the inner revolution...
What is it that begins to happen in our dreams as we explore and stay open to what it is they want us to know about ourselves, what it is that needs healing…how to recover this connection to self…to soul? How does the inner repair start to reveal itself? It begins with a sweet return of the capacity to love ourselves…all the parts of ourselves that we thought were lost to us. Then slowly…I have found that dreams work with us slowly and thoroughly…this love can begin flow into the outer in our capacity to be in relationship with others. The following dream is from a client who has been exploring his dreams with me for a while.
Dream - I am in Cuba with a whip smart 12 year old girl riding around on her bike, talking about how she’s going to be president one day. I love her, like a daughter, but there’s something else too. Not sexual - she doesn’t even have breasts - but romantic. We are sitting down to eat, and old lady serving us pretty gross noodles, some of which are still tied up with twisty-ties. The girl talks about how she doesn’t know if she’ll want to marry me and have children when she grows up because she may be to busy with her revolutionary plans.
(Image by Oleg Tchoubakov)
In Natural Dreamwork we are always aware of the boys and girls…the children…in our dreams as we have found them to be reflecting our relationship to our soul. They may come as infants, toddlers, young children, teens…all different expressions of how we are in alignment with that particular energy of the soul.
How they appear in our dreams and how we relate to them speaks to how we feel about this part of ourselves. Very common for many of us is that we want to take care of the dream child, protect it, believe it needs our help be okay. When we explore these kinds of dreams we find the child is perfectly fine…the one in distress is us.
If we were hurt or wounded at a young age…when we were very vulnerable…we may not want to feel a connection to the children in our dream. We got hurt back then and we don’t want it to happen again. So when these dream children appear we may find them obnoxious or annoying and just want to get away from them…we don’t understand that the reason we find them so is that we are afraid to be them again.
A very tender and painful way children may come in our dreams is as physically or mentally challenged…sometimes even dead…so painful and traumatic may have been our past that we believe that some part of us died back there. And while it’s true that something got terribly damaged…the soul never got damaged…it is still whole…but it is our connection to it…our capacity to be in relationship with and from our soul…that got frayed to the breaking point…but it didn’t break.
This particular dreamer, as do most of us, has had all of these kinds of children appear in his dreams…those he felt responsible for…those that annoyed him…and those that were so painfully damaged. This is not easy work. To be with these parts of ourselves that were damaged…to heal the connection…to find our way back to soul…means we take the medicine the dream prescribes…to feel the feeling…which will be frightening and painful…excruciatingly so. This work takes courage (of the heart, the seat of feelings)…and this dreamer has courage.
And when we keep taking our spoonful of dream medicine something breathtaking happens. We have a dream such as this…where the dreamer is with this soul part of himself…the soul girl…here the whip smart girl who has revolutionary plans…the revolution she is causing in him. Even the old ways of the mind…the woman with the uncooked noodles…can’t distract him. In the past this kind of figure would have gotten in and the dreamer would have left the girl to interact with her, felt responsible, try to explain, fix it or get annoyed. Here…he doesn't even acknowledge the woman. The old story...the old way of being is losing its grip.
All he knows is this girl in front of him…and there is a moment of not knowing…how does he love her? She is his soul and when we haven’t been in relationship in a while it can be confusing…is it sexual?…romantic?…father/daughter? We don’t know how we feel because it is a new feeling…a way to love that we have forgotten…a way to love ourselves that has no words that can limit or even define…it is the return of loving our self…our soul.
Mary Jo Heyen is a Natural Dreamwork Practitioner working with clients throughout the country and abroad in person, phone or Skype. Learn more about her work with dreams at www.maryjoheyen.com or www.thenaturaldream.com