Depth Of Our Dreams
Let
us awaken the inner knowledge that we all carry and our unquenchable spirits
with these words: We take a journey far
into the depths of your own Self, down cascading waterfalls, through murky
waters, past frozen glaciers, out into the sun. We see the shadows and paintings on the walls of the caves, step
into the unlit huts of your ancestors, gather with the gatherers, hunt with the
hunters, dream with the dreamers. Be
still and hear your own heart call to you, beating the earth drum that is your
very soul!
Dreams
have been revolutionizing people’s lives for millennia. For this reason, I am going to start and end
this sermon with the dreams of famous people.
In between, I am going to talk about the everyday dreams that you and I have. My observation from decades of clinical
social work practice and my own dream life is that our dreams have enormous
potential to contribute to our personal and collective spiritual
transformation.
Jeremy
Taylor is a Unitarian Universalist minister whose entire ministry has been
devoted to dream work. His book,
available in our bookstore, Where People
Fly and Water Runs Uphill, tells about Einstein’s dream as well as that of
Elias Howe. Howe struggled to invent a
machine commonplace in our world today—the sewing machine. The spinning jenny had been invented years
before and many people had tried to create an efficient machine that would sew
fabric to keep pace with the manufacture of cloth. Like the others before him, Howe could not come up with an
approach that would work. Finally, he
had a dream that provided him with the elusive answer. From his dream, he understood that he needed
to put the hole in the point of the needle, not in the back of it. Such a simple solution eluded people for 75
years.[1]
History is dotted with people whose dreams prompted revolutionary ideas that
changed our lives completely.
But
let us now turn to our ordinary, everyday dreams. Listen to this passage, adapted from Clarissa Pinkola Estes book,
Women Who Run With The Wolves:
“Dreams… provide a mirror into the deep
unconscious most often reflecting what is lost, and, what is yet needed for
correction and balance. The unconscious
is constantly producing teaching images…It is the continent of our knowing. It
is the land of our Self…It is from that land we step into our day clothes, our
day lives. We travel from that wildish
place in order to sit before the computer, in front of the cook pot, … in front
of the teacher, the book, the customer.
We breathe the wild into our corporate work, our business creations, our
decisions, our art, the work of our hands and hearts, our politics,… foreign
affairs, freedoms, rights and duties…It sustains
all worlds.”[2]
Now
that is high praise for our dream lives.
It is difficult to talk about mining the depth of our dreams if we don’t
confront the problem that many people have in simply remembering them. Everyone dreams, perhaps six or seven dreams
per night or sleeping cycle. Jeremy
Taylor’s book gives many concrete suggestions for dream recall such as sending
yourself a message to remember your dreams right before you go to sleep,
keeping pen and paper by your bed, or lying still before you start your daily
routines. Perhaps the most important
element to remembering our dreams is to have people with whom we can share our
dreams.
Many
people remember their dreams but the symbols make no sense to them. To understand our dreams, we must realize
that we are the scriptwriters and the directors. We make all the decisions about hiring and firing the
actors. Our dreams come out of our
daily experience, but they also emerge from issues and challenges we face. They form a kind of shorthand about our
lives. To explore their depths, we must
imagine what different objects, places and characters present in our dreams
mean to us in our waking life. Sometimes, it is helpful to simply free
associate about these different symbols.
You might begin to see how the plot, characters and objects are all linked
together, woven together as in a tapestry.
The
Basic Dream Work Tool Kit sheet is available after the service at the
back of the sanctuary. It contains six
hints that offer us a framework for looking at our dreams. Two of the principles relate to the depth of
our dreams. His first axiom is all
dreams “…come in the service of health and wholeness”. Nightmares may wake us up with cold sweats
and racing hearts that grab our attention.
The fourth assumption assures us we would not even remember these dreams
if we could not do something productive about these trying situations.
I
have shared one of my dreams with many of my clients who have been sexually
abused, a group of women at a domestic violence shelter and during a hospital
chapel service for patients and their families. This dream was one of those scary kinds of dreams, but it was
also a gift. I share it with you in
that same spirit.
In
the dream, I found myself in the wake of a ferryboat going to the Outer Banks
of North Carolina. I began to tread
water with all my might. Just when I
thought I was finally safe, the waves came again and I wondered if I would be
able to withstand them any longer. I
woke up from that dream, relieved that I was alive and that this was simply a
dream. Yet, I also could see that my
waking life at that time was very much like being caught in the wake of a
boat. I knew when I awoke that I had
been given a gift—that something deep within me provided me with the awareness
of my own strength and tenacity. I
have seen that others can relate to that dream when all seems hopeless in their
lives or in their world. When tragedy
strikes, there is something hotwired into our psyches that inspires us to
continue.
Perhaps,
it is just adrenalin and the fight or flight syndrome. But I think it is something more, buried
deep inside our unconscious minds that our dreams can tap into. It instills hope, confidence and purpose
when we are stuck and in pain. At other
times, we need different dreams that summon us to move away from the wake of
the boat—to call for help or to grab hold of a lifeline. But sometimes, we just need to be buoyed up
by our dreams that tell us that we can endure!
Our
dreams can also inspire social justice work and living out our common
ideals—giving direction to issues we struggle against such as racism, sexism,
heterosexism and ableism. Taylor tells
how Mahatma Gandhi’s dream fueled his vision for the non-violence movement in
India. After World War I, the British Empire passed the Rowlett Acts. These acts continued the wartime revocation
of precious rights such as freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the
right to participate in the appointment of local officials. Violence ensued. Gandhi tried unsuccessfully to quell the violence, but was not
allowed to speak and his letters were not published.
While
withdrawing to fast and pray, he had an inspiring dream. As a result of this
dream, he asked his friends to ask for Hartal,
a Sanskrit word meaning public prayer and festivities. They scoffed at his dream and so, he wrote
the letters himself--asking the leaders of India’s religions to hold a day of
common prayer. As Taylor writes,
“…followers of Vishnu and Shiva, Brahma and Durga, Mohammed and Buddha, Guru
Nanak, Mahavira, Baha Ullah, and others took to the street in great numbers,
not to protest the imposition of the Rowlett Acts directly, but to worship and
pray and seek solace and inspiration from their respective gods and goddesses.”[3] Ultimately, the British government rescinded
the Rowlett Acts and peace was restored without further bloodshed. Social change resulted.
There
is a wise sage in all of us. There are
answers that spring up from deep within.
They are available to us free of charge. We are the Einsteins, the Gandhis, the countless others who
dream and reach and find more within ourselves than we ever imagined. May your dreams take you deep into the
depths of your soul and offer you countless nuggets of precious material for
your life journey. May you mine them
long into the night and bless one another with your own unique treasures.
Blessings be, my friends.
© Susan Karlson, Intern Minister
July 14, 2002
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