going out to meet my dreams...

Recently my dreams have been abundant, the archetypes approaching me fast which is scary, the struggles of lifetimes, the ways I still remain separate from my soul, all are in my face. My unconscious seems to be speeding upwards and it is very frightening, the ground soft under my feet. Yet, what my dreams are asking of me is really only one thing...to feel, to feel again and to feel yet again...all of it...and stay with the feeling for as long as it needs, to trust that I need to feel it...whether it is love, pain, fear, joy...each touches me in a way so tender and raw that regardless of the feeling...I brace myself, afraid it will be too much...it won’t...this is where I need to learn to let go...to surrender to and stay with the feeling. 

I am currently studying Dream Yoga, the Tibetan approach to dreams. One of the first ideas that struck me is that in our dreams we work out karma.  If that is so, I can see why it can take thousands of lifetimes to awaken; most of us are unconscious not only of having dreams but even if remembered, what they may be trying to communicate to us. The Buddha was asked, “How long have you been on this journey to enlightenment?”  He replied, “Imagine a mountain six miles long, six miles wide, six miles high. Every 100 years, a bird flies over the mountain with a silk scarf in its beak and it runs the silk scarf over the mountain. In the length of time it would take the silk scarf to wear away the mountain, that’s how long I have been doing this.”  In a deep meditation years ago, feeling a self-imposed pressure to achieve something, arrive somewhere I heard a distinct voice in my ear say, “Relax, we’re going to be here a while”...yes we are.

Enter dreamwork...by consciously working with my dreams I am going out to meet the dreams, engage them, and perhaps accelerate the process.  I am willing to make conscious things that are unconscious and therefore along the way come to awakenings in one lifetime what would have taken scores...and that is why this work is so scary and so challenging.

In meditation we’re taught to let go of thoughts, to quiet the mind, which is critical in the awakening process.  Yet, if that were the single answer to awakening it would seem there should be millions of awakened beings.  There must be another piece.  This brings me to the question...what’s the point of being on the Earth? More specifically, what’s the importance of being human? Why go to all this trouble of being born, dying, being reborn into another life?  I don’t believe for one moment it’s some accident or cosmic caprice. Is there something in taking an incarnation that is a key to awakening and if so, what? Is there something we can do in the body that may be difficult or even impossible to do any other way? Would we have been given this dilemma without a way to solve it? Maybe the answer is as near as our dreams...our feelings.  To have self awareness and to feel, to know we are feeling, may be uniquely human. I remember my first spiritual teacher, Meldy, once saying that higher beings kind of envy us because they don’t have feeling bodies and have difficulty relating to exactly what it is we experience here on Earth, that they actually learn from us being here.  So what are the benefits of feelings?  Is their vibratory rate different from those on other planes? Is the feeling spectrum wider and more nuanced and therefore better able to identify where our specific struggles lie?  As I asked in a post a few months back, are our feelings the conversation with the divine...and when I refuse to feel I am refusing to listen?  Something about all this rings true. I am currently being shown in my work just how deeply I am to feel, not just when I do my dream practice, not just on the meditation cushion, but from moment to moment, on every breath. Could it be in trusting and opening to this I am accepting the difficult journey of awakening?

Mary Jo Heyen
Archetypal Dreamwork Practitioner
mjheyen@gmail.com 
Dream sessions in person, via Skype or on the phone
website: http://maryjoheyen.com/