Experiences with psychedelics are often described as “dream-like.” Is it really accurate to compare psychedelics and dreams? The short answer is “yes,” but the longer answer is “It depends what kinds of psychedelics and who is taking them, what kinds of dreams and who is dreaming them, and how you understand yourself and your world.” If you come from a culture that views consciousness-altering medicines and dreams as having legitimate potential for healing and exploration, then although the content of these experiences may differ, you are likely to respond to them and learn from them in similarly respectful ways. If you come from a culture that sees “hallucinogenic substances” as criminal or morally suspect, and dreams as silly or meaningless, then you may have negative assumptions about either kind of experience that make comparisons irrelevant. If you are just curious, and basing your comparison on objective content and results, you’ll probably find that some psychedelic experiences seem very similar to some dreams. Does that answer the question? No? Well, not getting a definite answer is quite consistent with both dreams and psychedelics, because they just don’t fit neatly into the practical categories that our everyday life has to offer (in current Western cultures, anyway). Ultimately, the best responses to the big questions that make life meaningful could be an open mind and the capacity to be comfortable with uncertainty. Both dreams and psychedelics are more about creativity and possibility than about coming to conclusions. Perhaps the biggest thing they have in common is that we don’t know exactly how “real” they really are, because they encourage us to question our usual assumptions about the nature of reality.
Still, we can make some broad comparisons, so let’s give it a try. Lately, the idea that both dreams and psychedelics have value is becoming more mainstream, even in parts of the world where value is defined only as that which can be demonstrated by officially sanctioned experts and methods. Within the constraints of that definition, some aspects of even the most indescribable experiences can be measured and studied. For example, a lot of excellent research has been done on what happens in the brain during a dream or psychedelic experience, and a variety of conclusions have been drawn from these data, as well as from well-documented subjective accounts. Some of the potential healing properties of psychedelics, and the essential roles of sleep and dreams in our mental and physical health have been fairly conclusively established. The experts are finding ways to prove what personal experiments and insights have been indicating all along.
I won’t try to summarize the research here, but, will just mention a few generally accepted ideas (which will probably not surprise anyone). The evidence suggests that classic psychedelics like psilocybin and LSD stimulate the brain to produce imagery and utilize memory in fresh ways, which can contribute to creative breakthroughs; the same is true of vivid dreams. Substances like MDMA (“ecstasy”) can increase our sensitivity to others, and, similarly, dreams can help develop our social and emotional intelligence. Ketamine, ayahuasca, and the medicines already mentioned have a tendency to bring significant shifts in perspective—a sense that life is much larger and stranger than we had imagined—and dreams can bring about such experiences of mystery and awe as well. Both psychedelics and dreams can also take us to, and through, places that are painful and difficult, which can help transform trauma into life-giving learning, often more successfully and with far fewer side effects than typical allopathic medications or most psychotherapeutic approaches.
My own perspective is very personal here, because ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) has played a significant role in my own healing process from PTSD. Dreamwork and KAP have been complementary for me, working together like two helping hands reaching deep into my life. Even though dreams and psychedelic experiences are internal, they aren’t isolating; they suggest that our exclusive identification with separateness is only superficial, and they can facilitate a deeper sense of connection. Dreams can reveal insights pertinent to communities as well as individuals, and, traditionally, many kinds of psychedelic “plant medicines” have been shared in sacred ceremony for collective benefit.
The importance of “set and setting” in psychedelic use is fundamental, and psychedelics are much more likely to be helpful as a healing catalyst if accompanied by integration with a skilled guide. This can also be true of dreamwork when the dreamer is in need of support and the dream content is intense. Although we are all more familiar with dreaming than we are likely to be with any psychedelic, and we are generally able to relate to our dream experiences on our own, when we have nightmares or “Big” dreams it’s certainly helpful to have a friend, family member or dream group at hand to hear about where we’ve been and how the experience has changed us.
Although others sometimes describe the content of their ketamine experiences as dreamlike, this wasn’t the case for me. At very high doses, ketamine is an anesthetic used in many medical procedures, and at sub-anesthetic levels it’s a strong psychedelic (characterized by intense out-of-body experiences), and “psycholytic” (characterized by relaxation, sometimes euphoria)—but it is not especially known for visual imagery like in dreams or classic psychedelics. With ketamine, I had tremendous, indescribable, altered-state experiences, followed by a gradual return to “normal” awareness during which there were impressions of memories and dreams—but it wasn’t like dreaming exactly, more like hypnagogic snapshots. This “you had to be there” kind of description is pretty typical of psychedelics, and makes those trying to convey what happened sound rather foolish! That’s the way it often is with dreams, too. We can talk about these things, or around these things, but we can’t convey the experiences as we actually experienced them, and we can’t make precise comparisons between one experience and another. I don’t know for sure that my dreams even remotely resemble yours. In fact, every one of my own dreams, and each of my KAP experiences, has been unique—and to some extent incomparable.
Finally, my own view is that we don’t need to conclude our questioning with answers. Integration, for me, means living with the effects of my experiences, with dreams or psychedelics (or anything, really). I define the experience by how it changes the ways I perceive, interpret, and respond to everyday events. Determining the impact and value of profound experiences means asking questions like: Does it seem that I have more choices? Am I kinder to myself and those around me? When I feel myself sliding into old patterns, am I able to notice what’s happening and change direction? I can answer “yes” to all of these questions, always remembering that life is a work-in-progress. When we have experiences that take us outside of our everyday, waking reality, it’s important to pay attention, and less important to know exactly what’s going on and what we should do with it. Dreams and psychedelics open the mind, and we can apply that open-mindedness to the challenges we’re all bound to encounter as we live our lives.
One final note for those of us dedicated to dreams. A significant difference between psychedelics and dreaming is that psychedelics are for “special” circumstances and take us beyond our everyday lives, while dreams, even when they are truly extraordinary, tend to be closer to home. It’s good to know that psychedelics could become more accessible, because a journey into a distant wilderness can be a wondrous adventure, but it’s also good to know that we can have wondrous adventures in our own backyards, by giving our respectful attention to the dreams we are having all the time.
[This article was originally published in in the Spring, 2024 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]
[This essay first appeared in the Winter 2023 Special Issue of Passager Journal. It’s written in a longer format than my usual posts, so please take your time reading it. Although it is not about dreams, I wanted to include it here, because it relates to the many posts I’ve written about how trauma, grief, and other kinds of life-changing events can influence our dreams.
“Walking Around the Block” is a very personal take on how trauma may come to us not only through our own personal experiences, but also through the experiences of others in the past, and through the conditions of the world in which we live. These kinds of traumas are what IFS (the Internal Family Systems model of psychotherapy) calls “legacy burdens.” Legacy burdens are burdens that are not intrinsic to our own psyche, but instead are inherited from our ancestors, our culture, and the society that surrounds us. We are all affected by legacy burdens, and such burdens appear in our dreams as well, which may become a topic for a future post. In the meantime, I’m including this essay here, because I believe it is vital that we all consider just how much we affect one another. We suffer together, and potentially heal together, so we all need to consider our impact on future generations and on the world we’re inhabiting right now, for better or worse.
While some of the images at the beginning of the essay may be triggering for some people (and if you need to stop reading, definitely do so!), please know that this story moves toward resolving the harm that such harsh images can stir up. I believe it’s essential that, whenever we are courageous enough to let ourselves be stirred, it is vital that we keep walking until we come all the way through the experience and into a new place. And, when we walk in courage and vulnerability, it is best that we do it together.]
Seven years before I was born, my parents had a ghastly car accident. They were on the freeway, on the way to a wedding; my dad was driving when a tire blew out. He lost control of the car, which skidded across the median strip into oncoming traffic and was then struck and spun and finally crushed “like an accordion” (my mom told this story so many times that I’ve memorized the phrases she habitually used). Fortunately, my parents were not wearing seatbelts, so they were thrown clear, probably through the windshield, at some point before the front seats were obliterated. Dozens of cars were involved in the pile-up, but theirs were the only serious injuries. Both were “given up for dead” at the scene.
I know exactly what that scene looked like, not only because of my graphic imagination, but because there are large glossy black-and-white (thank god) photos of it. These gruesome photos were shot by “an ambulance chaser” who sold them to my parents later, so that their lawyers could extract evidence of the cause of the crash. When I was a kid, the photos resided in the attic where my sisters and I, exploring, would periodically dig them up and bring them downstairs, so we could ask my mother to walk us through the story once again. Hearing it was both horrifying and oddly reassuring. I knew that my parents would ultimately come through, and that the happily-ever-after conclusion was my own eventual birth—my whole existence, in fact. The appeal of the story seemed to be the same for my sisters, and even, perhaps, for my mother who was always willing to tell it, as if the telling made her believe in her own survival.
Between the story and the photos, we’d all get pretty buzzed on adrenaline. I remember my hands and feet tingling, my lips going numb, my throat getting tight; I remember a weirdly ecstatic light-headedness. (I can remember this vividly, because as I write about it now, I’m feeling a lesser version of that same buzz.) When my mom died over sixty years after “the Accident,” my sister mailed me a big box of her possessions which included those photos. And when I went through them, telling my partner Holly the story just as my mom had told it, I felt the same symptoms, the same odd ecstasy—and afterward, a headache, nausea, and a shimmering anxiety I couldn’t shake off for several days. I haven’t opened the envelope of photos since; they live in a box at the back of a closet, or maybe in the garage. I don’t need to go looking for them.
Anyway, I know what they show. The smashed car, the debris scattered on the pavement, the blur of people being helpful or getting in the way (the police hadn’t arrived yet). My parents are the only ones not moving, not blurry. My mother is that gray, human-shaped mound on the road shoulder, with a blanket or tarp from the trunk of somebody’s car drawn up covering her face. She told us that “most of the bones in her body” were broken (not actually “most,” but many: both collarbones, one leg, a hip, several ribs), and she was badly concussed. She remained unconscious until she “woke up in the ambulance with a mouth full of teeth.” My boyish-looking dad sits slumped like a broken puppet with a stained jacket, too big for him, around his shoulders, and a spill of black blood all down the front of his white t-shirt. He had a concussion like my mother, plus a broken toe, a sprained back, and a shattered jaw. The blood came from his jugular vein; his throat had been sliced open by a large shard of glass. He would have died within minutes, except for the miracle that there happened to be a surgeon stuck in the ensuing traffic jam who happened to have a clamp in his medical bag. I don’t know whether the photo was taken while my dad was bleeding out, or just after the bleeding stopped. His expression is dazed and faraway, as if he’s watching himself die, but from a distance.
My sisters and I would gape at the closeness of this close encounter with death, and stare at my bloody young father, my covered-up mother. We passed the photos around with shaky hands. According to my mom, my dad could remember the whole Accident, though he rarely talked about it; she herself only remembered fragments, in flashbacks, much later. He remembered losing control of the car, shouting her name, and then overhearing someone at the scene who gestured toward her body, saying, “this one’s dead.” In the hospital afterward, Dad had to be brought to her bedside in a wheelchair again and again, because he couldn’t be convinced that she was alive. Her actual, living face was less persuasive than the mental image of her dead one. I know it was cathartic for Mom to tell us the story, but it probably left her feeling shaky, too.
Where was I going with this? Oh, yes. My own inheritance from my parents’ Accident was a heady mix of strong emotions and vivid mental images leading to some false conclusions that have remained extraordinarily tenacious. Although I know better, I somehow still believe that my own body went through that Accident, or at least that I am doomed to play out versions of it in my own life, to revisit it again and again. I anticipate horrors around every corner. An accidental blow-out on a sunny summer day can suddenly lead to a catastrophic, whirling loss of control, and a devastating, black-and-white still shot of chaos. Of course, while accidents do happen and change is always happening, crushing crashes are certainly not inevitable. Maybe I’ll eventually persuade myself.
The biggest inheritance I’ve received from the Accident, however, actually adds something to my life rather than taking something away, even though it makes life feel precarious. (I notice that the words “precious” and “precarious” only differ by two letters.) Because of my parents’ story, I know, truly, that I might never have been born. And so I also know that having been born is something. Having been born is not irrelevant, not to be taken for granted, not incidental or accidental.
For the past three years, I’ve been trying to live with—and learn from—the horrors of my own post-traumatic stress disorder following a major spinal surgery that set off a landslide of crises and losses for me personally in a world where crises and losses are everywhere. My PTSD didn’t just come from the surgery, of course. The condition that’s called PTSD rarely if ever develops from a single catastrophic personal trauma. In my case, there had been a degenerative neuromuscular disease, and a series of smaller nightmares leading up to the surgery. No trauma really exists in isolation, since anyone who experiences anything will have a previous history of other experiences, which will predispose that person to be more or less susceptible to being harmed by whatever is happening now.
I’m not alone in my trauma history. There are always repercussions from anything that happens to anyone, and the cumulative cause-and-effect can be passed on through generations, which means that not only do we gather more and more burdens as we age, we also inherit whatever was too heavy for our parents to carry, especially if their own parents left them a back-breaking load. The good news is that when we manage, somehow, to lay down (and learn from) our own individual burdens, we protect our descendants, and the people around us, from inheriting our pain. We might even resolve the unfinished business of our ancestors simply by not perpetuating it. Of course, this works laterally as well: we all influence each other, whether we’re family or not. But parents’ trauma histories do have a particularly high impact on how their children’s traumas will play out.
After weeks in the hospital, my own parents were released into the care of my mother’s parents. It was not a healthy arrangement. My grandmother was disapproving; she nursed a heartbroken conviction that both of my parents were going to hell since they’d renounced their evangelical upbringing, and her grim, reproachful, sorrowing silences were impossible to ignore. Meanwhile, my awful grandfather baited and shamed my father again and again with the “just joking” suggestion that he had “fallen asleep at the wheel.”
My parents could not work, could not drive, could not pay rent, and so could not leave my grandparents’ house. They couldn’t have a private conversation or even touch each other for weeks, since it was a small house and they had to sleep separately in the living room (my mom on a couch, my dad—whose back didn’t allow him to lie flat—in an armchair) just outside my grandparents’ open bedroom door. I don’t know what burdens of their own might have made my mother’s parents as unhelpful as they were, but the broken connections implicit in the conflicts and confinement of this arrangement were almost as traumatic for my mom and dad as The Accident itself. Here, in one small house, were parents and adult children harming each other, passing their traumatic histories back and forth, deepening each other’s wounds.
Retelling this familiar tale, I intended “to make a long story short…”—but it looks like I’m making a long story long. It was certainly a long story for my parents. In a sense their story never ended, and the whole point of telling it is that the Accident seemed to go on and on, like one car skidding into another all over the freeway, one impact leading to the next in my parents’ lives, and then in the lives of their daughters. I’m wondering now how such endless stories can be told differently, so that all the moving vehicles might finally come to rest. In the haze of oil smoke and exhaust, somebody will get out of their overheated, idling car, hike past the long line of stalled traffic with a medical bag in hand, and place a clamp on a vein to “stop the bleeding.”
It has taken me three days to write the last few paragraphs, to get my parents past the Accident and out of my grandparents house at last. It was several interminable weeks for them, before they were finally rescued by my other grandparents, my father’s parents, who paid the deposit and first month’s rent on a small apartment and bought them a second hand car so they’d be able to return to their jobs eventually. Even as further trouble kept coming for my parents, there were gaps in the relentlessness of their long story, where they could rest and heal.
But the relentlessness always resumed. My dad’s jaw had been wired shut during this time, so he’d been sipping his miserable meals through a straw. He was so excited when the wires could finally be removed that he indulged in a steak dinner immediately. That night, shortly after they’d moved into their own place, he woke my mother, clutching his stomach, groaning, “I’m dying.” It was an ulcer, though they didn’t know it at the time; all they knew was that they had to get him to the hospital. He was too sick to drive, and she had a cast on one leg from hip to toes and on one arm from shoulder to fingertips. They called 911, of course, but—wouldn’t you know it?—there was a minor hurricane going on at the time (at least it was a minor hurricane) and the dispatcher said there were no available ambulances.
So, my mother had no choice but to get behind the wheel. Neither of them had driven since the Accident, and these weren’t the best circumstances for restoring their confidence. With her one good leg, Mom worked the pedals, and with her one good arm, she steered. Dad, in agony in the passenger seat, shifted gears whenever she stepped on the clutch and shouted at him. The rain lashed down, the dark was impenetrable, and the gale-force winds hurled trash cans at the windshield. The main roads were closed, and every side street came to a flooded dead end. They couldn’t get the car into reverse, so she made innumerable U-turns in narrow alleys, and soon realized that there was no way they were getting to the hospital. So she gave up and drove to my grandparents’ house (not the miserable grandparents’ house, but the helpful grandparents’ house). Finally, I’m coming to the point of my story.
My helpful grandfather wasn’t particularly surprised to see them, and wasn’t particularly worried. The arrival of his frantic daughter-in-law and apparently dying son at three in the morning in a hurricane didn’t faze him. According to my mom, he just shrugged on his overcoat and said (I imagine he drawled), “Well, you know, when the horses had colic, we’d just walk them around until they got over it.” My grandfather was a Baptist minister, not a cowboy or a farmer, but he grew up in rural Sweden where everybody had horses and it was a long way to the nearest hospital, or veterinarian. He wrapped my dad in a blanket and walked him around and around the block for hours. And by the time it had gotten light, and the hurricane had blown over, and they could get my dad to the hospital and find out he had an ulcer, the crisis didn’t seem so critical after all. My dad was okay, though he didn’t eat steak for a while.
The family mythology of the Accident, accompanied by graphic images, fed an adrenaline addiction in me that the culture at large cultivates in all of us. We seem to trade in shock stocks that are always on the rise. So I came to associate the alarming, painful events depicted in those photos with being energized and alive. The quivering thrill of catastrophe is incomparable. Whether it’s experienced directly or just stimulated by a story, this perceived danger drives the autonomic nervous system to pour every bit of life force into survival, pumping us full of an energy so compelling that we cannot help but live. Afterward, we’re exhausted—almost high, but also empty. The way it’s supposed to work, once the danger is past, the body rests and returns to equilibrium, reminded by a calm environment and caring people that safety is possible, that ordinary stimulation is enough to live on. But if the danger signal gets sent again and again, then there’s no reassurance, no escape, no return to normal. There is no normal. A final burst is kept in reserve for emergencies, but after a while everything looks like an emergency and we’re constantly firing off what little we’ve got at nothing, wasting our life force on nothing. Worst of all, we become fundamentally disconnected from ourselves, and especially from all the other people who seem to have gone on without us.
Our culture sets us up for easy adrenaline addiction through violent entertainment, stressful competition, high-risk short-term pleasures. Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it all before, but we’re addicted so we don’t do anything about it, or can’t do anything about it. Maybe I believe that I’m only alive when my body’s playing out a life-or-death scenario in my imagination if not in action. But the truth is, it’s rarely life-or-death—it’s always life-and-death. Life includes small, quiet encounters with mortality all the time: something ending, giving way to something else. I could be savoring and sharing the cycles of endings and beginnings that repeat routinely but are subtly changing with each repetition.
Get this (I remind myself): I don’t have to to fight for my lifein order to bealive. In fact, the fight takes the life out of me. The less I have to fight the better off I am. Wouldn’t it be enough, just living and eventually dying, alongside our loved ones, in our own time, in our own way? Life’s not the accident or the ulcer or the hurricane; it’s not the surgery or emergency; it’s the walk around the block as the winds blow themselves out and your father tucks a blanket warmly around you, and keeps you walking until morning.
The Accident and its aftermath was horribly hard on the young people who became my parents, of course. Hearing about their trauma, I got to realize that their lives were not about me; their lives were their lives. I couldn’t help but notice that these two twenty-one year olds on the way to a wedding on a hot July day, were not “my mother” and “my father,” they were Shirley and Philip, who were not expecting to become my parents any more than they were expecting The Accident to happen to them. The Accident shaped them, but it was only part of what shaped them. I had a place in their lives, but I didn’t define them either. And I don’t want to define them now. Yes, both got stuck in what could be called PTSD, a kind of adrenaline addiction. In terms of trauma’s influence on their lives, Shirley could be described as “freezing,” while Philip “fought” and “fled.” Their trauma responses impacted their daughters, and later their grandchildren. But both Shirley and Philip also recovered, to a considerable extent, and lived, day in and day out, for many years, through many experiences. Both died in their eighties, with their daughters and grandchildren nearby, loving them. My own catastrophic accidents and aftermaths in the course of a lifetime have affected me, too, of course, sometimes in ways that echo my parents’ experiences, often not. It’s how we live the everyday that distinguishes us—not the shocks that force us to react but the ways we walk with our reactions, covering the same familiar territory: eating, sleeping, relating, circling the neighborhoods of normalcy.
Shirley told the story of the Accident for some of the same reasons I need to tell my own painful stories of illness, surgery, grief, PTSD. These reasons fall into categories that are either helpful or not—sort of like the strategies of the helpful grandfather and the awful grandfather. Like the awful grandfather, unhelpful reasons are focused on getting an adrenaline-fueled reaction. Telling stories to stimulate excitement is not necessarily harmful, but it’s certainly not helpful. We often do it because teasing out more emotion has become habitual; we’ve been scared into believing that life requires the utmost intensity of us and that connecting with others involves attracting their attention dramatically. This is, unfortunately, a slippery slope and can lead to manipulative behavior like that of the awful grandfather. Anyway, there are much better reasons for storytelling. Like the helpful grandfather, helpful stories try to evoke courage and coping, not over-reaction. When we share the story of a terrible experience with the intention to encourage and connect, when we have compassion for ourselves and gratitude for own survival and pass it on to the next generation, it is life-giving.
Dividing my grandfathers into the “awful” one and the “helpful” one is actually problematic. Do I need to divide my ancestors between the bad guys and the good guys? It’s true that one of my grandfathers used shame as a power play and was selfish and destructive in many other ways, while the other tried hard to be a good person, shouldered his responsibilities, and attempted to serve others. It’s true that some of my ancestors were Nazi collaborators, and others were artists, farmers and civil rights activists. But even the best of them—the best of us—were and are sometimes troubled, sometimes angry, sometimes hurtful. Even the worst of them—the worst of us—were and are capable of generous gestures and thoughtful moments.
I learned from my own PTSD that trauma causes shame, not because there’s anything shameful in being traumatized, but simply, biologically, because being in a traumatic situation makes the autonomic nervous system disconnect us. When we become stuck in a trauma response, as in PTSD, our social functions are impaired: we cannot make eye contact or smile authentically; our adrenaline pumps when we feel threatened, and we react in anger or deploy tricks to protect ourselves; we feel small and helpless, and this translates as a physical sense of shame even if we know there’s nothing to be ashamed of. This kind of shame is contagious, from ancestor to descendant, and right now in the present generation from one person to another. But other cycles are operating as well.
In the immediacy of traumatic pain and loss, that which makes life most meaningful may be sacrificed temporarily in favor of mere survival, but when PTSD makes that trade-off chronic and the suffering keeps coming, I invite my parents and grandparents to walk around the block with me. I invite those who are here now, and those who will come after us. And I try to receive the invitations that are extended to me. By disabling our capacity to engage with others, PTSD causes despair. More than anything else, healing calls for reconnection with the trustworthy people and humble routines that make life meaningful. Sometimes, even in desperate circumstances, a walk around the block means more than a rush to the hospital. My own PTSD got reenforced because each time I started to settle down to that everyday kind of comfort another emergency came along. So now I practice walking back through my stories slowly, sharing them with an awareness of those who are listening, emphasizing the pauses between the crises, the love and support, the parts where telling it will not crank adrenaline or jerk tears but instead can encourage us all to take a breath in the stillness before morning, after the winds have died down, when the rain-wet pavement smells like gentleness.
Richard Schwartz developed Internal Family Systems (IFS) as a therapy model forty years ago, and it is a highly effective approach to trauma-informed mental health care that is still evolving and being applied innovatively today. Psychotherapists who work with dreams might notice that dreamwork and IFS have striking similarities; combining these tools can have tremendous potential in their work. Outside of a therapeutic context, there’s also a naturally symbiotic relationship between the two, and bringing dreamwork and IFS together in our personal self-care and spiritual practices can result in life-changing insights and breakthroughs. Although such inner work is important, it doesn’t have to be laborious. Dreamwork and IFS both offer a sense of radical possibility, so using them to explore our psychodynamic ecosystems can feel more like play.
The IFS model draws upon our natural tendency to think of ourselves as complex multifaceted beings, recognizing that some aspects of our psyches are familiar to us while others can surprise or offend us. In IFS these parts* ofthe psyche are treated as sub-personalities, which might be compared to dream figures, with distinct feelings, behaviors, and motivations. Our parts, even the ones we consider problematic, all have something to contribute to the wholeness of ourselves, so IFS teaches skills and practices for communicating with these parts, to win their trust, address their concerns, and receive their gifts.
Some parts have been forced into extreme roles in response to difficult experiences, usually in childhood. The parts known as exiles are like vulnerable children who have been hurt; because exiles carry so much pain, other partscalled protectors try to keep them contained (or exiled). Protectors resemble “parentified children” themselves, and they have taken on the burdens of extreme roles (like perfectionism, being overly critical, people-pleasing, etc.) in a misguided effort to control pain. Such strategies might once have been useful, but have become unsustainable, distorted, or ineffective over time, and often cause further harm. Protectors and exilesinteract with one another in ways that can resemble a family in distress.
IFS also affirms that behind the ecology of parts, our original nature, called the Self, has an infinite capacity for qualities like curiosity, calm, clarity, compassion, courage, creativity, confidence and connectedness. If parts are comparable to dream figures, the Self is the deeper wisdom of the dream and the dreamer. The presence and guidance of Self means a happier inner family, providing an experience like waking from a nightmare and recognizing that you are the dreamer of the dream, not its victim. Even the most disturbed and disturbing parts or dream figures have reasons for doing what they are doing. When you, the Self or dreamer, create a trusting relationship with troubled partsor dream figures, you understand and honor what they’ve been trying to accomplish, and help them step out of extreme roles or patterns of suffering that are stuck in the past. Once unburdened, your parts can contribute their unique gifts to your overall well-being, and that of the larger community. This may sound like make believe, but the process feels astonishingly real, and the ensuing transformation can be remarkable.
*
For a brief example of how dreamwork and IFS might play together, here’s a dream with my commentary:
I’m a patient in the hospital, getting better, but still weak and fragile.
[The dream ego often acts as a protector, so her self-description might indicate the burdensome role she uses to avoid or manage pain. Here, the protector identifies with being “weak and fragile.”]
Another patient, a sick toddler, is crying.
[Exiles typically appear in dreams as children or animals in distress.]
Holly is here visiting me. She comforts the toddler, but I’m not sure we should be taking him out of his crib.
[My partner Holly is sometimes a stand-in for Self in my dreams. I see her as someone who can handle things that I can’t handle. In waking life and in dreams, I often have mixed feelings about this! Protectors are likely to distrust the way that Self relates to exiles, at least at first. ]
The baby is wriggling, so Holly lets him walk around a little. But someone opens the door, and the toddler becomes a cat and scoots out. I’m afraid he will get hurt, or disturb other patients and get us in trouble.
[The transformation and escape suggest that this exile has been spontaneously healed by the loving attention of Self. As a cat, the child no longer needs to be guarded by the protector, but the protector is afraid to let him go.]
I chase and catch the cat, and he nips my hand. I get mad at Holly, telling her that I’m supposed to be the sick one and don’t have the energy to chase cats! Besides, she’s the one who let him out, so she should try catching him. She picks him up, but then it’s me holding him. Maybe I’ve become Holly—I seem strong enough to manage him gently now.
[The protector herself has transformed here. As a weak patient trying to grab the cat, she got bitten, but when she becomes Holly-Self, she is able to handle the cat gently so nobody gets hurt.]
Now, the whole dream changes and I’m no longer trying to return the cat to the hospital room. Instead, I’m getting to know the hospital staff and patients, offering them my support.
[Now Holly is no longer here, so the dream ego has become fully Self, getting acquainted with various other parts in ways that could potentially support them.]
*
This is an oversimplification of the way IFS might look in dreamwork, but it demonstrates how the dream itself can enact a healing process with an IFS cast of characters. The dream ego (protector) is no longer anxious or weak by the end of the dream; the cat is no longer a sick toddler (exile) confined to a hospital room. The dreamer wakes up feeling that some inner dilemma has been resolved.
In most cases, dream figures don’t fit quite so easily into IFS roles, but the IFS model can still be applied helpfully when dreams and the feelings they evoke might otherwise be baffling or distressing. For example, I dreamed recently that I was behaving like “an absent-minded professor,” and woke feeling upset without knowing why. Recognizing the upset part of me as an exile, I asked her what she needed me to know, and distinctly “heard” her reply that she didn’t trust me to keep her safe. She showed me an image of myself as a small child: my father was “an absent-minded professor,” and although some parts of me found his eccentricities amusing, there was a vulnerable part that felt frightened and hurt when he didn’t behave like an adult I could depend on. The dream pointed out that a protector in me now (represented by the dream ego) acts like my father,deflecting painful emotions by acting confused and disorganized—and this eccentric behavior is threatening for the vulnerable exile, whose upset feelings emerge upon awakening. IFS techniques support my Self-capacity to be responsible and trustworthy, so I can attend to strong feelings (exiles) without being overwhelmed by them, and without resorting to absent-mindedness or other problematic strategies to avoid them. The dream drew my attention to an inner dynamic that I can now address compassionately.
I invite you to explore IFS as you explore your dreams, with curiosity and the other “C” words that distinguish the Self. What happens to our dreamwork when we believe that even troubling dreams are meaningful, and troubled dream figures are potentially helpful? What would happen to our lives if we could trust that we are, at the core, truly able to handle our “cats” (our strong feelings, difficult challenges and disturbing dreams)—with kindness, wisdom, and grace?
*Boldface indicates IFS terminology.
[This article was originally published in in the Winter, 2024 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]
If a dreamer describes a dream figure simply as “someone” or “a person,” one of the first questions to ask is typically “Male or female?” The answer, however, is often, “I’m not sure—Maybe female?” or “Maybe male?” Gender can sometimes be difficult to pin down in dreams. But perhaps that’s because gender is actually a more fluid concept than we tend to think. Because rigid binary categories exist in our culture, people and animals (and, in some languages, objects as well) get assigned to those categories. Of course, there’s a gender revolution happening all over the world these days, and more genders than the most familiar two are gaining wider recognition. Are our dreams reflecting this increased recognition of gender diversity? Or have dreams, perhaps, been gender diverse all along, and it is only now that we are being called upon to acknowledge—or at least notice—that things aren’t as binary as we believed? Though simplistic ideas about identity may have dominated our thinking until recently, it seems pretty clear that diversity and fluidity have always existed, in our dreams as well as in the waking world.
I’ve been trying to notice my own gender biases in dreamwork, as I’ve been questioning those biases in waking life. In the process, I’m feeling more creative as a dreamworker, and freer as a human being. Any trend that shifts our “us-and-them” categories can potentially be healthier for all of us, though we have to be willing to feel uncomfortable at times. If there are more kinds of categories, we are less likely to identify too exclusively with any one way of being. We’re also more likely to find that every “unique” personal challenge we face is, almost certainly, shared by lots of other people in this multifaceted world. It’s meaningful to embrace the identity that seems to fit best (and the communities that form around that identity), as long as we hold our categories lightly, recognizing that we are defined by much more than any single self-concept.
In dreams, it’s quite common for dream figures to be maybe-male, maybe-female, maybe-both/neither. They might be maybe-old, maybe-young, maybe-ageless or age-shifting. They might also be human-but-also-cat, or tree, or robot, or shape-shifting. In most dreams, I don’t actually know exactly what or who I am, unless someone asks me (in the dream or afterward) and then I feel obliged to decide. In some languages, people, animals, and objects are described by verbs rather than nouns: it’s not what you are, it’s what you’re being. I suspect that a dream-like strangeness represents something very close to the true nature of reality: at a fundamental level everything is movement and change, in shifting patterns of interrelated energies. When you look for an “elementary particle” you find “there’s no there there.” We are not static identities, we are life itself, living.
But, in a world where categories do exist, we’re often called upon to define and redefine ourselves. Wouldn’t it be great if this could be playful, rather than a struggle? If some categories weren’t privileged over others, we might all enjoy experimenting rather than settling down with one identity absolutely. What if we approached dreamwork this way? In my ideal dream world, “beings” are not assigned absolute categories—they’re just being and doing whatever they are being and doing, interacting with one another and changing one another in the process. Maybe we need a kind of dreamwork that leaves more room in our minds to ask questions without definite answers.
In waking life, I’ve been defined as female, but I never really felt female. I’ve been mistaken for male, but never really felt male. I’ve identified as a lesbian, but how can I define myself as a woman-attracted-to-women when our society’s understanding of “woman” doesn’t fit either me or my spouse? Now that there are more possibilities that more people are likely to recognize, I’ve become aware that a “nonbinary” gender identity describes me better than “female” or “male” ever could. “Nonbinary” was not a concept that was available to me when I was growing up, but, in my dreams and in the life I’ve lived, I’ve been nonbinary all along.
If you look back at some of your own dreams, perhaps you’ll notice that you are not always sure of the gender of every dream figure. Perhaps you’ll notice that you can’t always pin down your own gender, or age, or even species. Perhaps you are only a point-of-view in the dream rather than a distinct character at all. When writing down a dream or telling it to others, we have to use pronouns, which makes it more difficult to convey the actual dream experience, limiting our imaginations when it comes to finding that dream meaningful. Similarly, once we have assigned a particular identity to an individual we meet in waking life (even if the identity fits, and the person embraces it), we relate to that individual through the filtering lens of the identity, and this limits our capacity to respond spontaneously, naturally, and creatively to the relationship dynamic as it unfolds. Since our physical existence and even our dream lives depend on subject/object distinctions, we may need to create categories in order to have experiences at all, but those categories don’t need to be as rigid as we tend to make them.
Notice how awkward it is to pin down gender in this dream fragment:
I’m staying in a big house where I’ve been assigned a tiny room. Holly is staying in a nearby room with several bunkbeds and room-mates. I want to get permission from the landlord (or landlady?) for her (Holly) to sleep in my room with me, even though we’d have to share a narrow cot…. Later, we’re sitting outside under a big tree.
In working with the dream, I become aware that my awkward way of identifying the landlord/landlady and Holly might not be accidental: there’s meaning in the difficulty of assigning genders, just as there’s meaning in the room assignments Holly and I have been given. When I stop focusing on defining terms (deciding how to describe the one who owns the house, or the one who belongs in a particular room), I remember the actual emotions and sensations: the smallness of my room, the crowdedness of Holly’s room, the narrowness of the cot, the need to get permission to share a bed with my own spouse. In the end, I give myself permission, and relax a little. Instead of sleeping on that cot, we can move on into the next phase of the dream and enjoy the fresh air together. There’s freedom in deciding not to decide, in letting go of the dilemma of who gets to choose and who sleeps where.
The next time you get caught up in a confining dream or a defining identity, try giving yourself permission to relax a little. I’ll meet you outside, under that big tree.
[This article was originally published in in the Fall, 2023 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]
In the previous post, I wrote about how trauma-informed dreamwork can be meaningful in restoring well-being for those whose nervous systems have become disregulated by overpowering experiences. Here in part two, I’ll use some of my own dreams as a case study to reflect on dream themes that are typical when people are recovering from trauma.
It’s especially important not to over-think trauma-related dreams but to attend to the impressions they leave in the body and emotions. For people with PTSD, sense impressions in dreams can often be disturbing or confusing. Dreams may be difficult to describe or fully experience because the nervous system views disturbance and confusion as threatening, and is mobilized to react by “fighting” (denying the validity of the dream experience), “fleeing” (forgetting or fogging the dream memory), or “freezing” (becoming overwhelmed). Even vague trauma-related impressions can be emotionally intense, and can leave the person feeling haunted if the dream remains unexplored. Regardless of whether these dreams seem positive (helpful), negative (disturbing), or neutral (mundane or confusing), there is tremendous healing potential in giving care and attention to the specific sensations and emotions they bring to light.
In groups or with a therapist, theater and bodywork are wonderful tools for PTSD dreamwork. Playing the role of a dream figure allows a person with PTSD to experience themself as someone who is not “the one with the problem.” A dream scenario can free them from the need to make sense of a chaotic situation, as it emphasizes the dynamic flow of interacting characters rather than following a linear storyline. This flow—interpersonal and often playful—is particularly meaningful for those whose lives have been reduced to a series of reactions. Bodywork generally involves a similar freedom from the need to seek cognitive solutions to somatic problems. Instead of analyzing the dream’s imagery, bodywork helps the dreamer to focus on the sensations that arise as the dream is recalled, and to explore those sensations through breath, touch, or movement.
If a group or trained guide is not available, there’s still a lot of dream exploration that can be done on one’s own. When working with PTSD dreams, always engage with intense sensations and emotions in small doses, returning to a baseline of safety frequently so you (the dreamer) can trust that you have a choice about how much to experience. If the dreamer can’t access a baseline of safety (free from physical agitation and anxiety), then it is not a good time to work with disturbing, negative dreams. Positive dreams, however, can be appreciated anytime.
If your life has been impacted by trauma, as mine has, here are some types of dreams you might recognize, and approaches you might consider.
Some dreams offer a glimpse of life energy and possibilities. Others may set up problems that have solutions, requiring some effort but bringing a sense of accomplishment. Such dreams are simply to be savored, as they give the body a direct experience of what is needed for healing.
Mouse In Trouble: A frightening storm. Through the window, I see a mouse huddled on the ground. I plunge into rain and wind, and nudge the trembling creature into a container, but she wriggles out again. She is afraid of me and won’t cooperate. I keep trying until finally I’m running down the trail with the mouse at least temporarily contained. She escapes just as we reach the sheltered place I’ve found for her. It’s a dry area under a shed, and there’s a cereal box lying open there. The mouse goes into the box and gobbles cereal. She must have been starving—she is so thin and frail. She knows I helped her, so she’ll be willing to trust me from now on.
[This dream suggests ways of reassuring my own traumatized body. I can savor the mouse’s sense of safety and fullness, as well as the dream ego’s experience of having the courage to go into the storm, the patience and gentleness to ease fear, and the capacity to provide nourishment and protection to vulnerable aspects of myself.]
Especially early on in the healing process, some dreams may seem ugly, discouraging, shocking or nightmarish, leaving the dreamer feeling worse rather than better. You’d probably want to forget such dreams as quickly as possible, but it can be useful to notice how they affect your body. Try allowing your body to respond naturally, with exaggerated gestures, sounds, or facial expressions that convey the revulsion, anger, hopelessness or fear the dream evokes. Repeating these gestures vigorously (or imagining them, if they’re too intense to enact) can be cathartic and empowering.
Eating Lizards: I am eating a snack of small lizards from a paper cup. This is supposed to be one of my favorite treats, but as I become aware of what I am doing it becomes more and more revolting. I look at the last lizard and wish it were actually alive so I could let it go—but it’s dead and I have to swallow it.
[This dream captures the misery and shame of painful experiences I was unable to stomach. As I recall the sensation of swallowing dead lizards, I allow myself to make faces and gag, shaking my head. After a while, revulsion is replaced by sadness. I can feel the strength of my longing that the last lizard might live after all—that I might live.]
During the worst times of PTSD, I had violently frightening nightmares where I found myself drowning, being eaten alive, or fighting with dead-eyed attackers. Other dreams evoked grief and helplessness as I watched loved ones being harmed, or saw my home swept away by floodwaters. It was difficult to find a gesture that would encompass the enormity of such images, but I could respond by imagining myself screaming—letting the scream carry all the pain that I was unable to contain or express otherwise. Paradoxically, intense emotional pain represents a very powerful suppressed life force, and by screaming it out (in my head—it was too strong for my voice), I actually felt energized. I let the scream go on until the pain broke like a wave into crying, shivering, deep breathing—and finally receded so I could rest.
Recently, I’ve been having dreams that give me direct experience of being free of PTSD.
Spacewalk: We journey into deep space, beyond the known universe, on a mission. My beloved and I met on this spaceship journey; we are trying to figure out how we will maintain our connection once we have returned to our home planet. For now, we share the freedom of deep space where none of the laws of physics apply. We can actually go outside the ship without spacesuits, and walk on the emptiness, which is like walking on stars. We’re surrounded by sparkling lights and infinite, rich darkness.
Every dream is a healing journey into deep space. May we all step into emptiness and experience the infinite, in darkness and in light. We can trust ourselves to come through our most difficult experiences, restored to our home planet, reunited with our inner beloved.
[This article was originally published in in the Winter, 2023 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]
For the past three years, I’ve been living with post-traumatic stress disorder from experiences that occurred before, during and after spinal surgery. Trauma-related issues have become commonplace these days as uncertainty about the future is causing unprecedented levels of stress and crisis in many people’s lives all over the world. Our dream experiences reflect and influence our waking experiences, and in difficult times this dynamic relationship becomes especially significant. Drawing upon current therapeutic models for trauma care, I’d like to explore some of the healing possibilities of trauma-informed dreamwork.
First, a brief primer on trauma. Not everyone who has traumatizing experiences gets PTSD. Usually, we are able to literally “shake off” (through releases like trembling or crying) the physical shock of such experiences and go forward integrating the changes that traumatic events can cause in our lives. But PTSD occurs when the body’s natural threat responses and recovery processes are acutely or chronically thwarted or distorted. In PTSD, we feel trapped, and therefore can’t stop reacting, can’t return to equilibrium, after the crisis has passed. When this happens, virtually every subsequent life experience is perceived as a potential threat, especially experiences that remind us of the initial trauma. The body is numbed and disoriented by internal alarms, overwhelmed and confused by external stimuli, perpetually mobilized to fight or run away, or locked into paralyzing dissociation.
When all of the body’s resources are going toward threat readiness, some internal systems are charged up, while others are switched off. When we’re gripped by “fight-flight” (a sympathetic nervous system response) or “freeze” (a parasympathetic response), no energy is available for everyday essential functions like digestion, sleep or socializing. We can’t think creatively or systematically, can’t make decisions or feel joy. We aren’t motivated by anything but the emergency that never ends, so exhaustion is inevitable, relationships can break down, and secondary illnesses or injuries are likely. PTSD has profound physical, mental and emotional consequences, diminishing our sense of ourselves as whole beings with full lives; we become nothing but a set of reflex reactions to circumstances beyond our control. Even if diagnosable PTSD is not present, anyone with a trauma history may experience some of these symptoms when stressed. In troubled times, we all need support from one another, and from practices that help regulate our nervous systems and restore balance. Though dreams can be part of the problem (PTSD often brings repetitive nightmares and sleep disorders), they can also contribute greatly to healing.
Because traumas impair cognitive function, many forms of talk therapy are unhelpful, but if a traumatized person is able to recall dreams and has some capacity for self-reflection, dreamwork may be a tremendous resource because dream imagery offers a perspective on disturbing experiences that includes the body as well as the mind. Although PTSD dreams are often filled with repetitious problem and threat scenarios, these scenarios can be emotionally cathartic, and may include fresh details and connections essential to restoring equilibrium. Except in the case of PTSD nightmares (which are more like inescapable flashbacks than like dreams), dreaming can refresh our range of options, helping us recognize possibilities we can’t see when our emotions and cognitive minds are on automatic pilot, stuck in threat reaction patterns.
Dream scenarios usually diverge from literal memories of traumatic events in ways that create alternative neural pathways in the brain. Just having dreams helps, and then telling them to an attentive and caring person helps even more. If that other person has dreamwork skills and can provide fresh insights, all the better, though this isn’t essential. A listening ear and an open mind may be exactly what is lacking for a person with PTSD, and dreams provide an opportunity to connect with others in ways that are intimate and authentic yet potentially non-threatening. Just telling or hearing dreams non-judgmentally may be meaningful, because when interesting dream content is being shared, the social pressure of making conversation is reduced.
Generally, PTSD dreamwork that involves talking should emphasize sensations and impressions rather than analysis—allowing the dream itself to provide the healing. I’ll give some examples of this in part 2, but for now I’ll just say that an important aspect of PTSD healing is restoring trust in one’s own body, so paying attention to direct physical dream experiences in all five senses is extremely powerful medicine, provided there is a safe context. Even if someone does not recall any dreams of their own, or if their dreams are too disturbing to share, indirectly experiencing the imagery in others’ dreams may be meaningful, inviting physical impressions and responses without overwhelming personal associations. A person with PTSD should not be expected to offer insights, but should be welcomed to do so if it comes naturally. Above all, a vulnerable person needs permission to simply experience dreams without the imperative to make sense of them. This helps reinforce trust in self and others, so when potentially triggering dream content comes up, it can be felt with the confidence that it will pass, making room for new possibilities rather than an endless recycling of traumatic events.
If PTSD is acute, however, a more body-oriented approach may be necessary, since thinking and talking, even about neutral topics, can be too threatening. In some cases, flashback nightmares reinforce traumatic events, and more positive dream memory may be entirely absent. Yet dreams can still be the path of healing for the psyche, even if this process isn’t conscious. During REM sleep (perhaps also during other sleep stages) dreams integrate scattered memory fragments and sense impressions to create the coherence and meaning that are absent in severe PTSD. Unfortunately, it is often not just the capacity to remember dreams that is impaired by trauma, but the dreaming process itself: people with PTSD (like those with certain forms of depression or anxiety) tend to have less REM sleep and poor sleep quality overall, which deprives them of integration when they need it most. Therapies such as EMDR, tapping, and neurofeedback seem to carry out some of the same functions as dreaming, and may be helpful in reestablishing healthy dream sleep.
In part 2, I’ll give some examples of PTSD dreams, and also discuss how tools like theater and bodywork with dreams can be effective for those of us with disregulated nervous systems who might have difficulty with analytical dreamwork. In the meantime, if you are having PTSD symptoms, take heart! Even if you can’t immediately feel it, your dreams are working within you, and others’ dreams are working around you (as Jeremy Taylor would say) “in the service of healing and wholeness.”
[This article was originally published in in the Fall, 2022 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]
Whenever a participant in one of my groups brings a dream that includes BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, or People of Color] dream figures, I inwardly cringe. My dream group members are mostly white, and their racially-inflected dreams can be a minefield of stereotypes and projections. I wish I could write about this from some moral high ground, but I can’t. As a white person in the United States, my own unconscious mind is also filled with buried racial bombs, and though I’d love to claim that I’m not the one who buried them, I’ve been living happily in a land shielded by the presence of these deadly munitions all my life.
When recounting racially-inflected—in fact, racist—dreams, many group members are sensitive to the unconscious biases that these dreams reveal, and they acknowledge this with regret and sometimes shame. I hope I have the courage to expose myself as they do, in the interests of learning and changing at the deepest level, but the fact that we can see our own racism doesn’t make us less racist, and sometimes exposing ourselves can be a preemptive tactic to keep others from exposing us. Still, it’s less excruciating to work with these dreams if the racist implications can be openly discussed with the dreamer. Some dreamers, however, are oblivious to any implicit racism or, perhaps worse, sense that the “wrong conclusions” might be drawn from their dreams and hedge with justifications and denials. I’m afraid that my own dread as we tiptoe around our minefields doesn’t just come from the unpleasantness of hearing people I like say things that appall me, it’s also from a fear of dealing with any of this at all. Like most white people, I can avoid dealing with racism just by surrounding myself with the safety zones of whiteness—and it is those white zones of privileged obtuseness that make racism such a clear and present danger to the BIPOC community, while corrupting and corroding our collective humanity.
White people can easily take fundamentals like safety for granted, which is why I’m addressing a “we” in this article that refers particularly to white people. Although dreamers of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds can enjoy reading about meaningful dreamwork issues, BIPOC dreamworkers probably won’t be particularly surprised or enlightened by anything I have to say about white people’s racially-inflected dreams (though I’m grateful if you do choose to read on). On the other hand, I hope that all white dreamworkers will choose to reflect on issues that may cause us discomfort, letting an awareness of potential racist implications inform our work. I’ve learned a lot by overcoming my desire to avoid this subject, and dreamwork has been an excellent way to do some of that essential learning.
While white people’s dreams with BIPOC dream figures inevitably reflect the societal racism (and sexism, and cultural assumptions of all kinds) that we have absorbed, it’s helpful to remember that dreams reflect unconscious attitudes that are not necessarily congruent with our conscious intentions. Talking about our racist dreams should not become an exercise in blaming ourselves and one another, but should instead expose the ugly psychological and sociological scaffolding that has structured some of our fundamental beliefs and behaviors. We do this hard work so that we’ll be better able to refuse to perpetuate harmful and shameful systems even when they benefit us personally.
The presence of a person of a different race in your dream isn’t automatically racist—our waking world is populated by people of differing ethnicities and so is our dreaming world. However, all dream figures have stereotypical elements (representing categories or types, not just personal qualities), so they exhibit our prejudices. BIPOC characters in white people’s dreams often end up being cast in roles that are blatantly racist: lacking individuality, and emphasizing reductionist stereotypes. Working with such dreams, do we accept these stereotypes, or do we face and challenge them? It is essential that our ways of working with our own or others’ dreams focus on the uniqueness and humanity of every dream figure, while simultaneously acknowledging the roles that our dreams have assigned to them. Our dreams can exhibit a caste system—ranking figures according to our own scale of values. This is not accidental, and we must commit ourselves to questioning the demeaning systems within our dreamworlds that reflect similar systems in the waking world.
A white person’s dream of a BIPOC dream figure can be both racist and anti-racist, since that figure’s presence and our response gives us an opportunity to see what we are assuming, and opens up the possibility of seeing something more. Dream figures aren’t just there to reinforce and represent our prejudices, they are uniquely created and creative beings with the capacity to surprise us and change us. The more we recognize our stereotypical beliefs and how they are reflected in a particular dream figure, the more we discover how much we don’t know. This individual figure appears in my dream or your dream for a reason, and when we see them in their wholeness, we expand ourselves as well. Paradoxically, any dream figure (even blatantly stereotypical ones) can teach us to see our own blind spots, confronting our prejudices with humor or deadly seriousness; subtlety or shocking crudeness; compassion, or a gut punch.
I am not an expert on racially-inflected dreams, but perhaps my clumsy “beginner’s mind” is more useful than expertise in working with such dreams. Racially-inflected dreams make me uncomfortable—and they should make me uncomfortable. Racist social structures have allowed too many white people to be too comfortable for too long, at the expense of others who can never let their guard down without their vulnerability being exploited. When a white dreamer brings me a racially-inflected dream, my discomfort is a flashing red light that says, “Stop. Pay attention. This is important. Don’t respond by rote, because your knee-jerk response will probably be an attempt to escape.” The alert message I get from my discomfort gives me good advice for any kind of dreamwork: don’t take your expertise for granted, don’t trust your own assumptions (assumptions are the opposite of insights), don’t make excuses or try to prove anything, just listen to the dream and what it says, and invite others to do this with you.
Black people, Indigenous people and People of Color have been insufficiently heard and seen as full human beings by white people like myself, no matter how anti-racist we believe ourselves to be and want to be. That’s an essential thing to know. So, at the very least, when a figure in my dream is BIPOC, I know immediately that this dream figure is someone who should be fully seen and heard by the white dreamer (me) and by other white dreamers who might explore the dream with me. When white people dream up BIPOC characters, it’s likely that those characters, more than any white dream figures, will be carrying the information or insight that we most need to receive from this particular dream.
White dreamworkers do not need to smother our BIPOC peers with questions and concerns as we try to prove our “wokeness” or genuinely wake ourselves up—instead we can turn to our own dreams, question ourselves and our dream figures, and let them teach us what we still need to learn. BIPOC dreamworkers can learn from one another and from their own dreams about the needs and challenges they face in their own lives—and white people need to take responsibility for doing likewise, so that our lives are not being lived at the expense of theirs. Most of us share a hope that if we (all people) do our personal homework we’ll overcome our fears and assumptions about each other, demolish the power structures of white supremacy, and finally let our individual dreams invite us into an authentic understanding of our common humanity, our common dream. We’re not there yet. In the meantime, let’s learn to endure our mutual discomfort , integrate our real pain, and do the hard work even as we dream big.
[This article was originally published in in the Spring, 2022 issue of DreamTime Magazine. If you enjoyed it, please consider subscribing to DreamTime by joining the International Association for the Study of Dreams ]
[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 ]
Sometimes dreams seem to offer direct communication from the natural world—bringing guidance that reconnects us with the earth itself, and reminds us that we belong here. Our bodies are made of the same essential elements that make up all life, and we are part of the intricate and magnificent ecosystem that includes all living beings.
The Tree Is Not Afraid of Death: There’s a single row of red-cedar trees along the edge of the parking lot. A woman is clinging to one of the trees, crying. When I approach, she tells me that this one is her special friend, and they are going to cut it down. The whole place is under development. I see an arched doorway carved all the way through the trunk of the tree (like the tunnels in giant sequoias that cars could drive through—but much smaller). Since the trunk is just a couple of feet in diameter, and the doorway is about eighteen inches high and six inches wide, it’s a gaping hole, so I’m surprised that the tree seems healthy in spite of the damage. Some of the other cedars have doorways as well.
The woman begs me to protect her tree—not to let it be destroyed. I don’t know how to respond. I think that I have no authority to prevent them from cutting down the tree. Then, I think maybe they really aren’t planning to cut it down, since this row of trees was left standing when all the others were bulldozed to clear the lot. But these thoughts don’t seem particularly helpful; the woman is truly desperate.
I put one hand on the cedar and the other hand on the woman’s back, and I tell her, in a clear, strong voice: “You know, this tree doesn’t fear death the way we do. This tree feels no separation between itself and the earth. For the tree, death is just returning to the earth, becoming earth. The tree is already part of the earth.” I’m astonished at my own apparent arrogance in speaking for the tree—but the voice just seemed to come out without my volition, as if the tree had spoken directly to the woman, through me. The woman is comforted. She knows she can trust her connection with the tree, and the tree’s connection with the earth.
It is not really surprising that the trees in our dreams might speak to us, or through us; trees and dreams are rooted in common ground. Although our human business may seem to separate us from nature and from our dream-source, nothing, not even death, can uproot us from the ground of our being.
I’m often preoccupied with the big existential questions that tend to trouble our earnest human minds. As my health is tenuous, the prospect of death has become very real to me. I know that I am finite. Sooner or later, I’m going to be cut down. So, the part of me that is clinging to life, the part that thinks it’s special, the part that is uniquely “me,” the part that will die—that part of me is worried. I’m attached to being me.
Many people say that they’re not afraid of death, they’re only concerned about what the dying process will be like… Will it be painful? Will it be undignified? But, for me, the dying seems no different from what we’re doing all the time—sometimes it’s painful and undignified, sometimes it’s not—it’s just living. When I get close to death, I’ll still be living, in one way or another, I’ll still be me. I’m curious about the dying process. But dying always ends in death. And death is the end of me. At least, death is the end of the part of me that worries about me. Death is the end of my familiar, human business.
Still, the trees remind me, there’s more to my life than this identity, which is always “under development.” When I had cancer in my thirties, I was too ill to worry so much about dying or death. I relaxed into the larger life of the natural world around me. I noticed the slow-growing trees whose business was just absorbing sunlight, drawing water from the soil, making leaves and losing leaves, sheltering birds, animals, insects, and reaching toward the sky. Looking at the old ones—the big oaks and cedars and beeches and redwoods—I felt peaceful knowing that they might go on living long after my death. The trees reassured me: being dead would be like life expanded to include everything, with no business to get done and no place else to be.
All this lovely philosophy was helpful then, but now it’s not so easy. I’ve seen too much death in recent years. I’m tired and I feel the limitations of my body and my small, restless, anxious human mind, yet I’ve got a pretty strong attachment to being ME—and staying this way forever, if I can manage to hold on. Of course, I can’t. Even long-lived trees don’t live forever, let alone busy, ephemeral human beings. So, my dreams remind me of the tree-medicine within me, the tree-medicine I can offer to the part of myself that suffers the fear of loss, the fear of death.
In a previous post [“Pity the Poor Ego”] I wrote: “If you want to find the Ego in a dream, look for the one who’s suffering, because the Ego always suffers when reality doesn’t conform to what the Ego believes is important.” By this definition, the Ego in this particular dream is the woman who clings to her special tree and cannot bear to let go. The “I” character in the dream—the one I’m most identified with—has a more complex role that matches the role I find myself holding at this threshold in my waking life. While part of me tries to solve the problem that the suffering Ego would love to have me solve, another part of me holds her ground between that Ego and a deeper wisdom—making the connection between them.
My Ego (the woman in the dream) needs to save her tree, to save herself; she needs to find a way to prevent death from cutting in and bulldozing everything she loves. I ponder her problem, and feel her desperation. But I don’t have a solution. Instead, I place a hand on her back and a hand on the tree, and I bring them together. The tree-medicine flows through me. The three of us cannot be separated, and all the other living cedars in a row, and all the ghost-trees that once made up a forest here, all of us are rooted in the earth together, letting life rise up in us like sap.
As I explored this dream, I began to trust myself more—trusting the connection between myself and the fundamental, immortal essence of all living beings. At first, I didn’t think much of those doorways through some of the tree trunks. I thought of them as ugly wounds, imposed upon the trees by the heedless human business of development and destruction. After all, those thousand-year-old giant “tunnel trees” in the great redwood forests eventually died because people had cut out their hearts to run roads through. But a doorway through a dream tree does no harm: the tree is healthy, in spite of the gaping hole. In fact, the more I look at that doorway now, the more I see it as an opening, a portal through which I can reach the other side.
Paradoxically, our destructive human business, the plans and projects we devise to avert loss and fear, can sometimes open our hearts. We can come to understand the selfishness and neediness that leads us all to try to control and subdue the natural world, just as we would like to control and subdue death. And if we can see through our own motivations, our vision expands. That hole is indeed a doorway, an invitation to stoop down and step through. In a dream, the doorway doesn’t have to be big enough to accommodate me—you know, my dream-ego can get smaller, crossing that threshold. Can yours? Let’s try it. Maybe we can step through that doorway, through the tree’s heartwood… And maybe there’s a flourishing forest on the other side.
Authenticity always involves vulnerability. When we really listen to ourselves, and let our presence in the world reflect what we care about most deeply, we are making ourselves truly available and opening the way for beautiful connections with others. We are realizing our full potential. We are inviting unimaginable, transformative experiences that we can meet wholeheartedly. But there are risks. What we have to offer can be rejected; what we long for can be denied; who we are can be dismissed. When we give ourselves wholeheartedly, we can be hurt.
Several times in my life, I’ve felt this kind of hurt. I know that I’ve done my best, yet it doesn’t matter—my best is not good enough. Maybe I’ve been as open as I can be, as responsible as I can be, as caring as I can be—and someone takes advantage of the opportunity to do harm. Our politics, social dynamics, and interpersonal struggles frequently show the same pattern. But I don’t think this is a reason to shut down. Just the opposite. I believe that being authentic—and vulnerable—is my greatest strength. I believe that authenticity and vulnerability are exactly what we all need right now. Pain is a possible outcome when we are authentic, but inauthenticity always leads to even more pain in the long run.
In order to be trusting without becoming victims, we need to have each other’s backs. This doesn’t mean that we should fight off bullies on behalf of others—the more we fight, the more we become bullies ourselves. It’s not useful to see others as helpless weaklings who need us to protect them. Authentic vulnerability is not neediness: it is strength; it is courage. Like trees who grow from the same root system, we need to stand together. And standing together means being true to ourselves and one another: letting others know that they are not alone, that we see their strength and courage, that we are willing to be strong, courageous, and vulnerable alongside them.
What I try to remember when I’m feeling wounded and raw, is that sweet, familiar quote from Ram Dass: “We’re all just walking each other home.” When we’re being authentic, we’re not alone. We inspire others to walk with us, to grow with us, to dance with us, to ride along with us.
Being physically vulnerable is one of my own biggest challenges right now. I’m aware that, if a situation is emotionally charged, my neuro-muscular system will reflect my vulnerability in a way that I can’t disguise or control. I’ll develop tremors; I’ll become tearful; my heart will skip and skitter; my voice will shake; I might get faint, or have sudden chills or sweats. Even—or especially—when I trust the strength of my authenticity, my body can seem terribly weak and awkward. Sometimes, I feel ashamed of my infirmities and uncertain about my own truths. In these situations, the affirmations of others who stand with me can make all the difference.
In my dreams, I see the importance of our interconnectedness. The other dream figures may be seen as distinct individuals but may also be seen as aspects of myself, so the support, guidance and companionship I get from these figures may be exactly the support, guidance and companionship that I need to give myself (as well as receive from others) when I am feeling vulnerable.
Similarly, in waking life, if I want to risk standing for what I care about, even when my knees are shaking, then the people whose presence strengthens me will show me the same inner qualities I most need to strengthen in myself. And the vulnerable strength I am showing by standing with others will inspire them to find those vital qualities in themselves, too. In our waking or dreaming lives, our shared strengths and vulnerabilities make up our authenticity.
Our dreams may become more extraordinary as they reflect the true commitment we have made to our interdependent gifts, needs and callings. Continue reading
