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WHEN WE BECOME A DREAMING CULTURE
I have a dream: that we will again become a society of
dreamers. In a dreaming culture, dreams are valued and celebrated. The first business of
the day, for most people, is to share dreams and seek to harvest their guidance. The
community joins in manifesting the energy and insight of dreams in waking life. In a
dreaming culture, nobody says, “It’s only a dream" or “In your dreams,
mister.” It is understood that dreams are both wishes (“I have a dream”)
and experiences of the soul; that in dreaming, the soul may travel beyond the limits of
physical existence and return with gifts from higher realms.
Dreaming traditions -- like those of Australian
Aborigines, Native Americans and early European peoples -- recognize that the dream-world
is a real world, possibly more real than much of waking life, in which we often stumble
about in the condition of sleepwalkers. In big dreams, we “wake up” to a larger
reality. Dreaming peoples know that one of the central functions of dreaming is to keep us
connected to sources of healing, creativity and spiritual insight in an order of reality
that is hidden from ordinary perception. Another of the vital functions of dreaming is to
rehearse us for challenges that lie ahead in ordinary life. Dreaming peoples know that we
dream the future, maybe all the time. An Iroquois dreamer of my acquaintance says,
“Nothing happens until it is dreamed.” If you can dream the future, you may also
be able to change it for the better by making intelligent use of the information.
If dreams were honored throughout our society, our world
would be different.... and magical. Let me count the ways:
1. Dream Partners.
Personal relations will be richer, more intimate and creative. There will be less room for
pretense and denial. Sharing dreams, we overcome the taboos that prevent us from
expressing our real needs and feelings and open ourselves to those of others.
2. Family life and home entertainment.
“What did you dream?” is the first question asked around the table in a family
of dreamers. In our dreaming culture, families everywhere will share dreams and harvest
their gifts of story, mutual understanding and healing. Parents will listen to their
children’s dreams and help them to confront and overcome nightmare terrors. Best of
all, they will learn from their children, because kids are wonderful dreamers. This might
be bad for TV ratings but it would bring back the precious arts of storytelling, helping
us learn to tell our own story (a gift with almost limitless applications) and to
recognize the larger story of our lives.
3. Dream Healing.
In our dreaming culture, dream groups will be a vital part of every clinic,
hospital and treatment center and doctors will begin their patient interviews by asking
about dreams as well as physical symptoms. Health costs will plummet, because when we
listen to our dreams, we receive keys to self-healing. Dreams often alert us to possible
health problems long before physical symptoms develop; by heeding those messages, we can
sometimes avoid manifesting those symptoms. Dreams give us an impeccable nightly readout
on our physical, emotional and spiritual health. Our bodies speak to us through dreams,
giving us timely guidance on what we should do (and not do) to keep them well. For
example: Gloria’s Dream Diagnosis Gloria had suffered for months from painful
swelling in the lymph nodes under her arms. She was worried sick about the threat of
cancer and insisted that her doctor perform a biopsy after a mammogram was negative. Her
doctor then suggested that the swelling could be caused by “cat-scratch fever.”
Gloria submitted to medication that did nothing to improve her condition. Frustrated, she
asked for dream guidance. In the dream that came, she watched someone being fitted with a
neck brace, part of a complicated “head apparatus.” In the dream, people were
laughing at the patient in a way that irritated Gloria; they did not seem to realize that
she had fractured her neck. Waking, Gloria could see no connection between her dream and
her physical symptoms. But she was goaded to seek a second medical opinion. Her new doctor
detected a link between the pain in her arms and a neck problem she had not noticed in
waking life. His examination revealed a degenerative disk disease in her neck. When it was
treated, the swelling in her arms went away.
4. The Care of Souls.
As a dreaming culture, we will remember that the causes of disease are spiritual as well
as physical. We will use dreams to monitor and rectify energy loss, psychic intrusions and
unhealthy relations between the living and the departed. The insights we gain will help to
make Asklepian dream healing and shamanic soul work part of mainstream medicine and
psychology. We will work with dreams that alert us to the “energy thieves” in
our lives. Linda dreamed that her car kept stalling because someone she knew was draining
its battery. She realized that the energy thief was a needy friend and corrected their
relationship. We will use dreams to facilitate soul recovery. In dreams where we encounter
a younger version of ourselves, or are drawn back to a scene from childhood, we are
brought to recognize a deeper kind of energy loss, that shamans call soul loss. Through
trauma or abuse, through addiction or great sadness, we can lose a part of our vital soul
energy. So long as it is missing, we are not whole and the gap may be filled by sickness
or addiction. Dreams show us what has become of our lost children and when it is timely to
call them home.
5. Dream Incubation.
In a dreaming culture, we will remember to “sleep on it,” asking dreams for
creative guidance on school assignments, work projects, relationships and whatever
challenges are looming in waking life. When we seek dream guidance, we must be ready for
answers that go beyond our questions, because the dream source is infinitely deeper and
wiser than what Yeats called the “daily trivial mind.” Some of the dreams I have
incubated have been watershed events in my life, leading me beyond ego-bound agendas. I
once sought dream guidance on a plan to write a commercial thriller, following the formula
of a previous bestseller I had published. In my dream, I entered a luxurious restaurant
where a banquet for thousands was about to be served, all in my honor. There was just one
problem: the master chef had walked out because he did not like my menu. I got the
message: If I chose to repeat myself in pursuit of commercial success, I would part
company with the most creative part of myself, my “master chef.” I abandoned the
book project because of this dream, which brought me the salutary reminder that value must
never be confused with market valuation.
6. Using Dream Radar.
Dreaming, we routinely fold time and space and scout far into the future. In my journals,
I have logged hundreds of correspondences between dreams and subsequent events in waking
life. Here are two typical examples: Dream#1: Sixty-eight people have enrolled for one of
my work-shops. The week-end presents complex challenges, which my dream rehearses in
detail. (7/31-8/1/96 Follow-up: Just over a year later, sixty-eight people signed up for
one of my workshops. The old dream report provided invaluable and specific guidance on
challenges that developed in the course of the weekend. (8/28/97) Dream #2: I am watching
a silly little dog decked out in fake antlers for a Christmas pageant. The dog runs out on
the road and is killed but is magically revived by a bizarre character who seemed alien to
normal patterns of human behavior. (3/9-10/97) Follow-up: The next day, thanks to a missed
connection and a change of flights, I found myself watching the in-flight movie on a plane
bound for Denver. A silly dog with fake antlers appeared on the screen. The dog was killed
on the road and miraculously revived by a low-flying angel played by John Travolta in the
movie “Michael.” (3/10/97) I have never seen more time wasted in dreamwork than
when we fail to run a simple reality check on dream material to explore the possibility
that we have previewed the future. As a dreaming culture, we will work with dream
precognition on a daily basis -- and develop strategies to revise the possible futures
foreseen in dreams for the benefit of ourselves and others.
7. Building Communities.
When we share dreams with others, we recognize some-thing of ourselves in their
experiences. Working with beginners’ dream groups, I enjoy the thrill of recognition
that travels round the circle as people announce the titles of their dreams. “Naked
in public.” "Back in school.” “Falling.” “Snake dance.”
“My dead mother comes to visit.” Dreaming, we actually find ourselves in the
skin and life situations of different people. A Texas woman shared the following dream: In
A Black Man’s Body I am walking down the street in New Orleans. I notice something
different about myself, about my perception of temperature, the way my body hangs. I look
down and notice I have very long, muscular legs. A man’s legs! And they’re
black! At this point, I become aware I am dreaming. I am drawn to the smell of wonderful
cajun food wafting from a restaurant. A couple of white men block my way, making racist
remarks. Someone signals telepathically, “Get out of this place before you succumb to
his rage. The Texas woman marveled at the way she found herself inside the mindset of
another person. “If we could all have the experience of being in someone else’s
skin,” she told me, “we’d get over our prejudice and preconceptions.”
I believe she is right. In our dreaming culture, we will build community on the level of
soul.
8. The Art of Dying.
The path of the soul after death, say the Plains Indians, is the same as the path of the
soul in dreams -- except that after physical death, we won’t come back to the same
body. Dreamwork is a vital tool in helping the dying to prepare for the conditions of the
afterlife. For example: Wendy’s Waterslide World Wendy dreamed she was shooting down
a slide into an Olympic-size swimming pool, behind her mother. She was happy but puzzled,
because in waking life her mother was terrified of the water and had never learned to
swim. As Wendy’s mother splashed into the pool, a barrier came down, preventing Wendy
from following. When she peered over the barrier, she saw her mother frolicking with a
handsome, muscular young man she recognized as her father as he might have looked when he
was thirty. When she shared this dream, Wendy told me she felt her elderly mother was
approaching death but was full of fear. Her mother had never shared dreams. “I had
the dream my mother should have had.” Wendy mused. I suggested she might try
recounting the dream to her mother, bringing out all the happy, sensual detail and see
whether in some way she could make it her mother’s dream. Wendy’s mother enjoyed
this, asking her to retell the dream again and again. A week later, she called in high
excitement to report that she had had her own dream of her late husband. He had appeared
as a handsome 30-year-old. He told her he lived in a beautiful valley where it was always
spring and would be waiting for her when her time came. In our dreaming culture, dream
encounters with the departed will no longer be psychologized away. They will be screened
carefully to establish whether they are genuine contacts and whether they contain
information that is helpful to either the living or the departed. In the year after my
father’s death, he came to me repeatedly in dreams with valuable guidance for the
family, including practical and specific information to which I did not have access in
waking life. Sometimes (as Jung observed) the departed seem to need help from the living,
especially when they have become lost or confused, frequently because they are not aware
that they are “dead.” Active dreamers will develop the ability to dialogue with
these spirits and help them find their right path.
9. Walking the Path of Soul.
The greatest gift of dreaming is that it facilitates an encounter between the little self
and the big Self. Active dreaming is a vital form of soul remembering... of reclaiming
knowledge that belonged to us, on the levels of soul and spirit, before we entered this
life experience. So much of the harm we do to ourselves and others stems from the fact
that we have forgotten who we are and what we are meant to become. Dreaming, we
remember... and encounter authentic spiritual guides who will help us on our paths. I
remember vividly how I was taught by a vision guide who first appeared to me during a
life-threatening illness in early childhood that all true knowledge is anamnesis, the act
of remembering. Dreaming, we remember our kinship with all living things and the Earth
that sustains us. Dreaming we walk between worlds and remember that our spirits are
starborn. As a society of dreamers, we will participate actively in the emergence of a
more gifted and generous version of our species: the multidimensional human. We will come
to re-vision our world of physical extension and linear time from a higher dimension and
operate (sleeping or waking) in a state of multiple consciousness. We will treat others
with greater compassion, knowing that we are all related and face the surface events in
our lives with greater courage and generosity, knowing that they are only part of a much
bigger story. Creating a dreaming culture is not science fiction. It is a possible future
that all dreamers can help bring into manifestation, because we all dream and because
there are times when dreams will push through even the most hardened carapace of
skepticism or materialism. Without preaching, without shouting, all of us who value dreams
can give others a safe space in which to start sharing their own inner experiences. The
encounter may come at a bus-stop, in a supermarket, in line at the post office or around
the kitchen table, with a total stranger or a close relative who is opening up for the
first time. We can give those who are just beginning to share their dreams the gift of
validation: confirmation that they are not alone, that they are not going crazy, that
their dreams are not “only” dreams. We can encourage every dreamer to claim her
own power, by recognizing her as the final authority on her own dreams. Without setting
ourselves up as experts, we can offer the insights of frequent fliers. We can share what
real dreamers know: We are born to fly and in dreams we remember the soul has wings!
© 1999 Robert Moss. All rights reserved. |
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