For a period eight years ago, my dreams grew loud. I would awaken to fragments of imagery that felt important; so I started writing them down. For over a year, I gleaned volumes from my dreams. Shadowy guidance, windows into my inner world, spiritual illumination, messages from guides. Then, I grew tired. Recording and analyzing dreams requires dedication and sometimes disrupts sleep. If I’m to remember my dreams, I must force myself to scribble notes in the middle of the night. In the dark. Right as I awaken. Occasionally, I cannot get back to sleep. My dream recording and analysis has, therefore, been inconsistent.
But of late, intense dreams have me wading back in. I believe dreams always work on us whether we remember them or not, if only by helping us process emotions we avoid in waking life. Yet dreams can offer so much more.
For those who believe the outer world is all there is and that random chemical processes comprise the dream life and emotions, dreams may be easy to dismiss. But for those who believe in the unconscious and transcendence, dreams offer a window into that inner world, allowing the spiritual to interact with us in ways less hampered by the thick walls of ego. Dreams, much like deep religious or spiritual practice, can shift our perspectives.
In many ancient religious traditions (maybe even parts of early Christianity) and in indigenous traditions, psychedelics have offered similar windows, making the barrier of ego more porous, allowing greater interaction with interiority and the unconscious. But dreams, as well as the narratives and rituals of religio-spiritual traditions or deeply engaged novels or music, also make these experiences available. Author Michael Pollan talks about the shift in perspective made possible by psychedelics. I am intrigued by parallels between the perspective shift Pollan describes and the concept of metanoia (Greek), generally translated “repentance” and literally meaning “big mind,” signifying a radical life and perspective shift.
On Re-Enchanting Our Worlds
In an age when onslaughts of stimuli drown out interiority and the unconscious, dreams can help re-enchant our worlds. Never have humans been alive in a time of such noisy exteriority, ego dominance, and disenchantment. Every time we pick up devices to distract from inner experience—i.e. experiences of nature, music, prayer, intimacy or powerful narrative, we disrupt the flow of interiority and separate ourselves from enchantment. Yet the exterior world can seem so quasi-enchanting! (My poison: ceramics videos in my Instagram feed.) The allure of exteriority in our time only underscores our need for avenues into the unconscious, bridges to the interior world. Perhaps this is why psychedelics are being rediscovered and reimagined. These substances blast through our walls of ego and externality by modulating the brain’s self-obsessed “default mode network.”
For those willing to do the work, dreams can do the same. And for those open to it, deeply engaged religio-spiritual experience and art can similarly break down walls.
My intention in the new year is to delve more deeply into these portals to interiority. I don’t know that I’ll engage less with external stimuli—especially intellectually stimulating podcasts and audiobooks. But I need more enchantment in my life. I need the wisdom of the inner world, the perspective shift, to help navigate challenges posed by this year of our Lord, 2024. Maybe you do as well.
Wren, winner of a 2022 Independent Publishers Award Bronze Medal
Winner of the 2022 Independent Publisher Awards Bronze Medal for Regional Fiction; Finalist for the 2022 National Indie Excellence Awards. (2021) Paperback publication of Wren , a novel. “Insightful novel tackles questions of parenthood, marriage, and friendship with finesse and empathy … with striking descriptions of Oregon topography.” —Kirkus Reviews (2018) Audiobook publication of Wren.
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