Notes From The Dream World
Connection with your dreaming life is not a unique power that one simply has or does not have; rather it is a relationship that can be cultivated.
Artwork©HerasymchukVolodymyr/123r
When I was in my early 20s, I became curious about my dreams in a new way. I had had vivid and emotionally evocative dreams as a child. I remember some that were particularly intense and, at times, I was intimidated by all that they stirred. For a time following, I carried a small fear with me: what if I have a dream like that again? Now, raising my own children, I’ve seen big childhood dreams from the other side and I have a very compassionate adult perspective on how intense big dreams can be (for people of all ages) and how they can leave us rattled.
I have noticed that it never feels good for someone to say “it was only a dream,” or “it is just a dream.” Dreams are real experiences for the psyche, and while they may not be (or not usually) happening to our bodies in that moment, that does not make them any less real. “It’s just a dream,” dismisses the dreaming experience rather than validating it. These common reactions to big dream experiences are illustrative of the emphasis our cultural places on our linear consciousness and the lack of reverence we have for dreaming states and other states of unconscious in general. With this comes a deficiency in understanding of what the world of our dreams may have to offer us.
Even though the overwhelm of those childhood dreams lessened before I became a teenager, I continued to be an active dreamer. My dream experiences were often vivid and palpable. Even if I didn’t remember a dream when I woke, throughout the day I would sometimes have memories surface that would lead me back to a dream fragment or narrative.
It was in college in my early 20s that my attention toward my dreams shifted to include a new level of inquiry into the unknown. Coinciding with my study of herbalism, I began dreaming with plants by asking specific plants that I was working with to send me dreams. On these nights, and others, I started writing down my dreams. I also practiced lucid dreaming — the practice of being aware you are dreaming while you are dreaming. This skill developed for me, so there are times when I experience levels of awareness while dreaming, and times when I can return to a dream if I am interrupted.
The Dreamworld Leads To Intimacy With Our Psyche
Like intuition and connections to other states and levels of consciousness, connection with your dreaming life is not a unique power or ability that one simply has or does not have; rather it is a relationship that can be cultivated. At the center of this relationship is a commitment to cultivating familiarity navigating our inner world, a process through which we gain intimacy with our psyche and our unconscious.
For me, the experience of open inquiry is my primary interest. It sometimes leads to insight, and it almost always stirs feelings in me. I have come to learn that sitting with the feelings that emerge in and after my dreams, validating them and giving them space, even if I don’t know why I am having them or what stirred them, is the most productive and healing thing I can do.
I want to get to know the parts of myself that don’t make rational sense, and see what I have to learn by getting comfortable in that place.
I have never gotten into a formal practice of dream interpretation. For a while, I thought I should, and yet I never did. At this point, I have clarity as to why and all the shoulds have left. In tending to my relationship with my dreams I was not looking for another way to exercise my linear mind by learning a new system or getting into a field of study. Ultimately, for me, exploring my dreaming life has been about letting go of familiar patterns of rationalism and control that society expects from me daily. I want to get to know the parts of myself that don’t make rational sense, and see what I have to learn by getting comfortable in that place. I want my dreams to host me in the mystery and my mystery, and I want to validate what surfaces in my dream world even when I don’t understand it.
Opening to curiosity toward your dreaming life is an invitation for you to make space for parts of yourself you may not be making space for. It is an opportunity to gain intimacy with your unconscious and your feelings, and to validate what you find and experience there. I have come to learn that we do real and productive work in our dreams, even when we don’t remember them or understand them. While we dream, our psyche is working hard, processing, integrating, and building new pathways. You may consider it like a period of fallow for the psyche — a time of restoration and nourishment, a time when it resources itself.
Surrendering To Your Gorgeous Primal Unconscious
To surrender to dreaming is to surrender to our own gorgeous, raw, primal unconscious processes and place trust in our psyche to process what it needs to process, without our mind taking over. It can be disorienting and intimidating, and it may at times feel unsettling and scary. When unsettling feelings arise, it is likely that they were already with you, and your consciousness just wasn’t giving them space to circulate.
So, here they are in a dream asking to be validated. You can validate them with compassion and love, maybe even with support from another, building connection and new networks of trust within and outside yourself. As you validate and make space for these parts of yourself, you may find that you feel more and more oriented in your dreaming life and in the conscious and unconscious processes that surround your feelings.
This time of year, I sometimes have a craving to go to bed a full hour earlier, if not more. What I find when I go to bed at least 1 hour earlier than I am used to and am in bed for 9 or 10 hours is that I don’t always sleep the whole time. I may wake once or twice in the night and become partially conscious for a little while before returning to sleep. Am I sleeping or am I awake?… Usually, I am somewhere in between. I am in a state partially conscious between dreaming and waking.
Being in this place feels not only restful but refreshing. My psyche is having new experiences, I am connecting with parts of myself I don’t always get to connect with. It is reminiscent of seeing an old friend — I feel grounded in the connection of the friendship, but also with different parts of myself and perspectives on life gleaned from the arc of time gone by.
This article is a repost from Brittany’s substack newsletter; you can sign up for her substack atBrittanyWoodNickerson.substack.com.
Brittany Wood Nickerson is a writer, astrologer, herbalist, and interspiritual minister. You can learn more about her work and offerings at ThymeHerbal.com.
Find holistic Dreamwork Resources in the Spirit of Change online Alternative Health Directory.
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