Dreams of My Mother

I recently started a blog to catalog and explore my dreams. I'm a extremely vivid dreamer, a frequent lucid dreamer, and I also dream in color. I love to dream and welcome sleep each night so as to begin the night's adventures. I that blog as a way for me to better understand and share what my unconscious mind is wanting me to know. That said, I've been having dreams involving my mother more and more frequently of late. Visit the link to read my dream involving her and to visit previous entries as well. 

Dreams of My Mother

I've always been a very vivid dreamer. Sometimes I can have as many as three, four, or more dreams each night that I can clearly remember the next day. To explore the themes, patterns, and meanings of my dreams I've started a blog to record them. It's both fascinating and fun.

Click the image above to visit the blog.

Dreams

I'm not certain if I've ever written about my dreams. I've always had incredibly vivid dreams. I can clearly remember dreams I had over a decade ago. My dreams never have anyone I know in them. The people in my dreams are always strangers to me. That said, my dream a few nights ago was particularly vivid and potent.

I was standing in the desert on a tall dune. The sand was a very light, yet rich, tan color. The mountains in the distance were a dark chocolate color and extremely craggy and sharp. Above me were thin, wispy, bleach white cirrus clouds floating in a light blue sky. The sky seemed to be like a low-hanging ceiling (think of basement's that you have to lower your head to walk through because the ceiling above is lower than usual.) The sky was vast and expansive and I could easily see its curvature.

A woman appeared beside me and the sky began to rotate overhead. She pointed to one area coming over the horizon and it was a round, craggy break in the sky as if someone took a hammer and shattered a hole in it. Through that craggy opening I could see what was beyond the boundary of the sky ceiling. It was an even deeper blue sky, almost cerulean. My impression was that this was a sphere outside the sky ceiling above me rotating independently. In it (on it?) were painted stars, planets, moons, and other celestial bodies. The style was that of vintage woodcuts or illustrations, much like the kind in the image above. The heavenly bodies were shimmering as if they were drawn or painted with gold. As that rotated by, other craggy holes rotated past in the sky ceiling with similar things to see through them, all in that shimmering gold in the same deep, cerulean blue sky.

The woman never said anything but pointed to each opening as it rolled past. My sense was that she was showing me the "more" of the situation or place and my awe and wonder was overwhelming. She was making me see there was more to life. More to what is going on. More than what we can perceive or that we allow ourselves to be aware of. If we just look a bit beyond our range we can see and understand so much more.

And when the danger passed...

As the pandemic seems to be easing some and things are beginning to return to some kind of a "normal" please remember this and all the other things we've learned.

"And the people stayed home. And read books, and listened, and rested, and exercised, and made art, and played games, and learned new ways of being, and were still. And listened more deeply. Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows. And the people began to think differently.

"And the people healed. And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal. 

And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed." 

— Kitty O'Meara

Cheating at Cards and the Timeline of Self Awareness

I had the strangest dream last night about playing a card game called 21. Not the usual 21, though. This involved a random "20" card, almost like a wild Joker card. I was playing with a guy who was cheating. He'd stash the 20 card in his waistline and pull it out to win the hand just at the time when I thought I had him beat. I realized he was cheating when I noticed this enormous wet spot in his crotch. He had pissed himself. "He must really have a huge bladder," I thought to myself in the dream, because his pants were the heavy Carhartt canvas-like material that would be difficult to soak. In the dream I thought to myself he must be nervous about cheating at the card game, otherwise he wouldn't be wetting himself. In my typical fashion, I didn't say anything. I let go of the obvious thing that should be called out as unacceptable. I ignored it, as I always do, in order to not rock the boat or cause trouble. As the card cheating continued and he got more nervous about being discovered the wet spot got bigger and bigger from wetting himself. As his wet spot got bigger I became more frustrated. Not frustrated with his cheating but with my not saying anything. My actions in my dream mirrored my actions in my waking life. I never speak up. I always let things go. I'm always the one to "go along" with everyone else even it makes me unhappy. As long as everyone else is content, my misery, my silent unhappiness is a small price to pay. Waking up I wondered what could this dream mean? What does my personal behavior have to do with a man wetting his pants from cheating at cards?

As quickly as I asked myself the question the answer came to me. The man's growing wet spot was a symbolic "dream challenge" testing the limits of my ability to ignore things that make me unhappy. How long could I accept unacceptable situations sacrificing my own happiness in the process?

In that moment I could clearly see the path from never saying anything, afraid to upset anyone, to the frustration I feel with things. The connection was clear. Suddenly, I could pick out instances all throughout my life where I haven't stood up for my choices or opinions. It was all laid out before me like dots on a timeline. This particular thing in 1972, that incident in 1985, etc. And I could see the product of those dots, how I've arrived here at this present dot on the timeline. I was able not only to see, but also understand, how this has led to the smoldering frustration below the surface I feel most of the time It's been so constant and pervasive for so long I was unaware of it. I couldn't see the forest for the trees.

I've now gone through most of my morning with a new perspective and a sense of empowerment. My vow isn't to do away with this outmoded thinking in one stroke and replace it with some sparkling, brand new mentality. It will take time. Being more consciously aware of when these thoughts and feelings arise in me. Taking them individually, one at a time. Tackling it encounter by encounter, day by day. My happiness and sense of self expects nothing less. 

The Power of Dreams

I'm a believer in the message and power of dreams. Metaphor is a potent form of non-verbal communication and I think that's what dreams are. It's our unconscious mind's way of communicating with the conscious self.

I share a good many of my dreams with my friend Dan. He too is a believer in the power of dreams as I am. I discussed with him a dream I had last night, and our conversation helped me understand the full meaning of it.

I dreamed last night that I was trying to sew patches of fabric onto a glass window pane. The needle kept breaking and I was unable to get the patches sewn onto the glass. Dan's take was that the window represents light, sight, and clarity. My interpretation was to stop trying to do things that don't work for me. Dan replied that perhaps it meant to stop doing things that aren't working while reaching for the light. Combining the two notions I came to the conclusion that the dream meant to stop doing things (trying to sew fabric onto glass) that were blocking me from the realization of my goals (letting the light in).

If we have the curiosity and patience to investigate the meaning behind the message of our dreams, we can unlock a great many things.

Secrets to Success

My partner passed this on to me as his dad passed it on to him. Success, happiness, and achievement comes not only in the business realm. It also comes from deep inside ourselves, for ourselves and the way we view and treat others.