Last week I dug through some boxes of my grandmothers belongings that had been packed away for years in my parents’ basement.  I brought several beautiful dishes to light, including a set of delicate stemware each in a different vibrant color, a tea set of beautifully painted china, and two cups and saucers in floral patterns.

The crumpled newspapers that protected them from breaking date from the fall of 1977. The newsprint is yellowed, the dishes dusty and a bit grimy from the acidic paper.  As I washed them in preparation for display, I couldn’t help but think that these dishes are like the best aspects of many people—delicate and beautiful but wrapped and packed away.  At first they are hidden for safekeeping, but later because they are forgotten—out of sight and (mostly) out of mind.

The hardest lesson I’ve learned from dreamwork is to attempt to own my brighter gifts and talents.  My teacher calls this “Bright Shadow projection,” and the idea is that we often fail to recognize or acknowledge our greatest gifts, and are able to see them and admire them only in others.  Owning our gifts can be harder than owning our prejudices, because we have a cultural bias against being “too full of yourself” or boasting.  So we learn, usually very young, to tuck away our brightest lights into carefully packed boxes in our souls, and then sigh with unnamed yearning when we see our heroes shining with that same light.

In order to grapple with this process, I’ve made lists of qualities I admire in others, and then searched within to see where those qualities in me have been hidden.  It isn’t easy, but my dreams, and the dreams of my fellow dreamworkers, point us relentlessly in that direction.  For example, one of my friends recently dreamed of a man whose work he greatly admires.  In the dream the man sits at a table, teaching his followers, and there is an empty chair across from him.  The dreamer realizes that the chair has been empty for a while, and even though others are also standing, this chair is for the dreamer.

Of course, reclaiming and using our gifts can be a frightening process.  After all, we first packed them away in order to protect ourselves, maybe from others’ teasing, or jealousy, or anger.  But the effort it takes to ignore our truest selves can lead to exhaustion and depression.  Recognizing and reclaiming the talents I have has unlocked rooms of joy in my life.  When I’m truer to myself, I attract the people who truly resonate with me.  And I’m stronger now than I was when I first wrapped up those parts of me that seemed too big for the people around me to handle.  I have more knowledge of how to channel my gifts in ways that don’t overwhelm those near me.  And I have the enormous pleasure of seeing my friends embrace their own gifts.

Another dreamer recently reported the “billboard” message from one of her dreams as:  “To the extent that I choose suffering, I increase the suffering in the world.  To the extent that I choose joy, I increase the joy in the world.”  Unwrapping our hidden talents, while it may feel terrifying, leads to greater joy.  It makes us more whole as individuals.  And to the extent we make ourselves whole, we bring greater wholeness to the world.

There is a place at the table for  each of us.  The world needs our talents and gifts and art and creativity and problem-solving.  To keep our gifts wrapped in ancient newspaper is to deprive ourselves and the world of what is most needed.

“Squid wrestling: all tentacles and no substance.” Sleep Talkin Man

As a dream worker, I find it fascinating to try to understand what dreams mean. Images that arise in sleep talk are little jewels of dreams, which can be explored in the same way as longer, more involved dreams. I discovered Sleep Talkin Man because all of a sudden, several people brought the blog to my attention…friends on Facebook, and other dream workers. When I saw the post quoted above, at first I just had a good laugh, which is a sure sign that there’s a nugget of truth in it. But then I began to wonder what that nugget of truth would be. After all, I have no plans to literally wrestle squid.

As I considered the symbol as a metaphor, the first thing that came to mind is that this is exactly what it’s like for me to wrestle with my grief. All tentacles and no substance. Since my last blog post, my mother-in-law decided she’d had enough of her multi-year fight against cancer, and died peacefully in her sleep. After losing my mother seven months earlier, the grief was familiar, yet different. I didn’t have the prolonged fog or sense of unreality, but I did find that I could sleep as long as I was allowed, including multi-hour naps during the day. At first, sadness mixed with relief that her suffering was over, but as the days wore on, the relief faded and the sadness took over.

Every little reminder, mostly unexpected, raises tears. Today, it was the bulky white envelope in the mailbox. Seen from the end, in the stack of other mail, it resembled the sort of envelope my mother-in-law would send, stuffed with photos and clippings and a cheerful note. Each of these reminders grips me in its tentacles and I have no choice but to live through the rise of emotion.

Yet there’s nothing of substance to grab onto. There’s no physical being to wrestle to the ground, no actual tentacle to peel off my skin. Instead, there’s just the acknowledgement that loving someone creates deep and lasting ties, and even when the other person is gone from this earth, the habits of those ties remain in our hearts and minds. People say that time will heal my grief, and they may be right. But I know, from watching my mom get teary when she spoke of her dad, decades after his death, that the tentacles never really let go.

This week may top all others in immensity of psychic energy experienced, used, and drained away. Election day I volunteered as a monitor at the local school where two precincts were voting, and then did a shift as a runner, taking food out to poll watchers and bringing back the lists of folks who still might need reminding to go vote. That night provided a huge catharsis for the tension, hope, anxiety, yearning, and work of the campaign season. Barack Obama’s speech, the footage of Jesse Jackson in tears, the crowds of joyous Americans…I’m so very grateful that I lived to see the day. I appreciated the seriousness of Obama’s speech, the lack of cheap promises for easy fixes. His eloquence, as always, touched my heart. The next day, I thought more about what having Michelle Obama as a first lady will mean to this country. During the campaign, I received a recorded call from her, and was impressed by the measured cadence of her voice, the calm that she evoked. Thank you, America, for making this possible.

The Saturday before the election, I started Nanowrimo. I’d never signed up in previous years, because it seemed silly to churn out yet another first draft to sit among the other first drafts that have piled up over the years, awaiting their turns at thorough editing. But this year, I had a dream that, when I worked it with some friends, pointed me clearly toward writing the novel I’d been toying with starting. (The dream also had layers about the election, all entwined together as dream symbols so often are.) So I figured I’d give it a try. After all, it wouldn’t be so different from what I’ve been doing for nine years, right? The pages would just pile up faster.

Actually, so far, that’s turned out to be true. My writing sessions take longer, of course, since I’m writing about five or six times as much per day as my previous minimum. But it’s not the first time I’ve had work pour through me this steadily, and this novel is truly begging to be written. Today, I worked the dream again with Jeremy Taylor, and found more affirmation that writing the novel is the right thing to be doing now, in part because its themes tie in deeply with the question of race in America. I’m so very grateful that two intelligent, well-spoken, responsible individuals will be our next president and first lady. And I’m grateful, in the way I was grateful when the Berlin Wall fell, that a historic barrier has finally crumbled. I am hopeful that Barack and Michelle can, by being themselves, erode the negative projections that we’ve historically visited on people with African ancestry in this country. Though, as I write that, I’m reminded that if we go back far enough in our human ancestry, we all have our roots in that rich continent.

I hope I can grasp hold of my own squirmy projections long enough to dissect them in the writing of this novel. I hope that this process shines light on my own shadows and brings to conscious awareness any unconscious prejudices I still lug around. Jeremy Taylor suggested that I consider the following: How have I been changed by this prodigious effort to conjure non-material truth and put it on the page?

Making myself available to the story comes easily now, after all the years of practice. Understanding how the story changes me is a new, unfamiliar idea. It’s an effort that I would be wise to make in regards to the election of our new president, as well. How does this new story for America change me, and how does it change our collective understanding of who we are as a nation?

I returned late last night from a five day workshop led by Robert Moss called The Return of the Seer. I had read several of Robert’s books, and watched his DVD set The Way of the Dreamer, but I knew from my dreamwork experience that reading or watching doesn’t lead to the same level of understanding as doing.

As a confirmation that I was on the right path, my travels there went incredibly smoothly, including having my suitcase be the first off the plane in Hartford. Flying into Hartford, I noticed several red cars in the driveways below, and had the thought, “I’ll get a red rental car.” Never having had a red rental car, this was an unusual thought, but sure enough, it was red. It had my birth month and year on the license plate, too. The license plate came up at several discussions throughout the week and various people teased other interesting meanings from the combination of numbers and letters on it.

The week itself was full of deeper coincidences and surprising moments. The clincher, for me, came early in the week. In groups of four, we took turns being the focus of a”journey” conducted by the other three. These journeys were a kind of waking dream, which I found very similar to the experience of writing fiction: just watching what unfolded in my mind, not judging, but observing. In the second of the journeys, the three of us who were journeying had startlingly consistent visions. I reported mine second, so was able to hear what I had seen (and noted in my journal before anyone spoke) described by someone else. There were variations in what we saw, but the similarities outweighed the variations. The experience was very affirming for me, confirming that these journeys were more than “just” imagination, especially since what we saw resonated very clearly with the person we were journeying for. To my Raven Journey brother and sisters, I will be forever grateful for that gift. And of course, to Robert, for facilitating the experience with the heartbeat of his drum and the raven imagery.

In addition to those and other journeys, we practiced Lightning Dreamwork and participated in dream theater. What’s so striking about dreamwork retreats in general is how quickly and deeply the participants get to the core of what matters to them. I don’t know what most of my new friends do for a living in the waking world, but I know what moves them in their hearts. Such meetings are not luxuries, as one participant pointed out, but necessities. We need to find deeper connections with one another in this world.

The other great gift of the week was gaining a true understanding of how essential it is to believe and trust one’s own experience. It’s a good and useful thing to study with the teachers who have years of experience of their own, who can lead the way more surely than we might stumble across it by ourselves, but it’s crucial to experience the spiritual and numinous for oneself. As Jeremy Taylor often says, “I know this to be true, and it’s much too important for you to take my word for it.” Now I understand that more deeply than ever. Everyone’s experience of the dream world, whether sleeping dreams or waking dreams or shamanic journeys, is individual, and everyone must come to her or his own understanding of what that experience means.

I’m grateful to Robert and to all the participants of the workshop for helping me to deepen my understanding.

In every moment of life, there are endings and beginning–breaths, heartbeats, seconds ticking on a clock. But sometimes in life, there are bigger endings and beginnings. On a human scale, the largest of these are birth and death, of course, but within each life are the moments we use to mark the trail. Graduations, relationships, changing roles in family life. Growing up, growing older.

I had a few of those landmarks recently. In April I mailed off Bone Temple, after an intensive effort to revise based on feedback from both Martha Mihalick’s critique from the RMC-SCBWI Fall 2007 conference, and the Wild Folk of the West. Getting it off my desk felt like a completion, though indeed I hoped it wasn’t really an ending, but a beginning of a new relationship with an editor. What every writer hopes for, of course.

In May, I finished the requirements for my Certificate from The Marin Institute for Projective Dreamwork. Certainly an ending and a beginning rolled into one. I framed the certificate and displayed it in my newly-rented office space, glad to have its company as I led dream exploration workshops. Also in May, I mailed off a short story, hoping for some success to mark my path. And, the biggest ending and beginning, by which I see my life divided into two–I gave up eating wheat and gluten, and achieved unexpected health.

I rested, for a couple of weeks, in the uncertainty of what to expect next. Well, rested isn’t exactly the word. I kept busy with all the usual duties of home and work, took a trip to Crested Butte and then to South Carolina, planted and weeded in the garden, tended the elderly cat, hosted several gatherings of family and friends, and generally stayed busy.

Then the beginnings started arriving. Further suggestions for revision from Martha. My short story accepted. A new computer. New ideas. More ideas than I can contain, during a time (summer) when my duties as mom trump my usual work time. Yet even that has a new beginning, as I explained to my kids that I needed some uninterrupted writing time during the day. They understood, and have been honoring my request.

And so, back to the new rewrite: another time through the novel weaving in more elements, deepening my own understanding of the full implications of the story. I faced it at first with some reluctance, but now the ideas are flowing and the process is fun again. Hang on, it’s the beginning of another ride.

I recently had the wonderful opportunity to work dreams at a party, with people I had never met before. The sessions were very quick, just ten to fifteen minutes, which is why I called it Spotlight Dreamwork. We didn’t have time to explore every nuance of every symbol, but even so, the magic of dreamwork is how quickly one can get close to the heart of things.

Usually, in ten minutes of small talk, I might find out what a person does for living, what their hobbies are, where they traveled for the holidays or whether they have children. We might form impressions of each other based on hairstyle, clothes, and comfort level with chitchat. But when someone tells me a dream, and expects me to offer some insights into the meaning of the symbols of the dream, the conversation takes a much different tack. I’m much less likely to hear about someone’s career as about the challenges they faced in childhood, or the sometimes very serious challenges they face as parents. I’m much more likely to learn about a difficult relationship with a parent than about recent vacations. And I’m much less likely to make assumptions about a person based on appearances. Instead, when working dreams, I am constantly reminded of how very much we are alike at a fundamental, crucial level. I’ve yet to meet a person who isn’t carrying burdens, and I’ve yet to meet someone interested in dreams who isn’t also yearning for a deeper understanding of themselves and of life.

And so my wish for you in the new year is that you’ll remember and examine your dreams, and find answers to your questions within them.

Two weekends ago, I attended an amazing weekend retreat. If you’ve never experienced Group Projective Dreamwork, it might be a challenge to appreciate how astonishing and healing a weekend of it can be. This was the fourth time I’ve attended one of the dream retreat weekends that Billie Ortiz organizes. Jeremy Taylor offers his mentorship, and the dreams, as always, inform each other and help everyone who works them to reach a deeper level of self-understanding.

One of the side effects of getting deeply involved in dreamwork is that synchronicities begin to become more noticeable in one’s waking life. On Sunday, the final dreams we worked on triggered an amazing recitation of synchronicities that the dreamers in the room could point to as connections with the dream material. It ended with Jeremy mentioning the book Patterns that Connect, which explores archetypal patterns in art forms throughout non-technological societies around the world. He specifically mentioned crosshatching as a decorative motif. When I got home, before I told my family about my weekend, we sat down to eat and my older daughter began methodically making crosshatch patterns in the top of her slice of squash pie.

If you’™re interested in some visual synchronicities, check out the blog “3191 a year of mornings”.

The number of connections between dreams that arise in a weekend, and the number of connections that can be made between two images, raises the questions, “Would there be that many connections between any small set of dreams? Does the human mind seek connections so automatically that we can find them in almost any pair of photographs?”

I’m beginning to suspect that the answer to both questions is yes, and that as a species, we’ve only begun to understand the depth and breadth of interconnectedness in our world.

Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to visit Southern Hills Middle School to discuss dreams as part of their Diversity Day. After three back-to-back forty-minute sessions, I was quite impressed with the willingness of students to share their dreams, and I came away with a lot of ideas of what I’d do differently if I ever have the chance to work with these students again. Knowing there wouldn’t be enough time to talk about everyone’s dreams, I asked the students to write a dream symbol on a slip of paper, and promised to discuss them here. With the caution that I can’t get at all the layers of meaning in a symbol (or even perhaps the right ones) when the symbol is out of context of the whole dream, I’ll offer some ideas, some sparks to get the dreamer thinking.

Remember, only the dreamer can say what the symbol means to her or him. What I say here is what the symbols mean to me, and since symbols come from much the same places in all of us, it’s likely that you’ll find something helpful in my projections.

Some students also wrote down brief dreams, which I’ll discuss in the next post.

I’m guessing that some of the symbols were intended as jokes or commentary, but as a writer I’m a firm believer that imagination is the waking dream, so I’ve included the sillier ones here too. Who’s to say they didn’t come from the same place as dreams? So, here are the symbols that the students gave me, in random order:

Bull: The first thing that comes to mind is the slang for something false and useless. But bulls are incredibly strong animals and I associate them with intense anger when they’re provoked. So this dream symbol could mean that the dreamer has some frustration or anger to work through.

Wolf: Depending on whether or not the wolf is menacing will determine what it’s doing in the dream. Wolves are pack animals and live in a strict hierarchy, and there’s some evidence that they use some kind of telepathy to communicate. So a wolf in the dream might point toward the hierarchical structures in the dreamer’s life, or the ways in which silent communication is taking place. An attacking wolf, though, might suggest that the dreamer is out of touch with his/her own instincts. See Jeremy Taylor’s thoughts on being menaced by wild animals: http://www.jeremytaylor.com/pages/menaced_animals.html

A man with a pizza head, rake arms, and cars for feet, and chairs for legs: Okay!. Pizza Head was a fake show used in Pizza Hut commercials, so beyond the incredible visual of red sauce for skin, I’d say this suggests someone who lets the media dictate what they think. Rake arms–someone who is trying to rake it in, or who is preparing the ground for planting. Cars for feet suggests someone who is moving much too fast. Chairs for legs sounds like a suggestion that the dreamer isn’t walking enough.

Fence: A barrier I (as the dreamer) have erected either to keep something out or to keep something in. If I’m sitting on the fence, what decision in my life am I ambivalent about? Maybe it’s time to make a choice.

Falling: We fall when our feet lose traction with the ground. Sometimes it’s a slip on the ice and the shock of falling might be strong enough to make us pay attention more. In waking life, such a fall can be life-changing because of the damage to the physical body. In dreams, such a fall often wakes us with a jolt–demanding that we pay attention. Sometimes we fall from a great height. This type of fall suggests to me that we’re reaching for new understandings (the great height) and the potential of making changes that come with new understandings is so great that we step into fear–the fall. If I can become lucid in such a dream, I can choose to fly.

An aggressive tusked bear: Jeremy Taylor suggests that animals represent the dreamer’s instincts, and the more aggressive or dangerous the animal, the more alienated those instinctual energies are from my conscious mind. For more on Jeremy’s discussion see: http://www.jeremytaylor.com/pages/menaced_animals.html
The tusked bear suggests both masculine and feminine energies. Male because of the tusks and female because I associate aggressive bears with mother bears protecting their young. There’s a lot of power in a bear, and so a lot of energy to channel into some creative outlet.

Organization: On one level, this could represent human society as a whole: the interconnections and structure that enable large groups of us to live and function together. Similarly, this could represent any organization to which the dreamer belongs–family, school, athletic teams, religious groups, scouts, etc. Of course, the basic message could be that getting organized would make life easier.

Lightning (See also storms): Where I live, lightning is one of the greatest natural dangers we face. Getting struck by lightning isn’t always fatal, but it’s certainly life-changing. So in that sense, I see lightning as a sudden transformation. Lightning could also mean that it’s time to get out of the pool, or, metaphorically, time to get out of the wash of emotions and take cover.

Storms: Sometimes dramatic change doesn’t come all at once (see Lightning) but brews and builds for a while and then wreaks havoc on lives and families. Sometimes storms are big enough to devastate whole coastlines or states, so storms in dreams could be a sign of the social/political storms around us. See Jeremy Taylor’s discussion of tornados and other storms: http://www.jeremytaylor.com/pages/tornadoes_storms.html

Knife: The intellect, which can cut through confusion, and the expression of which can be sharp, pointed and painful.

Death by tire (See Death): Death is the ultimate expression of transformation, and tires help us move through life, either by bike or motor vehicle. This symbol sounds like a profound transformation in the area of how I’m moving forward in my life.

Death: This symbol, however it presents itself, represents transformation. When we change and grow, old parts of us “die” and are no longer useful, so it’s always worth asking what aspects of ourselves the dying or dead person or animal represents. If I dream that I am killing myself, or even if I have waking thoughts of suicide, the dreams or thoughts aren’t really directing me to hurt myself. They are suggesting that I change myself so dramatically that only my own death is a powerful enough symbol for that change. For more on this, see Jeremy Taylor’s article at: www.jeremytaylor.com/pages/suicide.html

Cave: The subconscious, or a place of retreat and hibernation. So, depending on the context, this symbol could mean going deeper into subconscious thoughts and patterns, or that I’m retreating from the world or needing a long period of rest.

Twenty foot llama: A llama carries heavy loads, senses danger, and sounds the alarm. Llamas are used to protect herds of sheep. So this might be a part of the dreamer that is overburdened and/or protective. Since the size is greatly exaggerated, this part of me is probably out of balance compared to the rest of my life.

Someone who has passed away: Who’s to say that the deceased’s spirit isn’t coming to visit? Dreams of friends and family members who have passed away can also represent those parts of us that we saw in that person. Maybe those parts have shifted and are no longer useful to us.

Being naked in dreams: Showing more of my true self in public than I intend to. See Jeremy Taylor’s discussion: http://www.jeremytaylor.com/pages/nakedpublic.html

Flying pig in submarine: The three symbols here work in interesting ways together. Flying is often a yearning for creative expression in waking life, or spiritual pursuits and connections. A pig represents intelligence and/or obesity, as well as stubbornness. And a submarine helps us plumb the depths of emotion. So flying pigs in a submarine could be my intelligence or material desires looking for a way to creatively express deep, probably subconscious emotions. Or, I have extraordinary abilities trapped where I can’t use them.