Just a few days ago, I heard sawing happening nearby. Then, suddenly, a falling log nearly pounded me right between the eyes.
I gasped and gripped the bed beneath me, as I realized I was dreaming.
After a few moments to gather my wits about me, I took the image to the page, making notes for my work to come.
Several years ago, I began a personal practice of dreamwork. And now, in just a few short months, I will complete a training certification from The Haden Institute in Jungian dreamwork.
Did the log hurt me? No.
Was it real? Absolutely.
In the course of my oneiric studies, I read Toko-Pa Turner's recommendation of the documentary My Octopus Teacher as a beautiful metaphor for the nature of working with our dreams. I have since viewed it many times, and I, too, recommend it. In Craig Foster's ninety-minute story of a transformational relationship with an octopus, there are many gifts. I see something new each time I watch it.
I soon asked my artist friend Jeanna to paint an octopus for me. She did, on a 12 x 12 canvas that now hangs in my studio. I also made a gold octopus charm for my necklace stack, adding a rose cut salt-and-pepper diamond that reminds me of the kelp forest in the film. The octopus became, for me, an emblem of dreamwork.
In My Octopus Teacher, Foster does not capture the octopus, remove her from the kelp forest, or demand that she reveal herself. He returns to the same place again and again. He watches. He waits. He learns the contours of her world. Over time, something like trust develops between them.
Dreamwork asks something similar of us. A dream is not a puzzle to be solved or a message to be decoded as quickly as possible. It is a living image, encountered in its own habitat. We return to it. We notice what it does. We resist the urge to pin it down while we move into a relationship with it. Sometimes the dream comes closer. Sometimes it disappears into the rocks. Sometimes it changes color before our eyes. And sometimes it drops a tree on our head.
My falling log, the abruptness of the image, and the height of my somatic response brought to my awareness how threatened I felt by a situation in my waking life. With that awareness, I was able to shift my perspective and advocate better for myself.
The practice of dreamwork is not primarily about finding the right interpretation. It is about cultivating relationship with the dreaming psyche – with that strange, intelligent, image-making life force that dwells beneath the surface of our waking consciousness. From that depth of connection, we become more aligned with the essence of our being.
French philosopher Simone Weil wrote, "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."
Dreamwork asks us for precisely this kind of generosity toward ourselves: attention without demand. Curiosity without conquest. Reverence without sentimentality. A willingness to remain with what we do not understand. When we offer our attention to the material arriving in our dreams, we begin a relationship with wisdom. Dreams have taught me that image is the language of the soul.
When the soul wishes to have an experience, she calls forth an image, and steps into it. – Meister Eckhart
Making jewelry for most of my adult life, I have created all sorts of emblems through the years, some literal like my little octopus, and many much more abstract. Because of Craig Foster's documentary (another act of generous attention), his octopus and their relationship altered the way I understand attention. It is, perhaps, our most precious asset.
The gold octopus resting against my chest is not the creature beneath the kelp. But she carries the image into my ordinary days and reminds me of the gifts of cultivating a relationship with mystery.
Consciousness is more than the thin layer of waking thought I usually call "me."
Imagination and curiosity are valid spiritual disciplines.
Images can possess a kind of agency and vitality of their own.
And sometimes the work is simply to keep returning. To the dream. To the image. To the mystery we cannot quite understand, to offer our attention without demanding an answer.
Perhaps this is how a relationship with the unseen grows: not through certainty, but through presence. We return again and again, and slowly learn the contours of a world larger than the one we thought we knew.
Sometimes something comes close enough to touch us.
And sometimes it nearly hits us between the eyes.