One of the most beautiful dreams I've ever had in my life started with the peeling of a sunburn from my shoulder to my chest until I had uncovered my ribcage, looked in at my beating heart and pulled it out.
I looked at it and said to myself,
"...next time be more careful... do not lose track of your dreams. If you think you are lost now, wait 20 years and guess again at a direction you cannot discern. Pay attention to your dreams because they will not go away. They may be hard to see but they will never go away. If you refuse to see, they will gnaw at you like wondrous motions of the body, a mystery that eludes and confounds and inspires. They will foster in you the sense that something isn't right, that something is lost, that something forgotten must be recovered. There will be an aching space, an unnameable space that is ever unfulfilled. They will linger in every moment. Save yourself the heartache and don't lose track of them; once they are deeply buried, they are difficult to unearth."
7 comments:
Right on. Dreams are significant. They put you through your paces.
I had a dream last night about my partner JSP. In the dream I behaved very badly to him and then became angry when he abandoned me.
I woke up this morning and realized that the events in the dream did not happen and I was overjoyed when I saw him enter the room this morning. My conscious mind knows that he would never abandon me, but my dream made me aware that my biggest fear is that I could do something that would make him consider leaving.
Just the wandering of another mind. We all have our insecurities I guess.
I love your two cents worth:) You are a fantastic presence in my life and I always appreciate your perspective JB:)
Dreams are so strange... I laid down for a nap the other day and woke up more fatigued than when I went to sleep because the dream I had was so ultra vivid and crazy violent. I had to wake myself up before it got any worse. It's not the first time I've had this particular dream either. This time I think I was a little closer to the end of it... one day I'm sure I will see what happens.
xoxo
This sort of thing makes me jealous of people who have actual dreams, as opposed to random terrifying or disorienting images and half-waking hallucinations.
Haven't been here in a while... very happy to come back to find your last few posts. So beautiful and present.
Most of my life I've had wickedly intense dreams, and it is indeed a strange affair...Not too long ago (just as bloodroot was coming into bloom) I was out walking in the rain with Andrew and had to ask whether he thought this was a common experience, waking up overwhelmed by what you've seen and where you've been in your sleep, who you've met...gets to be a bit much at times...
And I had become accustomed, in a way, to having terrifying nightmares (mostly when sleeping), but then last Fall--after a particularly intense one--that just sort of stopped...and I haven't had a true nightmare since. So, Daniel, there's hope, yet.
Such beauty, such darkness on these mysterious travels...
dear god, was this powerful! the symbolism and the words....they really touched where I'm at right now.
I'm in the process of trying to escavate my 'dreams'. Funny what can happen to them when they don't happen after awhile. I'm 52 now. And at some point, I must have given them up (sorta kinda). But your words are so true. They haven't gone away. They just lay inside of me, under a bunch of ash and rubble, and quiver there. I *know* they are there, even if I've tried to ignore their movement because I'm too afraid to believe again or try again or dare again.
But I'm peeling back that skin (or skins...there are 7 layers, aren't there? LOL) The place where I'm trying to get at, is kept safely in my Inner Child's heart. She holds the keys to all of it.
Thank you for this. I haven't been here in a long time, and I'm so glad to be back.
P.S.
I rarely have dreams I can remember...I don't know why that is. But maybe I should find out :)
Wow, so many responses to this entry... You've each said much to appreciate:
Fremenine: ... if this was a common experience, waking up overwhelmed by what you've seen and where you've been in your sleep, who you've met...gets to be a bit much at times...
Nad: ...random terrifying or disorienting images and half-waking hallucinations.
JB: ...my dream made me aware that my biggest fear is that I could do something... ;)
Grace: They haven't gone away. They just lay inside of me, under a bunch of ash and rubble, and quiver there.
As for not remembering dreams... I'm not sure we do forget, they lay inside somewhere. Surely we lose track of the images, but once we begin to listen, if we wake without images, our bodies can be full of emotion and myriad sensations.
I woke from a dream once, having held in my arms a baby girl that I could not 'see...' I was bereft without her, grieving in the morning winter light. It's strange to cry like that. What happens to all that emotion? Where do we put that kind of information? How does this kind of experience inform our lives?
A few years after the death of a close friend I dreamed that she was only in hospital... I went to see her, I hugged her close only to 'lose' her all over again when I woke up.
For me, Fremenine, it is quite common to wake overwhelmed by who and what I've seen or heard or met or felt... I've been to ritual, I've received guidance, I've been deeply disturbed and moved beyond beauty...
Nad, I have had many violent dreams here lately. They're f**king awful. The last one (mentioned in the comment to JB) was so violent I started to cry at the site of a fluffy kitten snuggling on a bar stool in the kitchen of this dream, which is the only reason I was able to wake up. I spent the rest of that evening and the following day in a fog... There was a question though, that lurked amid the graphis of the dream: What is at the base of this violence? (Who are these people? What is dying?) Don't know. Yet.
Here is where I feel that Grace has named the place I am in these days. When you say, 'they haven't gone away, they lay inside and quiver there...'
I am absolutely amazed at how much I have stuffed away, how much I have allowed myself to forget. Most surprising of all is that I am beginning to see that I started doing this when I just 7 years old.
"She began to look with her own eyes: to see and to apprehend the deeper undercurrents of life. No longer was she content to 'feed upon opinion' when her own soul had invited her." -from Kate Chopin's The Awakening
This is part of the work in the promise I made to myself on May 30th.
Bright Blessings to each of you- thanks for looking here-
xoxo
ConnieWonnie
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