Dreams

Dreaming much lately? I sure am. So is Shannon. So is Shannon’s mother. In fact, a few days ago I heard a promo for an upcoming segment on NPR indicating that a whole lot of us are. I am not usually a lucid dreamer, or at least I don’t usually wake up knowing that I have been dreaming much less remembering what I might have been dreaming about. There are exceptions, of course, but this is generally true. Not these days. I wake up so tired from dreaming that I wonder if I would have been better off staying awake!! While I don’t necessarily remember, or perhaps want to remember, what I was dreaming about, I am quite aware when I wake up that I have been lost in it. And “it” was weird.

Before I get into that, here is a quick update on our stay-at-home tiny house experience. As mentioned previously, we have no internet or cell service up here. That means none of our usual forms of entertainment, which largely consists of Netflix, are available to us. We also like board games, but we don’t really have room for boards! We do, however, have one game that we are quite fond of that takes up next to zero space in storage: Bananagrams (thanks, Sara, for the intro even if getting our butts repeatedly kicked by you was extremely frustrating!). So that’s what we do. We play Bananagrams. If you aren’t familiar, the game basically consists of utilizing a Scrabble-like letter set to race each other to make a Scrabble-like crossword puzzle. It’s fun, but I have to say that you can only near-tie each other so many times before hitting a bit of a wall. That’s when the creativity breaks out. 

Shannon and I some time ago had become tired of playing and just randomly started putting words and then phrases together. They almost always ended up being weird, funny, poetic, etc.  A few nights ago we reverted into that mode when Shannon had the idea of starting a phrase with “Jedi Sayz,…” That was all it took to set us off on a whole new obsession with playing Jedi Sayz. We are up to nearly 40 or so phrases at this point and are aiming for 108 good ones to share. The photo above is a sampling. For starters, we’ll share them one by one on our FB and Instagram pages. They are providing us with a whole lot of insight about where our psyches are. We hope you enjoy! 

Back to the dreaming, who in the heck knows what we are all dreaming about, but I find it fascinating that so many of us are. Even as we practice social distancing it indicates how inextricably interconnected we are. It points to a reality beyond the one that we comprehend through our usual frameworks. Those frameworks tell us that this is all terribly real, whereas what happens in dreams is some sort of residue from our conscious lives. It is our subconscious expressing itself. Maybe so, but I don’t think the “sub” gives dreams their full due. Let me explain.

In the framework that I do my best to live by, my soul (aka Self) abides (lives) in the Absolute realm (the non-embodied realm or field which I call God/Oneness/Consciousness). As such, it isn’t subject to my subjective experience in the relative world. It’s not that I am a separate entity from my Self, it’s just that the latter has a 360 view on What Is (aka reality) whereas the former only sees what it can see from the perspective of the life I am currently inhabiting. From this framework, it would be more correct to say that my self is a dream of my Self than the other way around. In other words, this is the dream (the world as we have created it), not the realms that we travel to when we manage to break free from what we perceive to be real. So to call the non-embodied realm sub to this one, in my view, is an incorrect framing. It’s the exact opposite. 

O.K., o.k., that may be a lot. So why stop now?? There is an indigenous tribe in South America called the Achuar. Their culture is centered around their dreams. When they wake up in the morning, the first thing that they do is gather to share and discuss their dreams. What they discover in their dreams then determines the course of their day. They let their dreams guide them. Now this may sound like crazy talk from the framework that we operate in, but it is not the least bit crazy from the framework that I described above. In fact, it is quite possibly the only sane way to proceed if we understand that our “dreams” are one of the best ways that our Self has to communicate with us.

In the early 1990’s, Achuar shaman and elders began having disturbing dreams about the health of the Earth and in particular the devastating impact that humans were having on it and themselves. So, in true form, they began wondering what to do with this information. The guidance that they received was that they needed to reach out to Westerners and to start co-creating a new dream for the earth and humanity’s role in it. At the same time, a group of Westerners including Bill and Lynne Twist got the same call from the other end. They heeded that call and sought out the Achuar. Together they initiated the Pachamama Alliance. The network that they have built, while still invisible to our society at large, is extensive. I am part of it having first completed their “Awakening the Dreamer” course and then having gone through the training to lead that course. These days all of this coursework can be found online, with multiple more programs to choose from. If you find yourself with disturbing dreams these days, perhaps the best thing that I can recommend is to put that energy into taking one of the courses. You can check it out here:

Pachamama Alliance

To take this one step further (you knew I would!), I would make the case that if we are to chart a new course for humanity and for Gaia, then that guidance is going to have to come from the level of our soul/Self. As my good friend Chausey Leebron Jameson says, we simply don’t have the altitude from where we sit to know how to navigate ourselves out of this maze. When we work and push and fight for change, those efforts are more likely to lock us into the reality that we have created rather than catapulting us out of it. That is because when we do these things we are often operating from within the same frawework/worldview that was utilized to create this world, all while expecting a different outcome. It’s not going to happen that way. Sure, there may be a power transfer from one group to another, but the resulting dynamics will be the same. In order to create a reality that does not resemble the one we are trying to evolve out of, we need to reach beyond the frameworks with which it was constructed. We have to reach into the realm of pure potential, where our souls live.

That doesn’t mean that you will or should stop showing up in whatever way that you do. Maybe you are an activist. Maybe you do amazing, transformative work in the world. Maybe you do your best to take care of your family, friends, and community. I’m not suggesting that any of that stop. I am saying that all of our actions will be better serving if they are sourced from the non-embodied realm: from the field of pure potential, from Consciousness, from Oneness, from dreams, from God, from Self. To tap into that requires not a concentrated effort, but a letting go. Mind you, one of the best ways that we have of reaching a state of letting go is to exhaust ourselves in the concentrated effort, so in that sense… fire away on all pistons! Just pay attention and watch for that moment when you have reached your wit’s end and honor what is conveyed to you in your surrender. That is where the answers will come from.

Jedi Sayz, “Happy dreaming!”