Dreamwork as Spiritual Practice

Category: Healing Dreams (Page 1 of 3)

Noninterference In Healing And Dreamwork

The body’s capacity for healing amazes me. As I slowly recover from my spinal surgery (I had surgery on May 1st), I’m more and more aware that my primary task is not to help the healing along, but to trust that healing is happening, sometimes even in spite of my interference. 

My first experience of myself after surgery was of shocking physical damage. There was a puckered ten-inch incision down my back, held together with staples. There was a raw four-inch incision across my throat, held together with glue. Ten vertebrae in my upper spinal column had been pulled apart, rearranged, and bolted back together. Nerves and muscles and blood vessels in my neck and back had been severed. I couldn’t reposition myself in bed, turn my head, swallow properly or manage my own beleaguered senses. My heart sputtered under the strain, and I felt so sick, feeble and disoriented that I really couldn’t imagine ever being whole and strong again. 

Yet, almost immediately, the healing began. Soon, the wounds in my back and throat became neat seams. The chaotic sensory panic signals found a tentative rhythm, so my body’s communication became comprehensible again. Each day I felt better as I relaxed my ineffectual instinct to struggle against this experience. My body had been overwhelmed, but my body knew how to heal. All I could really do was cooperate, bear witness, and rest.

Before the surgery, with the progression of my neuro-muscular disease, it was almost impossible to believe in healing. No matter what I did or didn’t do, the symptoms steadily worsened. Yet healing was happening even then. Sometimes healing can be an increasingly profound spiral downward into the unknown, even into death. Or sometimes things just have to get worse before they can get better, and that’s how it was for me. The disease intensified to the tipping point, against my will, but in the post-surgical wreckage of my body, healing began to show itself as naturally as a green shoot breaking through rubble. Now, it seems to be growing easily in me. I’m not approaching death (not yet)—I’m relaxing into possibility. 

Five months after surgery, all of my current symptoms can be seen as forms of healing in themselves. The inflammation that causes me pain is actually promoting bone growth in my spine. My weakness and lethargy are my body’s call for patience; I truly need the rest that this fatigue imposes. My heart’s arrhythmias slow me down, because it’s good for me to go slowly. 

I’m not making this happen. Healing resists my interference. But noninterference can be active; it certainly doesn’t mean apathy. I’m fully engaged in recovery, and my noninterference includes caring deeply, using all of my senses to discern what to do and what not to do, how to nurture the green shoot of the moment as it spirals upward. 

I have a strong preference for long-term survival and physical well-being, of course—but ultimately it’s not up to me. Ultimately, I will die, even the earth will die, and when the time comes, it could be a kind of healing, a not-yet-conceivable transformation. However, as long as I’m alive, healing must include appreciation, and participation in the life force that sustains my body and the earth. Interference is always a lack of appreciation, a lack of respect which creates distortions in natural cycles and developmental processes that would otherwise resolve themselves in balance over time.

Dreams are healing processes, and good dreamwork is also about noninterference. I don’t think there can be any effective prescriptions for interpreting dreams, just as I don’t think there’s any medication or surgery that will “fix” my body permanently, or any intervention that will “fix” our planet. Dreamwork is a fluid process, not a “fixed” method. Dreams move in the direction of healing and wholeness—but the key word I’m using here is move. All healthy processes are changing, moving. “Fixing” invariably means interfering by interrupting that movement. 

If I claim that certain dream images always symbolize certain things, or that a dream’s meaning can be found only according to a particular method, or that there is only one correct meaning to be found in a dream, then I am interfering with the momentum that makes the dream what it is. A dream is a changing, unfolding, un-pin-downable experience. We can’t “fix” it or define it without violating its wholeness and preventing its potential. Yet dreamwork through noninterferenceinvites engagement, commitment, and patience with our own unknowing. 

As I heal, I’m being invited to trust. I’m being invited to enjoy my life, with all of its discomforts and upheavals, and even with the inevitable unknown potential of its ending. As I explore dreams, I’m being invited to enjoy the sometimes disturbing and confusing impressions that those dreams make when they break through the rocky soil of my life and grow wild, escaping my understanding. I can nurture the green sprouts of healing possibilities, through trust and appreciation, without interfering at all.

The Depths of the Dream

Although I know all kinds of ways to work with dreams, I can still miss the most significant implications of my own dreams. Sometimes, the images are just too close to home—I take the dream too literally, or let the more obvious features stand for the dream as a whole, ignoring some meaningful details. When a dream is delightful, I’m tempted just to enjoy it, and let those troublesome details slide. Jeremy Taylor used to say that when his dreamwork clients brought him awful nightmares they’d always leave the session feeling happier (having discovered the shining, breakthrough elements of those ugly dreams), but when they brought happy dreams they were in for some hard work, and usually left the session sobered. He was pointing out that those happy dreams can pack a punch. And I wanted to say, “Yes, but sometimes a happy dream is just a happy dream, right?” 

Whether I’m working with others’ dreams or my own, I believe it’s vital that we simply enjoy our “happy dreams,” allowing the powerful positive emotions and images to comfort and heal us, without overworking or overthinking. Nevertheless, I also believe that Jeremy knew what he was talking about (he usually did): Every genuinely happy dream must include our pain as well as our pleasure, and often the pain needs our attention in order for the pleasure to be possible. 

In my own life, joy and grief have a fundamental relationship—and I know that my dreams reflect this. Yet, when I finally had a beautiful, “happy dream” after months of plodding “problem dreams,” I just wanted to savor the beauty and did not look below the surface at first. I thought that the dream addressed some painful issues, but gave me a reassurance that although change and loss were happening, it was possible to relax and enjoy and adapt. I was right, of course—authentic happiness was certainly at least part of the true meaning of the dream, since the dream really did provide a direct experience of relaxing, enjoying, and adapting. But there was more to this paradoxical dream than my direct experience of joy.

It was a long, rich dream in which I felt a sense of warm connection to the people around me, even though the atmosphere was chaotic and a little sad as we were all completing a task (a game or project) and preparing to say goodbye to one another. The dream was full of the same patterns of problems that have been regular dream themes for me lately: I’m packing for departure but keep losing precious things I want to take with me; I feel somewhat vulnerable and tired; I encounter people or animals in distress and cannot help them; there’s too much happening at once and I have no control over anything. Yet, in every situation: I care deeply about others and they care for me; we share our problems, laugh together, comfort each other; I appreciate the delicious sensory experience of a warm breeze, the ground under my bare feet, flower fragrances, sunshine glittering on ocean waves; we are all at ease in our own awkward but capable bodies, and trust in the changes we are experiencing.

Here’s how the dream ended:

I am happy, walking with friends, with my senses wide open. The ocean (a deep bay, with a rocky shore) is right over there—and as we are talking about how beautiful it is, we’re delighted that it gets even more special because I’ve glimpsed a humpback whale spy-hopping just offshore. We pause to watch several other kinds of whales as they surface, spout, and plunge. Wow! Look, there’s the stunning black-and-white face of an orca, open-mouthed, in ferocious pursuit of a harbor seal! Both animals break the surface together and then submerge—the whale hunting; the seal fleeing. I expect to see blood in the water when they go under, because it seems that the seal won’t be able to get away. I’m briefly horrified, but there’s nothing I can do, so I let go of my visceral distress, allowing myself to feel compassion for the seal and respect for the whale, without anxiety. This is just the way it is, the way it must be. Now, the seal has apparently become a bedraggled dog, limping slowly along on the surface of the water (as if the water were ice). We want to coax the dog to shore before the whale looms up and swallows him… But again it is clear that this situation is not within our control, the dog is out of reach, and our caring response from a distance is the only help we can offer. We must walk on. I accept this completely, and wake feeling at peace.

I’ve been handling my waking life challenges with this same acceptance, as much as possible. Most of my circumstances are beyond my control for now, and all I can do is bring compassion to bear on my situation—compassion for myself, and for those whose lives touch mine. As in the dream, I sense the underlying joy and beauty in just living, sharing difficult experiences with others, appreciating small pleasures in the midst of great uncertainty.

I’m waiting (it seems like forever, but actually it’s been eight weeks) for a consultation with a neurosurgeon about a major surgery to straighten and fuse most of my cervical spine, and maybe part of my thoracic spine. The as-yet-unscheduled surgery is frightening enough, and it’s also unclear whether I will be able to recover and heal from it afterward due to my underlying diagnosis—a progressive, degenerative neuro-muscular disease, causing kyphosis and pressure on the spinal cord. Being in limbo for so long has been excruciating, as my condition continues to deteriorate and I won’t know what to expect, what to prioritize, or how to prepare until I can finally meet with the surgeon next week. 

Long walks and writing projects have been the most consistent features of my daily routine, and these things have given me a sense of accomplishment that makes it possible to remain in the present moment and exercise some patience. I was functioning fairly well, feeling an underlying joy in spite of the strain of waiting… But then, quite rapidly, I lost the ability to walk more than a short distance, as my crooked spine can no longer support the weight of my head. When I try to walk, my gait is impaired: I stumble, stagger, struggle. I can’t walk upright. There’s something about the forced posture of “hanging my head” that induces an unconscious sense of shame and dejection. Plus, I’ve been focused on preparing a manuscript for publication—a frustrating task with many obstacles and little creative satisfaction—which means that my “writing time” involves more stress and less actual writing. 

Trying to write, trying to walk, I face failure. Without the essential structures of physical competence and creative flow, I’m floundering. Acceptance is coming less easily. I’m not sure what I have to offer others, and my needs and moods are not entirely within my jurisdiction. Although my relationships with clients, family and friends continue to be meaningful, I’m finding it harder to accept “the whole catastrophe” (as Zorba the Greek would describe it, with an exuberance I can’t quite muster). In fact, the main thing I must accept right now is my own non-acceptance. Really, I want the struggling to stop—but my resistance is part of this experience, and I can’t force myself to be more accepting than I actually am. The underlying joy is still here, but grief is present, too.

So, having such a lovely, happy dream was a blessing. It raised my courage, my strength, and my gratitude; it relaxed my resistance. The dream was, and is, an authentic gift that shows me what is possible. Nothing can diminish that experience. And yet, there’s more to the dream than bliss. 

I savored the bliss for a while, responding to the dream with ready appreciation. That seemed good enough. I’d gotten the message. There are ways to feel joy, no matter how hopeless things seem. Yes. Yes… but. Eventually, I realized that the dream wasn’t finished with me. I’d missed something fundamental. 

As a dreamwork facilitator and teacher, I frequently remind my clients that the dream ego’s perspective is not the whole story. The entire dream is communicating, and although the “I” in the dream may have meaningful insights, other dream figures may have other points of view that are equally valuable. This is true in waking life as well: The way I experience the world is only one way of experiencing, but the world itself offers an infinite array of possible experiences, and alternative perspectives bring more possibilities. Dreaming and waking, this world is multi-faceted and sparkling. If we let ourselves be too dazzled by the overall brilliance, we’re depriving ourselves of this paradoxical diversity, the play of light and contrasting colors, the exquisite patterns. If we just see what we already know to be there, we don’t learn or change. I know that I want to let this dream change me. 

Whenever I see the ocean in my dreams, I look for whales, and if I see whales I know that this is a deep, powerful dream for me. I can’t turn away from those depths. So, remembering my own professional guidance, I extend my empathy to the fleeing seal and the bedraggled dog. It is so hard to ask that dog how he feels, because I really can’t bear to feel what he feels. When he speaks for himself, I have to acknowledge him fully.

The dog hears us calling to him from the shore. He longs for us, for the joy we are able to experience as we go about our lives. But we aren’t going to save him, and he knows he is going to be eaten. He is already hurt, and exhausted. In a sense, in the form of the seal, he may have already been eaten, while as the dog he is just limping along helplessly, trying to escape the inevitable. Our joy breaks his heart, because he can’t reach us, and we can’t reach him. 

Of course, I recognize this dog’s pain. Of course I do. But the joy is still real, the peace and acceptance are strangely, impossibly, essentially and absolutely real—along with the pain. The dog is walking on the water, he is somehow divine, even in his misery. Meanwhile, the orca is as glorious, powerful, and beautiful as any of the other whales, even though, unlike the gentle baleen whales, orcas have sharp teeth—they kill to eat. From the whale’s perspective, the pursuit of the seal is exhilarating. From the seal’s perspective, there’s fear and flight, and then—what? From the dog’s perspective, there’s longing and loss. From my perspective, there are joyful aspects to every situation and ways of savoring those joys, even when I’m struggling, even when I’m suffering. From the dream’s perspective, everything is unfolding in wholeness.

A happy dream, or a happy life, would not be happy if there were nothing but happiness. If we lived forever, nothing would ever be able to change or grow, and life would have no value. We are mortal; our bodies age, and we die. Some living beings kill and eat other living beings. But life also includes the capacity to welcome our interdependent experiencing of everything, our capacity to care about these experiences and one another. Even when we can’t feel welcoming acceptance of the painful events themselves, the fact that we feel pain is a testament to the fact that we love, and we can embrace the experience of loving. I may suffer because I am losing aspects of myself and my life that I care about, but the intensity of that loss makes me more aware of how much I do care—not just about having a healthy body, fruitful work and precious relationships, but about living life however difficult it may be. 

The intense experience of longing and loss practically eats me alive—while at the very same time, expanding my definition of “me,” my connection with “you,” our participation in “everything.” In pain and in joy, we all dream this paradoxical life, and live it too. 

Resistance and Dream Catharsis

It seems peculiar that when so many profound spiritual and physical changes are occurring in my waking life, my dreams continue to be uncomfortably uneventful. I’m having lots of what I call problem dreams, the dreams that drain energy, vent frustration, and express unproductive struggle. In these dreams, I’m trying to do something or get somewhere, encountering petty obstacles, feeling impatient, inadequate, exasperated, resentful and worried. Do you have dreams like this? Problem dreams are extremely common. They’re like the “filler” that takes up space and time in our lives, the day-to-day entropy of irritation and expectation that fills in the gaps while we’re waiting for something more meaningful to occur.

Ironically, I’ve been quite free of such “filler” in my waking life lately. While my physical health has declined rather sharply, I’m finding ease and meaning in the unfolding of my everyday experiences. The obstacles I encounter while awake are very real, but somehow acceptable; yet at night, in the relatively harmless dream world, I’m tripping over every step, struggling with every task, resisting all the way. 

Jung wrote of the compensatory quality of dreams: how they balance our waking life experiences by showing us what we’re missing about our reality, how they restore wholeness by including what’s being neglected. In my own case, however, my “compensatory” dreams don’t seem to be inviting me to integrate these neglected, problematic elements into my waking life. Instead, they seem more cathartic, helping me to discharge energies that would exhaust me if I acted them out during the day. It seems like I’m getting the usual messy business of wrestling with difficulties out of my system in my dreams, so I can ease up when I’m awake. 

My primary spiritual practice right now is “Don’t Waste Energy.” My symptoms are exhausting enough, and I want to appreciate the life I have, not expend scarce resources on unnecessary resistance. For the moment, I have to deal with increased pain and neuropathy, increasing debility, and the threat of further deterioration. None of this is under my control, though I do have a say in how I’m going to respond, and everything is improved by a response that is yielding rather than confrontative. My health issues also put me directly in the path of a dysfunctional and absurdly obstructive medical system, which is nevertheless staffed by many kind, capable practitioners—so when I encounter difficulties (the referral inadvertently lost; the long-awaited appointment accidentally canceled at the last minute; the insurance billing misdirected) it is a waste of energy to rage and blame the decent people who are just trying to do a good job in a bad business. It’s better for me to dream and re-dream my relentless, unsolvable issues than to take them out on myself and others when I’m awake. 

At a deeper level, all of these draining difficulties are only difficult because I’m afraid. The physical symptoms and the ineffective health care system only exhaust me because they scare me, they make me aware of my own helplessness in the face of my mortality. Every exasperating problem, finally, comes down to an encounter with the truth of how vulnerable and ephemeral we all are, how little control we have over our lives or our deaths. In dreams, I’m feeling the frustrating futility of fighting, so when I’m awake I can open my arms to the shared experience of being human; I can let my own transitory suffering soften my heart. I can embrace the awesome depth and breadth of our humble, meaningful moments together—the ways we need each other, the ways we care for each other (friends and strangers alike), however imperfectly. 

I’m facing the prospect of a major spinal surgery that would restructure my body, and thus my sense of myself, completely. My vertebrae are stacked crookedly, pressing into the spinal cord, and so the spine may have to be straightened and fused—cut, broken, rebuilt. It’s difficult to contemplate being taken apart at my very axis. My spine is the tree that springs from the source of me and spreads the branches that manifest me in the world, the twigs that leaf out into my life. How frightening to permit such drastic pruning. And not to be pruned by my own cautious clipping and splicing, but to give myself over to whatever hands I have to trust. 

While my dreams take on the tangled negotiations between my idea of me and my resistance to what happens to me, my waking life is free to experience itself happening. While walking or meditating, I hear the background chatter of my fears, like the ambient noise in a busy airport or, more pleasantly, like rain pattering on the spread leaves of my life, or wind rocking the branches so they rise and fall out of sync with one another yet rhythmically. I can almost feel myself as mere awareness, sheer awareness, pervasive as sunlight or darkness. This is the truth behind all of the stories that nest in my branches, or the insidious little worries that infest my heartwood like boring insects. The sunlight is everywhere and nowhere; the darkness is everywhere and nowhere. Sunlight feeds each individual tree. Darkness is quiet. This is okay; I can live like this.

For now, my problem dreams gnaw at my sleep, but they don’t bring down the tree. In fact, there’s a kind of symbiosis going on. The dreams live in me, and they give me permission to let them be. Usually, I think of dreams as deeply important, to be explored, but these dreams are meant to be left to get on with their work, releasing me from resisting them. I don’t need to bushwhack my way toward some sort of answer. I can step back for a larger view of the thriving chaos of my life. I can witness the chaos, allow it, even love it. When I’m not resisting, I stand in the sunlight, and shine, as we all do. 

Tree Medicine: Existential Dream Wisdom

Sometimes dreams seem to offer direct communication from the natural world—bringing guidance that reconnects us with the earth itself, and reminds us that we belong here. Our bodies are made of the same essential elements that make up all life, and we are part of the intricate and magnificent ecosystem that includes all living beings.

The Tree Is Not Afraid of Death: There’s a single row of red-cedar trees along the edge of the parking lot. A woman is clinging to one of the trees, crying. When I approach, she tells me that this one is her special friend, and they are going to cut it down. The whole place is under development. I see an arched doorway carved all the way through the trunk of the tree (like the tunnels in giant sequoias that cars could drive through—but much smaller). Since the trunk is just a couple of feet in diameter, and the doorway is about eighteen inches high and six inches wide, it’s a gaping hole, so I’m surprised that the tree seems healthy in spite of the damage. Some of the other cedars have doorways as well.

The woman begs me to protect her tree—not to let it be destroyed. I don’t know how to respond. I think that I have no authority to prevent them from cutting down the tree. Then, I think maybe they really aren’t planning to cut it down, since this row of trees was left standing when all the others were bulldozed to clear the lot. But these thoughts don’t seem particularly helpful; the woman is truly desperate.

 I put one hand on the cedar and the other hand on the woman’s back, and I tell her, in a clear, strong voice: “You know, this tree doesn’t fear death the way we do. This tree feels no separation between itself and the earth. For the tree, death is just returning to the earth, becoming earth. The tree is already part of the earth.” I’m astonished at my own apparent arrogance in speaking for the tree—but the voice just seemed to come out without my volition, as if the tree had spoken directly to the woman, through me. The woman is comforted. She knows she can trust her connection with the tree, and the tree’s connection with the earth.

It is not really surprising that the trees in our dreams might speak to us, or through us; trees and dreams are rooted in common ground. Although our human business may seem to separate us from nature and from our dream-source, nothing, not even death, can uproot us from the ground of our being.

I’m often preoccupied with the big existential questions that tend to trouble our earnest human minds. As my health is tenuous, the prospect of death has become very real to me. I know that I am finite. Sooner or later, I’m going to be cut down. So, the part of me that is clinging to life, the part that thinks it’s special, the part that is uniquely “me,” the part that will die—that part of me is worried. I’m attached to being me.

Many people say that they’re not afraid of death, they’re only concerned about what the dying process will be like… Will it be painful? Will it be undignified? But, for me, the dying seems no different from what we’re doing all the time—sometimes it’s painful and undignified, sometimes it’s not—it’s just living. When I get close to death, I’ll still be living, in one way or another, I’ll still be me. I’m curious about the dying process. But dying always ends in death. And death is the end of me. At least, death is the end of the part of me that worries about me. Death is the end of my familiar, human business.

Still, the trees remind me, there’s more to my life than this identity, which is always “under development.” When I had cancer in my thirties, I was too ill to worry so much about dying or death. I relaxed into the larger life of the natural world around me. I noticed the slow-growing trees whose business was just absorbing sunlight, drawing water from the soil, making leaves and losing leaves, sheltering birds, animals, insects, and reaching toward the sky. Looking at the old ones—the big oaks and cedars and beeches and redwoods—I felt peaceful knowing that they might go on living long after my death. The trees reassured me: being dead would be like life expanded to include everything, with no business to get done and no place else to be.

All this lovely philosophy was helpful then, but now it’s not so easy. I’ve seen too much death in recent years. I’m tired and I feel the limitations of my body and my small, restless, anxious human mind, yet I’ve got a pretty strong attachment to being ME—and staying this way forever, if I can manage to hold on. Of course, I can’t. Even long-lived trees don’t live forever, let alone busy, ephemeral human beings. So, my dreams remind me of the tree-medicine within me, the tree-medicine I can offer to the part of myself that suffers the fear of loss, the fear of death.

In a previous post [“Pity the Poor Ego”] I wrote: “If you want to find the Ego in a dream, look for the one who’s suffering, because the Ego always suffers when reality doesn’t conform to what the Ego believes is important.” By this definition, the Ego in this particular dream is the woman who clings to her special tree and cannot bear to let go. The “I” character in the dream—the one I’m most identified with—has a more complex role that matches the role I find myself holding at this threshold in my waking life. While part of me tries to solve the problem that the suffering Ego would love to have me solve, another part of me holds her ground between that Ego and a deeper wisdom—making the connection between them.

My Ego (the woman in the dream) needs to save her tree, to save herself; she needs to find a way to prevent death from cutting in and bulldozing everything she loves. I ponder her problem, and feel her desperation. But I don’t have a solution. Instead, I place a hand on her back and a hand on the tree, and I bring them together. The tree-medicine flows through me. The three of us cannot be separated, and all the other living cedars in a row, and all the ghost-trees that once made up a forest here, all of us are rooted in the earth together, letting life rise up in us like sap.

As I explored this dream, I began to trust myself more—trusting the connection between myself and the fundamental, immortal essence of all living beings. At first, I didn’t think much of those doorways through some of the tree trunks. I thought of them as ugly wounds, imposed upon the trees by the heedless human business of development and destruction. After all, those thousand-year-old giant “tunnel trees” in the great redwood forests eventually died because people had cut out their hearts to run roads through. But a doorway through a dream tree does no harm: the tree is healthy, in spite of the gaping hole. In fact, the more I look at that doorway now, the more I see it as an opening, a portal through which I can reach the other side.

Paradoxically, our destructive human business, the plans and projects we devise to avert loss and fear, can sometimes open our hearts. We can come to understand the selfishness and neediness that leads us all to try to control and subdue the natural world, just as we would like to control and subdue death. And if we can see through our own motivations, our vision expands. That hole is indeed a doorway, an invitation to stoop down and step through. In a dream, the doorway doesn’t have to be big enough to accommodate me—you know, my dream-ego can get smaller, crossing that threshold. Can yours? Let’s try it. Maybe we can step through that doorway, through the tree’s heartwood… And maybe there’s a flourishing forest on the other side.

Howling Together: Healing Dreams & Community

What does healing look like in the dream world? Dreams reflect the changes that are happening all the time, in our physical bodies and in our spiritual lives. For me, those changes have been dramatic in the past couple of years, and recently I had a wonderful dream, which gave me a deeper trust in the process of change itself. I dreamed about the wisdom of wolves.

Thanks to this dream, I can believe that authentic healing is going on in my body and spirit. I’m especially grateful because the dream not only helped me to experience this healing directly, but also gave me a restorative image of death and renewal that truly resonates. I will hold this image like an open door inside myself, through which powerful emotions can come and go. Because of the dream, I can sense the small voice of my own life rising to meet the wild song of all life—just as the howl of one small wolf rises to meet the music of the whole pack.

I’ll share some of the changes that have been happening in my waking world, followed by the dream and its resonance. Please howl along (leave a comment), if the song speaks to you…

For the past two years, health problems have shaken up my life: heart damage, deteriorating muscles in my upper body and neck, neurological issues, migraines and stroke-like symptoms, digestive difficulties that drained the life out of me… There’s no certainty at all about where this is going. My disease is rare, and doctors have no idea what the progression will be. When my heart function seemed to be failing steadily, the prognosis was five to ten years, or less. When I lost too much weight and was just too frail to function, I couldn’t imagine surviving more than a year or so. Some days, it felt like I might be dying pretty soon—but some days that just seemed too melodramatic to believe. Often, I felt almost normal, just with a stiff neck, a tummy ache, and some clumsiness and weakness. Then, my heart stabilized, at least for the time being. I started adjusting to most of my symptoms with less fear. It became possible that I might live for quite a while. But I can’t know for sure, of course. Overall, I’ve just had to accept the chaos within myself.

I had to let go of my ambition for the future. I had to let go of defining myself as either “healthy” or “sick.” I had to wait on the threshold: tired, confused, hopeful, peaceful, constantly aware of the reality of death, sometimes numb, sometimes afraid… existentially baffled. There was, and is, a kind of grace in the open-endedness of my situation, even though some aspects of the process have been lonely—impossible to share with others. Sometimes, all I can do is immerse myself in the unknown, and wait.

I haven’t been remembering many dreams—which contributes to the general uncertainty. My sleep is shallow and disrupted by discomforts, but most of the dreams I’ve been able to remember could be classified as “death dreams.” I’ve dreamed, over and over, about packing for a long journey “home,” with my deceased parents coming to accompany me. From my experience in hospice work and spiritual direction, I know that these kinds of dreams are typical for people who are literally getting ready to die, but they’re also common for people going through life transitions of one kind or another. The death is just as often metaphorical as literal: one part of my life is dying, my deceased loved ones are helping me on this journey, and my ultimate goal is a sense of “home,” a sense of knowing I’m in the right place.

So, are the dreams literally predictive of death, or metaphorically describing the experience of my present life? The situation is complicated by the fact that dreams often reflect our priorities, the things we’ve been thinking about—and I’ve been thinking a lot about death. Whether it comes tomorrow or twenty years from now, it’s real and it’s on my mind. These dreams have a healing quality, because they’re reassuring in an ultimate kind of way… but they’re repetitive, and I haven’t really gotten beyond packing, or riding in a car with Mom and Dad, on the way…

So what has changed recently that would invite a new kind of healing dream? Where did the wolves come from? Recently, I’ve been feeling healthy. It’s weird, because my upper body is still deteriorating and painful, and I still have many of the symptoms I had before. But my heart seems steadier, my digestion has settled down for now, and I’m getting stronger. I walk long distances several times a week, and I can feel the muscle tone all over my body (except in the areas affected by the disease). Maybe I’ll die tomorrow, or maybe I’ll live forever. I’m appreciating other people, and myself. I feel that I belong to my life again. I’m allowing my vulnerability to be an invitation to others: Let’s all open up a little, find what’s most authentic in ourselves, share our challenges and gifts, be at home with uncertainty because it allows for new possibilities.

So, I have a dream…

Howl:I look behind some bushes near my campsite, and I’m stunned to see a full-grown wolf—sitting up at first, then lying down as if unconscious, in a shallow pool of icy-cold water with decaying leaves at the bottom. I think she might be dead… but she is still breathing. She has chosen to lie in this freezing water—why? Perhaps she is dying, and is trying to hasten the process and numb her pain? It is hard to see her die, but perhaps she is trying to heal herself somehow. It wouldn’t be right for me to interfere, but I mention her to others, because I’m concerned and hoping someone will know why she is here or how to help her.

When I return to check on her, I hear sounds coming from her hiding place. A veterinarian—a middle-aged woman in a white coat—is working over the wolf, doing CPR. The wolf’s heart must have stopped! But, the vet can revive her. Soon, the wolf stands unsteadily, shakes herself, then seems to regain her strength. Other wolves gather around—and other humans, too. Everyone seems excited about the successful healing. Spontaneously, playfully, the vet lets out a howl, and several other people pipe up, too. They don’t really sound very wolf-like, and the wolves look away, as if embarrassed for them.

Quietly, I try a little howl myself. It begins with just a murmuring sound, and then rises to a hollow, resonant tone that comes from deep within me—gentle, tentative, but clear. There’s no contrivance or exaggeration—I let myself feel the wolf-ness inside me, and then release the wolf- song. I sound like a small, cautious wolf.

Now, I notice a wolf pup—very shy and slightly awkward as if she hasn’t yet grown into her body. Her fur is a soft gray, lighter than the other wolves. She’s sitting on a flight of stairs (even though we’re in the woods). Her ears prick up at the sound of my howl, and her whole body trembles, alerted. She looks at me with intent eyes, as if trying to determine whether my howl is a true howl. Can she trust it? She decides to trust—closes her eyes, and listens. Then, she tips back her head and begins to howl with me. She has never howled before, and she pours herself into the sound—high, sweet, rich and pure. The other wolves join her, and then the humans. We are all howling together and I can feel my heart expanding with the gorgeous howling of the pack.

When the howling is done, there’s a moment of stillness. I realize that these wolves are completely at ease with human beings. Apparently, a woman has opened her house to them, so they can come and go as they please. Now, the wolves (including the pup) walk into the open door of that house—across the threshold. They enter without fear. I don’t see the woman who owns the house, but I know that she keeps the door open.

What are wolves? They are very wild animals, but very social, deeply connected to one another. I’ve had a funny relationship with wolves, because several years ago, when I asked for a “spirit ally” to appear to me, I had a distinct image of a subway door opening to reveal a wolf. A wolf as a spirit ally seemed like a cliché, and I wanted something more unusual, maybe a sloth or a wombat. But a wolf showed up. And the wolf wasn’t always friendly. When I asked the wolf for help, the wolf said, “You don’t need help.” In dreams, sometimes a wolf would attack me and I’d rush into the house and try to slam the door—until, finally, I held my ground, offered my arm and said, “Go ahead, eat me.” When the wolf took a bite of me in a dream, it hurt, but being eaten up wasn’t so bad. Another dream came after that, and the wolf and I were on better terms. I have a history with dream wolves, but this last dream is new to me. Continue reading

Pity the Poor Ego: Trickster Dreams

My most disturbing dreams have not been the classic frightening nightmares—instead, I dream of being a bystander while someone else suffers. Instead of terror, there’s horror, and the agony of helplessness and vicarious pain. Just as with nightmares, the emotional impact is ugly, and, at first, it’s not especially useful to tell myself that there must be something valuable here, even though I know that disturbing dreams have been some of the most meaningful experiences in my life. I’ve witnessed the beauty and transformative power they can have again and again in working with my own dreams and those of clients and friends. Yet, I can’t plunge in with enthusiasm right away; I need to respect the real (awful!) feelings that such dreams arouse, and give them time.

When I had the following dream, it left me feeling ashamed and upset:

Burning Alive: A man, with the cocky over-the-top manner of a Master of Ceremonies from a television game show, keeps intruding on the scene. He has a large, toothy smile, and he speaks loudly and glibly about nothing, with a lot of fake laughter and fake friendliness. He assumes that everyone should pay attention to him, and is idiotically over-confident.

There’s a room with its floor covered in blazing hot coals, radiating waves of heat. A waist-high wooden wall, blocks the open double-doorway. Casually, the man climbs onto the wall, waves, and jumps into the room—showing off. Apparently someone else is inside there, working on the hot coals (raking them?)—but s/he must be wearing protective clothing, because s/he’s not harmed by the heat. The Master of Ceremonies, who jumped in without protection, has no chance of survival.

I’m horrified. There’s nothing that I can do, or that the person in the room can do, to help him—and he can’t help himself either. He must be in agony as he falls on the fiery coals, unable to get up or get out, slowly burning to death. I don’t actually see this, but I hear him shouting and imagine what is happening. Ironically, his voice sounds almost as stagey and artificially enthusiastic as he was when he was just showing off. First, he shouts, “It’s so hot!” An absurd understatement, in that loud, falsely cheery voice. Then, his cries seem more poignant and painful, though he’s still using this “game show” voice He says something that suggests he can’t stand the suffering: something like, “Please get on with it!” And even though there isn’t anguish in his tone, I feel the anguish for him and find this suffering unbearable. Please, let it be over soon. Let him die quickly.

I woke from this dream truly distressed—and the only meaning I could find in it at first was not at all encouraging. The waves of heat radiating from the room reminded me of the radiation treatments that are the source of my current neuro-muscular disease. Twenty-three years after my cancer treatments, the residual radiation is increasingly active in my body, “burning me alive.” Am I like that pathetic fellow, somehow causing my own pain? Have I been “showing off,” throwing away my life, leaping into trouble and then finding myself helpless—desperate, but somehow also ridiculous? Of course, this is not a fully-formed response, and certainly not a reasonable way to approach the dream or my own life situation. But it seemed consistent with the awfulness of the dream’s aftertaste. I wanted to feel compassion for that man (and for myself), yet all I could feel was pity, helplessness, and a strong desire to turn away from the suffering, to get it over with.

I didn’t want to remember this dream. I wrote it down, but tried to forget it. Then, a couple of days later, while I was taking a walk, it came back to me vividly—with a new title making a different impression. Instead of “Burning Alive,” the new title was much more specific, and somehow less painful: “The Self-Immolation of the Master of Ceremonies.” Why did this seem less painful? Well, “self-immolation” implies a kind of intention, a sacrifice rather than a silly, wasteful, careless act of self-harm. I associated “self-immolation” with the Vietnamese Buddhist monks who set fire to themselves in protest against the Vietnam War. Their actions were drastic, and not consistent with my own cultural ideas about what constitutes appropriate dissent… yet their intentions were genuinely meaningful. They gave their lives to draw attention to an injustice. Could the man in my dream be making a similarly meaningful statement? Also, the term “Master of Ceremonies” implies not careless foolishness but the possibility of “mastering” a situation that might represent a “ceremonial” offering. What if this ridiculous character is suffering for a reason? And what if his suffering is something other than it seems?

In a previous post [“Seeing With Fresh Eyes”], I mentioned two important “tricks” that I often use in working with difficult, unpleasant dreams: 1) look for anomalies and inconsistencies in the dream itself; and 2) question the dream ego’s perspective on the situation. In “The Self-Immolation of the Master of Ceremonies,” the anomaly and the questionable point-of-view are directly related; the most obvious inconsistency suggests a potential inaccuracy in the dream-ego’s perspective. The dream-ego assumes that someone who has fallen on hot coals must be in agony, yet the “Master of Ceremonies” himself does not sound distressed. He uses his “game show” voice to express what he is experiencing, and his emotion is not at all consistent with the suffering that the dream-ego expects him to experience.

So, what if the “burning alive” really is a ceremony, a game, or a show—a metaphorical ritual that involves the “burning up” of old patterns rather than a soul in torment?

With the strong emotion of my initial reaction to the dream, it was easy to assume that this egotistical fellow represented my own Ego-identity in its crudest form: trying to be the center of attention, and coming to grief as a result. But, in fact, the dream-ego (the “I” in the dream) is actually a much more accurate representative of how my own Ego-identity (the “I” in my waking life) sees the world. The Ego, in Jungian terms, is not necessarily egotistical—it is just the essential lens through which the much larger Self perceives and understands experience. We can’t reject the Ego, because we need an Ego-identity to function in the world, but we shouldn’t take her perspective as the whole truth. The dream-ego, like my waking identity, does her best to interpret what she’s experiencing. She understands what’s happening according to its impact on her, so when the Master of Ceremonies behaves as he does, she reacts by judging and defining him as “idiotically over-confident”—his leap onto the burning coals is “ridiculous” and, from her perspective, inevitably results in his pathetic annihilation. Yet, she also wants to be a good person, and finds her own inability to help, or to feel authentic compassion, shameful and painful.

If you want to find the Ego in a dream, look for the one who’s suffering, because the Ego always suffers when reality doesn’t conform to what the Ego believes is important. In this dream, the man who leaps onto hot coals doesn’t seem to be suffering—but the dream-ego is clearly in a lot of pain. She can’t bear what she thinks is happening. In my waking life, my own experience of fluctuating emotions and deteriorating health often causes me suffering. Yet there’s more to me than this suffering Ego, and more to my experience than my Ego can imagine.

Who is the Master of Ceremonies, then? Who is running this “game show”? Dreams have more to offer than the Ego can grasp—but the wholeness of my Self includes all of it, and my Ego can learn from the other characters in the dream. In this dream, I suspect the Master of Ceremonies is not just an exaggerated Ego figure, but a Trickster.

Tricksters in world mythology are not usually very appealing characters, and their stories can make an ugly and painful first impression. Characters like Coyote in some Native American traditions, and Loki in Norse traditions, have all the worst qualities of the Ego: they are malicious, greedy, lustful, and brutally selfish; they are clever, even brilliant at times, but they always end up being too smart for their own good and coming to a bad end. Other Trickster figures may seem more benign, especially when they are represented in cartoons for children, through characters like Bugs Bunny or the Cat in the Hat. But all of them are, at the very least, cocky—and, to some degree, this cockiness is self-defeating. Tricksters are always getting into trouble. While the Master of Ceremonies in my dream seems merely annoying rather than mean, his bad behavior (“showing off”) seems to be his downfall. But wait…

Tricksters are not just bad guys. They may be brought down by their own machinations (often explosively, grotesquely, or pathetically) but, like Wile E. Coyote, they are always up and at it again in the next scene. They always bounce back, and the inadvertent consequences of their actions are often massively transformative.

Tricksters are game changers; the world is recreated in their wake. When Coyote steals fire for his own selfish reasons, his tail ends up in flames, and as he flees in panic, the sparks he scatters form the stars in the sky. By accident, new energies are released, new life begins, new possibilities are opened up. We human beings are the epitome of the Trickster, with our greedy self-interest, our crazy, impulsive, ego-driven yet creative technological advances, we harm and transform ourselves and the world around us. The Trickster leads the way to catastrophe, but also, potentially, initiates whatever comes next.

In my dream, the Master of Ceremonies leaps onto the hot coals, showing off. The dream-ego interprets this as a wretched mistake. Meanwhile, another unseen person, who is impervious to the heat, bears witness. The MC should be in terrible pain, yet his expressions of dismay are unconvincing, and it’s primarily the dream-ego who seems to suffer. Another dream anomaly is that the wall which separates the blazing coals from the rest of the world is made of wood. Wouldn’t a wooden wall catch fire?

If the wall is made of wood, then perhaps the fire is not as hot as it’s supposed to be? Or else, that wall represents an illusion of protection; sooner or later, the wall will burn and the fire will be right here, where I must experience it directly. The fire is inescapable, not only for the MC (who plunged right into it!) but for me. For every mortal being, protections are only temporary. It’s inevitable that we will all encounter experiences that are too painful, “too hot to handle,” as we lose loved ones, physical health, and ultimately our own lives.

The dream-ego is caught up in the horror of the dream’s apparently disastrous momentum, but she never actually sees what is going on in the fiery furnace of that room. If I actually get closer, overcoming my revulsion and dismay… If I actually look past that anomalous wooden wall… What might I see? I imagine the Master of Ceremonies, the Game Show Host, would not be writhing in agony. In fact, he wouldn’t be there at all. The “someone else in the room” could turn out to be another face of the Trickster, with no need for “protective clothing,” impervious to the pain, but raking those coals in order to make the room ready for a ceremonial Fire Walk. These “too hot” horrors could become a way of transforming pain into something more meaningful.

Perhaps my own Ego-identity can step into that room, and walk across it, without judgement or suffering. Perhaps she is willing to change, to let her old life be burned away, and to walk into a new world, born out of the flames of losses, illness, and uncertainty. Continue reading

Beyond Dead Ends: Accepting the Kestrel’s Invitation

Recently, I shared a dream about a hawk, and explored ways of working with dreams that present us with our “problems.” Since I wrote that article [“Seeing With Fresh Eyes: Finding Meaning in Problem Dreams”], more hawks have appeared both in my dreams and in my waking life. They seem to be heralds of a new way of seeing and being, presenting me with a challenge to open my eyes, my mind, and my heart to new possibilities.

The hawk in my previous dream was a juvenile Sharp-Shinned Hawk: a small hawk that generally hunts in forested areas. Within a week of that dream, I saw a hawk exactly like this in two different places. Both times, the hawk appeared unexpectedly, landed close to me, and seemed to look straight at me. Up until then, I’d seen many adult Sharp-Shinned Hawks, but no juveniles. I knew from the field guide that juveniles have different markings—plain brown and white, rather than the more detailed adult markings—but I’d never encountered a juvenile up close (except in my dream). Seeing these juvenile hawks when I did seemed significant. At the very least, it suggested to me that my dream was both meaningful and currently active in my life.

Then, I had a second hawk dream about a different kind of hawk: a Kestrel. A Kestrel—also called a Sparrowhawk—is a very small falcon with extraordinarily colorful markings. Kestrels hunt by hovering high in the air, beating their wings rapidly in place (like “treading water”), looking for their prey below. This dream also includes my deaf black cat, Toby, who died of a neuro-muscular disease (not too different from the neuro-muscular disease I’m coping with myself) last year, while he was still quite young. He was a sweetheart, very brave and innocent, funny and affectionate—I’m still wrestling with his death, not fully able to accept it.

Toby Wants To Fly: Toby’s on a leash outside with me, and I need to get him home safely. I lift him in my arms, holding him tightly, and hurry. It’s a long way. I have to get across a large, busy intersection and traffic circle. We’re surrounded by loud trucks, car horns, shouting voices, city sounds… I’m so afraid that Toby will get spooked and struggle to escape, but then I remember that he is deaf, so of course it isn’t noisy for him. He’s alert in my arms, looking around with calm curiosity at everything.

We get beyond the city, and I have to climb a little hill covered in low, heather-like shrubs. Suddenly, a stunningly beautiful Kestrel flies right up to us, and hovers in the air at head-level, just a few feet away—looking straight at us with a piercing gaze. Toby struggles to get free, to leap after the Kestrel. I cling to him, desperately determined to hold onto him. I can’t let him go. I know that if I let him go, he will die. I notice that there’s a second Kestrel in a bush nearby.

Having subdued Toby, I continue on over the top of the hill and begin to descend the other side. Now, it’s getting dark, and the downslope is treacherous because there are white plastic garbage bags full of some unspeakable, dead, rotting stuff scattered everywhere in the shrubbery. It’s difficult to pick my way through the shrubs, without stepping on those bags. Toby’s still wriggling. Perhaps this is a place where people come to do drug deals or shoot up, a real “dead end place.” I’m not scared, but the downslope is ugly, grim and sad. I need to get Toby home.

Because of his deafness and his obliviousness to danger, Toby would not have been safe outside; he was an “indoor cat” his whole life. I never took him out on a leash (except in this dream). But I loved to hold him in my arms, whenever he would let me, and I wished I could have held him like that forever.

Throughout the dream, I’m motivated by seeking “safety” and “home.” I’m apparently willing to ignore the powerful invitation of the Kestrel, because my strongest need is to get Toby home safely. When members of my peer dream group pointed out how clearly the dream was offering an opportunity to let go, I insisted that if I let go, he would die. Maybe I would die.

But the contradiction is evident: Toby is already dead. And this is a dream: Anything is possible. If I had been lucid in this dream, aware that I was dreaming, I would have realized that I could release him—he would go free, maybe fly into the air after the Kestrel. He could not be harmed. He is already home, safe. I’m the one who’s afraid. I’m the one who’s deaf to the call of the Kestrel, and who trudges on, “over the hill,” in the bleak landscape of decay and death.

This dream, like most of my dreams lately, reflects how I’m dealing with my own mortality and health challenges, and also how I’m seeking meaning in my life.

I have a disease (Radiation Fibrosis Syndrome) that makes me vulnerable in some of the same ways that Toby was vulnerable. I long for a safe place to rest, but, at the same time, I understand that my physical symptoms and uncertain prognosis put me in a situation that is potentially a spiritual opportunity. Every moment of every day, I’m meeting the unknown. I don’t know how quickly the damage to my upper spine and heart will progress—and I don’t know whether these conditions will cripple or kill me, sooner or later. I don’t know how to proceed with my work commitments, since my ability to undertake long-term projects is entirely unpredictable. I’m holding on, desperately, to the things I treasure about my life, afraid that the clamor of the busy world around me will sap my remaining resources, or distract me into wasteful, exhausting digressions. But I know from many years of inner work that this open-ended experience of not-knowing gives me a chance to question my assumptions, release my need for control, and surrender to the freshness of a life without agendas and absolutes.

Yet my dream tells me that I’m not as open as I truly want to be. I’m holding on tightly, believing that death, or at least a painful loss, is the inevitable outcome of a leap into the unknown.

What if I let Toby leap after the Kestrel? My dreamworker friends also mentioned the phrase, “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” The second Kestrel waits “in the bush” nearby. Both Kestrels are wild and free. My “bird in the hand,” my beloved cat, wants to be wild and free, too. But I’m holding onto him. I wonder… How am I holding myself back? Do I think that possessing my life is more important than living it? Continue reading

Fight, Flight, Freeze… or Flow?

In a recent dream, I experienced several ways of responding to chaotic and frightening circumstances:

Dangers and Discovery: I’m in a forest as it gets dark and the wind rises. The tall trees are swaying and creaking, and several come crashing down quite nearby! Frightened, I try to find shelter, scampering around looking for a safe place. One of the fallen trees is apparently dead and rotten. It breaks apart as it crashes to the ground, and a beehive inside bursts open. Shiny black bees swarm out. I run desperately and they follow… But gradually, the swarm disperses and I return to the fallen tree. I search through the fragments of rotten trunk and broken branches, and find a chunk of heartwood that is soft and pulpy on one side, but smooth, hard, rounded and beautifully-grained, like polished agate or petrified wood on the other side. It is very special. I realize that the falling trees, swarm of bees, rotten wood, and this precious gift are all part of an initiation for young girls. I’m part of it, in my own way, as an older woman.

This dream coincided with some thoughts I’ve been having about our instinctive and natural reactions and responses to threatening situations. What happens when we get past our first fearful reactions, and respond instead with curiosity and openness? In the dream, this exploratory process is an initiation for girls. While traditional initiations for boys usually involve overcoming or standing up to our fears, perhaps a female form of initiation might allow for a variety of more complex responses. Both boys and girls, both men and women, might benefit from honoring all the choices that are available to us when we are confronted with crises or uncertainties. When we recognize that every situation offers alternatives, and we can choose our responses, we are entering into maturity, finding our place in this wild and wind-blown world.

When confronted with an unwanted experience, we respond instinctively in ways that reflect our most basic options—commonly called “fight or flight,” sometimes with a third possibility, to “freeze.” These responses evolved to cope with direct threats to our survival, and for the most part, they don’t serve us well when we are faced with difficult, complex interpersonal situations in the modern world.

These days, the basic instinctive responses might look a bit different from the prehistoric scenarios. Fight might not mean literally throwing a punch or a spear, but instead just throwing a tantrum, resisting, blaming, complaining, disrupting. Flight might not mean literally running away, but instead avoiding, denying, refusing, distracting. Freeze might not mean literally playing dead, hiding or becoming a “deer in the headlights,” but instead spacing out, going numb, dissociating, ignoring. Such strategies can be effective as immediate reactions to a shock, giving us a little distance from whatever unpleasantness is confronting us—but as long-term strategies, they are not only unsustainable, but potentially destructive. In the dream, I tried fleeing… but this didn’t really get me anywhere.

When we keep fighting, fleeing or freezing in response to the things that happen to us, we end up threatening others and setting off similar reactions in those around us. When I ran away, the bees seemed to chase me—if I hadn’t run, what then? When conditions are stressful, as in the United States under the current administration, the entire population can seem to be engaged in nothing but fighting, fleeing or freezing. Nothing works, and no one is happy or safe under these circumstances.

But there’s another response in our repertoire, which I believe is just as instinctive, just as natural, as the fight, flight or freeze response. We also have the capacity to respond to threats with flow. What does flow look like?

Flow is our resilience, creativity, adaptability. Flow is our capacity to respond to a threat or problem—and the accompanying rush of adrenaline—with curiosity, or humor, or surrender, or improvisation, or compassion, or investigation, or determination, as appropriate to the circumstances. Continue reading

Seeing With Fresh Eyes: Finding Healing in “Problem Dreams”

Sometimes, dreams just seem to show us where we are stuck—blatantly and unhelpfully highlighting our struggles and suffering. What is the point of such dreams? Waking life can be stressful enough without reenacting our problems when we are trying to get some restful sleep. I’m having a lot of these “problem dreams” lately, and even though I usually wake up from them feeling discouraged, I’m finding that these dreams always contain powerful healing if I can get past my initial resistance and take a closer look.

My most recent problem dreams have had to do with my deteriorating health, and the changes in my body that sometimes bring me to the edge of existential despair. I’m coping with a neuro-muscular disease that has been steadily progressing over the past year, and although the life-threatening aspects of this disease (heart damage and stroke risk) are stable for now, there are several less dramatic symptoms (muscle spasms and weakness, digestive trouble, intense fatigue) that drain my life force. It can be difficult to keep my spirits up, and everyday obstacles can seem insurmountable.

In many of my dreams, I’m trying to pack for an important journey but can’t get it together: there’s too much “stuff”—more than I can carry. Everything is just too hard. On top of this hard work, there are always other dream figures who are suffering. I feel their pain, but can’t do anything about it. My dreams are full of pathetic, bedraggled, wasted characters who embody my own physical misery in all-too-obvious ways. So how am I supposed to respond?

This seems like an impasse, but it’s not. When I look at these miserable dreams from a different angle, they can open my eyes. In a previous post [Feel It In My Bones: A Dream Experience of the Body] I wrote about how the physical condition of dream figures can reflect the physical condition of our own bodies—and how relating to those figures with compassion and respect can help us relate to our physical selves. So here’s an example of one of those dreams. In this case, compassion and respect come easily, but a sad, hard outcome still seems inevitable:

The Hawk Who Can’t Fly: …Oddly, there’s a a hawk standing on the pavement between buildings. Not perched on a branch, just standing there in the open. Although she has plain brown plumage and markings, and is quite small, her presence is powerful, and her eyes are bright and fierce. But something is wrong. Her wings are spread (as if she were flying) and one looks crooked and withered while the other has large torn gaps. Clearly, she has been seriously injured. She can’t fly, but also can’t even fold her wings to rest. The injuries don’t look fresh, so she has been surviving for quite some time like this, and appears fairly healthy for now. How has she managed to feed herself? I imagine she’s been picking up scraps, though there’s not much food that would appeal to a hawk here. Maybe people have been feeding her? Hawks needs to be able to hunt, and it’s difficult for them to eat food that isn’t alive, so this seems like a miserable existence. I’m so sorry to see her suffering this way. Should I try to feed her? Or maybe it would be better if she died quickly, since her death is inevitable. She isn’t looking at me, but I feel the intensity of her gaze.

My first impression of this dream was that it painfully illustrated my own dilemma: I need to fly, but even my wings (my strengths) have become an encumbrance. I can’t get off the ground, and I can’t even rest. My food (daily routine) is lifeless and doesn’t nourish me. I’m leading a miserable existence, not sure it’s worth the effort. Well, okay. That is how I feel on bad days. Sometimes, the broken bird is just broken. The dream seems to end with a whimper.

But I’ve still got a few dreamwork tricks to try. Let’s see what happens when I pay attention to the dream itself, instead of my predictable assumptions about broken birds and sad stories.

When I imagine what might happen next if the dream continued, I think of trying to feed the hawk, helping her fold her wings so she can rest, or even “putting her out of her misery” by gently euthanizing her—allowing her to transcend her problems through death. None of these problem-solving possibilities seem to fit with the dream itself, however. The hawk has no interest in my efforts to save her. Similarly, my own health issues seem indifferent to my urgency and concern, and the things that I try to do to fix myself—medical appointments, tests, therapies, medications—have no apparent influence on my condition. Trying so hard to solve these problems, I find myself in the same situation as the dream-ego in the dream: my genuine compassion and respect for my own body (or the hawk) seems tainted by feelings of pity, frustration and hopelessness.

Are problem dreams like this one just meant to torment us? Of course not. So, instead of buying the obvious premise that these “problems” need solving, let’s look instead at what the dream has to say. To find the core issues in a dream, it’s always useful to pay attention to anomalies or questions within the dream itself. Although dreams don’t always make sense by waking life standards, they have a kind of internal consistency, and things that don’t seem to fit are not accidental. In this dream, there’s a crippled raptor who can’t hunt for herself, yet she seems healthy and “her eyes are bright and fierce.” If her condition is so awful, how has she survived? How has she sustained herself? Clearly, there is something about her situation that is not consistent with the way I have understood the “problem.”

This leads to another important insight: Particularly with problem dreams where the dream-ego is thinking and behaving in ways that lead to an impasse (reflecting a similar waking life impasse), don’t assume that the dream-ego is always right about what is going on and what should be done about it. The dream-ego (the “I” character in the dream) usually follows the dreamer’s expectations and reinforces the dreamer’s beliefs about life’s limitations—but other characters in the dream may represent different perspectives, different possibilities. When the dream-ego’s point-of-view leads to a dead end, other characters or circumstances in the dream may be giving the dreamer an opportunity to see a different picture, tell a different story.

So, I ask myself: How is this hawk surviving and even thriving? The answer is immediate, surprising, and consistent with the information the dream presents, rather than with my expectations. I expect the hawk to be miserable, desperate, defeated, near death. But the hawk’s eyes are “bright and fierce.” What does she see? How does she see herself and her life? I’m stunned by the world that I see through those bright, fierce eyes.

The hawk sees herself as a hunter. For her, finding food and eating it—even if it’s “scraps”—is hunting, and she sees herself plunging on her prey, doing exactly what she was born to do. The hawk embodies the spirit of a raptor, a formidable bird. For her, keeping her wings open means that she is flying—she is always flying. Even while standing on the pavement, she feels the air moving through her feathers in the smooth swerve of flight. The hawk has acute perceptions, powerful vision. For her, the world is vivid, clear, enticing, expansive, even if it’s just the narrow paved alley between buildings. The hawk is wild and free. For her, pain and disability are just part of life. Death will eventually be part of life, too. She is not crippled or desperate. As long as she is alive, she is fully alive.

If I take this hawk as my teacher instead of seeing her as a victim, I am able to experience the fullness of my life, even when my wings seem heavy and my world seems small. I can see what the hawk sees, with her bright, fierce eyes. Our limitations do not define us. Our dreams may show us those apparent limitations, but they also show us that we are wild and free.

Can we open our wings? The next time you feel oppressed by your own problems—hurt, tired, helpless—ask yourself to see as the hawk sees. Ask yourself who you are, and how you might live this life you’ve been given. Dream your wings wide open. Whether you know it or not, you are always flying.

 

Feel It In My Bones: A Dream Experience of the Body

My relationship with my body is undergoing some rapid changes, and my dreams reflect this process in a visceral, or rather a skeletal, way: I can feel these dreams in my very bones.

Over the past year, I’ve been coping with Radiation Fibrosis Syndrome, a progressive disease that causes structural and systemic damage to muscles, nerves, blood vessels, bones and major organs. The course of this disease is unpredictable, so it’s difficult to find a place to stand within myself; the ground of my physical being is continually shifting. Most of the time, I’m very tired and uncomfortable (or painful). As my body becomes increasingly uncoordinated, I also feel more socially awkward and self-conscious. Yet I can still function fairly normally even though I’m probably moving toward further disability and a shortened life expectancy. What am I to make of this? Are my dream experiences offering suggestions?

I sometimes see myself in an oddly objective way these days: as though my body is a dear, rather difficult, old friend. Of course, I’m worried about this friend. She looks and feels fragile, and her mortality unsettles me—yet, at the same time, I’m impressed by her stubborn resilience. I don’t know how she’s doing it, but she seems to be coping. Both her vulnerability and her toughness make me feel fairly helpless and unnecessary. Does the body really need me to manage her business? She’ll do what she needs to do, in her own way, whether it inconveniences and grieves me or not; she’ll live as long as she can live, and then she’ll die. From her perspective this mortal life seems completely straightforward. From my perspective, it’s sometimes frightening, sometimes sad, sometimes fun, sometimes beautiful and moving, often (almost always) confusing.

It makes sense that my dreams usually represent my changing physical condition through dream figures other than “me.” In my dreams, other people—or animals, or plants, or objects—exhibit my symptoms and face my worst fears, while “I” (the dream-ego) am just a bystander. Other dream figures have wasting diseases, weakening bodies; other dream figures suffer heart attacks or strokes, and may suddenly die. Meanwhile, “I” call 911, or bring tea, or sing, or burst into tears… bearing witness with love, trying to be helpful.

As I’m not fully identified with my own body right now (she’s changing so fast, I can’t keep up), I’m very aware in waking life of other people who have disabilities similar to mine, and I keep being drawn to stories of people who are dealing with their own mortality or health challenges. So, my dreams reflect this exploratory process, and show me ways of relating to my bodily changes as if I were relating to other people who are physically frail or in transition. My dreams are filled with sick people and dying people, and the response of deep tenderness I feel for these dream figures is healing for me as it teaches me to care for my own body in a similar way. Continue reading

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