Catch a Glimpse, Take a Sip

To share our dreams in a Natural Dreamwork session, we need to remember and write them down. But in the transition from sleep to waking, something is always lost. Sometimes we lose the entire dream. Sometimes we recall a remnant of a longer dream, but lose the dream’s other interactions. Sometimes we remember almost all of the dream, except for one precious detail - the words that were said to us in the midst of a dream embrace, or the title of the book given us by a dream teacher who insists, “This has the answers you need!”It is helpful to keep in mind that the dream narrative we write after waking doesn’t need to include every minute detail or elaborate descriptions. The dream narrative is a way of recording what you can remember of a dream’s landscape, the dream figures you encountered, the feelings and poetry of the dream, and the images that still linger. It doesn’t have to be a complete screenplay of an epic movie. The narrative only has to be a doorway into the dream, helping us enter it and bring it to life in a Natural Dreamwork session. Even a brief, one line dream narrative, such as “I am jumping off a large boat into a smaller one” can be a doorway into so much dream wisdom. So I encourage dreamers to write down and share even what feels like brief, fleeting dream snippets, trusting that they can open us to potent healing.Still, in almost every dreamwork session I’ve participated in, there is a moment of regret, apology, or even shame for not remembering dreams more fully. I look for creative and compassionate ways to respond to those feelings of inadequacy when they arise in my Natural Dreamwork clients, and in myself.Recently, as a client new to dreamwork was describing her challenges remembering her dreams, I offered words of assurance that felt as if they spilled out from the dream-world themselves.  “Imagination,” I heard myself saying, “is infinity giving birth to infinity. Of course, we can’t take it all in. But, what you can remember is enough. We will always have plenty to work with.”I saw my client breathe a sigh of relief mixed with wonder, and we sat for a moment feeling the presence of that infinite source of dreams, which reaches out to us with such intimate understanding and longing for connection. For a moment, I could see my client and myself from the perspective of that intimate infinity. I shared what I was seeing with my client. “Imagination doesn’t see our imperfect efforts to connect as failures! It is quite delighted that we show up at all. It is delighted,” I continued, “that we dip our hands into it, and catch a glimpse, or take a sip of it.”Like a sacred encounter in our dreams, that moment of being able to see myself and my client as we are seen by the source of dreams, has stayed with me, offering nourishment and medicine. While walking in my neighborhood admiring the resplendent autumn crimson, amber, flame, and green-gold colors of the maples and poplar trees, I have found myself simultaneously aware that I am on a planet that is a pale blue dot in the depths of space, as seen in the photo sent by Voyager 1 as it left the fringes of our solar system.I also found myself recalling an image that came to me directly from primary imagination after the birth of my daughter, 25 years ago. I hunted down the painting I made of that image, finding it in a portfolio of old art stored in the garage. It depicts a woman, crouched at the rim of night, reaching her hands into the well of creation, as a newborn soul rises up to meet her. I had completely forgotten the quote from the Tao which I had written in pencil at the bottom of this image:The Tao is a well, used but never used up, the eternal void of infinite possibility, hidden, always present. I don’t know who birthed it. It is older than God.I share all this hoping it helps you be compassionate toward yourself when you wake with imperfectly remembered dreams, mere snippets, or quickly fading fragments. Keep taking sips and catching what glimpses you can. Keep sharing even what feels like tiny fragments of possibly “bigger” dreams, trusting that like fractals, these fragments are filled with the potent wholeness from which they come. If you simply continue along, in your own limited human way, in the course of your Natural Dreamwork practice, you too will have moments in which you can see yourself from the perspective of Imagination. Then you will feel the Infinite’s delight that you have shown up, that you are dipping your hands with longing into its deep well, and turning your limited human gaze with love in its direction.Painting by Liza Hyatt Liza Hyatt, ATR-BC, LMHC is a certified Natural Dreamwork practitioner, board certified art therapist and licensed mental health counselor in Indianapolis. For more information about spiritual growth through dreamwork with Liza, please contact her at lizahyatt@gmail.com. You can learn more about Liza on the About Us page of our website.