Dreams As Visions

Without dreaming we are either very ill or dead. If dreaming is stopped altogether, then we are not functioning at our best.

 I have lived in many different worlds and in all of those worlds there have been dreams. Dreams are like the blood that flows through all living things that have intelligence. They carry the life. They carry the love. And they carry also a mirror.  And in the mirror you see what you have created of that life and that love. It’s a gift, and without that gift we can wander far away from your true life.

Dreams encompass the largest and the smallest.  They bring to this limited thing that has emerged in time and space its connection with the ground of being.

(Is it enough to dream without being aware of the dreams?) Is it enough to love without giving that love?  Is it enough to create without making it with your own hands?  Is it enough to want a child without bearing it?  It takes our own movement towards what is offered us to bring it fully into being.  A dream is also an invitation to live in worlds beyond one’s imagination but only an invitation that you might neglect.

(What about the dreams I don’t remember?)  There is no dream that is forgotten except when you wake up. They are all there for you to remember when you wake up. We are all largely asleep in this body.

(What would you recommend are the simplest and most powerful two ways of approaching dreams for the reader of this book)?  Life has a way of coming to us in our sleep and together we weave dreams. To approach that weaving as if it were a book to read or a quotation to remember is to miss that this is a process of creativity between you and something extraordinary.  Take the dream, as it were. gently in your hands like you might pick up something delicate and beautiful.  Don’t hurry with your gaze. This is like meeting a lover.  How will you do that?  Will you sit and ask questions and attempt to penetrate your love intellectually?  Will you walk with your love some way and see if there is a connection that can gradually unfold?  The dream is ready to speak to you if your heart and mind are not closed to it. For dream images are like icons on a computer screen – you have to ‘click’ on your dream images to make them come alive. Thinking about them doesn’t work. You need to open yourself to the magic of them. To make them into the wonderful gateways they are you may have to learn certain skills.

Again imagine this lover.  Could there be connection if you have no heart to feel?  Is your mind already full of things that you believe? The way is difficult for some. If the way is difficult when you hold the dream, is there any part of your being that can respond to it? Look for wherever there is the slightest response.  Listen to that response as small as it might be. For this is like a plant that grows, a bud that opens.  Allow that bud to open and respond.  Be like a gardener watering and caring for that plant as it grows, recognising that as yet it might not have bloomed but the time will come.

(Tell me specifics about dreams that is going to grab the attention of the reader and force them to listen?) The song,  Bad moon rising.  As a child you had dreams, not necessarily the dreams of the night. They were dreams impelling you toward something or away from something. As the years passed, those dreams may have become covered by the debris of memories and events.  And you know inside yourself what it is like not to have dreams, what it is like to have lost that light, that urgent guide toward the future.  What is it like now to stand alone without your dreams? Be honest and look into that dark place where they used to be, where now only shadows and pains stand to haunt you. Those dreams have been pushed into the night and to find again that bright guiding light, you need to open the door of the night and to allow your dreams into your waking.