Saturday, August 8, 2020

Just-so dreams

 I always note my feelings on leaving a dream. Very often I jot down "just-so", meaning that it feels as if I have been having an entirely literal experience in a another space.That space is other than my ordinary reality in which my body has been lying dormant on the bed,but is no less real. Indeed, in our crazy shut-down time the dream space may feel more real and certainly more vibrant and mobile than the everyday world.
    Dreams are social as well as private, transpersonal as well as personal. We get out and about, far from the basement of the personal subconscious. We make visits and receive visitations. We meet people who are not merely projections or aspects of ourselves. We enter parallel worlds and alternate realities. We travel across time and space, seeing things that may play out in the future and meeting up with friends and strangers far away.
    Let me call as evidence my records from dreaming in the last two phases of sleep overnight. There is nothing extraordinary going on here and no strong feelings were aroused. I felt just-so: been there, done that. My other feelings were mild curiosity and a certain wistfulness over the fact that I can't get out and about in my regular body right now the way that I can in dreams. Nothing stronger. No sense of a call to action.No need to face a monster or call a doctor, to walk a tiger or swim to the moon, to continue a dialogue with a master teacher or bring back a book from the Total Library that has not yet been seen in this world. Had I had to rush to the airport, I might have let these little dreams go. But since March I have only been to airports in my dreams.
    I recorded six small just-so reports from my last two phases of sleep. I am glad I did so because the ordinariness of these vignettes may help to make my main point, that dreams are a field of action and interaction with others. In dreams we travel without leaving home, and can be as social as we please. Any approach to dreams that does not go beyond symbolic interpretation or rests on the narrow theory the whatever is going on in a  dream is a is part of the dreamer is going to miss the panoply of dream experience 

Here are unedited excerpts from my journal reports:

2020 August 8

dream (up at 4:00  a.m.)

New Retreat Place

I am showing a man around a retreat center where I am leading an advanced gathering. Someone comments on how the decor shifts very visibly from feminine to masculine design.  I realize that all the complex travel plans for this year must be abandoned.

I watch noisy kids go into the building in pairs from a pleasant outdoor recreation or pool area 

I lead the man to the dining room. It is very sterile, reminiscent of a diner. There are quite a lot of people there already but they are from another group. I don't recognize anyone from my group all of whose members are known to me because they have come to previous retreats. There is a second dining area. I lead the way there, hoping for a private table and more pleasant decor.

Feelings: Just-so. Mild curiosity.

Reality check: I don't recognize my male companion or this retreat center outside the dream. I could encounter them in the future. It does seem I will have to postpone all my teaching and travel plans for this year in my ordinary reality.


dreams (6:00-7:30 a.m.)

Mountain Loop

Taking a walk on a mountain path. The sun is bright but there is ice and hard packed snow. I decide to go back to the lodge but don't like the look of the ramparts of snow and ice I would need to climb. I think it will be easier to follow the trail making a big loop that will bring me to an easier access point. Walking slowly I am passed by cheerful girl hikers who are delighted by how melted snow sends little jets of water into the air. I have done this walk before but decide it is too long for me now. I turn back. If I need help climbing up I will ask for it.

Feelings: Neutral, curious.

Reality Check: This is a plausible situation. Despite my knee replacement, I have difficulty getting about on rough ground and am scared of slippery slopes. I don't recognize this locale but I could find myself there in the future. It was good to be out in the fresh mountain air. Symbolically, there are passages in life where one may need to be ready to turn back and ask for help. However, this felt like an entirely literal, just-so situation.


Dreamwork at a Table in Europe

With a friend at a big table in a restaurant in a European city. She gives me an update on her activities and we do dreamwork with several dream reports she shares.

Feelings: Glad to see my friend.

Reality Check: I think I know that restaurant. 

Action: Check whether my friend remembers a restaurant meeting from her dreams overnight. 



Deep Reading 

A man talks to me about a plan for deep reading he is following. This in involves reading or re-reading a list of books in a prescribed sequence with parallel reading encouraged at certain points. I suggest he should add Alejo Carpentier's The Lost Steps

Feelings: Cheerful

Reality check: Without much of a plan, I have lots of books on the go at any given time, skipping back and forth. I learn so much by re-reading old favorites. I loved The Lost Steps, which I first read in high school, and if I can find my copy in my forest of books I shall add it to my current reading pile. I don't recognize the man in the dream. I am willing to entertain the notion that he is an aspect of myself that approaches things with more planning than I do, but again he feels like another person altogether.


Call to an Author

I have the phone number of a famous author with an Italian surname. I decide to call him. I admire his work and would like to engage his support for a new book project. When I call, it is like listening in on a party line. His wife delivers his eulogy but in a robotic monotone. His son is lively and friendly but has a hard time speaking over the monologue. The writer seems to be taking a nap but when I ask the son to get his dad he says he'll do it without asking who I am. However the man I want has not come on the call when I leave the dream. 

Feelings: Lively curiosity

Reality: I don't recognize the name I recorded (not included here) but I guess I have been given a detective assignment I do hope to birth some new books in different genres, and will be glad of support. 

Action: Maybe I'll manage to reenter to dream and complete that phone call.


As I complete this inventory I see that the "little" dreams are maybe not so trivial after all, and that a couple contain leads I will want to follow in one reality or another. 
    Whatever exactly is going on, all these episodes are examples of "just-so" dreams, leaving the sense of been there, done that - in another room, another land or another world. " They invite exploration rather than interpretation. I often find myself asking detective questions: Who, What, When,Where...Why?
    After a night of a dozen or more of these outings, my dominant feeling may be "travel worn" or "jet-lagged"....

1 comment:

Patricia said...

I am having more dreams like this lately.

8/7/20 I was going to my office to prepare a speech. I had made a tree stand for my office. Inside this dream a tree stand was this metal I worked with and then placed evergreen roots at the base. I heard Robert was having an over nighter and walked down the hall and around the corner. People were trickling in. When I went over to say hello, Dream Robert said he would show me how to write inside a dream. He pulled out this unusual paper, large sheets, maybe papyrus or older brownish paper? We could tell it was getting time to start. I looked at his shoulder upon request. At first I placed my hands on his left shoulder joint. Then took them away and said, I could do energy work with this, but if you just open up this space it will work the same to untighten your shoulders. As physiology in dreams go this could be about heart space, or stretching your pectoral muscles or because I was feeling both the three bones; scapula, femur and clavicle and seeing energy patterns, it could have been about how this dream Robert is using his wings. As I walked over to join the group I said, Pay attention to not over use internal rotation.
Feeling: just so, a good way to describe