Compass Dreamwork

Dreamwork as Spiritual Practice

Author: kirstenbackstrom (Page 2 of 18)

Natural Light: Dreaming Into Death, Dreaming Into Life

June 7, 2023 /

[This article was written during troubled times: the early days of the pandemic, when, like many others, I was suffering the impacts of collective and personal traumatic events. In such times (which can be anytime), dreams provide perspective—inviting us to see things as they are, in the shadowy half-light where nothing is absolutely certain. In dreams, death and life receive equal space, darkness gives way to light when light gives way to darkness. Dreams don’t accept the good/bad duality we impose on our experiences, they invite us into paradox. Here, I explore such riddles, and accept the dreams’ invitation to walk in the dark.]

When animals (including human beings) are seriously ill or badly injured, they can experience a pull toward death that may become as powerful as the drive to live. Perhaps this is nature’s way of easing suffering. When survival seems unlikely, dying becomes easier. 

I saw this when our feral cat friend Harold was living out his last days. It was winter, and we’d set up a space heater and a bed for him on our doorstep out of the wind. For a while, he kept warm, but finally insisted on leaving this comfortable shelter to wait for his death in the open, in the cold sleet. We tucked a towel around him, and he accepted it, but clearly preferred to let himself be chilled, to hasten the implacable process of dying. It was painful for us to watch, but perhaps not so painful for him. Mostly, he lay with his eyes closed, purring at the sound of our voices, otherwise patiently still. 

In 2019 I went through a major spinal fusion surgery and spent weeks in the hospital struggling with heart problems, intense pain, choking episodes and total physical helplessness—and this condition helped me understand Harold better. While one part of me progressed toward healing, another part of me prepared for potential death. For months after surgery, my physical craving for rest, which would give my body the opportunity to recover strength for new life, was also allowing for the possibility of leaving life behind. Profoundly, instinctively, I needed to withdraw. Eating and drinking required tremendous effort. I hovered in a dreamy, half-sleeping state all the time. I had no inclination toward the future, and felt no real connection to the past. This was strangely peaceful. It would have been easy to die. From the perspective of my physical body, the damage caused by years of degenerative illness and a brutal surgery might be irreparable. Even as I was getting better, my body also contemplated letting go. 

Turning away from dying was difficult. Supporting the healing process meant hovering in limbo, in that animal place where the instincts take over. I had to let lethargy consume me, let myself rest at the deepest level, yet hold myself back from death. My dreams reflected the ambivalent nature of this recovery period:

Wanting to Sleep: Restless, I get out of bed and go into the living room where there are lots of people. I realize that this must be a dream because it’s the middle of the night and there shouldn’t be people here, but even though I know I’m sleeping, I still feel exhausted. I try some lucid explorations like asking questions of the dream figures, knowing I can do anything I want. But I don’t really want to do anything, don’t want to be lucid. All I want to do is go back to bed and let myself sink into deeper sleep.

Plunging Into the Graveyard: There’s a little patch of graveyard nearby. A skeleton is just sitting there on a stump or gravestone. How can this be? Is it real? A boy wearing bulky plastic bones attached to his body like armor dives off the rail fence and plunges headfirst into the loose, loamy dirt of the graveyard. He disappears into the ground as if it were a pool of water. We’re all shocked, waiting anxiously to see if he will resurface. He doesn’t.

My dream journal was filled with dreams like these, but also with dreams that suggested a definite movement through the “dying” process, rather than the finality of a “dead end.”

Walking In The Dark: I’m in my late teens, responsible for a group of 12 to 14 year olds. It’s night. I lead them through a city, through unfamiliar urban neighborhoods. Now, we’re facing a downhill sloping sidewalk that plunges into total darkness. I tell them to put away their flashlights; our eyes will adjust. We begin to descend. The kids are whispering to each other nervously. At first, we can’t see anything, but then we get used to it, and the darkness begins to seem safe. There’s enough natural light to go on.

Now, over a year later, I am still feeling my way forward in darkness or semi-darkness, trying to sense the “natural light” that will show me where I am going. My “eye” (I) is still adjusting. The dream reflects the vulnerability, but also the potential, of a coming-of-age process as the part of me that is leading is barely older than the parts that are being led. Yet the confidence of the dream ego to “put flashlights away” and guide the whole self safely downward and inward, into the dark, suggests that a decision has been made. Unlike in the earlier dreams, there is no doubt that progress is possible, no question that we will keep going.

The world as a whole is going through some dark times right now, and it’s natural that many of us are experiencing a tendency to withdraw in exhaustion or dive into the grave of our own fear, anger, and despair. Sometimes, we dream of giving up. The earth herself seems unsure which direction to take, since ultimately death is as natural as life. Yet even as death and dissolution are possibilities manifesting around us and within us, healing is also happening. We stand up, we walk together, we learn. The natural world and the human world are the same world, even when we are divided and pulling in different directions. Outside my door, where Harold went to meet his death, squirrels and birds are eating birdseed together in the cold rain, keeping themselves warm and fed and alive. Personally, I waver every day, but even in uncertainty I recognize my own strength, and yours. 

May our hearts sustain the courage, collective imagination and energy we need to explore an unknown future. May we be willing to go inward and downward into the dark, without the probing light that insists on knowing the outcome of our efforts. May we let our “eyes” (our I-dentities) adjust. May we choose life, and find our way. 

[This article was originally published in the Winter, 2021 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]

Dreaming Emotional Experience

May 7, 2023 /

[This “Dream Alchemy” column, written in 2020, describes how the strong emotions experienced in dreams can contribute to emotional flexibility and resourcefulness. Sometimes emotions in dreams can be overwhelming, and, as in the case of nightmares, may even cause the dreamer to close down rather than open up. Still, dreams always have the potential to be healing and meaningful, though framing the experience of the dream in a positive way is essential. I hope that this article serves as a positive frame for even the more difficult dreaming, and waking, experiences.]

Dreams are often emotionally intense. They can exaggerate ordinary feelings to a ridiculous degree, but they can also give us an opportunity to experience our most profound emotions in their full richness and complexity. It would be impractical to feel everything so intensely under ordinary circumstances in our waking lives. We might be moved by the death of a neighbor’s old dog, or frightened by the prospect of giving a presentation, or angered by a politician—but generally those emotions are contained within socially appropriate bounds. In dreams, however, we may discover our tremendous capacity for passionate, consuming and often contradictory feelings. Discharging strong emotion in dreams can be healthy, relieving us of repressed energies. More significantly, I believe that our dream feelings can help us to know ourselves, acquainting us with the depth and breadth of the emotional faculties that allow us to experience the world as we do. 

I’ve been reading a thick book about 9/11. The subject matter is certainly disturbing, and the book isn’t particularly well-written as it tumbles repeatedly into the twin traps of sensationalism and sentimentality. Yet I keep on reading, because immersing myself in the details of this iconic catastrophe gives me a chance to witness, from many different angles, how we human beings respond to shocking, overwhelming circumstances. I want to understand who we are in the immediacy of extremity. How do we cope with chaos and pain? How do we face death? How do we make sense of the incomprehensible? How do we interact with one another in the midst of shared crisis? What makes us compassionate and courageous, and what makes us lose ourselves in selfishness? 

The heroic stories from 9/11 have become legendary, representing the best responses that we might have in a desperate situation. But there are other stories, too: stories of the terrified people who abandoned injured companions or ignored pleading strangers; stories of officials who couldn’t face the sheer horror of the situation and persisted in following inapplicable protocols—ordering people to return to their offices, assuring them that everything was under control. Such unhelpful (or even harmful) responses are just as natural as the heroic ones, but we all hope that we’d come through with courage and compassion in a crisis. Among the survivors, it’s often those who were not heroes who suffer the most excruciating after-effects of a tragedy, in shame, self-justification or regret. 

So, what makes the difference? I don’t think heroic behavior comes only to those with special training or religious faith, or to unusually “good” people as my 9/11 book simplistically implies. My sense, after reading these stories, is that those who are already familiar with their own intense emotions can more often choose to act on their strong, natural feelings of empathy in spite of their equally strong, natural feelings of fear. In a crisis, both kinds of feelings will arise simultaneously, but some people manage to make brave choices about how to respond to those feelings and some don’t. If we know from past experience how profoundly afraid we can feel, then we’re less likely to be overwhelmed when our feelings are most extreme. If we’ve felt this way before, then we’re less likely to ignore the reality of a terrifying situation because we can’t face the fear, and less likely to deny our empathic connection with others who are also afraid. 

Few of us have felt such a nightmarish level of fear in our waking lives, but many of us have felt it in dreams. Our dreams may provide us with an opportunity to practice the full range of our emotions, so that those emotions won’t take us by surprise and overwhelm us in a crisis. Just having access to our own emotional range also expands our repertoire of responses in any situation, and makes us more resilient human beings. And, finally, the intensity of dream emotion can give us a more vivid experience of our whole selves, showing us who we really are and can be. 

In dreams, I’ve been in a village under siege when the enemy breaks through the gates. I’ve been accosted in a dark parking lot. I’ve been stalked by a monster. In these kinds of dreams, I’ve been amazed and ashamed to find myself in the kind of panic that prevents me from caring about anything other than saving myself. Since the emotional centers of the brain are more active in dreams, I get a glimpse of how visceral and irresistible my fear can be. Dreams also show me how compelling desire can be, how violent rage can be, how wrenching grief can be.

I don’t know if those who behaved courageously in the surreal horror of 9/11 had previously “practiced” with fear in their dreams, but I strongly suspect that they were all people who had some previous experience of their own vulnerability. If we’ve never been vulnerable, we might expect that we can handle most situations, and we’re not likely to respond well when control, even of our own emotions, becomes impossible. But if we’ve felt the raw vulnerability of being emotionally triggered (in dreams or in waking life), we’re less likely to need to deny our unfamiliarly out-of-control “negative” feelings, and we’re more capable of choosing which feelings to act upon. During the events of 9/11, many of those who managed to follow their courage and compassion in the midst of their terror were later able to integrate the pain of what had happened rather than be broken by it, because they had connected with something within themselves more deeply meaningful than the fear.

Dreams show us the “positive” feelings as well as the “negative” ones. In one of my recent dreams, a friend of mine who has been in a wheelchair for over twenty years suddenly recovers the ability to walk: She looks radiantly healthy; her injuries are healed. Joy and tenderness well up in me. In tears, we lock eyes. I reach out to touch her shoulder, her cheek, unable to find words. The feelings we share in this moment fill us completely: wonder, love, exquisite hope… 

I can’t describe the power of these dream emotions. For the first time, I felt how profoundly moving it would be to see my friend standing, walking. In waking life, this friend and I know each other well and can speak openly about many things, but we never express, or directly experience, feelings this intense. I know that I care about her, and feel saddened at the thought of the challenges she faces on a daily basis, but I didn’t realize how very deeply I care. There’s some obvious projection in this dream, since I’m just beginning to allow myself to imagine the possibility that my own physical disabilities might heal—so the wonderful tenderness I feel is, on one level, for my own potential healing as well as for my friend’s. In the dream, I care more deeply for her, and for myself, than I could ever have imagined. But, the central experience of the dream is uninhibited joy—an emotional vulnerability and openness that extends beyond either of us to encompass all beings everywhere as we struggle with limitations and pain, yet long to stand in the shining wholeness of who we really are. 

When we allow ourselves to feel all of our emotions, as we do in dreams, we are likely to find that profound compassion coexists with fear. Our capacity to feel is virtually infinite. Our best actions can arise out of the fullness of our feelings. No matter what challenges we face, we can recognize ourselves in each other, and choose to feel with and for each other. In moments of extremity, we can’t know who will behave heroically and who will not—but we will all be longing to live up to the best in ourselves. Even if we can’t literally stand and walk, even if we can’t simultaneously feel our fear and act on our courageous love, we can trust that the potential for every possible response exists within each of us. We can feel it in our dreams.

[This article was originally published in the Winter, 2020 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]

The Ninth Dog Guards The Threshold

April 7, 2023 /

[This “Dream Alchemy” column, first published in DreamTime magazine in 2019, includes a dream that still raises questions in my mind about the true meaning of healing. Now, more than four years after it was written, I’m touched by the innocence of my approach to the dream, my idea that the “ninth dog” resting across the threshold and blocking my way, might be suggesting that my need for rest would require nine weeks, after which I would be ready to return to life. Healing turns out to be a much more complicated process—and the dream, too, is rich with imagery that I don’t/can’t fully understand. Dreams are mysterious; they don’t offer formulaic answers to our questions, though they do allow us glimpses of potentials, impressions and openings. In this dream, the experience of the dreaming itself was a form of healing that unfolded over nine weeks, nine months, and beyond. Some healing is completed, some is perpetually in process. My intention is to remain aware of my own changing understanding over time.]

What are your intentions as you work with dreams? Whether we are researchers, artists, therapists, educators or explorers, our dreams can be some of the most powerful, potentially sacred, experiences in our lives, and we should approach them intentionally and respectfully.

Whatever we bring into the world, the intentions that guide our actions really do matter. That was true for the ancient alchemists, too. If their intentions were selfish, their experiments were likely to end in flames and failure rather than successfully realizing greedy dreams of gold, power, and immortality. 

When I offer workshops (about dreams or anything else), I always begin by sharing my intentions for this gathering of people, this unique event: 

  1. I intend that we will be reminded of things we already know.
  2. I intend that we will learn something new.
  3. I intend that something special will happen among us: an alchemy that can take place only here and now. 
  4. I intend that whatever happens here and now will expand outward to touch others and spread beyond our imagining.

These intentions are very broad, of course. I think they can be applied to many different kinds of endeavors, and they can certainly be applied to dreamwork. Dreams themselves serve all of the purposes expressed by these intentions: they remind us of what we already know; they show us something new; they create an experience in themselves; and they can expand beyond any one dreamer’s experience to reach others in ever-expanding ways.

Here’s a dream that expresses these intentions clearly:

The Ninth Dog Guards the Threshold: I’m in deep woods, being chased by a pack of wolfhounds. They are not mean dogs—but they are guard dogs, and I am in their territory. For refuge, I run to an isolated house; an older woman meets me at the screen door and lets me in. The dogs come in, too, but she provides protection and will help me deal with them. She explains that we can’t manage the dogs as a pack—each dog needs something different. One dog needs information, understanding. Other dogs need other things: some have emotional needs (comfort, kindness, patience, reassurance); some have physical needs (petting, feeding, healing, play). The dogs become calmer and friendlier in the woman’s presence, and I know I can follow her example and be safe with them. But now the woman is speaking urgently, calling for my full attention: “Not all the dogs are here! Where is the ninth dog?” I am confused by the question. Why does it matter whether they are all here or not? Also, there are only six dogs—are there supposed to be nine? She’s insistent, so I recognize that the ninth dog is especially important. I look for him, and find him. Unlike the other dogs, he’s a black lab. He’s sleeping on the threshold of the doorway where I entered. He wakes, stands up wagging his tail drowsily, greets me, then lies back down. He’s not threatening at all—but not budging either. He won’t let me cross the threshold until it is time. For now, we must let him sleep. 

The dream helpfully reminded me of something I already knew. I was recovering from spinal surgery, and the wolfhounds expressed the many urgent needs that were “hounding” me. I would have to tend those needs one by one, in a safe place, under the guidance of the wise woman who represented my own inner wisdom. The last dog affirmed my need for rest, and I couldn’t cross the threshold and return to active life until all the dogs were satisfied, especially that one.

I also learned something new. The question “Where is the ninth dog?” led me to wonder about the significance of the number of dogs in the dream. Apparently there were nine dogs: six chasing me, two absent, one guarding the threshold. The specific numbers made sense if I looked at them in terms of time: It had been two weeks since I’d left the hospital (those two dogs were absent because they’d already caught up with me—their needs had been met), but there were still seven more weeks, seven more dogs presenting their immediate needs. I’d hoped to return to work after five weeks of recovery, but the dream suggested I’d need more time—a total of nine weeks. My healing would take longer because there were many physical, emotional and spiritual needs still to be met. The first need was for me to “get” this information, to understand; and the last, most significant need was for rest. Because the wise woman insisted that I find “the ninth dog,” I was compelled to pay attention. As it turned out, I needed those extra weeks since new cardiac problems and pain issues developed, and prolonged rest was absolutely essential to my healing. It wasn’t enough to accept my own needs conceptually—I had to learn what these dogs were asking of me. I had to change my expectations, and my plans. I had to allow myself to be changed. 

A powerful alchemy occurred within the direct experience of the dream. I truly felt the fear as those needs threatened to overwhelm me, the relief when I turned inward (entering the house) and found a guide who could respond wisely. I felt genuine recognition when I found the sleepy “ninth dog” on the threshold, and acknowledged my own profound longing to rest, to satisfy the simplest and deepest need of all. This was the need that lay behind every other need, gently but firmly preventing me from crossing the threshold. The “black lab” was the blackness of night, the transformative laboratory of sleep and dreams where authentic healing can occur—a place where I could rest in the deep darkness of my inner unknowing, to be restored and recreated. 

So, this dream spoke to all of my personal intentions: I was reminded, guided, inspired and changed—and after all of the dogs had been satisfied, I was released to share what I had learned by living this dream in the world, letting its meaning expand and spread beyond me. All sacred ceremonies follow a similar pattern. Like our dreams, they are shaped by fundamental spiritual intentions that include revisiting the wisdom we already hold, making new discoveries, invoking and inviting transformation… And, finally, there’s a “sending forth,” where the individual and collective experience of the this unique time and place can be scattered like pollen on the wind, to seed new possibilities, new dreams. 

Perhaps every dream is a kind of ceremony that potentially expresses our best intentions, holding us in the crucible of transformation (guarded by the “black lab” of sleep, and “hounded” to meet our own essential human needs), until we can be “sent forth” to share that which has changed us.

[This article was originally published in the Fall, 2019 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]

Pass It On

March 7, 2023 /

[My second “Dream Alchemy” column, first published in DreamTime magazine in 2019, is concerned with transformation and also the sharing of gifts. The dream I share here was certainly a gift in my own life—in fact, only a few days ago, this dream came back to me and the memory of it helped me through a long night when I was feeling ill and disconnected. The dream reminded me that I belong to a human lineage, and that belonging carries both responsibilities and blessings. I hope that the “bread” of this dream will nourish you, as it nourishes me.]

In keeping with the theme of “Dream Alchemy,” I’d like to consider some of the transformative processes at the heart of both alchemy and dreamwork. Alchemical change occurs when something ordinary is subjected to various procedures (heating, cooling, distilling, coalescing…) until something extraordinary happens. The remarkable result of alchemical experimentation is the transformation of a dark heavy substance (prima materia, like lead or feces) into a substance of great value (usually gold), or into a potion with special properties, perhaps an elixir of immortality. Alchemy breaks the rules of our predictable lives, and, metaphorically at least, shows us that true value may be found in unlikely places when various elements (people, circumstances, natural forces, chemical compounds) combine to become more than the sum of their parts. When these components come together in the right way, even time itself can be suspended or reshaped so that, in a sense, we might live forever. 

Dreams experiment with these same elements, stretching the bounds of what we believe is possible and offering us infinite abundance, while reminding us that authentic treasures are not to be kept, but to be shared and passed on as wisdom. Here is one such dream:

The Dalai Lama’s dearest friend is dead. He weeps openly. I’m escorting him through the crowd of mourners. He needs to return home, to sleep, but he’s barefoot and there’s snow on the ground. I intend to go get a car to drive him, but I realize that he has become a small, crying child. I can’t leave him alone, so I must carry him. As I lift him, he transforms—becoming an infant, then an adult corpse stiff with rigor mortis, then both simultaneously. I have difficulty carrying him, so I drop all my personal belongings and devote myself to the task completely. 

Later, alone, I’m standing in line for the bathroom. The Dalai Lama as a tall young man emerges from the crowd with his retainers. He’s reserved and distracted. I don’t expect him to recognize me. But then I feel his hand on my arm. He asks me to get him a snack—a packet of cookies—from a nearby bakery counter. I get the cookies; he thanks me. This seems to complete the process I began by carrying him earlier. I feel deeply honored to have had a small part in the reincarnation of a holy one.

(I wake from this dream in awe, wondering whether the Dalai Lama has actually died. Outside in the dark, it begins to rain—a downpour—the wind blows hard, the wind chimes ring. There’s lightning, thunder. It’s magical. I return to sleep and the dream continues…)

Now I’m indoors and the whole building fills with people: the Dalai Lama’s entourage, plus a crowd of followers, gathering for the closing ceremony of his visit. A woman from his inner circle brings me a gift. It’s a carafe filled with a thick, yeasty liquid that looks like sourdough starter, with a thin red ribbon tied around the neck of the carafe. She hands the potion to me, saying that it is “for you”—but when I ask if I’m really supposed to keep it, she says “no.” I try to give it back, but she won’t take it, repeating that it’s “for you.” I ask, “Is it mine?” and again she says “no,” but won’t take it back. She leaves. I’m bewildered about what to do with the gift. Holly [my partner] explains that it must be like yeast: we should take some of what I’ve been given and add flour and water so it will grow. Then I can return the original carafe and keep growing more. I can’t “keep it” for myself, but I must “keep it alive.”

For me, the Dalai Lama represents profound wisdom and extraordinary leadership, manifested through an authentic, gracious, humble human being. He is said to be the reincarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion (Avalokiteshvara/ Kwan Yin/ Chenrezig). Having passed through many forms, suffered death and rebirth over and over, the bodhisattva returns endlessly, serves willingly, until all beings can come to full awakening. In my dream, I find myself in the role of literally carrying this awesome loving presence through the transformations of a lifetime. Perhaps this is the true meaning behind all of our lives: we are part of a lineage, carrying forward the awakened potential that is our inheritance, manifesting that potential through all of our actions in this world.

The compassionate grief that the Dalai Lama feels for his friend, and the sense of tender responsibility I feel for the barefoot, crying child provide the energy, the life force, the fire that sets the crucible boiling and makes birth and death and rebirth unfold. The passage of a lifetime is both a difficult task, and a mutual dance of love and blessing.

The dream becomes more ordinary when the Dalai Lama is a young man preoccupied with his responsibilities, and I am just another person waiting my turn to tend to my own physical needs and ablutions. What’s asked of me here is simple: to provide a snack for someone I respect, to offer him a respite in the midst of his daily business. Nothing more is required, yet the “cookies” I offer are a kind of sacrament. The Dalai Lama accepts them matter-of-factly, yet there’s a tacit acknowledgement that the very ordinariness of the gesture has confirmed my part in the whole miracle of compassionate love, passed from one person to another.

I awaken briefly to experience the wonder of the natural world, to participate in it just as I have been participating in the miraculous dream world. Rain, thunder, lightning, wind, windchimes… The music of the spheres, the bubbling of alchemical potions and preparations, the transformation of lifetimes, all offered up as easily as a midnight storm passing through—as I slip back into sleep and return to the dream.

As always, the reward for service to others is ambiguous, and invites new questions, offers new challenges to learn, share and change. The red ribbon around the neck of the carafe is like the red thread that people of many faiths wear as a bracelet, as a reminder of our life-blood and the circular, braided path of our interconnectedness. And what about the liquid inside the carafe? What is this frothy stuff that’s been given into my care? It’s “for me,” but not “mine.” It’s “to keep alive,” but not “to keep.” It’s my very life, and its only value lies in allowing it to develop, to expand, to provide for others, to return to the giver with gratitude but still have plenty left to pass on. What a dream this is! It’s the loaves and fishes, it’s the circle of life, it’s every cliché that conceals a real truth. With such yeasty stuff, we bake the bread of heaven, each tearing off a warm, crusty piece as it’s passed around. 

The alchemy of the dream completes itself when the dream is shared. The ordinary becomes extraordinary; the finite becomes infinite. Indeed, the elixir of immortality can be concocted through the deep work of dreaming.

[This article was originally published in the Spring, 2019 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]

Dream Alchemy

February 6, 2023 /

[Welcome back to Compass Dreamwork! After a three year sabbatical, I’m finally emerging from hibernation, blinking in the sunlight, ready to reconnect. It’s been a difficult time for many of us, and it’s good to return to my dreaming community, to share ideas and, I hope, hear from some of you as well. Instead of writing a regular blog, I’ll be opening up the conversation by posting articles each month that were originally published in my “Dream Alchemy” column for DreamTime magazine. If you’re a member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, you might have seen the column, but if not, the articles will be new to you. From time to time, I’ll be sharing other essays and excerpts from various projects I’m working on. I hope you enjoy reading what I’ve written, and I invite your comments. ]

Each night as we sleep, the caldron begins to bubble. Unremarkable raw materials, mixed with infinitesimal droplets of mysterious tinctures, get cooked down to their essential elements. A cleansing steam rises as the impurities are filtered out, and the elements interact in new combinations—sizzling, sparking, shrinking and expanding, changing color. The pungent catalyst of emotion sets off a chemical reaction. Images appear in the drifting smoke. Occasionally, something explodes. Sometimes we have to discard the burnt sludge at the bottom of the beaker and begin again, but often there’s a glimmer of gold. Deep transformation can emerge unexpectedly from the chaotic process of dream creativity, rewarding us with bright insights and alchemical treasures: precious metals, the Philosopher’s Stone, the Universal Solvent, or even the Elixir of Immortality. When we begin to experiment with our dreams, we discover that anything is possible.

As we dream, a strange concoction is created. Whether we see this concoction as a psychological experience, a neurological event, a profound message, or an encounter with other worlds, our dreams represent a dynamic aspect of our lives that can inspire us to experiment. As we explore our dreams, we find ourselves delving into the vital essence of our perceptions, our choices, our beliefs, our relationships, our environment. Dreams are strange. They give us plenty of raw materials, but it’s up to us to simmer, stir, titrate, distill and filter those materials, using our tools and skills to realize their potential. We really don’t know what we’re doing when we’re dreaming, but if we bring curiosity and courage to our dream experiences, we can find authentic valuables in this process of alchemical investigation. 

I’m calling this column “Dream Alchemy” because both alchemy and dreamwork have to do with finding meaning and life in a transformative process that includes everything: the worst and the best, the mundane and the miraculous, the corporeal and the ineffable. I’ll be exploring dreams from a wide variety of perspectives, applying what I’ve learned from others and what I’ve discovered through my own alchemical investigations and life experiences.

Because of my particular background and inclinations, I’ll be emphasizing certain aspects of dreams and dreamwork. As a dream alchemist, my apparatus includes: 

1) Working with dreams about death, and particularly the kinds of dreams we have when we are ill, grieving, aging or experiencing big life transitions and thresholds. I’ve been exploring my own death dreams, and studying death dreams in hospice chaplaincy, pastoral care and spiritual direction contexts for many years, and they seem to represent a concentrated quintessence of change and renewal. 

2) Working especially with unpleasant dreams, difficult dreams and nightmares, because they invite the alchemy of transforming heavy, dark substances like lead (or feces) into gold. 

3) Finding meaningful ways that dreams can change the world—exploring the implications of dreamwork as a personal task or quest that can be part of a larger, universal task or quest. The metaphor of dreamwork as pilgrimage is especially significant for me, and I want to explore how the dream-pilgrimage of an individual lifetime reflects and contributes to the shared journey of all living beings, the whole earth, the cosmos. 

4) I’ve been a student of world mythologies all my life, because they express central human existential concerns: the nature and origins of our existence, consciousness, identity, reality. Mythologies and dreams are manifestations of our longing for the Philosopher’s Stone, our endless search for meaning, which can be conveyed as story, rich with metaphor, paradox and mystery.

5) Fun and creativity! I love turning dreams (and waking life) upside down and inside out, like an alchemist messing about with ingredients, stirring up and sometimes exploding the “stuff” of our waking and dreaming experiences so that new and surprising substances can come into being.

There’s a lot of dream alchemy ahead in this column… so, watch this space! 

Here’s a dream, to play with:

Giving Away the Marble: An older, wiser woman has a lot of wonderful small objects: marbles of all kinds and tiny stone animals of all species. I get to keep a few of them, and I’m trying to choose. A man with a toddler is nearby—I offer the boy a little giraffe (now a stuffed toy rather than stone) and a clear marble that reflects everything upside-down. He accepts the giraffe, but ignores the marble. I roll the marble on the floor, and it becomes much larger, the size of an earth globe. It is mostly clear, a slightly irregular glass sphere with sparkling lights in it. I pick it up (it’s heavy!) and feel its shape—finding it beautiful. Now, the man would like to have it, but I would like to keep it. I decide to give it to him.

Alchemical transformations occur in this dream: the stone giraffe becomes a stuffed toy; the marble, when rolled on the ground, becomes a sparkling glass globe; my desire to keep these treasures becomes a willingness to give them away. Gifts are passed on from generation to generation as the old, wise woman gives them to me, and I give them to the small boy and his young father. 

What are these gifts? They are simple, toy-like, and “wonderful”—the kinds of gifts we all need to inspire our growth and development. The child accepts a giraffe—an awkward yet graceful creature with a long neck, reaching for the heights—just as this child will eventually, inevitably, grow into the longing aspirations and awkward grace of adolescence. Instead of a hard stone animal, this giraffe has become a soft toy, supple and comforting. 

I’m a woman in late middle-age, so the gifts I choose (marble and giraffe) represent things that I can appreciate but know I can’t really keep. I recognize that the child should have the chance to choose, too. The marble is still mine for now—the spherical glass jewel that reflects everything within it upside-down… but then I roll it on the ground, on the earth, and it grows into an entire globe-like world, slightly irregular, imperfect, but full of sparkling light. It is heavy, too heavy for one person to carry forever. Even Atlas had difficulty carrying the whole earth; I can’t carry it for long. Much as I’d like to hold onto my important role of bearing the weight of this beautiful world, I recognize that the next generation needs to receive it from me. And so I give it away, just as I gave away the giraffe. Maybe now I’ve become the wise old woman myself, passing on the blessings I have in abundance.

The shifting shapes of our dreams give their gifts freely, playfully, to the holy alchemical fire that will transform them. We grow, age, choose, offer, receive. Let’s explore the transformative power of our dreams together, sharing the gold that results from our experimentation. I’ll be looking forward to the expanding possibilities of this column, and the dream-alchemy we can create together. 

[This article was originally published in the Winter, 2019 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]

Changes in Compass Dreamwork

January 31, 2020 /

Everything is always changing, and that’s good, of course—but also often sad. Without change, there would be stagnation and death, but where there’s change, there are endings as well as new beginnings.

A lot of clichés! Admittedly, I’m stalling here. It’s hard to write this, but I won’t be maintaining the Compass Dreamwork blog on a regular basis any longer. We’ve been dreaming together in this blog for seven years now, and seven years marks a completed cycle. I’ve begun to repeat myself, so it’s time to pause… look around… listen…

I don’t yet know what’s coming next. If you enjoy reading my work, there will still be occasional posts coming through on Compass Dreamwork: maybe some surprise blog articles from time to time, and some reprints of articles published elsewhere. There’s also a huge archive here on the site (if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you can browse through the “Categories” menu and pick posts on any topic you choose). And, of course, I’d love to have you read (or perhaps re-read?) my book, Just Walk.

Among the potential projects I’m considering is a sequel to Just Walk… called Just Wait. Also, a book on dreams is brewing. However, my biggest project, for now, is just waiting, just dreaming. I’ve made a commitment not to let myself become busy. It’s time for spaciousnes and patience, time to breathe, to live.

Wishing you all the time you need in your life, too.

Thank you, for the ways that you have nurtured my work —your reading, your insights, your comments and questions. I trust that the community we’ve made together will continue, in new ways. I’ll be in touch with you, when the time is right.

Just Walking: A Gift For The Journey

December 1, 2019 /
click on the photo to find the book

If you’re anything like me, you’d like to give meaningful gifts, but also feel bombarded by advertising, sick of shopping, and reluctant to add to the clutter that tends to accumulate in all of our lives. I hope that suggesting a good book will not add to your seasonal stress. Some gifts can be worthwhile, and I really believe that Just Walk is one of those gifts, especially if it’s chosen with the right person in mind.

If you have a friend or family member who is coping with illness, aging, discouragement or uncertainty, who is approaching new possibilities or seeking creative change in their lives, please consider giving them a copy of Just Walk: Following the Camino All the Way Home. It’s a very intimate journey that is also universal, following a traditional pilgrimage route on the Camino de Santiago, and a parallel pilgrimage through illness.

The book has been used by book groups and classes, and for daily readings during personal retreats. Couples have read it aloud to each other, and solitary people have read it to themselves for companionship in a crisis. If you are looking for a meaningful gift, for a loved one or for yourself, I hope you’ll read a few pages and see if Just Walk is what you’re looking for.

Here are a few of the things that others have shared about the book:

 I have been very sick for several weeks and… what kept me going was being able to savor your amazing book while I lay in bed. Not only was/is it a riveting story, but the telling of it was so artfully done. I love the way you would go back and forth between the pilgrimage in Spain and the one you’ve been presently on since coming home. Your setting up the scenes was just right to let me feel like I was there close by. Now I understand better why you are such an inspiration, your strength, endurance, but also how well you share from your depths… 

A.D.

I was thinking that it would be so wonderful if all those we love could write such a book that could take us inside each other’s journeys. Such a gift, such a joy! I look forward to it each day.

M.H.

We finished “Just Walk” this morning. We’ve been reading a little each day since we got the book. I wept through the last page–a perfect ending to your pilgrimage story (though, as you said, the story continues.) We are both grateful to you for writing the book, for all it has given us in the way of insight, strength, acceptance, humor, and all the other good things of life.

K.O. & T.H.

[Click on the photo to find the book…]

Keep Dreaming

November 19, 2019 /

Lately, I’m hearing (and sometimes feeling) a lot of discouragement, anxiety, and even cynicism about the prospects for our future survival on this earth. People are saying that it’s too late—climate change will destroy the home we share with so many other precious beings, and there’s nothing we can do about it. This seems to be true, and yet…

There’s always something we can do. Maybe we don’t have the super-powers that would be required to turn the world around, but we can create positive change, and positive change spreads just as powerfully as negative change. It’s hard to remember this when I’m feeling scared and sad, however. What I can remember much more easily is what I’m still able to experience right here and now, on this magnificently beautiful planet filled with abundant life and possibility.

When I look around me, I appreciate that, although there’s plenty to be concerned about, the earth is still a wonderland. On my daily walks in city parks or neighborhoods, I can see healthy beeches, oaks, cedars and  sequoias; wrens and herons and sapsuckers; turtles, squirrels and owls; grapevines and marigolds and crabapples. I can see water flowing over stones, autumn leaves blowing along the path, sunlight and shadow shifting as the day progresses. I breathe it all in, and remember that most of the glorious life we’re afraid of losing is actually still here, right now, all around us. Appreciating the natural world, recognizing how blessed we are to be a part of it… This is what we can do.

Savoring abundant and glorious life may be more vital than anything else we can do, and it’s certainly more important than reminding ourselves of all the things we can’t do. If people had been appreciating this earth all along, we wouldn’t have done all the terrible damage we’ve done. If every living person appreciated the earth fully right now, positive change would happen naturally and inevitably. There would be solutions. But, even if it wouldn’t change the future at all, it would be still be meaningful to savor what’s here in the present. Breathe it in. Love it. Don’t waste this gift!

My personal, physical resources have been at low ebb since my spinal surgery last May, but as the tide slowly begins to turn and my strength slowly begins to return, I don’t want to lose the increased appreciation I’ve gained during these months of healing struggle. Not knowing whether or not I will ever heal fully has made me pay attention to every small delight that I might otherwise take for granted. I recognize now that walking outdoors—feeling my own body alive in the open air, surrounded by other living beings—is sheer bliss, even when I can only walk for a few exhausting blocks. I want to remember that every moment can be filled with sensations, with connections, with surprises, with spaciousness. When I’ve been most afraid of pain or loss, I’ve also been most aware of how much I have to lose, how much there is to love about this life. I believe this is the kind of caring attention we must bring to our planet, and to all of our relationships with others. It is also the fundamental approach we should take to our dreaming lives as well as our waking lives.

Before we start worrying about what a dream means, or what we should be doing about it, we need to ask ourselves how it feels. We need to appreciate the undiluted experience of the dream, just as we need to appreciate the experience of the world around us. If we appreciate fully, we will naturally respond, naturally learn and grow in relation to the dream or to the world, and we will naturally see and feel what the dream has to offer and the possibilities that are open to us. On the other hand, if we sum up the dream with definitive interpretations or quick fixes, the dream will lose all real meaning. We’ll end up feeling helpless, or doing harm inadvertently, if we don’t first connect with that which is already meaningful in its very essence. 

The dream world, like the waking world, is not always easy to savor, of course. There are industrial wastelands—brutal, empty, ugly places in dreams or nightmares, just as in “real life.” As I work toward healing, my own dreams often feel desolate, even horrifying. But, the desolation, too, must be fully experienced, even savored, before meaning can be made of it. Such a poignant contrast between the grim “reality” of an ugly dream and the glimmers of beauty I can still remember, and still sense just beneath the surface! Feeling the intensity of the contrast compels me toward the light. If I dig deep in the dark, I find the splitting seed of a sunflower, a pale green sprout spiraling upward. If I allow myself to feel the sadness, the suffering, the uselessness and helplessness of a harsh dream, I discover the vitality of my own urgent longing and love for life itself—the longing that Dylan Thomas described as “the spark that through the green fuse drives the flower.”

I dream of a world that is made up of everything—an utterly wild, yet strangely familiar place where I am not in charge of what happens, yet not entirely helpless either. My best response to this chaotic and contradictory dreamworld (which we all inhabit, awake or asleep) is to surrender my plans and my explanations and just listen, appreciate, savor the exquisite uncertainty, and keep dreaming.

Bowing To One Another

October 15, 2019 /
Click on the photo for “Bowing to One Another”

I don’t have a new blog post this month, since I’m still healing and taking time for reflection before writing more. Instead, I’d like to share an article about vulnerability that I wrote for Presence magazine. Presence is published by Spiritual Directors International, so this article is specifically connected with my work as a spiritual director (which includes working with dreams)—but the larger theme of relationship and authenticity is certainly applicable to other contexts.

“Bowing to One Another” was written over a year ago, and although I was coping with illness and loss at the time, my understanding of vulnerability was still developing. Then, my central consideration was how vulnerable I should allow myself to be with other people, particularly with clients. By the time the article appeared in print last June, however, I had gone through major surgery and a month-long hospitalization, and vulnerability meant something quite different to me. I’m now learning about a more profound level of vulnerability, which has little to do with allowing or choosing.

So far, I’m not really ready to write about this deeper sense of vulnerability—perhaps because it must be fully experienced (willingly or unwillingly) alone, before it can be shared. But, eventually, this, too, is an experience I hope to be able to explore with you in a meaningful way. In the meantime, please join me in contemplating the essential, preliminary question that I posed in writing this article: What does it mean to be vulnerable with one another—in our work, and in all of our relationships?

[Click on the photo for the article]

Noninterference In Healing And Dreamwork

September 17, 2019 /

The body’s capacity for healing amazes me. As I slowly recover from my spinal surgery (I had surgery on May 1st), I’m more and more aware that my primary task is not to help the healing along, but to trust that healing is happening, sometimes even in spite of my interference. 

My first experience of myself after surgery was of shocking physical damage. There was a puckered ten-inch incision down my back, held together with staples. There was a raw four-inch incision across my throat, held together with glue. Ten vertebrae in my upper spinal column had been pulled apart, rearranged, and bolted back together. Nerves and muscles and blood vessels in my neck and back had been severed. I couldn’t reposition myself in bed, turn my head, swallow properly or manage my own beleaguered senses. My heart sputtered under the strain, and I felt so sick, feeble and disoriented that I really couldn’t imagine ever being whole and strong again. 

Yet, almost immediately, the healing began. Soon, the wounds in my back and throat became neat seams. The chaotic sensory panic signals found a tentative rhythm, so my body’s communication became comprehensible again. Each day I felt better as I relaxed my ineffectual instinct to struggle against this experience. My body had been overwhelmed, but my body knew how to heal. All I could really do was cooperate, bear witness, and rest.

Before the surgery, with the progression of my neuro-muscular disease, it was almost impossible to believe in healing. No matter what I did or didn’t do, the symptoms steadily worsened. Yet healing was happening even then. Sometimes healing can be an increasingly profound spiral downward into the unknown, even into death. Or sometimes things just have to get worse before they can get better, and that’s how it was for me. The disease intensified to the tipping point, against my will, but in the post-surgical wreckage of my body, healing began to show itself as naturally as a green shoot breaking through rubble. Now, it seems to be growing easily in me. I’m not approaching death (not yet)—I’m relaxing into possibility. 

Five months after surgery, all of my current symptoms can be seen as forms of healing in themselves. The inflammation that causes me pain is actually promoting bone growth in my spine. My weakness and lethargy are my body’s call for patience; I truly need the rest that this fatigue imposes. My heart’s arrhythmias slow me down, because it’s good for me to go slowly. 

I’m not making this happen. Healing resists my interference. But noninterference can be active; it certainly doesn’t mean apathy. I’m fully engaged in recovery, and my noninterference includes caring deeply, using all of my senses to discern what to do and what not to do, how to nurture the green shoot of the moment as it spirals upward. 

I have a strong preference for long-term survival and physical well-being, of course—but ultimately it’s not up to me. Ultimately, I will die, even the earth will die, and when the time comes, it could be a kind of healing, a not-yet-conceivable transformation. However, as long as I’m alive, healing must include appreciation, and participation in the life force that sustains my body and the earth. Interference is always a lack of appreciation, a lack of respect which creates distortions in natural cycles and developmental processes that would otherwise resolve themselves in balance over time.

Dreams are healing processes, and good dreamwork is also about noninterference. I don’t think there can be any effective prescriptions for interpreting dreams, just as I don’t think there’s any medication or surgery that will “fix” my body permanently, or any intervention that will “fix” our planet. Dreamwork is a fluid process, not a “fixed” method. Dreams move in the direction of healing and wholeness—but the key word I’m using here is move. All healthy processes are changing, moving. “Fixing” invariably means interfering by interrupting that movement. 

If I claim that certain dream images always symbolize certain things, or that a dream’s meaning can be found only according to a particular method, or that there is only one correct meaning to be found in a dream, then I am interfering with the momentum that makes the dream what it is. A dream is a changing, unfolding, un-pin-downable experience. We can’t “fix” it or define it without violating its wholeness and preventing its potential. Yet dreamwork through noninterferenceinvites engagement, commitment, and patience with our own unknowing. 

As I heal, I’m being invited to trust. I’m being invited to enjoy my life, with all of its discomforts and upheavals, and even with the inevitable unknown potential of its ending. As I explore dreams, I’m being invited to enjoy the sometimes disturbing and confusing impressions that those dreams make when they break through the rocky soil of my life and grow wild, escaping my understanding. I can nurture the green sprouts of healing possibilities, through trust and appreciation, without interfering at all.

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Kerry Backstrom

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“In my view, dreams are much more accurately described as experiences—that is, conscious events one has personally encountered.... We live through our dreams as much as our waking lives.”
-Stephen LaBerge

“Perhaps, in the end, there are no dreams intrinsically more healing than those that demonstrate that our separation is an illusion; that we are part of a living web that extends beyond our own skin and skull.”
-Marc Ian Barasch

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