dream groups – The Dreaming Well

Dreaming Thresholds, Dreaming Crosstroads

Artwork by Vladimir Kush http://vladimirkush.com/ — Artwork by Vladimir Kush
http://vladimirkush.com/

Just as the seeds of new life deep down in the soiled memories of the earth are being darkly and secretly dreamed anew, so too, our lives are stirring once more as we launch yet again upon the unknown journey of the New Year.

The period of time, which we now call “the Holidays”, once known as and referred to as “the Holy Days” has seemingly passed and many of us will now return to the actions and duties of daily life and work. Some have rested, many have supped, gifted, socialized and still others have withdrawn or retreated. Many have also been dreaming and remembering, day and night, paying attention to the surrendered visions of experience that form behind the eyelids as we sleep and restore ourselves during long winter nights, the darkest nights that are even now once more shortened and brightening, following a full yet perhaps briefly held moment of stark depths.

No less, as we go now, the call to reflect can still be heard upon the silvern wafts of moonlight sailing upon the winter winds in the oceans of sky just outside our doors and on the other side of the windowpanes knowingly navigating through the ethers of night and early mornings.

Symbolically and mythically, naturally and cosmically, this time of seasonality evokes the living energy of the threshold. Threshold gateways appear in dreams as doors, bridges, windows and portals, and more, among other deeply cloaked situations and scenarios that bespell the energy of ‘the crossroads’.

This is the archetypal resonance of a needed rite of passage in the human and the world soul. Ancient and traditional as well as contemporary cultures have marked the turning of the New Year in various ways at specific calendrical moments for ages. What lies behind is, on some level, let go of and finished, when what has passed is no longer vital or needed. What lies ahead is very likley unknown and uncertain. It’s as if the darkness itself mirrors the rich potentiality of that which falls away into the void and the stirring possibilities for what may yet emerge.

Threshold times can be times of great tension, as the craving for some sense of what is and what is to be done grips us in the midst of a great turning towards and through an invitation for emptiness, solitude and renewal.

In the dreams of many individuals, death, dying and darkness appear as echoes of this energy at this and other times. In the metaphoric and symbolic language of dreams, the people we have been, and whom we may have relied upon, are shown to “pass away” in the dreaming, as energetic and actual experiential events showing that the psyche, and the soul of individuals and the collective are in need of transformative and resuscitating movements.

The word “threshold” itself hails from the old farming practice of separating the “chaff” from the “wheat” – the valuable from the less-than-necessary portions of the harvest. To stand upon the threshold is to exist within the quality of this form of separation, and to trust that what has gone before is now falling away, while that which will come is still yet to arrive. On the threshold gateway, it may be felt that the only thing we can know is that we are “betwixt and between”. The need for certainty may be asking to be sacrificed at this time and in this place, that is to say, to be made sacred.

The tendency in modern times may be to rush ahead or back into comforting activities of the daily world, the routine of what is known, the familiar. However, we might pause once more before re-engaging our lives and projects and seek to honor this passage over the threshold of time-bound reality amid the palpable wisp of the eternal passing over the lips of the Old and New Year, to feel into the dream of our lives, the earth, the animals, the elementals and the stars for creating some vital, true spaces for the new dream to be fashioned by the divine forces that act deeply within us and speak to us through the unexpected voices and occurrences in our waking visions and sleep dreams.

As we move into the cadence of life “as we know it” we might renew our awareness around the depths of our soul’s desires by simply seeking to reflect once more upon the energy and meaning of how it feels to make the crossing yet again, from the past year into the renewing times ahead. As we do so, the wise energies in our dreams and our imaginings will be seen and felt to offer surprising and rich forms of guidance and mystery that can and will betoken the winds of change that lie just ahead on the pathways of our individual and shared lives, blessing body, spirit and soul.

Dreaming in the Dark

The darkness and the unknowns that occupy the limitless spaces within have always frightened and thrilled us. On one level, it seems that the story of our modern lives revolves around an effort to banish the darks by bringing more light to every crack and corner. At this time in our existence, there is more light on the face of the darkened earth than ever before. And yet, is life really any better as a result?

Dreams occur in a state of darkness. Sleeping, at night, we close our eyes and turn out the lights, as the sun is temporarily lost to us and the earth revolves, making her journey through the galaxy and around the sun. Even visionary states that occur during daylight hours tend to unveil themselves behind darkened eyelids.

As this time of the yearly cycle finds us dealing with greater and greater amounts of literal and actual darkness in the space that surrounds our daytime wakefulness, we might become increasingly aware of our dreaming selves. Just as nature all around us expresses its cyclical quality of the seasons, we, in our humanness, also experience a rhythmic circling, ripe with fecund obscurations and well-lit vistas of clarity.

The poet Rilke, in his poem “You Darkness”, celebrates the as-yet-unformed possibilities to be found in the absence of light, whose first lines echo out into the inky blackness of space, You darkness, I love you more than all the fires that fence in the world, for the fire creates a circle of light for everyone and then no-one who is outside learns of you. What an unexpected and perhaps unpopular view this is! Aren’t we usually accustomed to the opposite celebration, of gladdening ourselves when the darkness has finally been banished by the rising flames of a warm hearth at the center?

And yet, Rilke reminds us of another vitality to be found in the limitless possibility of shadow, as it darkens forth its own boundless and paradoxically central quality in our lives. The poem continues, But the darkness takes in everything, shapes, fires, animals and myself, how easily it gathers them, powers and people. These words, carefully crafted, evoke the way that the dreamtime holds us as we sleep, the way anything can happen in the dreaming, and how it all takes place in the, often, frightening realms of unlimited mysteries. Here, the dark itself creates a whole new reality containing potentials, where what is not known can be any way it chooses.

In this time of increasing darkness, nearing the Winter Solstice, waking life might even begin to take on the feeling tone and quality of our dreams. Whether we pay attention to our nightly adventures in the dreamtime or not, the energy of interactions and events of our lives might begin to reflect more of a quality of unexpected or surprising forces. Many suffer at this time from heavy emotions and the return of the old, well-worn and saddening dramas of familial life. Others participate in the disturbed dream of consumeristic happiness at being able to gift our selves, and each other with an abundant display of presents, rather than finding a depth of ability to participate together in the immediate experience of presence. People all over the Western world, at least, seek to light up the night and dispel the shadows that Nature herself is presenting us with as we enter the loamy and still womb of deepest winter. And this year, the Moon is here in North America, creating a wholly lit landscape of reflected solar light amid the darkened night.

While there is something beautiful in all this, the colors and the lights and the efforts to warm our hearts and the hearts of others by shining forth the circle of light, might we not also seek to heed the poets courageous invitation to honor the darks and the wonderfully lit moonscape that finds us here, as well?

Rilke goes on, …and it is possible that a great energy is moving near us, I have faith in nights. Perhaps with a more deliberate celebration of and opening to the dark, in addition to an honoring of the light, we might open ourselves to the blessings of the great unknowns and undetermined quantities and qualities of our lives. When we can allow for a space in which sheer questions exist, it seems we might be able to open more deeply to unseen, dark, previously hidden possibilities of great expansion and the true energies of our lives for drawing more deeply on the wisdom of our dark inner nature itself.

And so it is with dreams and dreaming. For the dreams themselves spring forth surprisingly out of the darkness and involve us in great opportunities that were formerly invisible. We don’t always allow for what’s possible there, as a result of the overly brightened glare of waking consciousness, where the new and unformed possibility could not become manifest, as a result of too much specificity and expectation about the way things should look or be. It is as though, through the ambiguity of darkness, where anything can happen, creative moments emerge that hold meaning, value and content as a result of the loosening of the limitations of the known physical world. By willingly entering the darkness, and admitting the dark to enter us, we may give time and space to the unknowns. And, just as sleep can be a replenishment that arises again out of the darkness, by honoring the need for what is not known, we may find surprising outcomes that we didn’t even know existed.

Here is a song from my album, “Yoro Yoro” with Ben Leinbach which is a celebration through sound of the emerging mystery of the darkness.

And here is the full poem from Rilke which you may choose to enjoy as a call to entering the darkness courageously and fully while giving greater spaciousness to dreams and the great unknowns of your own life.

You darkness, I love you more than all the fires that fence in the world,

For the fire creates a circle of light for everyone,

And then no-one who is outside learns of you.

But the darkness pulls in everything, shapes, fires, animals and myself,

How easily it gathers them, powers and people.

And it is possible a great energy is moving near us,

I have faith in nights.

What Have Dreams Done for You Lately?

What have dreams done for you lately?

When I talk with most folks about dreams, it seems that almost everyone has had at least one experience of great meaning and value as a result of a nighttime vision. Certain researchers have even explored the folk notion that about 50% of people, in general, have had dreams of future events that came true and swear by the helpfulness of such occurrences.

In online groups, individual consultations and in person meetings, I see the vast array of benefits of working with dreams on a regular basis.

As you read this, perhaps you can think of an example of a dream that visited you, which offered some key level of information or insight and possibly even forecasted a future event? I’d love to hear about it, if you feel like sharing.

A big part of how I got involved in devoting myself to community work with dreams has had to do with the way dreaming clearly helps uncover hidden pieces of the puzzle towards being-becoming who we truly are. I deeply value how I have benefitted from what the dreams offer me, and the folks I get to adventure with, as they consistently depict wise yet practical messages and embodiments of fulfilled vital paths towards wholeness.

The projective-style dream work model myself, and others use is both self and other-empowering. It operates on the notion that in sitting with and sharing the dreams, we will all see and feel within them what is most true and meaningful for each of us as individuals. Often times, there are many layers of meaning that resonate with several, if not all, of the group participants.

When worked with respectfully, our dreams and visions can be honored as unique forms of authentic inner guidance. In my experience, I’ve seen how dreaming represents a wellspring of deep wisdom that accurately reflects what’s important now and how the dreamer can locate what is most meaningful and pragmatic to waking life at any given time. It helps immensely to have the assistance of others to see what is difficult to see for our selves, however.

Why don’t we talk more about our dreams with each other? Time and again, when witnessing folks who may be new to or familiar with this work, I have the pleasure of seeing how apparently mistaken notions of dreams being meaningless, harmful or nonsensical break down and give way to increased understanding about the vast potential within dreaming experiences. We’ve inherited a lot of ideas about dreams being useless fantasies. And yet, we also often talk of having special, big dreams for our lives. I sense and witness how folks sometimes feel their dreams are too troubling, disgusting or just plain weird to share with others. All the seemingly small and strange dreams along the way are like holographic portions of the larger total vision we carry within, through our own original yet universal quest in this lifetime.

In the kind of work I do, we say, “there is no such thing as a bad dream, only dreams that sometimes take a dramatically negative form in order to grab our attention”. Paradoxically, and quite wonderfully, when I’ve had the privilege of imagining such dreams for myself, and with others, these are the very dreams, which hold the greatest potential for energetic release and power of insight. Our negative views of disturbing dreams hold hostage the very energies asking to be released and acknowledged within them. If only we can work with and share our deeply personal, yet surprisingly pan-human (universally shared) dreaming adventures and honor their imaginative counsel for our lives, we find that it is so.

If the response of the numerous individuals I’ve worked with for many years is any indication, and it ought to be the most reliable signpost of success, all dreams are wildly potent and do offer reliable and immediate gifts supporting the dreamer and the folks sharing the dream.

To find out more or to respond please leave a comment and visit the Dream Work and Sound Healing Page here at Word Press. All Blessings, Travis W

Online Community Dream Work, “Across Space and Time”

Image Credit – by www.thisiscolossal.com

When I started participating in and leading dream groups, about twenty years ago, the World Wide Web had just barely begun to be a venue for many of the activities it is used for presently. Today it’s possible for dreamers to meet from the comfort of our own homes and to call in over video to do this deeply intimate and fun work together online. There are a number of folks doing dream work in this fashion currently around the world.

Not much of a “techie” over the course of my life, the thought of doing group work with dreams over the Internet did not appeal to me very strongly at first. Having done a hefty amount of various types of group work in a wide variety of venues, I thought that it would be crucial to be in the same physical space, in order to read body language and the like. Thankfully, I was persuaded by a host of friends and colleagues to try it out, and I have to say my mind and heart have been changed on the matter.

The way myself and several of my colleagues work with dreams supposes, on the tested basis of experience, that all we can really do, honestly, is imagine another person’s dream for ourselves – the fairly well-known “if it were my dream” approach credited to both Jeremy Taylor and Montague Ullman. It turns out that working online appears to support a further invitation to use, involve and honor our living imaginations: yet one more opportunity to also own our unconscious projections.

Online work affords many advantages: we save time, resources and money by not driving someplace physical to meet, there’s a “come as you are” element involved, it’s possible to refer to typed written records and helpful pertinent images while working and folks can even look up further info, via Google, to seek to expand the available connections of meaning while engaging with one another during a meeting. It’s as if, symbolically, we are extending the dream into a whole new arena, while we are awake, as well, dreaming the dream further and more expansively.

The experience of being online itself involves a symbolic attention to the imagination that also includes a sense of paradox; even though we are far away, we are and can be close together, intimate across space and time. On the deeper levels of the dreams themselves, to my awareness, we do seem to be connected at a distance and dream motifs of collective synergy often reveal themselves in clear synchronicities during this work. So, the two experiences are uniquely related and encourage the fostering of a deeper kind of connection, albeit perhaps ironically, at a relative distance which fosters a vital closeness of connection, nonetheless.

Participating in and hosting online dream groups appears to be one way that we may avail ourselves of the current technology, in a quality fashion, to support evermore deepening levels of authenticity and rich inner wisdom to come more clearly into action in the waking world.

My current online group meeting takes place every other Tuesday from 10am to Noon PST, U.S. and we’re accepting new members. Please go to the groups page here to get more information and contact me to register.

Dreaming On, Travis Wernet

Dreaming Spirals, Dreams and Dreaming as they relate to the Personal and the Collective

Dreams are experiences and messages sent to us by Nature. They go beyond the theoretical categories we assign to them in order to understand them. It turns out that our Dreaming Nature is also Nature Dreaming, through us and within us. We’re also, in a sense, akin to ancient ideas about dreams and dreaming, being dreamt up at the same time. Although we may perceive that we are having the dreams, there’s also the possibility that they are having us, that ultimately we are part of an observable matrix of life that goes beyond but includes our individual sense of identities and living dramas.

For almost twenty years I’ve been paying attention to my own and others dreams. It’s been the case for this period, especially when working in groups to explore dreams, that there are always multiple layers of meaning and archetypal, symbolic contents present. It’s crucial to look at the dreams from the perspective that they are reflecting meaning and experience through metaphorical as well as potentially literal language. Even when they don’t seem to be, the harder we look, the more clear it becomes how even the dreams that seem to be presenting literal situations offer potent metaphors of meaning and insight as well.

As an example, consider a recent dream in which my car breaks down and the mechanics come to haul it off to their garage, not an uncommon motif, which I trust many folks are able to relate to.

In my work with this dream I have entertained several possible meanings. Because we moderns are so involved with motor vehicles as a form of transportation, it’s true that any dream of a car is likely to be speaking to the dreamer, and potentially others, about a multitude of important issues.

It’s easy to recognize that a dream automobile could represent a mode of life direction for the dreamer. In the case of a breakdown, perhaps the current trajectory is not working out. The physical quality of being in a car is also symbolically akin to what it’s like to be in a body. It’s also true that cars in dreams often point to health concerns for the dreamer. A broken down car could represent a physical or mental malfunction, or both. The dream might also be a warning about a future breakdown in waking life, of an actual waking world vehicle.

On a collective level, cars and their effects appear to be central to the impact of the environmental conditions of global warming on the planet at this time. So, in the event of my dream car, what might the dream be saying about the universal layer of meaning by posing the breakdown of the auto? I myself, as the dreamer, resonate with the notion of my dream car breakdown as a further implication of the experience around how it feels to be alive at this time. It evokes a sense of what it’s like to hold such a variety of concerns for the ecological welfare of the earth and its’ inhabitants as related to my daily activities such as driving a motorized vehicle and all that this entails.

Perhaps the dream car breakdown also suggests looking for creative alternatives to conventional or common ways of dealing with present-day crises. Maybe it spells out the all-too-human predicament of breakdowns in the true efficacy of our current technology and of mechanical modes for trying to make it through one’s life, as related to collective concerns about the impacts of automobiles characterized here by the dream car no longer able to provide conveyance, or to support movement. By touching on this level of concern, the dream has begun to invite understandings and themes that involve, not just the individual dreamer, not just humanity as a whole, but all of life on earth and the planet itself.

This is a very brief example, which nonetheless may serve to illustrate that even such a simple and common scenario in dreams can be found to be depicting a long list of pertinent meanings which are best represented when applied on as many levels as possible, including the personal and the collective.

Egyptian Dream Travels, Part 1

For the last three years, I’ve traveled to Egypt as a ceremonial guide, sound healer and dream worker. My role in this has been to offer music, poetics and support for groups of individuals taking a soul-journey to an ancient land of rich, surviving spiritual wonder. Over the course of my sojourns, I have been mindful of paying attention to my dreams and learned much about the ancient world. Through this course of trips, I have also found inspiration at home and abroad to learn as much as possible about the various connections between music and dreams – both in ancient and contemporary times. Various threads of curiosity have tickled my attention as they’ve woven across the loom of my adventures. I find them still, composing a wild and unfinished garment of experiences I have been about discovering on my travels in this fertile, surprising land.

In 2012, I had a bevy of dreaming and waking serendipities, which I feel illuminate the way that creative and attentive work with dreams benefits both the dreamer and his/her community on many multiple layers of meaning and experience. While on a short layover in Jamaica New York on my way to Egypt this time around, I had the following dream:

“Beach Swim below the Mountain of the Ancestors”

“I find myself at the beach, with others, including my waking life partner. We’re playing in the waves, and I sense this is a place somewhat like Hawai’i and/or Mexico – somehow a combination of both. We’ve been to the nearby mountain. This high peak reminds me of a place I often visit in dreams and which I connect, on one important level, with the energy of the Ancestors. It rises up into the sky just above a wave-lapped wall up from the surf where we are swimming in the ocean. It’s time to go for a bite to eat. As I have this thought/realization in the dream, my former boss from many years ago (also a good friend in waking life to this day) shows up along with one of my former work-mates – they are both women. Their names, I discover later, mean ‘the forest’, and ‘of noble birth’. I see the mountain up beyond the beach where these two individuals have suddenly appeared. There is a ring of cloud around the top, a ways below the summit. It seems like bad timing, as the woman who was my boss has a sore on her lower back and is asking me to help her with this, or is complaining about it to me. She’s uncharacteristically ‘trashy’ and seems ‘needy’. My attention is distracted away from my friends, by her unexpected presence along with the other woman. At this moment, I get taken under by a big wave, eventually come up and look at the whole scene as before. The beach, the wall and the mountain behind the other figures are stil there; my friends are irritated with me for dilly-dallying and paying attention to this woman, rather than going with them to get some food.” End of Dream

At the time of this recollection, I paid special attention to record it in my journal, ponder it and turn it over in my mind and heart. I had very little idea of what to make of the experience (something we’re all prone to, when working dreams alone, due to a phenomenon known as ‘unique blindness’ which says that it’s often difficult for us to ‘get’ the meanings and messages spun through our own dreams, because it’s hard for us to see ourselves – as if we’re looking from within and seeking a clear view from without). No less, I spent time with this dream reality and came back to it as my Egyptian advent unfolded. This begins to describe the way that ‘Dream Catchers’ – folks who work and play with our own and others dreams – seek to make a healthy habit of tending a nest for the strange and wonderful, sometimes confusing productions of the psyche. With dreams, it’s as if one has been given the charge to look after a burgeoning garden. Even after the starters have been planted in the soil, much care and attention is needed for the growth of a healthy and diverse harvest. The vital living forces of the dream garden are to be watched, felt, watered, fertilized and nourished along the way to any crop that might be taken in when what is grown and greened becomes ‘ripe’. Over the years I’ve learned not to put away images and events that enliven my nights during sleep just because I don’t at first understand their meaning or import to my life. As Carl Jung has said, the more we turn such energies around in our waking awareness, “something almost always comes of it”.

The story of my 2012 Egypt trip continues in Part 2, “coming soon” All Blessings, 13 Thank Yous! Travis W