TO THE HOUSE OF THE DREAM AMBASSADOR
Active Dreaming to Help the Dying
By Robert Moss
One of the
greatest services we can render the dying is to help them open to the gifts of their own
dreams. Just as dreams rehearse us for challenges on the roads of life, they prepare us
for the journey beyond death. Dreaming, we travel quite naturally beyond the body, into
deeper dimensions of reality, and make connections on the other side. By helping someone
who is approaching death to open to their dreams, we help them to find their way home, and
approach the last stage of physical life with greater courage and clarity, as a time of
growth and awakening.
All we need do, to begin with, is to suggest to the dying
person that if he or she happens to remember a dream, we would love to hear it, and to
cherish the moment of sharing. Open a safe space for dreaming, and beautiful things can
happen, as we learn from Katy’s moving experience of helping her father prepare for
his death.
To the House of the Dream
Ambassador
Katy’s octogenarian father Ed moved into hospice care after a
debilitating series of strokes. His doctors thought he would probably succumb to kidney
failure within a month. In fact, he survived for another six months, a time of deepening
pain and frustration over the failures of the flesh that was nonetheless a period of
immense learning and high adventure thanks to his discovery of dreaming. In each of her
frequent visits, Katy gently encouraged him to share any dreams he remembered.
In the first dream Ed recounted – six days after moving into
the hospice – he discovered that his old clothes were “all twisted up”. He
wanted the people caring for him to dress him in new clothes because he was going to take
a trip on the Concorde and wanted to look his best.
This short dream – from a former stockbroker not previously
accustomed to recalling or sharing dreams – is already a wonderful rehearsal for the big
journey. It reflects the collapse of the physical body, and promises an exciting
transition – in new garments – to another plane of existence.
As dream sharing became daily practice for Katy’s father,
many varied gifts came through. Some of his dreams rehearsed him for physical adjustments
he needed to make as his body declined, easing these passages for a proud and once strong
man. Dreams of broken plumbing and laying pipes, for example, prepared Ed for the
catheterization that was eventually required.
In an intriguing series of dreams, he was excited to find himself
doing new work and feeling really good about it – an unlikely scenario, in ordinary
reality, for a sick man in his 80s. In one of these dreams, he was working on an
“angel machine”. When Katy asked him what that was, he explained, “I’m
supposed to comb out the feathers on the angel wings” and giggled like a happy child,
full of wonder.
Towards the end, Katy’s father often slipped into
waking dreams, moving between the worlds with increasing fluency, learning the art of
reentering a sleep dream to gather more insight and energy effortlessly, without any
formal instruction.
One of his big dreams seemed to promise a happy
landing on the other side and opened a fascinating personal locale in the possible
afterlife. He dreamed that on a day of heavy snow, he attended a magnificent banquet in a
beautiful mansion. Everyone was dressed to the nines, and an elegant, distinguished man
wearing an ambassador’s sash with his dinner jacket showed Ed around and poured him a
delicious drink “like white champagne” but beyond anything available in ordinary
reality. Delighted by his welcome, Katy’s father had the feeling he would be going
back to the mansion of the dream ambassador. On the day he passed, it was snowing heavily
for the first time in months, as in the dream.
Through their days and nights of dream sharing, father and
daughter deepened their loving connection. Katy confirmed and validated her father’s
experiences as he opened to realities beyond the physical, an inspiring example of how we
can help each other on the roads of dying (and living). Katy believes that dreaming
provided her father with a vehicle in which he could travel to the other side. “He
was fearful of leaving this life that he loved so much, but with the dreaming he grasped
that there really is a life ‘over there’ that is just as much fun.” His
fear of death gave way to a willingness to let go.
The story of Ed’s dreaming does not end with his
passing. Within days, he started turning up in the dreams of his loved ones. He appeared
to the one family member who had not been able to visit him in the hospice, sat with her
under a tree for what seemed like hours, and made her laugh. He returned Katy’s
visits in the dreamtime. In Katy’s dreams, he often appeared doing things (like
skiing) that he had failed to do, or to master, in the life he had left.
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