I'm posting the short dream report that follows less for the content - though I find that mysterious and intriguing - than for the experience that immediately followed, which was of being able to shift back and forth between two orders of reality without reality confusion. This is a useful skill to develop, as we grow the practice of active dreaming.
-Five Goddesses Set Out from Britain
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Five women, all striking and statuesque, with different features and coloring, are setting out from the island of Britain. They seen much larger than lifesize, almost like Britannia figures floating above the waves. One is going north from the coast of Scotland, one is heading east from East Anglia, one is going south towards France form the English coast, another is going southwest from Cornwall, and one is striking out due West from Wales.
-I wake from the dream in early sunlight and glance around my bedroom. When I close my eyes, the scene of the goddess-like women skimming the waves is there before me, as vivid, perhaps more so, than before. I watch them from high above. I open my eyes and again inspect my bedroom. I close my eyes once more to check whether the action is still in play over those northern seas. It is. I test this yet again, switching between open-eyed perception of the sunlit morning world around me and the continued movement of those majestic women across the waters when my eyes are closed.
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There is no confusion of realties here; rather, the awareness of dual realities, both accessible in the same state of full consciousness, with the eyelids as the curtain that opens one and closes the other.
-As for the dream content: I have strong family and personal connections with Britain, and was recently in the UK, where I spent several days in Cornwall, the birthplace of my maternal grandmother. I think a lot about goddesses, and am now on my way to teach in Lithuania, where the religion of the Great Goddess - as beautifully expounded by the great Lithuanian scholar Marija Gimbutas - flourished longer than in any other European country. On my last visit there, I saw the Neringa (the spit of land, famed for its giant sand dunes and summer writers' cottages, that shields the Lithuanian coast from the wild Baltic) as a living godddess.
The only thing I wish you had done (isn't hindsight, especially when it is not even one's own, a wonderful thing ...) was to have talked to one or more of the Goddesses upon re-entry.
ReplyDeleteWorlbridger, that would certainly be an interesting intention for dream reentry, but let me clarify that what I described was NOT (in my vocabulary) an example of dream reentry. Rather, it was a case of the continuity of unfolding dream events while the perceiver shifts back and forth between physical focus and another plane - and of the possibility of straddling the worlds by maintaining a presence in both without reality confusion. What I reported was actually quite similar to the kind of dual or multiple consciousness I need to sustain while leading workshops in which I may be drumming for the group, checking the physical and psychic space, journeying on my own agenda and looking in on other people's journeys all at once.
ReplyDeleteYou know, with all the 'everything' happening around us these days (natural disasters, etc.), it is heartening to read this. Like you, I am intrigued by this sequence of dream scenes and thank you for sharing them.
ReplyDeleteI think I understood what you were saying as not being a typical re-entry, which is why I was intrigued as to what might happen, if, in the state of mind you described you were able to start up a communication with one or more of the Goddesses.
ReplyDeleteI mean it's not every day one gets the opportunity. My wife might argue otherwise, however. ;-)
Worldbridger - that was good! I like that last comment!
ReplyDeleteRobert - I believe the power of the Goddesses might just be with you...which wouldn't surprise me a bit. I understand the experience you describe even though a similar experience has only happened to me once or twice in the past. Last night, though, I was having a dream, then stepped back from it and "interpreted" it while I was dreaming it. I've only done that one other time that I can remember. In your experience, it sounds as though you woke up physically then dreamed it again forward. In mine, I stayed in the dream but was also "aware" that I was dreaming in it and yet was using my mental abilities which I might use when awake to try to understand my dream while dreaming.
I wonder if there can be different realities inside a reality?
Margie
Hi Margie - The experience you report of becoming aware you are dreaming and then able to interpret (and witness, and navigate?) the dream while fully present to it sounds like what is often called "lucid dreaming". A very useful state to be able to sustain, and one example of the many modes of conscious or active dreaming.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your provocative question about nested states of reality. Our 3D reality (4D if we add time) is in fact "nested" within a multidimensional reality that offers many other states of the real. Through the practice of active dreaming, we seek to become more and more and home in the multiverse, and capable of sustaining multiple levels of consciousness that enable us to perceive and operate in more than one state at one - without "losing" it :-)
Thanks for your response and clear (lucid!)explanation Robert. Nested is the perfect word. Yes, it seems like the more I practice active dreaming, there also seems to be an increased frequency and ease involved. It also helps to have guidance and explanations along the way from knowledgeable dreamers, such as yourself. It is much appreciated,
ReplyDeleteMargie
Robert,
ReplyDeleteWhat beautiful descriptions of Neringa and holding space (multiple spaces) and shifting through the flow. And then your comment to Worlbridger is humbling. All the work you do for others brings me into feeling hopeful that this world can shift into a strong supportive healing processes.
Rock On, Dude.
Patty
Hi Robert, I love the image of the goddesses gliding over the seas. To me they project a quality of purpose and intent. It is a powerful image.
ReplyDeleteI'm much more interested in the way you are maintaining two foci of awareness at the same time. I've not really been able to do this between the dream and the waking dream, it seems I've only been doing it in one or the other. I was going through my journals looking for dreams where I existed in multiple forms at the same time and have found one so far, but I know I have others. In that dream I am in a human body at the same time as being in a non-human body. My human self is on a higher level in the room and I wonder if this is to indicate that we exist on multiple 'levels' at the same time? I've also had the sensation when awake, and not just in the morning, that the dream is still going on but I have not been able to switch back and forth at will as you describe.
I've also had non-dream experiences where I have felt myself to be in two places at once, but later I could not tell if that was the case or not. When you first began to experience this did you try to encourage it or do anything to increase it, or did it naturally arise?
--fran
Thanks to all for your stimulating questions, commentsb and personal sharings.
ReplyDeleteFran, your questions demand a new essay (and no douht a new book). I'll just offer a quick response to your last question for now. One of the indelible experiences from my boyhood was of riding in the backseat of the family car on a very long drive through a rolling landscape. I saw the surface landscape rise up like a great carpet, revealing a second landscape beneath it. The second world looked just like the surface(at least on ITS surface) - and yet was utterly different. In that moment, I understood that there is a world-behind-the-world and that it is possible to see it and perhaps do far more.
Robert,
ReplyDeleteYour last comment reminds me of an old dream of mine, maybe from the 1970's. I was watching a normal street scene, & saw a cutaway side view of the street, with the people tumbling through to a lower level of reality, which I knew was the year 2000. I couldn't imagine being that old at the time, & never got a clear meaning for the dream. When I worked on it with some expert dreamers a few years ago, they helped me realize I met you around the year 2000 & started my involvement in Active Dreaming! This is much more satisfying than the Reality I was in at the time of the dream, believe me.
Nancy
Nancy - I love your highly visual account of seeing beneath the city street into the "understory" and something that would play out quarter of a century later. Yes: our way of dreaming opens worlds that are deeper than those accessible to the linear mind and the ordinary senses.
ReplyDeleteRobert,
ReplyDeleteHi -- I wasn't writing my dreams back then, but do remember one woman who was walking down the street, then falling through, being terrified. One man was oblivious, like he was sleep-walking, & another man was excited about the adventure. Now I might turn it into a journey to lead others to exploring nearby levels of Reality of which they have been unaware, & examine what their attitude might be. I did not want to be the terrified woman!
Nancy