Dreams
I just woke up from a nap so deep that if you asked me what my name is, what year is it, where exactly I am, all of it, at least for a few moments, would be completely, peacefully, unknown. It’s so pleasant to be in this state of ease — a state where all parts of myself, even the protective ones, have submitted to just ‘being’. It feels like I’m in another dimension… but is this sensation disconnection or reconnection?
It’s taken me some time to unwind the belief that sleeping, particularly napping, is a waste of time. Deeply rooted within me is a part that associates activity and action with productivity. It's the part that wonders why someone would sleep ten or twelve hours a day when our waking life is so finite — a part that detests the word 'lazy' and its sensation. It’s restless, curious, energetic. I can trace its origins to the personal, cultural, and political spheres I was raised in. It has its place, as it fuels much creation. Yet, learning to stop and allow ourselves to deeply rest is one of the pinnacle lessons of our time. Inaction is an action.
I can’t remember what shifted my perspective, perhaps it was due to the lack of consistent sleep. There were a few months when I was only sleeping five or six hours a night, and I thought my brain was broken. I couldn’t remember things, my nervous system was on guard all the time. I thought it was a lack of vitamins, minerals, or water, but it was just a deep need for rest. My perception of the dream world has been changing too. I began to have lucid dreams again — accidental ones, like I did as a child. Mid-dream, while my body is still asleep and in a state of paralysis, my mind will awaken and engage in the dream that’s unfolding (very similar to The Matrix). It’s quite joyful and exciting; if you’re skillful, you can dream up whatever experience you’d like. You can go flying, build cars that run on bubbles — anything and everything is possible.
But the dreams I’ve been having lately have a particular depth to them. They leave a bodily resonance I hadn’t experienced before. Some weeks ago, I woke up in a dream in which I was viewing the Earth from outer space. It was cool, loudly silent. I was moving all around the Earth, viewing it in all directions. But there was no ‘I’ to touch or experience, no body… just a sense of embodied awareness. So there I was, formless, directionless. I can’t tell you how long I slept, but when I awoke, it took me a few minutes to remember I had a human body. To remember who I was, what I was, where I was. I had another dream like this a few days later, this time retracing my lifetime, my exact age, which ended going back to the beginning of time. There, lay this embodied sense of eternity. Emptiness. I woke up feeling incredibly old.
I revel in the fact that I live in a place where I can share these dreams freely. What exactly is happening? Is this the beginning of insanity? Is this awakening? A few of those I told have smiled and laughed… “Those don’t sound like dreams,” one said. “They sound like memories — embodied experiences of insights.” Many cultures and traditions deeply value dreams as opportunities for receiving information from the cosmos, spaces for healing. I was speaking to an elder of the Dakota Nation the other day, and she freely shared how people, insights, and truths have come to her in the middle of the night.
Gently, my understanding of what it is to be ‘alive’ expands. No longer a state I associate just with the waking world, but rather a way of being; wakeful, aware, in every state or dimension of reality. What even is reality? We are such mysteries. Life is such a mystery. So many paradoxes, so many unknowns. The more I explore, the less I seem to know. The less I seem to know, the more open, the more peaceful I feel.