get more milk, it’s a little sweet. I know now that all I have to do to have a baby is suck this milk.

Wake: Oh boy, another Nazi dream. Weird. Well, I am thinking that it my version of something that is categorically negative. I do not like intolerance or violence. There are probably few other things that would resonate as evil/negative/violent consistently for me, so I guess Nazi’s make a good symbol for that. This skinny baby reminds me of the milk thistle seeds. They are skinny, seeds are the baby of the milk thistle, milk related, and have a bad reputation. In the bible, thistles were seen as punishment for being evil. They also cause pain when touched and are nasty weeds to get rid of. They are also great liver remedies. I am hoping that they will help me deal with hormones better, which I think it impeding my ability to have a baby. I do think think I need to look deeper into the whole nazi symbolism–not a pleasant prospect–I avoid looking at the negative if I can help it.

 On another note we have moved into our new home in NE Portland. My intent is for the house to be a dream venue. I’ll keep you posted.

Later:

Just talking to my friend Emily who brought up the swastika in a conversation earlier today. We spoke about how the swastika is a symbol of the cycles of evolution and involution in Hindu culture, that was later perverted by the Nazis. So if the baby is a symbol of death bringers, and I can get well by being nourished by the baby–nourished by death–Emily sees it as clearly being about needing to eat meat–be nourished by mass death (Emily says “Hey! not mass death–just fish!”. Mmm…sounds just as evil as the baby feels. I will have to ruminate on that one. Definitely food for thought.

I’m in a white, institutional hallway running/flying away from a man. I am flying feet first. I am face up, (back parallel to the ground), feet leading. I try a few arm positions to increase my speed. Finally I say “I want to go fast now”, and with my arms above my head, that works tolerably well. I go down stairs to get out of the building but I don’t navigate them as well as I normally do.  Outside I see the other person I am tryingt o escape–the woman–she managed to get outside ahead of me. She’s on her knees on the edge of a hill that has some cement ledges. I shove her forward and she bangs down the hill on her knees. I feel a bit bad about her knees being scraped up. I run off in the other direction through the grass. The man wraps his arms around me, I am unhappy about it, too hot.

Wake: Another nightmare from being too hot…and knees, knees of enemies. My father’s health comes up…I am worried about him and call him on waking. He’s fine in the waking time.  I was interested in this dream because of the new way of flying–feet first. Interestingly when I woke (immediately after being held) I was on my side, not flat on my back. In cases of peculiar positions I often find the body to be in the same position as in waking time, but not this time. I wonder if flying feet first is a more grounded way to fly, or related to moving around by your feet like we so often do in waking.

The other day I was tired and dragging around without much energy. I reminded myself, “That is because I am associating with my physical body, not my subtle body–my subtle body can do anything.” This works in dreamtime. It also lightened my step at that moment in the waking time.

“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.

May the force be with you!

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.

Later that night I drank a glass with a couple friends. It has been a long time since I drank regular wine, but it seemed more mellow, warmly expansive, and less of a bonk over the head than straight-up grape wine. It had a more subtle flavor than welch’s, although not too far off. And–yeah! for me–it did not give me the feeling that my limbs are falling off that I get from most alcohols, including a strong kombucha. I liked it, but very much look forward to trying some that is not so sweet. The let down from the sugar high was probably worse than the let down from the alcohol.

To add to the excitement of my super herby day my friends and I spent some time talking excitedly about nettles (but, how else can you talk about nettles–they are so exciting!). We’re planning a little nettle party, that will include, as I so eloquently put it in my happy tipsy state:  

‘I hope there will be beer making, soup, and that I get to flagelate people.’

Thank you to Martha Stewart, here’s a great Nettle soup recipe. I can’t wait to make it again. We’ll be experimenting on my balding friends to see if the nettles will bring back their hair.

Later that night I slept with my crystal for the first time in a while and at one point woke up with it by my left hip (it tends to wander to where it’s needed). I had visions of little children and babies all night long.  All in all making it was an exciting day and night.