Upon Waking from a Dream

I’m going to let David Whyte have the first words on Waking in his poem “What to Remember When Waking”

In that first

hardly noticed moment

in which you wake, coming back

to this life

from the other more secret, moveable

and frighteningly honest world

where everything began,

there is a small opening

into the new day which closes

the moment

you begin

your plans.

What you can plan is too small

for you to live.

What you can live wholeheartedly

will make plans enough

for the vitality

hidden in your sleep.

To be human

is to become visible while carrying

what is hidden

as a gift to others.

To remember the other world in this world

is to live

your true inheritance.

You are not

a troubled guest

on this earth,

you are not

an accident

amidst other accidents.

You were invited

from another and greater night

than the one

from which

you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light

of the morning window toward

the mountain presence

of everything that can be,

what urgency calls you to your one love?

What shape

waits in the seed

of you to grow

and spread

its branches

against a future sky?

Is it waiting

in the fertile sea?

In the trees

beyond the house?

In the life

you can imagine

for yourself?

In the open

and lovely,

white page

on the waiting desk?

There is an art to lingering that our fast-paced culture has forgotten, and there are few places I can see where lingering is quite as important then when waking, except perhaps after love making.  When waking, whether it be in the middle of the night, in the morning, or after a nap, don’t be in a hurry to let your roles, lists and plans rush in, or let “all the king’s men, and all the king’s horses, put Humpty back together again”.  Linger softly in bed, perhaps resting on the threshold of two worlds, and let curiosity flood into the crevasses of this space. Dreams often pour out of us like water from a glass when we sit up, wake up, or let the human doing have its way with us. This is often true for powerful dreams that we think we couldn't possibly forget, telling ourselves that we’ll write it down later in the day, only to find that barely a residue remains just a couple hours later. The trick is to find the pause, the space in between, and reside there.

So, what to do in this lingering?  Let the dream play in your mind and body, and repeat it even several times, each time allowing details to pop out with greater clarity.  Look at the from different angles, and becoming increasingly curious about details like colors, landscapes, major and minor characters, narratives, time of day, lighting, objects in the background.  Notice what narratives you are holding about the dream, what happened?   Drop into mindfulness and feel into the residual body sensations, emotional impressions, and how you feel about the dream.  Are you happy it was just a dream, or wish it could have lasted forever?  Consider saying out loud any words, phrases, or song lyrics that showed up in the dream.  If there were any movements or gestures that showed up in the dream, consider doing those in bed, if for no other reason than to etch them into the body’s memory for later.  Everything is important, and the waking ego will dismiss anything it can. It will say, “Oh, I didn’t get the whole thing,” or, “That didn’t make sense at all,” or, “That was just a work dream,” or, “That was a big fat nothing.” All lies, I tell you!

The dream came to you not to be understood by the waking mind, rather, to help the waking mind wake up to the much larger world of psyche and soma, to truth of our past, the possibility of our future, the dream of a collective, and our soul’s place in all of it.  And this is why dreams are dangerous.