Journal of Sacred Work

The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle.   – Anais NIn

    It is one of the most strangely decorated experiences we have. It occupies one third of our life time. During it, we are, we may feel that we are literally in another world.
   All of these things are true of the period we call sleep. You may not remember, today, the dreams you had last night because the conscious mind has so much trouble understanding what happens in the world of drams. For example, what are we to make of the fact that last night we may have been flying (without a plane) above a medieval village or walking naked down a four-lane highway? 
   Experts say that during most, if not all, of our sleep, we are dreaming. The role of the mind is to think. When the body drifts into sleep, the mind continues to generate thoughts. But the body’s lapse into sleep generates a very different consciousness than the kind you are occupying right now…

   Plato said that life itself was a dream. And who are we to say whether he was wrong?
   What do dreams tell us about life? For me, dreams are one of the ways I observe the trick of time. When we lose regular consciousness and drift into sleep, we discover that sleep is like the snap of fingers. We go to sleep and wake up with very little understanding (absent a look at the clock or the change of light) of how long we have been away from the world.
   Isn’t the same thing true of anesthetized consciousness? An unconscious patient has no perception of how long he or she has been "out." A person who drinks too much may experience what the conscious world calls a "blackout." Upon recovering, the mind asks questions about what happened during the drunken stupor. The worldly mind cannot answer these questions.
   I have long admired the loving care which recovery room nurses give to unconscious patients. Uncaring nurses may treat the anesthetized patient as a subhuman species, shoving them about as if humanity had been lost. Loving nurses speak to unresponsive patients as if they understood communication which perhaps, at some level they do. This approach preserves the humanity of both the patient AND the nurse.
   To me, one of the most remarkable truths about our dream life is that during this time, we lack conscious intention. I know there is such a thing as lucid dreaming, during which the dreamer generates
some ability to control the dream process. But that is atypical. Dreams follow pathways we cannot direct. Accordingly, our dream life proceeds unchecked by countless rules and restrictions of the conscious world. As a result, our dream may contain the wildest and most surrealistic imagery. Dead people reappear as if alive and speak to us in ways as real as if they still walked this earth. Live people appear in what ever ways our dreams may describe them. Objects are not bound by gravity. And we may dream of a future richer and more remarkable than we ever imagine when we awaken.   
   Freud’s respect for the dream process taught us a great deal about what meaning dreams might have. After all, don’t dreams feel as real as the life you are living right now?
   Most of us spend, give or take some small fraction, about one third of our lives asleep. That is why we are devoting the rest of this week to reflection and meditation about dreams.
   Meanwhile, the Journal is primarily about presence to our lives. What does life look like when we are unable to manage that presence?  Part of the answer may lie in calling ourselves to a new level attention about our dream life. Sleep, it turns out, is about much more than simple rest. The body needs this rest, so why is the mind so active as the body rests?
   What did you dream last night? It might be worth it to try and remember. After all, perhaps our vast world of dreams deserves more attention.
   Sweet dreams.