Recently, just before having a scary medical test, I had a dream that I not only remembered afterwards in detail, but which greatly affected me. Actually, remembered might not be the most accurate way to describe what happened, because I was partly awake even while I was dreaming.
In the dream, I was visiting the city of my birth and wanted to call my parents. They were back in the home where I grew up, even though they had moved out of that house several years before either my mom’s or my dad’s death. And in the dream, I knew all this, knew they had died years ago. Yet, I still wanted to call them on the phone, but I had forgotten their phone number.
Suddenly, I was with a group of friends entering a restaurant not far from my parent’s old home, not far from my old home. The friends and I had reservations for dinner. But I suddenly decided to quickly walk to my parent’s house, tell them I would come by after dinner and stay the night, and I’d get their phone number.
When I got to the house, I looked in the front window. Both my parents were there. They were entertaining other couples. But they had a security guard at the door, a tall, strong man standing in a darkened area of the front porch. The guard knew about me, had heard stories from my parents. He even told me about his own son who was training in the martial arts. But he wouldn’t let me in without checking my ID. I showed him my driver’s license and he said I could enter.
As soon as I did, I was swept up in the feel, the atmosphere of the past. I was there, in my old home, with my parents very fully there, right there, and yet I also knew they were no longer alive.
Then I woke up. Somehow, dreaming this dream changed my whole emotional situation. I felt good, no longer afraid of the medical test, or maybe anything. It was not that I felt my parents could, now, speak to me. But seeing them made my past come alive ⎼ and was possibly telling me something about my future. About not fearing death, maybe? Or about fear itself? About reality?
We wander to so many places in our dreams, and we can dream and wander both while asleep and awake. Daydreams, and all manner of thoughts and images can run around our minds all through the day, accessing the same river of imagery as nightdreams.
The dream clearly reminded me how much I missed my parents and that they were still with me, as me. And that includes so much more than their DNA. No one is perfect, but my parents, more than anyone, taught me to love. But was the security guard a gatekeeper to a mythic realm or heaven, or maybe a form of Charon without his ferryboat, taking my dream mind to the other shore? And why had I forgotten their phone number?
Interpreting, questioning, re-entering and conversing with dreams can be so helpful. But maybe interpreting dreams is not as important as merely living with them. Maybe it’s awareness itself, or something about the nature of consciousness itself that heals us ⎼ not that I can even begin to explain the nature of consciousness. The dream, with all the feelings included in it, just by my dreaming and embracing it, healed something that had been hurt, connected me to something that had been disconnected.
After all, dreams are not creations of rational thinking. They are, as Carl Jung and others made clear, symbols, and so they always exceed our attempts to pin them down. Interpretations, which can seem so right in one moment; but the next day, the whole rational edifice can crumble or seem so superficial compared to the depth of the dream itself.
And people throughout history, and probably prehistory, recognized, talked about, and were as surprised as I was by the possible healing power of dreams. (But nightmares? Can we learn how to lessen their pain and find healing in them?)
When we dream, we are both the dream image and the watching of it. Both conscious and asleep. Creator and observer. Object and subject. An ineffable contradiction as large and as deep as the universe itself. And in this case, the contradiction was made boldly clear, because I was partly awake while asleep, or to an extent, lucid dreaming.
When the human world goes through a chaotic time, we can forget this depth of mind. Threats and shocks, illnesses, and traumas, can glue us to the surface of things. But as so many teachers, artists, philosophers, and healers ⎼ and leaders like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. have reminded us, we are deeper than we often think. There is more to us, there are more beings inside us standing with us, than we usually remember. So, it’s so helpful, so healing when the time is right and some wisdom in our own minds and hearts reminds us to look more deeply and compassionately. To see all and everyone that’s present.
And maybe this message is especially relevant now, in this crazy time and during the holiday season, when many of us will be visiting with family and/or friends.
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This Post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock