Dialogue for Lasting Change

        I experienced a stroke this morning  . . .  luckily, it was only in my dreams. Dream or not, the experience of helplessness, of not having control over reflexes and feeling an unusual constraint on awareness was a powerful experience of powerlessness. In it, I knew something was wrong with me, but the realization of the what and why took awhile. It took a couple of scene shifts in the dream for the realization to dawn in awareness.

Paraphrasing what Charles Fillmore said about illusion, it was only a dream – but it seemed so real! So real that I awoke with the remembrance, so real that it caused me to write … I am not writing of the details, the settings, my sense of the people involved or the seeming reality of the scene by scene unfolding of the experience. That has no particular relevance here, in this writing. It was “only” a dream and I awoke from it possessing all of my faculties, I think.

In the moments after that dream, before I opened my eyes to the new day, I had brief flashbacks to other dreams, dreams of other realities. The power of dreams to create a sense of reality and having an experience of another reality is amazing. Even more amazing is the carry-over into my “awake time.” I have in conscious mind the feelings, the pictures, the experiences of many other non-real realities. For example, the memories of a looping road and small community out in the country not far from Troutdale, Oregon. Several times I’ve driven and even walked the roadway, visited the community and drank deep of the peacefulness of the country setting. It is a real place, a real experience – in my memory – but there is no such place on our present version of planet earth. (Vivid dreams can perhaps temp one to ponder the existence of parallel universes.)

Before there was a Harry Potter I experienced something that I’ve only read about in books; and later seen in the Harry Potter movies — pictures that move. No, I’m not talking about movies, TV, videos and the like. I’m talking about looking at a flat photographic print and seeing a figure in it move. I’ve opened up a photo album and looked at old black and white photos and seen movement, every so slight, in them. A person turns, blinks, nods …. in my awake moments I have clear memories of such experiences with photographs, so real that I have to stop and think … no, those were only dreams.

Have you ever levitated? I have, many times, it is a wonderful experience! I have also experienced the great joy of sitting down at a piano and playing the classics, jazz and popular music with ease. There is a part of me that possesses a talent and skill not present in my wakeful state. It causes me to wonder  . . .

      There are dream books that explore and explain the symbolism, the meaning, of dreams. I have glanced at a few of them, more out of idle curiosity than anything else. The symbolism and meanings presented are perceptions based on the experiences of dreamers over thousands of years. That dreams have (or can have) meaning is widely recognized and even has deep roots in scripture. Remember David interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams? Remember Jacob’s dream of the ladder and the angels? It is said that Daniel understood all kinds of visions and dreams. (It’s not that I have dreams of biblical proportions …)

I have had recurring dreams, dreams which build one upon another over weeks and months and even years. (I had a teacher who said the individual dreams are often like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle, you must carefully piece them together in order to see the whole picture.) I am, for the most part, a lucid dreamer – I remember many of my dreams; at times I seem to be compelled to remember. Some dreams, as I mentioned before, are so vivid as to have place in conscious memory along with a sense (the illusion) of physical reality. As I have explored them, I’ve found that many such dreams do have meaning bearing on what is going on in my life. Don’t misunderstand, I not talking about spending a day at the races and then dreaming that night of gambling and horses. My recurring dreams have often reflected a sense of the stresses, of the challenges and problems I was experiencing.

For example, if I was up against some problem at work for which I had not yet been unable to find the solution, I would have problem solving dreams. The dream scenarios would take various forms in a variety of settings. In some I was being pursued through a seeming labyrinth of familiar or nearly familiar places – never being caught and never truly escaping. My experience has been that variations of these dreams continue until the outer problem is resolved. My ongoing dreams were a persistent call for action – I had to decide and act upon a solution or, resolve the issue by simply letting go of it. When the problem ceased to exist, the dreams ceased. There have been other dreams, some in the form of unsolved mysteries, dream scenarios that cast their own shadowy light on the stuff of life. These are never crystal clear reflections of life – they are little more than seeing through a glass darkly.

       Dream books explain dream symbolism for the purpose of providing insight into what is going on in one’s life as revealed in one’s dreams. There is some validity in these books. Sometimes they seem to be dead on, at other times they seem wholly irrelevant. But like so much of life, filtered through the human mind, there are a variety of interpretations and various schools of thought. No one book or school of thought is right; all are perceptions of an illusory reality. The stuff of dreams is the stuff of illusion. They are sometimes inspired and sometimes not. Dream meanings, if they are to have any importance, can be no more than that which they have for the dreamer. The value, if any, in analysis by dream book is that it may point in a direction that may lead one to develop your their understanding of their dream. Joseph’s interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream was meaningless until it struck a chord of realization within Phararoh’s own mind. The meanings of Jacob’s Ladder have been widely contemplated and have been explained in a variety of ways. The real meaning, of course, can only be that which had personal relevance for the dreamer himself, Jacob. It was his dream, not ours. The only relevance it can have for us is that which we choose to give it. The stuff of the dream books is much the same …

       For me it makes sense to set aside the dream books and to explore my own dreams and their possible meanings. My dreams have led to changing the course of my life, have impacted my decisions and prompted new avenues of thought and expression; all to the good. Being a lucid dreamer helps in this process; of more importance however, is the exploration of the dream. As a dream explorer I am sometimes so moved by a dream that I endeavor to write about it using pen and paper. Even if I don’t remember much, I begin writing and the process of words flowing onto paper opens the pathways to the memory and message of the dream. I write without thought or deliberate evaluation or contemplation – I let the words flow and the thoughts revealed become my teacher. I am constantly amazed by the process.

I think, I know, that the Grace of God has provided us with a powerful set of tools for understanding what’s going on in our lives and for finding life’s purposes and direction. It’s sad, I think, that we have not yet learned how to dream and how to understand and employ the stuff of our dreams. Our dreams do have purpose, no matter how deeply the meaning and purpose lies hidden within our veiled perception of self.

These few pages are the result of one of last night’s dreams – I know that there is much more to explore and to say, but that’s it for now.