Why Our Dream World Matters & The Myths We’re Told to Ignore Them
How are your dreams? Have you been dancing with them? Giving them space to flow through you? Have any dreams been courting ..you..?
Over the last few years I’ve become increasingly curious about dreams. Waking dreams, sleeping dreams, and the connection between them. Cultivating a connection with my dream world feels inextricably connected to my ability to imagine and participate in bringing to life the world I desire to be a part of. I have long since realized there is no master plan in place for the collective and it is up to each of us to actively co-create the life, culture, and world we want to live in. As present day society is demonstrating, leaving the masses to default patterns of passive participation do not lead us to the flourishing our hearts know is possible. So how then, can we build connection to the source of dreaming and doing otherwise?
While growing up I was told a thousand times, only sometimes explicitly in words, that dreams are just what happens when our brains are resting. Or that it’s an unimportant process happening as our meta-brain decides what information from the day wants to stay in our brain. A nightly pruning ritual of some sort. “Chaotic energy your mind makes into story” I’ve heard from others. So largely I balked at the weirdness and wildness of dreams from time to time but mostly just let them be.
But over the last few years I have come into contact with more and more people, people I deeply respect, who deeply care for their dreams. Wonder with them. Use them as intuitive guides. It’s captured my curiosity so that now I cherish getting to hold my dreams, no matter how briefly, upon waking. I have begun a dream journal and occasionally give myself space to listen closely to what is being revealed to me through them.
Dream world feels like another aspect of life; a part of ourselves we’ve largely severed ourselves from. I’m not here to make any claims of their value or lay out convincing arguments for why to take them seriously. But I can’t help but notice how stunted most of us are when it comes to creativity, to intuition, to myth and story, and the life force that connects us to soul and spirit. It certainly seems true to me that there is interplay between these.
I had a friend share the idea that the consciousness most of us occupy day to day is like living on land. And that our subconscious, what gets center stage when we sleep and enter into certain altered states, is like being in an underwater world. Everything is more fluid. Light, time, and space take on new properties. I like this idea because it feels true. Waking up I often feel like I’m experiencing a phase shift, like the bits of dream world I remember are like liquid drops dripping back into the ocean of dreams.
This slippery quality of dreams feels true of waking dreams too. I notice how I can be afire with clarity that -this- is the thing to be doing.. a future I am in love with.. a longing that needs acting upon — and then a few days later, it’s a vague memory. It feels parallel to waking up and having the sand of dreams slip through your fingers… as the world you were moments ago existing in dissolves into your bedroom.
I know for me as I get older I find it easier to fall into social patterns of acceptance and normalcy. It’s underlined by the jadedness that comes from too much exposure to the modern myth of monolithic systems that are harder to move than mountains. The slide towards complacency, to settle for how things are is strong. And yet I’ve tasted enough magic of True Aliveness to be fully hypnotized into default mode.
I am here to embody another way of being. To carry the aliveness and determination that comes with dreaming of brighter futures. To resist the complacency and instead find a home in creatively bringing to life alternatives.
Swimming is one of my favorite things so why not plunge into the waters of dreamworld nightly and see what arrives when I let my gaze catch the glimmer of something otherwise. Maybe with enough exploration I’ll cultivate the skills to sculpt the slippery nature of dreams into something potent enough to live and breathe in dayworld.
