Compass Dreamwork

Dreamwork as Spiritual Practice

Category: Dreaming and Waking Reality (Page 1 of 3)

The continuum of dreaming and waking experiences.

Dreams & Internal Family Systems (IFS)

February 9, 2024 /

Richard Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems (IFS) as a therapy model forty years ago, and it is a highly effective approach to trauma-informed mental health care that is still evolving and being applied innovatively today. Psychotherapists who work with dreams might notice that dreamwork and IFS have striking similarities; combining these tools can have tremendous potential in their work. Outside of a therapeutic context, there’s also a naturally symbiotic relationship between the two, and bringing dreamwork and IFS together in our personal self-care and spiritual practices can result in life-changing insights and breakthroughs. Although such inner work is important, it doesn’t have to be laborious. Dreamwork and IFS both offer a sense of radical possibility, so using them to explore our psychodynamic ecosystems can feel more like play.

The IFS model draws upon our natural tendency to think of ourselves as complex multifaceted beings, recognizing that some aspects of our psyches are familiar to us while others can surprise or offend us. In IFS these parts* of the psyche are treated as sub-personalities, which might be compared to dream figures, with distinct feelings, behaviors, and motivations. Our parts, even the ones we consider problematic, all have something to contribute to the wholeness of ourselves, so IFS teaches skills and practices for communicating with these parts, to win their trust, address their concerns, and receive their gifts. 

Some parts have been forced into extreme roles in response to difficult experiences, usually in childhood. The parts known as exiles are like vulnerable children who have been hurt; because exiles carry so much pain, other parts called protectors try to keep them contained (or exiled). Protectors resemble “parentified children” themselves, and they have taken on the burdens of extreme roles (like perfectionism, being overly critical, people-pleasing, etc.) in a misguided effort to control pain. Such strategies might once have been useful, but have become unsustainable, distorted, or ineffective over time, and often cause further harm. Protectors and exiles interact with one another in ways that can resemble a family in distress.

IFS also affirms that behind the ecology of parts, our original nature, called the Self, has an infinite capacity for qualities like curiosity, calm, clarity, compassion, courage, creativity, confidence and connectedness. If parts are comparable to dream figures, the Self is the deeper wisdom of the dream and the dreamer. The presence and guidance of Self means a happier inner family, providing an experience like waking from a nightmare and recognizing that you are the dreamer of the dream, not its victim. Even the most disturbed and disturbing parts or dream figures have reasons for doing what they are doing. When you, the Self or dreamer, create a trusting relationship with troubled parts or dream figures, you understand and honor what they’ve been trying to accomplish, and help them step out of extreme roles or patterns of suffering that are stuck in the past. Once unburdened, your parts can contribute their unique gifts to your overall well-being, and that of the larger community. This may sound like make believe, but the process feels astonishingly real, and the ensuing transformation can be remarkable. 

*

For a brief example of how dreamwork and IFS might play together, here’s a dream with my commentary:

I’m a patient in the hospital, getting better, but still weak and fragile.

[The dream ego often acts as a protector, so her self-description might indicate the burdensome role she uses to avoid or manage pain. Here, the protector identifies with being “weak and fragile.”]

Another patient, a sick toddler, is crying. 

[Exiles typically appear in dreams as children or animals in distress.] 

Holly is here visiting me. She comforts the toddler, but I’m not sure we should be taking him out of his crib.

[My partner Holly is sometimes a stand-in for Self in my dreams. I see her as someone who can handle things that I can’t handle. In waking life and in dreams, I often have mixed feelings about this! Protectors are likely to distrust the way that Self relates to exiles, at least at first. ]

The baby is wriggling, so Holly lets him walk around a little. But someone opens the door, and the toddler becomes a cat and scoots out. I’m afraid he will get hurt, or disturb other patients and get us in trouble. 

[The transformation and escape suggest that this exile has been spontaneously healed by the loving attention of Self. As a cat, the child no longer needs to be guarded by the protector, but the protector is afraid to let him go.]

I chase and catch the cat, and he nips my hand. I get mad at Holly, telling her that I’m supposed to be the sick one and don’t have the energy to chase cats! Besides, she’s the one who let him out, so she should try catching him. She picks him up, but then it’s me holding him. Maybe I’ve become Holly—I seem strong enough to manage him gently now. 

[The protector herself has transformed here. As a weak patient trying to grab the cat, she got bitten, but when she becomes Holly-Self, she is able to handle the cat gently so nobody gets hurt.] 

Now, the whole dream changes and I’m no longer trying to return the cat to the hospital room. Instead, I’m getting to know the hospital staff and patients, offering them my support. 

[Now Holly is no longer here, so the dream ego has become fully Self, getting acquainted with various other parts in ways that could potentially support them.]

*

This is an oversimplification of the way IFS might look in dreamwork, but it demonstrates how the dream itself can enact a healing process with an IFS cast of characters. The dream ego (protector) is no longer anxious or weak by the end of the dream; the cat is no longer a sick toddler (exile) confined to a hospital room. The dreamer wakes up feeling that some inner dilemma has been resolved. 

In most cases, dream figures don’t fit quite so easily into IFS roles, but the IFS model can still be applied helpfully when dreams and the feelings they evoke might otherwise be baffling or distressing. For example, I dreamed recently that I was behaving like “an absent-minded professor,” and woke feeling upset without knowing why. Recognizing the upset part of me as an exile, I asked her what she needed me to know, and distinctly “heard” her reply that she didn’t trust me to keep her safe. She showed me an image of myself as a small child: my father was “an absent-minded professor,” and although some parts of me found his eccentricities amusing, there was a vulnerable part that felt frightened and hurt when he didn’t behave like an adult I could depend on. The dream pointed out that a protector in me now (represented by the dream ego) acts like my father, deflecting painful emotions by acting confused and disorganized—and this eccentric behavior is threatening for the vulnerable exile, whose upset feelings emerge upon awakening. IFS techniques support my Self-capacity to be responsible and trustworthy, so I can attend to strong feelings (exiles) without being overwhelmed by them, and without resorting to absent-mindedness or other problematic strategies to avoid them. The dream drew my attention to an inner dynamic that I can now address compassionately. 

I invite you to explore IFS as you explore your dreams, with curiosity and the other “C” words that distinguish the Self. What happens to our dreamwork when we believe that even troubling dreams are meaningful, and troubled dream figures are potentially helpful? What would happen to our lives if we could trust that we are, at the core, truly able to handle our “cats” (our strong feelings, difficult challenges and disturbing dreams)—with kindness, wisdom, and grace? 

*Boldface indicates IFS terminology.

[This article was originally published in in the Winter, 2024 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]

PTSD Dreaming, Part 2

December 7, 2023 /

In the previous post, I wrote about how trauma-informed dreamwork can be meaningful in restoring well-being for those whose nervous systems have become disregulated by overpowering experiences. Here in part two, I’ll use some of my own dreams as a case study to reflect on dream themes that are typical when people are recovering from trauma. 

It’s especially important not to over-think trauma-related dreams but to attend to the impressions they leave in the body and emotions. For people with PTSD, sense impressions in dreams can often be disturbing or confusing. Dreams may be difficult to describe or fully experience because the nervous system views disturbance and confusion as threatening, and is mobilized to react by “fighting” (denying the validity of the dream experience), “fleeing” (forgetting or fogging the dream memory), or “freezing” (becoming overwhelmed). Even vague trauma-related impressions can be emotionally intense, and can leave the person feeling haunted if the dream remains unexplored. Regardless of whether these dreams seem positive (helpful), negative (disturbing), or neutral (mundane or confusing), there is tremendous healing potential in giving care and attention to the specific sensations and emotions they bring to light.

In groups or with a therapist, theater and bodywork are wonderful tools for PTSD dreamwork. Playing the role of a dream figure allows a person with PTSD to experience themself as someone who is not “the one with the problem.” A dream scenario can free them from the need to make sense of a chaotic situation, as it emphasizes the dynamic flow of interacting characters rather than following a linear storyline. This flow—interpersonal and often playful—is particularly meaningful for those whose lives have been reduced to a series of reactions. Bodywork generally involves a similar freedom from the need to seek cognitive solutions to somatic problems. Instead of analyzing the dream’s imagery, bodywork helps the dreamer to focus on the sensations that arise as the dream is recalled, and to explore those sensations through breath, touch, or movement. 

If a group or trained guide is not available, there’s still a lot of dream exploration that can be done on one’s own. When working with PTSD dreams, always engage with intense sensations and emotions in small doses, returning to a baseline of safety frequently so you (the dreamer) can trust that you have a choice about how much to experience. If the dreamer can’t access a baseline of safety (free from physical agitation and anxiety), then it is not a good time to work with disturbing, negative dreams. Positive dreams, however, can be appreciated anytime.

If your life has been impacted by trauma, as mine has, here are some types of dreams you might recognize, and approaches you might consider. 

Some dreams offer a glimpse of life energy and possibilities. Others may set up problems that have solutions, requiring some effort but bringing a sense of accomplishment. Such dreams are simply to be savored, as they give the body a direct experience of what is needed for healing. 

Mouse In Trouble: A frightening storm. Through the window, I see a mouse huddled on the ground. I plunge into rain and wind, and nudge the trembling creature into a container, but she wriggles out again. She is afraid of me and won’t cooperate. I keep trying until finally I’m running down the trail with the mouse at least temporarily contained. She escapes just as we reach the sheltered place I’ve found for her. It’s a dry area under a shed, and there’s a cereal box lying open there. The mouse goes into the box and gobbles cereal. She must have been starving—she is so thin and frail. She knows I helped her, so she’ll be willing to trust me from now on. 

[This dream suggests ways of reassuring my own traumatized body. I can savor the mouse’s sense of safety and fullness, as well as the dream ego’s experience of having the courage to go into the storm, the patience and gentleness to ease fear, and the capacity to provide nourishment and protection to vulnerable aspects of myself.]

Especially early on in the healing process, some dreams may seem ugly, discouraging, shocking or nightmarish, leaving the dreamer feeling worse rather than better. You’d probably want to forget such dreams as quickly as possible, but it can be useful to notice how they affect your body. Try allowing your body to respond naturally, with exaggerated gestures, sounds, or facial expressions that convey the revulsion, anger, hopelessness or fear the dream evokes. Repeating these gestures vigorously (or imagining them, if they’re too intense to enact) can be cathartic and empowering.

Eating Lizards: I am eating a snack of small lizards from a paper cup. This is supposed to be one of my favorite treats, but as I become aware of what I am doing it becomes more and more revolting. I look at the last lizard and wish it were actually alive so I could let it go—but it’s dead and I have to swallow it. 

[This dream captures the misery and shame of painful experiences I was unable to stomach. As I recall the sensation of swallowing dead lizards, I allow myself to make faces and gag, shaking my head. After a while, revulsion is replaced by sadness. I can feel the strength of my longing that the last lizard might live after all—that I might live.]

During the worst times of PTSD, I had violently frightening nightmares where I found myself drowning, being eaten alive, or fighting with dead-eyed attackers. Other dreams evoked grief and helplessness as I watched loved ones being harmed, or saw my home swept away by floodwaters. It was difficult to find a gesture that would encompass the enormity of such images, but I could respond by imagining myself screaming—letting the scream carry all the pain that I was unable to contain or express otherwise. Paradoxically, intense emotional pain represents a very powerful suppressed life force, and by screaming it out (in my head—it was too strong for my voice), I actually felt energized. I let the scream go on until the pain broke like a wave into crying, shivering, deep breathing—and finally receded so I could rest. 

Recently, I’ve been having dreams that give me direct experience of being free of PTSD.

Spacewalk: We journey into deep space, beyond the known universe, on a mission. My beloved and I met on this spaceship journey; we are trying to figure out how we will maintain our connection once we have returned to our home planet. For now, we share the freedom of deep space where none of the laws of physics apply. We can actually go outside the ship without spacesuits, and walk on the emptiness, which is like walking on stars. We’re surrounded by sparkling lights and infinite, rich darkness. 

Every dream is a healing journey into deep space. May we all step into emptiness and experience the infinite, in darkness and in light. We can trust ourselves to come through our most difficult experiences, restored to our home planet, reunited with our inner beloved. 

[This article was originally published in in the Winter, 2023 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]

Dreamwork & Race

October 7, 2023 /

Whenever a participant in one of my groups brings a dream that includes BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, or People of Color] dream figures, I inwardly cringe. My dream group members are mostly white, and their racially-inflected dreams can be a minefield of stereotypes and projections. I wish I could write about this from some moral high ground, but I can’t. As a white person in the United States, my own unconscious mind is also filled with buried racial bombs, and though I’d love to claim that I’m not the one who buried them, I’ve been living happily in a land shielded by the presence of these deadly munitions all my life. 

When recounting racially-inflected—in fact, racist—dreams, many group members are sensitive to the unconscious biases that these dreams reveal, and they acknowledge this with regret and sometimes shame. I hope I have the courage to expose myself as they do, in the interests of learning and changing at the deepest level, but the fact that we can see our own racism doesn’t make us less racist, and sometimes exposing ourselves can be a preemptive tactic to keep others from exposing us. Still, it’s less excruciating to work with these dreams if the racist implications can be openly discussed with the dreamer. Some dreamers, however, are oblivious to any implicit racism or, perhaps worse, sense that the “wrong conclusions” might be drawn from their dreams and hedge with justifications and denials. I’m afraid that my own dread as we tiptoe around our minefields doesn’t just come from the unpleasantness of hearing people I like say things that appall me, it’s also from a fear of dealing with any of this at all. Like most white people, I can avoid dealing with racism just by surrounding myself with the safety zones of whiteness—and it is those white zones of privileged obtuseness that make racism such a clear and present danger to the BIPOC community, while corrupting and corroding our collective humanity.

White people can easily take fundamentals like safety for granted, which is why I’m addressing a “we” in this article that refers particularly to white people. Although dreamers of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds can enjoy reading about meaningful dreamwork issues, BIPOC dreamworkers probably won’t be particularly surprised or enlightened by anything I have to say about white people’s racially-inflected dreams (though I’m grateful if you do choose to read on). On the other hand, I hope that all white dreamworkers will choose to reflect on issues that may cause us discomfort, letting an awareness of potential racist implications inform our work. I’ve learned a lot by overcoming my desire to avoid this subject, and dreamwork has been an excellent way to do some of that essential learning. 

While white people’s dreams with BIPOC dream figures inevitably reflect the societal racism (and sexism, and cultural assumptions of all kinds) that we have absorbed, it’s helpful to remember that dreams reflect unconscious attitudes that are not necessarily congruent with our conscious intentions. Talking about our racist dreams should not become an exercise in blaming ourselves and one another, but should instead expose the ugly psychological and sociological scaffolding that has structured some of our fundamental beliefs and behaviors. We do this hard work so that we’ll be better able to refuse to perpetuate harmful and shameful systems even when they benefit us personally.

The presence of a person of a different race in your dream isn’t automatically racist—our waking world is populated by people of differing ethnicities and so is our dreaming world. However, all dream figures have stereotypical elements (representing categories or types, not just personal qualities), so they exhibit our prejudices. BIPOC characters in white people’s dreams often end up being cast in roles that are blatantly racist: lacking individuality, and emphasizing reductionist stereotypes. Working with such dreams, do we accept these stereotypes, or do we face and challenge them? It is essential that our ways of working with our own or others’ dreams focus on the uniqueness and humanity of every dream figure, while simultaneously acknowledging the roles that our dreams have assigned to them. Our dreams can exhibit a caste system—ranking figures according to our own scale of values. This is not accidental, and we must commit ourselves to questioning the demeaning systems within our dreamworlds that reflect similar systems in the waking world.

A white person’s dream of a BIPOC dream figure can be both racist and anti-racist, since that figure’s presence and our response gives us an opportunity to see what we are assuming, and opens up the possibility of seeing something more. Dream figures aren’t just there to reinforce and represent our prejudices, they are uniquely created and creative beings with the capacity to surprise us and change us. The more we recognize our stereotypical beliefs and how they are reflected in a particular dream figure, the more we discover how much we don’t know. This individual figure appears in my dream or your dream for a reason, and when we see them in their wholeness, we expand ourselves as well. Paradoxically, any dream figure (even blatantly stereotypical ones) can teach us to see our own blind spots, confronting our prejudices with humor or deadly seriousness; subtlety or shocking crudeness; compassion, or a gut punch.

I am not an expert on racially-inflected dreams, but perhaps my clumsy “beginner’s mind” is more useful than expertise in working with such dreams. Racially-inflected dreams make me uncomfortable—and they should make me uncomfortable. Racist social structures have allowed too many white people to be too comfortable for too long, at the expense of others who can never let their guard down without their vulnerability being exploited. When a white dreamer brings me a racially-inflected dream, my discomfort is a flashing red light that says, “Stop. Pay attention. This is important. Don’t respond by rote, because your knee-jerk response will probably be an attempt to escape.” The alert message I get from my discomfort gives me good advice for any kind of dreamwork: don’t take your expertise for granted, don’t trust your own assumptions (assumptions are the opposite of insights), don’t make excuses or try to prove anything, just listen to the dream and what it says, and invite others to do this with you. 

Black people, Indigenous people and People of Color have been insufficiently heard and seen as full human beings by white people like myself, no matter how anti-racist we believe ourselves to be and want to be. That’s an essential thing to know. So, at the very least, when a figure in my dream is BIPOC, I know immediately that this dream figure is someone who should be fully seen and heard by the white dreamer (me) and by other white dreamers who might explore the dream with me. When white people dream up BIPOC characters, it’s likely that those characters, more than any white dream figures, will be carrying the information or insight that we most need to receive from this particular dream. 

White dreamworkers do not need to smother our BIPOC peers with questions and concerns as we try to prove our “wokeness” or genuinely wake ourselves up—instead we can turn to our own dreams, question ourselves and our dream figures, and let them teach us what we still need to learn. BIPOC dreamworkers can learn from one another and from their own dreams about the needs and challenges they face in their own lives—and white people need to take responsibility for doing likewise, so that our lives are not being lived at the expense of theirs. Most of us share a hope that if we (all people) do our personal homework we’ll overcome our fears and assumptions about each other, demolish the power structures of white supremacy, and finally let our individual dreams invite us into an authentic understanding of our common humanity, our common dream. We’re not there yet. In the meantime, let’s learn to endure our mutual discomfort , integrate our real pain, and do the hard work even as we dream big.

[This article was originally published in in the Spring, 2022 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]

Virtual Reality & Dreaming, Part 2

August 7, 2023 /

[This is a recent article I wrote for DreamTime Magazine to take my exploration of Virtual Reality and dreaming a step further.]

I enter a hidden workshop, and find the tools for making and decorating an ornate mask. Wearing the mask I’ve made, I’m transported to another world where I glimpse a figure in the distance who is also wearing a mask. I return to my workshop, make a copy of the stranger’s mask, put it on, and become that stranger. I’m standing where the stranger was standing, doing what the stranger was doing! By wearing different masks, becoming different people, I am able to travel further and further into an unfolding story….

This doesn’t sound exactly like a dream—the events and images are a bit more predictable than in a typical dream—but it definitely has some dream-like elements: identity and perspective shift, and the mythical settings, vivid sense impressions and compelling narrative create a pervasive quality of significance and wonder. The experience of maskmaking prompts me to question myself and examine my own responses as if responding to a dream. I ask myself: How does my personality change in different contexts? Am I driven to acquire more and more powerful disguises, to conquer more and more worlds, or am I searching for a meaningful relationship with my own creativity and integrity? 

You may have guessed by now that I’ve been describing a Virtual Reality game. A couple years ago, I wrote a column about VR here, but at the time I was a newby and by now I’ve become something of an “expert,” at least on the softer side of VR (there’s a whole range of hardcore violent VR that I’ve avoided). Although VR games are not entirely dream-like, they’re more like dreams than like ordinary video games, and I’ve been studying them extensively to learn not only how they can contribute to my own healing from PTSD, but also to better understand how this medium might be helpful in responding to much greater questions and concerns in the world today. In short, I’ve come to believe that, at its best, VR can contribute to our sense of safety and belonging by supporting our natural creativity, resilience, patience, playfulness, and openness. 

VR mobilizes some of the same inner resources as dreams. Like a powerful dream, a well-crafted VR game gives us problems we can solve; it engages our bodies and emotions, as well as our minds, in finding answers and facing challenges. So, if you haven’t yet experienced it for yourself, I’d like to invite you to try on the “mask”—a VR headset. Now, you are the mask-maker, stepping into the stranger’s VR world, and I can give you a brief guided tour. 

The Maskmaker falls into the genre of problem-solving VR games, and many of our dreams focus on problem-solving as well. These games or dreams can be fairly mundane and practical (basic VR puzzles or simulations might be compared to dreams about doing the dishes or studying for exams), but the better ones are wildly imaginative and immersive. Ordinary activities in dreams or VR like gardening, cooking, driving, crafts or sports (there’s VR snowboarding, believe it or not) can activate the senses and refresh our mindfulness about the things we do in our everyday lives. In fact, dreams and VR both improve our “real world” problem-solving skills because our brains don’t distinguish between dream experiences, Virtual Reality experiences, and “Real Reality” experiences: as far as our brains are concerned, they are all learning experiences. But dreams and VR also offer possibilities that RR doesn’t offer. Sure you can fly, you can breathe underwater… but did you know you could raise manatee-triceratops-cows and feed them kebabs? or solve a mystery at an abandoned space outpost? or figure out how to pickle a tractor? These dream-like games become their own real reality and you forget that they are “virtual” just as you might forget that you are dreaming. You are challenged to consider different ways of approaching not only the virtual or dream worlds, but also the world you inhabit every day. When you are fixing breakfast, could you manage it if you had baseball bats for arms? Do you suppose your computer might be curious about where you go on vacation? What would your shadow look like if you were living inside a mirror within a mirror within a mirror? 

It’s so easy to become stuck in patterns of thought that not only make our own lives smaller, but actually endanger those around us and the earth itself. Climate catastrophe, rampant bigotry, brutality and greed are all the results of limited, shallow thinking, choices and actions. I believe that dreams deepen us by giving us a glimpse of possibilities beyond our own immediate interests and expectations. VR can do the same. Both VR and dreams regularly use humor (especially silly exaggerration and surprise) to keep us from being too sure of ourselves, inviting our minds to do absurd stretching exercises that will ultimately make us more flexible.

The biggest stretch for the mind might be to fully include the body. Yes, a lot of VR games literally give you a workout, but there are a few that go far beyond the virtual gym. Some VR sports, and some music games like the one called Beat Saber, approach the ecstatic. Our “real world” teaches us to be bodiless, except when we are taking exercise like bitter medicine. In VR, exercise can be bliss. In Beat Saber, for example, you are simply cutting colored blocks with a light saber but the exquisitely choreographed rhythm patterns become increasingly complex with each level, and your body becomes joyously, magically, more and more free. It’s remarkable what the body (even a tired old body like mine!) can do without the mind’s excessive coaching from the sidelines. 

If you dream that you are strong, beautiful, capable—it’s not just “pretend.” You actually wake up feeling stronger, more beautiful, more capable. The nerve pathways and micro-muscles have been sparking; you’ve been expanding your idea of who you are, and extending your body’s limits (limits that probably aren’t as absolute as your mind believes). In a VR game like Beat Saber, you discover this same dream-like potential of the embodied self, and you suddenly know, really know, body and soul, that you have greater inner resources than you could have guessed. And, when you can know this in an embodied way, it means that maybe we all have far more resources than we could have guessed. With such resources—just maybe—there’s more hope for our present lives, and for the future of our world. 

The power of dreaming, and of Virtual Reality, can be abused, of course. When you put on a mask, the disguise can define you or disguise you in dangerous ways. But if you take responsibility for who you become, you can create all kinds of masks and choose how to wear them. I hope that those who know how to dream deeply and wisely will be the ones to create the future of VR, and the future of our shared “Real Reality” as well. Those dreamers could be us. 

[This article was originally published in the Spring, 2023 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]

Virtual Reality & Dreaming, Part 1

July 7, 2023 /

[At the peak of COVID, I wrote this article about a technology that was (and still is) meaningful for me in coping with difficult circumstances. More recently, I wrote a second article to consider the ways that my experience of Virtual Reality had evolved, so I’ll share that here as well—in Part 2, next month. Both of these articles reflect upon the similarities and differences between dreaming and VR. My personal priority in doing dreamwork has always revolved around the potential for opening our minds to new possibilities, so exploring VR from this angle comes naturally to me. I hope that you will find the subject as intriguing as I do!]

The new Virtual Reality technology, now available for reasonably-priced popular use, opens up some breath-taking possibilities, that might be applied to our dreaming and waking lives. With a heavy “visor” (resembling diving goggles) and simple hand controls, you experience a fresh reality. It’s incredibly persuasive. VR isn’t exactly a dream, but can potentially provide a dream-like alchemical recipe for personal and social transformation. 

I was introduced to this technology as a patient in a Pain Clinic this past summer. I had severe PTSD a year after traumatic spinal surgery, and for months I’d been having episodes of excruciating back spasms that couldn’t be controlled, my heart rhythms were unstable, and my nervous system was in shreds. Slowly and with great care, the pain experts were guiding my healing, and that process included an experimental trial with Virtual Reality. 

In my first VR session, I found myself floating down a sparkling river canyon while giant otters on all sides waited for me to shoot rainbow fish to them. This was actually a pretty rudimentary VR program, and the session only lasted ten minutes, but it gave me a sense of glorious spaciousness, relief from pain and anxiety, and a chance to encounter a truly unthreatening experience with the joy of a child discovering the world for the first time. Like an ecstatic dream, it freed my mind and heart.

I probably needed this experience more than the average person because of my health issues, but we could all use an opening right now. In the era of COVID, the small world we inhabit can seem tedious and stifling, when it’s not outright alarming. Our imaginations may suffer from a lack of meaningful inspiration and a surfeit of distracting or overwhelming stimulation. These times only accentuate our human tendency to get stuck in repetitive patterns that create and perpetuate suffering. Confined to an over-familiar environment, masked and buffered from our neighbors, perhaps faced with desperate stresses and choices, we share only screen presence and grow sick of the confines of our own minds. 

Maybe we are fortunate enough not to be immediately afflicted by economic pressures, environmental disasters, family emergencies, health concerns or existential crises. Still, for most of us, the past year has brought some hard reckonings with the limitations of our way of life. So where can we go for a new perspective? Of course, we turn to dreams. But, dreams can sometimes be difficult to access, especially if our waking lives are energetically exhausting. Virtual Reality could be a powerful tool for reaching new parts of our brains using the same approach that dreams use to develop and exercise under-used neurological pathways, expanding our mental breathing room and creative possibilities. And, as a side benefit, VR can accentuate dreams themselves, making them more vivid and easier to recall.

Of course, any technology that offers instant sensory gratification can become problematic if it leads to avoidant or addictive behavior. On a gloomy, wet winter day, confined to my stuffy little house, it might be too easy to retreat completely into this thrilling realm of color and light. But I can resist the impulse to overdo it: the visor is rather uncomfortable, and the natural world outside is actually where I want to live my life. Just as even the most pleasant dreams don’t usually tempt us to sleep our days away, VR can enhance our appreciation of our RR (Real Reality), rather than enticing us to escape from it.

Some members of my Pain Clinic team have been studying the therapeutic possibilities of VR.  With my own home system now, I’m doing research on their (and my own) behalf—reporting back as I explore some of the most recent popular “games,” to assess the benefits and challenges that Virtual Reality might offer neurological patients like myself, or anyone experiencing “real world” stress, depression or anxiety.

I’ve been swimming with whales, gazing into unfolding mandalas, hanging by my fingertips from cliff faces, planting magical gardens, tumbling down rabbit holes, encountering thrilling surprises and staggering beauty… all while sitting comfortably in a chair. Though many of the apps designed for VR are just glorified video games full of high-speed, combat-oriented, adrenaline-pumping action, it is also possible to find apps that create a positive, transformative virtual environment. These apps, described as “experiences” rather than “games,” are remarkably similar to dreams in their capacity to challenge stale patterns of perception and thought. Personally, I try to enter a virtual world with the same respectful, even reverent, curiosity with which I approach my dreams. I expect to be astonished, sometimes confused or frustrated, often delighted, occasionally blown away. I know I will learn something. 

With some apps, there are puzzles to be solved—but unlike with my everyday problems, I feel invited to linger and explore rather than pressured to figure things out. Other apps are simply playful, peaceful, or lovely—offering a sense of expansiveness and joy that comes as a tremendous relief when the world seems to present only dark prospects. 

One of my favorite VR apps lets me experience the intense challenge of high altitude rock-climbing. In waking life or even in dreams I have severe vertigo and couldn’t begin to tackle these heights. But while the VR experience is vividly realistic, the vertigo is manageable, and I can glory in being thousands of feet above the ground, grappling for a grip on crumbling sandstone. It’s great training for a nervous system that has been primed by PTSD to react to every challenge as a major threat. VR climbing makes my palms sweat and activates the small muscles throughout my body; I grunt and gasp as I struggle upward; I fall again and again, try again and again, until I clamber onto the top. The tension mounts, and my nervous system gets charged up. But I’m learning to de-escalate, transforming raw fear into concentrated focus, vitality, and sensitivity to my environment. In climb after climb, I’m able to take risks in a safe space and discover how strong I am, how resilient I am. I’m learning to trust my own body again. A life-like, perhaps dream-inspired, “game” intended for popular entertainment, invented by people I will never meet, has given me a personal opportunity to heal and grow.

The past year has presented us with challenges that our old, familiar patterns of thought and behavior couldn’t meet. We’ve all needed to dream up new ways of being hopeful, new ways of trusting that we can change for the better. VR can be more than a personal tool or toy; it can be a social catalyst. We can co-create this reality as “players,” by choosing how we conduct ourselves within any given situation. 

When I say “this reality,” I’m not just talking about VR now, I’m talking about a potential that exists in all of our experiences, which are never “just a game” or “just a dream” or “just the same old thing.” Whatever we do to heal and inspire ourselves, we invariably share with one another just by living together in our own unique, multifaceted time and place. So, please believe that there are wonders everywhere—it’s all a kind of dream—and let yourself be surprised, virtually and truly, every moment!

[This article was originally published in the Spring, 2021 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]

Out-of-Body: A Mystery

August 20, 2019 /

During my hospitalization in May (following spinal fusion surgery), I had an “out-of-body experience” that was on the threshold of a “near-death experience.” It wasn’t a dream, though it may seem somewhat dream-like as I describe it:

I’m sitting up uncomfortably in bed, trying to remember how to eat and drink. My partner Holly is feeding me tiny bites of food. Swallowing is painful, exhausting and scary. I’ve choked several times already, but I think I’m managing okay. Holly turns away for a moment while I rest between bites, and suddenly… I’m up near the ceiling. The room is whirling slowly, as if I am on a merry-go-round, or as if I am weightlessly turning in space. Everything looks much clearer than normal—stunningly bright and gorgeously detailed. The upper panes of the tall windows come into view, dazzling me with sunlight and sky. I can’t ordinarily see that part of the room from my bed, but there it is. The pocked surface of the ceiling tiles, the lintel of the bathroom door and the gap of the doorway pass by. The television mounted high on the wall shows a PBS children’s program with Buddy the adorable orange dinosaur grinning and revealing his T-Rex teeth (rounded, cartoon teeth, that don’t look dangerous). The room is fascinating, lovely, as it swings around and around, suspended, like a mobile in a warm breeze. What is happening? I wonder, but I’m not worried. Then Holly is shouting my name, shouting at me to breathe. There’s a a loud buzzing and everything becomes harsher and blurrier than it was a moment ago. I’m back in bed. Holly is leaning toward me, her face desperate. I try to reassure her, though I don’t know what’s going on. She apparently called for help, and now the room fills with people. I try to explain, but I can’t explain. Someone else explains what they saw on the monitor: my heart stopped for seven seconds. My heart still isn’t working right. It feels awful. Now, there are plenty of things to worry about. My heart is in atrial flutter, my blood pressure is way too low… Did I choke? What caused this, and what if it happens again? Soon my bed is jolted into motion by a team of young men and I’m clattering through the halls at high speed on the way to the ICU, leaving Holly behind.

Although the “out-of-body experience” itself had been curiously pleasant, it was soon tainted by the nightmarish days that followed. I kept asking myself the same unanswerable, existential questions over and over, “What happened? How could it happen so suddenly, without any warning? What if I’d died?” My body was a precarious place to be. 

I didn’t die, and the separation between my body and me lasted less than a minute, but the experience was so fundamentally strange that I couldn’t leave it alone. Unlike slipping into the alternate reality of ordinary sleep, I’d been catapulted right out of my identity—still in the same room, but no longer in my body, no longer in my own life at all. If the separation had continued, where would I have been? Not whirling around the ceiling in that hospital room forever. There wasn’t enough of “me” to grasp—but the world (even the orange dinosaur on television) was so clear and complete in itself that it didn’t seem to matter what happened next. In the midst of the out-of-body experience, I perceived the world as a puzzling and pervasive sweetness. But immediately after it was over, I started grappling with the mystery: How could I have perceived anything without my body? Who experienced this experience? Certainly not the same helpless, frightened and wretched patient who was tormented by these questions in the ICU afterward.

In the three months that have passed since this experience, the big mystery of “not knowing” has become a lot less traumatic than it felt at first. Instead of being preoccupied with relentless questions, I keep remembering the ease of that sparkling, turning world, where I wasn’t embodied and no questions needed answering. The strain of surgery and hospitalization had triggered some cardiac arrhythmias that briefly disconnected my body from the directed flow of my life and myself—as if I’d been unplugged. Somehow, I was still present to experience the unplugging. But I don’t know whether that was death, or just a glimpse of what it’s like not to be entirely corporeal. We are never entirely corporeal anyway. Our dreams allow us to forget our physical bodies, or at least to perceive them differently, on a regular basis—yet this was nothing like a dream. In a dream, the world is insubstantial (even though the dream seems real), but in this out-of-body experience, the world was acutely manifest, while I was nothing but awareness.

The world I see from my everyday perspective is somewhat blurry, distorted by my well-worn 59-year-old eyes and habitual expectations. Yet somehow, without physical eyes, I “saw” this world with the dazzling clarity of pure vision. My body was confined to the bed, and I couldn’t turn my head (due to the spinal fusion), but somehow I saw—accurately—parts of the room that I couldn’t have seen through my physical eyes. How is this possible? I don’t know. Why was everything going around and around? I don’t know. I was a point-of-view rather than a personality, yet this “point-of-view” had distinct characteristics and a way of experiencing that surprised me. Whatever “I” was, I could be surprised! Not knowing, and not needing to know, made this constantly shifting perspective feel spacious, fresh, and quite easy; in its enchanting impossibility, it was perfectly real.

Having seen the world in this way, there’s an opening for me now. As I recover my strength, resume my work, and see my life from a new perspective with a newly healing body, I’m finding that the easiest and best response to every question I encounter is, “I don’t know.” How has the ordeal of serious illness and major surgery changed me? I don’t know. Where will I go from here? I don’t know. How should I respond to the thousands of tiny, pleasant and unpleasant surprises I encounter every day? I really don’t know. Though I find myself responding, one way or another, to each moment, there’s nothing I “should” do or be. I really don’t need to be certain about anything. It’s delightfully liberating, not knowing. There’s space—like sky—between the cloudy, complicated questions. Instead of defining and redefining myself and my circumstances, coming up with plans and explanations, I often find myself floating, weightless, in slow circles, just looking at the world as it drifts around me. Can I be a point-of-view rather than a personality? When my mind gets snagged on something and starts grappling again, can I remind myself that uncertainty is not a problem? I don’t know. And that’s fine.

Flashes of Memory and Dream

April 16, 2019 /

As I prepare for sleep, I lie in bed with a book and let my mind drift. It is peaceful; there’s nothing to be done, nothing to be decided. Drowsiness comes over me slowly, and during this interval between bedtime (according to the clock) and the untethered dreamtime, I often have flashes of memory that are unlike the everyday “remembering” that makes up the narrative of my life. Instead of remembering events and stories linked together sequentially, I experience memories that have no beginning or end. Perhaps they are located in space rather than in time. They are vivid impressions of a place, a situation or a circumstance from my past, with all of the vivid sensations and emotions of the immediate experience. 

This is an entirely different kind of memory. It is not really like remembering at all. It is an eternal present, an unfolding moment fully realized. It is as real as now, lying in my bed with my book. Here comes a moment: In my first grade classroom, the dusty, nutty smell of the pencil sharpener, the oblique afternoon sunshine falling through tall windows and warming a corner of  my desk, so many details along with the feeling of being six, forever. As if that moment, that day, never actually concluded or became another day. As if I could resume that life any time, and live into it. And then the memory flits away and another alights: A salt marsh on a winter night, cold stars, frozen tussocks of grass, reflections of silvery alder saplings in the dark water, wind low to the ground and wood smoke rising, the feeling of being twenty-five, forever. I could slip back into that life just as easily as falling asleep now. 

These memory moments keep coming, almost every night. Sometimes, I turn them into more ordinary remembering: I think about first grade, the classmate who died of leukemia, my mother picking me up at the end of the school day and taking me with her to the college library where she would study while I read my treasury of Peanuts comic strips… Or I think about what happened next, after I left the rough log cabin on the salt marsh and moved to another cabin on another island on the other side of the country… But these ordinary, orderly memories are like remembering the story of an experience, rather than the experience itself. Most memories are really just the memory of a memory. By contrast, my immediate memory flashes are far richer, far deeper: I can taste them, smell them, breathe into the many dimensions of actually living those experiences. It’s better not to elaborate them, or organize them. By themselves, as impressions, they allow me to experience immortality. As if, somehow, every moment of my life is ongoing, as if every moment is a hologram containing all of my experience, and nothing can ever be lost.

I love these memory moments, these momentous memory flashes—they seem to be a gift that has come with aging and illness. When I am too tired or too ill to be somebody with a whole personal history to sustain, I can let myself be made up of moments. Just these flashes of perfect presence. Sometimes they are so poignant that they are painful, but even the painful moments are to be savored. They come and go so quickly, taking no time, lasting forever. I imagine this is what is meant by the idea that “your whole life flashes before your eyes” when you die. I’m not dying at this time (as far as I know), but I’m understanding how it might be to die—to live instantaneously and simultaneously, experiencing all possibilities as “now.” 

Some of those flash memories have no context—I don’t know exactly where or when they fit into my life story: …a dimly lit hallway with a thin pink carpet, a staircase descending to the left, closed apartment doors on the right, a feeling of mild apprehension and also curiosity, the feeling of being lost… Perhaps they are moments that weren’t substantial enough to add to the narrative of my life events, or perhaps they are moments from the future rather than the past. Perhaps they are even someone else’s memories. Yet, they are real, and they belong, in a way, to me. 

Obviously, the kind of memory moments I’m describing have a lot in common with dreams. Like dreams, they are filled with vivid impressions and emotions, but can be very difficult to describe, and impossible (or unnecessary) to hold onto. In order to remember dreams as stories that we can share, we generally manage to find a narrative structure that approximates the experience of the dream while giving it a linear coherence that can be followed. All the rest of our dreams are forgotten, but perhaps still present within us as moments, as flashes of experience, flashes of life being lived onward and inward.

My theory is that when we are young adults or teens our dreams often seem more like accounts of consecutive events. We fill our dream-journals with long, detailed narratives. But when we are small children or older adults, our dreams may be more impressionistic, more like those flashes of momentary memory that don’t lend themselves to narrative as readily. This makes sense because young adulthood is the time when we shape the story of who we are and what has happened to us. By contrast, when we are children or elders, doing things and describing what we’ve done may be less important than just following life as it unfolds around us and within us. 

Children and elders can sometimes dream (and live) in the midst of experience itself, rather than perpetually retelling the stories that define their lives. Of course, throughout our lives, we still want to “get a handle on” our stories and make sense of ourselves, but maybe in childhood and aging we’re more willing to give that handle a twist and let it go, rather than trying to wrench and wedge it into a set position.

Perhaps this is why remembering dreams often gets more difficult as we get older, and why children’s dreams can seem so disorganized. I’m trying to understand why I, and many of my clients (who are mostly over fifty), wake up feeling that we have been completely immersed in a dream reality, yet even though we grope around in our minds, looking for that “handle,” we cannot find the faintest thread of a dream memory. The impression is strong, but the narrative isn’t there. 

At this time in my own life, making a story out of my experiences seems less and less important. I’m even accepting the fact that few of my dreams can be remembered in the unequivocal way they once were. Not so long ago, I had a clear sense of the narrative trajectory of “me,” my memories, my dreams. I could tell you who I am, where I’ve been, what I’ve done, what I’m dreaming, where I’m going. But as the uncertainties and losses mount, I’m losing the thread. Yes, I still know my own story, and it still interests me… but I don’t know where it’s going, and I’m not sure who I really am or what will become of me. I’m aware of death—that stark perspective reminding me that I will eventually be forgotten—yet also more aware of life. The kind of remembering that matters is like my momentary memories, like impressionistic dreams, rich with the experience of being alive in a particular way, right now, exquisitely, eternally. My flash memories remind me that I have always been alive in this way, maybe even beyond this lifetime. Someone has been experiencing something, always. We are all experiencing. Maybe that’s the only thing we really are. Our dreams, our waking lives, all of our moments in this world—this is authentic reality.

As I write these words, I pause. The clock chimes and keeps ticking, the world is humming around me. I notice this moment. I can’t even describe it. Maybe, later in my life, this moment will come to me in a memory flash or in a dream. Maybe someone else is experiencing an identical moment right now. Maybe this same moment has been going on since before I was born. No moment is really separate from the next. Past is present, present is future, and forever is everywhere and always. Do you remember?

Appreciating Incoherence

December 18, 2018 /

Dreams are often incoherent: the images shape-shift, the timelines tangle, the events overlap, and the whole dreamy experience itself can get lost in a haze at the edge of awakening. We count on coherence in our waking lives, expecting the narrative to make sense with a reasonable cause-and-effect predictability. We generally think that things should hold together—they should cohere—and when things fall apart incoherently, it’s bad news. But we all know that the dream world is different, and we’re willing to accept a certain amount of disorder there. Still, our waking minds have to do some reconstructive work before they can get a grip on those slippery dream experiences, and some dreams just won’t cooperate. We know we have dreamed; the dream is a palpable presence with a distinct sensory intensity… but we just can’t get hold of anything solid enough to make a memory. So, the incoherent dream gets forgotten.

Lately, my waking life has been almost as incoherent as my dreaming life, and accepting this much incomprehensibility has been a challenge. I have an illness that is unpredictable and rare, so I don’t know what to expect from one day to the next. My symptoms shift like loose sand  underfoot; my daily routine is a steep dune I’m climbing, and the routine itself disintegrates as I struggle up its sandy slope. I can’t get on top of it, can’t see what’s on the other side. Is there an open ocean somewhere out there? Or just an endless sea of similar sand dunes? I’m discovering how much our lives usually depend upon our plans for the future, and my plans have been suspended in this slippery limbo, since my prognosis is uncertain.

Ordinarily, our experiences have some coherence. The sand has been moistened and packed down, so we can walk without wallowing. Even our dreams can usually be shaped into sand castles. But, sometimes the sand is so dry and fine, or so wet and slack, that we can’t hold onto a handful without its slipping away, and it’s not possible to shape a story or a structure with such material. The sandman has come to sprinkle our sleep with dreams, and has delivered a sweeping desert landscape that changes with the wind.

Dream meanings are not usually direct messages, they are more intricate, richer, and sometimes disturbingly weirder than any direct communication could be. Yet even the most incoherent dream can feel meaningful, can be meaningful, if we care about the dreaming experience, allow it to touch us and allow ourselves to respond. I’m trying to see the incoherence of my waking life in the same way. Meanings do not necessarily make sense. Life can be meaningful whether it makes sense or not.

I can’t give a good example of an incoherent dream, because, well, those dreams are really incoherent—they don’t hold together. But there’s been a sort of theme to my recent incoherent dreams. They start with a chaos that I’m trying to control:

I’m packing, but there’s nothing to contain all the stuff I need to carry with me… I’m cleaning, but the messes keep multiplying… People or animals are in trouble, but there’s no way to tell where the trouble is coming from and no way to help… Something or someone is lost—maybe it’s me… Then, in the dream, I remember that the ocean is not far from here. I haven’t seen it yet, but I know it’s nearby. I know I just need to get to the ocean. If I could only set all the impossible problems aside and get out in the fresh air, I’d be able to get there…

But usually the problems remain unresolved. Things get more and more confusing. Often, the ocean seems impossible to reach, even though I realize it’s just outside, just beyond the edge of this chaos.

Actually, the ocean itself is chaotic, too, but in a different way. The ocean is infinitely wild, vast, incoherent because it can’t be contained. The chaos indoors (or inside myself) seems disturbing because I’m trying to control it; the chaos of the open ocean, by contrast, is glorious, unrestrained and impossibly deep. The ocean has its own rhythms and patterns, which defy my sense of coherence. There’s something liberating in this. Somehow, I recognize those inconsistent and incomprehensible rhythms and patterns—I know the ocean with my own deep sense of wonder, not with my grasping mind.

“It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear, moving, utterly free…”
-Elizabeth Bishop, from “At the Fishhouses”

There’s an authentic relationship between the oceanic unknown (or deep knowledge) and the shifting sands of my everyday experience. The depths of the infinite lap at the shores of the ordinary, so sometimes the sand gets just damp enough to shape sand castles at the water’s edge: coherent dreams, insights, projects, possibilities… and then, predictably, the tides recede leaving those castles to dry and slump, or the tides rise to wash them away completely.

In my incoherent dreams, I flounder in confusion, trying to accomplish something, remember something, catch hold of something, anything… But, still, I know that the ocean is out there. The ocean does not concern itself with my accomplishments, my concerns, my comprehension. It gives me nothing to hold onto, and yet it shapes my experience. I trust the tides; I trust the depths. Occasionally, my incoherent dreams complete themselves: I leave the frustrating incoherence of my problems and worries behind, and find the more profoundly incoherent openness of the ocean. It’s right here, all around me: the infinite. I immerse myself in that dark, clear water. And I find myself fully awake.

Easy Does It: The Path of Least Resistance, In Dreamwork and In Life

October 17, 2017 /

Dreamwork doesn’t have to be difficult. We don’t need to come up with a “solution” to the dream, because the dream is not a problem or a puzzle—it’s an experience, and, like any other experience, is filled with rich potential, some baffling details, and a variety of emotions and perceptions. I’m learning not to view my waking life experiences as problems to be solved, but as offerings to be appreciated. Dreams, too.

What does it look like to do dreamwork the easy way? Well, in dreamwork, as in life, following “the path of least resistance” can be a meaningful practice. When I encounter a dream—either remembering one of my own or hearing someone else’s—the first step on the path of least resistance is simply accepting the dream without judgement or analysis. I might notice that the dream images bring up feelings of confusion, anxiety, impatience, amazement, boredom, revulsion, comfort, excitement, restlessness, distress, delight… maybe one strong feeling, maybe a jumble of different feelings, maybe just a bewildered uncertainty about how to respond. I don’t work too hard to catch every detail, but let the dream present itself in its own way, and let myself be drawn into the dream’s images, events, and emotions as they come along.

After accepting and experiencing the dream uncritically, my natural curiosity leads me to ask questions that will increase my awareness and participation in the dreaming. I’ll open my senses, and wonder about everything. If some aspect of the dream seems especially incomprehensible or uncomfortable, I just notice my discomfort and let it be. Like a kid playing in a muddy stream, I take a long twig and fish up weeds and rotting leaves from the bottom, build little dams and watch the water spread behind them, float bits of bark to see which ones are fastest, look for jewelweed (the leaves turn silver underwater) and touch-me-nots (the pods burst and scatter tiny seeds). I take off my shoes and socks and wade right into the dream. This is all-absorbing, even when I encounter slimy or spiny creatures, even when I dredge up old beer bottles, even when I step in a deep spot and get wetter than I intended. I don’t need a plan: one question or experiment naturally leads to the next, and learning happens easily in the process.

Recently, I had an opportunity to take a ten-day personal retreat—staying in a little cottage alone, surrounded by rolling gardens and brambly woods. A couple of times a day, I walked over to a nearby house to feed and visit with two nice cats while their family was on vacation, otherwise I had no responsibilities. I really, really needed this time away. I’d been coping with a glut of health issues, medical appointments, work and existential crises for several months without a chance to reflect, so I was overdue for a break.

I started out thinking I might get a lot of writing done. I could set up a routine of meaningful practices—meditation, haiku, journaling, T’ai Chi, listening to sacred music, studying, exploring nearby parks, working on my book… I’d come home with a better grasp of my life situation, and a solid sense of spiritual accomplishment.

But that wasn’t what I needed, and that wasn’t what I did. Instead, I took it easy. I sat outside or inside, reading for hours on end. I watched the doe and fawn who came by almost every morning and evening to eat the garden. I listened to the birds (finches, chickadees, woodpeckers… ostriches? pterodactyls?). I dodged the yellow jackets that plagued me while I ate lunch. When I felt like moving, I walked up and down the level, quarter-mile gravel drive—up and down, up and down, up and down… walking along the magnificent row of sequoias that line the drive, past a few small pastures where there were occasionally rabbits or coyotes.

No productive planning. No long, steep, bushwhacking hikes. No writing. No schedule. No spiritual practices other than presence and participation. Nothing significant happened. I didn’t work at it, but I learned what I needed to learn from the experience itself—just as I might learn from the experience of a dream.

During this lovely, easy retreat, I couldn’t remember many dreams (and I didn’t make much of an effort to remember them), but one just came along, like the deer, to graze around in my mind:

Treasures Keep Coming My Way: I have a sense that many precious things are to be found here, so I look carefully. There are a couple of shiny quarters on the sidewalk! A homeless man claims one of them (apparently, he can’t pick up both, since his hands are full) and I pocket the other. Then, I realize he needs it more than I do, so I give it to him. He grumbles, not at all grateful, but accepts the coin—and I feel that I did the right thing. I go on, keeping my eyes open… and there are more treasures! Around a gift-shop counter where a woman is buying some fancy crystal ornaments, I see many oval glass discs scattered on the floor. Some are coin-sized, some as big as my hand; some are clear glass, some amber or pale blue. They’re incredibly beautiful, though very simple. Each disc has a tiny animal (one is a fox) etched into its center. I gather them all up, feeling rich. But then I realize they must belong to the gift-shop, so I bring them to the counter and give them to the sales clerk. She thanks me warmly, and finds my name on her customer list (she knows my name?)—telling me she’ll check the discs against their inventory, and then contact me to give them back if any do not belong to the shop. They are apparently very valuable. But I feel no sense of loss as I return them. I anticipate more and more treasures waiting for me.

 The more we give away, the more we have. Yes, of course, this is a cliché, but a very true one.

Ordinarily, I’m stingy with my energies, fearing I won’t live long enough to live fully, believing that I need to hoard my resources and my time, insisting that I must work very hard so that I don’t waste my precious life. But my retreat (and my dream) remind me that this isn’t true. Life can be easy—we can squander it, share it, give ourselves away and set ourselves free to follow an apparently random path that goes nowhere in particular… and the world will offer itself to us, willingly, again and again.

Dreamwork is easy when we drop our resistance and our itineraries and follow that plain path, appreciating whatever we find. Look at those sequoias—each one is different! Look, what a huge, scary spider (and don’t walk into that web)! Listen, I think I hear a Swainson’s thrush! Ah, let’s sit and rest for a bit… there’s no hurry. Another day, another dream, another treasure. Easy enough.

Being the Dreamer, Living the Dream

August 15, 2017 /

My priorities have changed significantly in the past few years, and so have my dreams. Although I’m not yet sixty, I’m starting to see the world as an elder, and my dreams have reflected this change as well. Especially in the past year, as I’ve developed symptoms of a degenerative disease that is accelerating my physical aging process (Radiation Fibrosis Syndrome), I’m truly discovering what it means to be initiated into a completely new stage in the life cycle—and it’s not what I expected. It’s much more subtle than the leap from childhood to adulthood, yet more profoundly meaningful than any of the other transformative experiences I’ve known.

So many times in my life, I’ve come to the end of one phase, experienced losses, uncertainty, and “suspended animation” during a transitional period, and then begun a new phase, with new energies, new resources, and new options. But, for some reason, when I left a job I loved five years ago and entered one of those painful, liminal transitions, the “new phase” I expected never seemed to arrive.

Instead of starting over, I found that the “suspended animation” just went on and on. Somehow, I’m not getting re-animated! Unless I reframe this experience, and change my expectations, my situation and prospects could look pretty grim. Loved ones just keep dying. I face more and more physical limitations. When I tried to go “back to school,” seeking out further education and training (which had always worked before), I encountered impossible obstacles. When I started new projects, they didn’t exactly fail, but required constant attention and drained away my energies rather than rejuvenating them. And, most disturbing, many of my familiar spiritual practices and disciplines no longer seemed life-giving.

At first, all of these discouraging experiences seemed to point to depression—so I soldiered on patiently, kept trying, hanging in there, not giving up, waiting for an opening, doing my best. I tried some big things, and lots of small things, but life just kept slipping by without any significant breakthrough.

Then, I began to notice something strange about this apparent stagnation. Underneath it all, I’m at peace in a way I’ve never been before. The harder I try, the more drained and discouraged I become; yet when I stop trying so hard, I’m filled with quiet joy. I’m not so concerned with proving myself, or even with being myself—instead, I’m just being. I’ve lost most of my ambition, but it doesn’t actually worry me (except when I think “Shouldn’t you be worried about this?”). I’m paying lots of attention to the physical pleasure of doing the things I can still do, and not dwelling much on the things I can’t do. The past makes me sad, the future can make me anxious—but I’m quite interested in the present, and the present is just fine.

Even when the world situation seems catastrophic, even when there are too many losses coming too fast, even when it looks like finances or health or politics will cause everything to fall apart—I sense and trust a kind of spaciousness, and can hold that space open for others and myself. I have no idea how I’m doing it.

What is this? The “new phase” I’ve been looking for is actually already in progress. It just doesn’t work the same way that any of my previous phases have worked. I’ve always been drawn to old people, because many of them have this funny way of not getting bothered, while still caring deeply. Could this be where I’m going? Could this be who I really am?

My dreams are different, too. Like many older adults, I’m not remembering them as well. Aside from the fairly common sleep difficulties that can disrupt dreaming as we get older, I suspect the dream-recall deficit is because the work of these dreams doesn’t urgently need to be brought to my conscious attention. I’ve accumulated enough material to work on over the past fifty-six years, and I don’t need more stuff to figure out and make sense of. What I need is simple experiences of being alive and valuing life. When I remember my dreams, they just point to what’s most important right now.

I have a lot of dreams about helping or teaching others, dreams where I’m not the “hero,” but the mentor, sidekick, or teacher. I’m trying to make it easier for someone: saving a spider from the bathtub, or bringing peppermint tea to a sick girl. In many of my dreams, I’m not the central character—and often, I’m not present at all, just a disembodied observer of someone else’s story—which, ultimately, is my story, too, of course. I have dreams of returning to familiar places, finding them changed, and adapting to those changes. And then there are the sweet dreams of just appreciating something beautiful: birdwatching from the deck of a becalmed ship as sunlight glitters on the water’s surface; or approaching a lit cabin through the woods in the dark. Continue reading

« Older posts

Kerry Backstrom

Click on the photo for Kerry’s bio

Dream Blog Categories

Blog Post Archives

“In my view, dreams are much more accurately described as experiences—that is, conscious events one has personally encountered.... We live through our dreams as much as our waking lives.”
-Stephen LaBerge

“Perhaps, in the end, there are no dreams intrinsically more healing than those that demonstrate that our separation is an illusion; that we are part of a living web that extends beyond our own skin and skull.”
-Marc Ian Barasch

© 2024 Compass Dreamwork

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑