the promise of the dream...

Dream - I am in a large school, hurrying down a hallway; the bell is about to ring.  I can’t find the foreign language hall and I will be late.  The halls are crowded and every turn I make is wrong; I have no idea where to go. I reach up to a door handle, push open an office door, and ask if someone can help me.  A woman says that the man who can help me will be right back.  In he comes, rotund, white beard, 60’s.  I tell him I’m lost and he takes me back into the hallway where there are at least 6-8 boys (ages 9-10).  He says something like, “They can tell you how to get there.”  They all talk at once, offering different routes.  Then another boy, dark, 9-10, off to the side, says that he knows the way but that the hallway is very long and that it will be difficult.  We all set off and I am being moved along in this sea of boys, up high, like I’m being carried or sitting on someone’s shoulders.  I feel excitement about what we’re doing and joy being with these boys, like I’m a little girl and they love me.  We turn a corner and look down a very long hallway, kind of dark and a greenish light, like under water.  I feel the good kind of scared like this is scary and an adventure and the boys are with me.

I’d like to pause here and give a brief overview of what it means to work with your dreams.  I’ve posted my dreams chronologically, trying to map how this work unfolds.  My initial postings are from almost four years ago, places in me where I was still very closed and unconscious.  So it feels important to take a moment to jump ahead a bit and speak of the arc of the dreamwork...and the promise of the dream. The dream above is from last year.

My teacher, Rodger Kamenetz*, speaks simply and clearly about the three gifts of the dream and in my own words, I’d like to share those here.  Our dreams come to us each night to teach us about ourselves, ways our inner and outer are or are not in alignment.   Some of that learning can be very challenging and ego-pinching.  So the first gift of the dream is to show these ways we are separate from our true essence, our soul if you’re okay with that language.  Who are we, what are we doing in our lives that is out of alignment with our true self?  Our dreams may show us being reactionary, judgmental, lying, hypocritical...and so we can ask ourselves, how are we this way in our outer life?  Some of these ways we may be aware of and others may be hidden in a blind spot, that is ways we think are working for us, and the world may value, but leave us feeling empty, a sense that something is off.  So, perhaps the dreams will show us being co-dependent, caretaking others, all at the expense and loss of our own needs and desires.  Again, we can step back and look at ourselves.  Are we living a life of passion and desire, living from our fullness, and from that place being with others, or are we living from our emptiness, making it all about others...leaving nothing, having nothing of and for ourselves?  Who would we rather be in relationship with...someone living from their true essence and is with us from that place...or someone who is running on empty, somehow believing that is what life is.

The second gift of the dream is to teach us about who we truly are.  We can use spiritual language and say our soul, or simply say our true self.  Either way, the dreams show us the places and ways we are connected or not to our inner self. The dreams remind us who we truly are, our ability to give and to receive love, to feel our excitement and passion, our joy...who we truly are when we are living from our soul. 

The third gift of the dream is about relationship.  We are beings that need and thrive on relationship, with ourselves, with others and with the divine.  Our dreams show us the state of those relationships.  How are we being true or untrue to ourselves, to our partners, our children...to the divine?  In the dream above, after almost three years of working with my dreams, I had this dream.  In the dream I am small, the soul self.  I know I am lost, know I cannot do it on my own, no longer believing the lie that to be strong means that I have no needs, have to do it on my own. I know I need help and ask for it.  The moment I do, the teacher shows up and opens me to even more of my soul...the ‘sea of boys’...who carry me into the exciting watery depths of feeling and connection.  This is the promise of the dream...the return to our depth, our eternal self.

Dream Practice: Be carried down the hallway by the sea of boys, down into the dark watery depths, feel my fear and excitement. 

Rodger is the author of “The History of Last Night’s Dream," and was interviewed on “Oprah’s Soul Series.”

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