We are a species of dreamers! Dreaming has been a big part of what it means to be human for at least the last 100,000 years, minus the last 200 or so. You might say that over the last 200 years we have been experimenting with being a species of non-dreamers, at least in the Western World.
It isnt that we postmoderns dont or cant remember our dreams so much as that we arent present for our own dreaming. I can think of lots of little reasons (and some major ones) why we behave as if we arent born dreamers, but I dont think the why matters as much as Now what? Or , How do we step back into those dreaming shoes?
We need to be present for the great living story that envelopes our lives whether we are waking or sleeping.
We are not designed to be separate from our consciousness. Ideally there is no line or boundary between wakefulness and dreaming. We should fall asleep, dropping down or sinking into our dreaming. What happens when we turn out the light with the intention to sleep is, we drop below our waking consciousness into a lower or slower brainwave. The transition from wakefulness to sleep (instantaneous or gradual) is inherently seamless. Kids know this.
But we adults have perfected how to ghost where we go when we dream.
Waking consciousness is self-centered, but objectively oriented, the objects being the non-self (such as people, things or thoughts), but sleeping consciousness is also self-centered and objectively oriented, but when we are dreaming the objects are archetypes. That is the difference.
When we talk about waking VS sleeping or waking vs dreaming-consciousness, we are talking about different realities, but the self is present in both as the focus and measure of our experience. One is our outer (or extraverted) reality and the other is our inner (or introverted) reality. I am repurposing these words of Jungs just to demystify a remarkable fact, that our
self is a changeling, a shape-shifter depending on what reality it is navigating. But it never loses its tether to the living story of its journey from birth to death. As we learn to be present for our dreaming, we actually add depth and longevity to our Earth walk.
If we dont remember our dreams, we still dream, but we are denying ourselves a most extraordinary opportunity to peek behind the curtains of the stage of our lives, because what happens in dreams is endlessly exciting, creative, unpredictable, adventurous and eye-opening. Being present for our dreaming keeps us emotionally, and psychically limber. In a way, it keeps us lucid. Learning to navigate dreams prepares us to move more fluidly with the vagaries of waking life.
With this little article, I invite you to step into your dreaming shoes and enjoy your birthright to be a dreamer.
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