The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination (9 page)

The violinist carried that thrilling sense of movement into his subsequent performances, at his friend's funeral, and later — in a personal tribute to the source of the music — at the grave of Maria Barbara Bach.

Steinhardt's beautiful memoir,
Violin Dreams
, celebrates his passionate, lifelong love affair with the instrument that cries and sings, and he describes how at every turning, his rich dream life has supported his calling. He opens the book with a dream that sends him on a quest to learn the history and prehistory of the violin. In another dream, a beautiful woman visitor reveals herself as the soul of a violin.

Dreams of Writing

Dreams are an incredible gift to writers. For one thing, writing a dream in your journal gets you started. You are immediately working your writing muscles and warming up. A dream can give you the whole story. Jacqueline Mitchard says she dreamed the story of her powerful first novel,
The Deep End of the Ocean
; it then took her several years to bring all of it through. Even a fragment can get your writing fingers working. Three years before his death, Egyptian novelist and Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz said that a writer must write something every day. Even if his energy is dwindling, every day a writer must write something, anything. What he did was to write vignettes of his dreams. “They are very, very short stories, like this,” he said, pointing to the tip of his index finger.

It's not just that dreams give us creative ideas; they supply creative
energy
. Stephen King recalls that the idea for
Misery
(like the ideas for many of his novels) came to him from a dream, in this case when he was napping on a plane bound for London. He dreamed of a woman who held a writer captive until she eventually killed him, skinned him, fed his remains to a pig — and used a piece of his skin to bind his novel. As soon as King got to Brown's Hotel, he dashed off the first fifty pages of a draft. The plot changed a lot in the telling, but the first vision of the book, and the raw energy for bringing it through, were the gift of the dream.

Robert Louis Stevenson described the central role of dreaming and dreamlike states in his creative process in “A Chapter on Dreams.” During his sickly childhood, he was often oppressed by night terrors and the “night hag.” But as he grew older, he found that his dreams often became welcome adventures, in which he would travel to far-off places or engage in costume dramas among the Jacobites. He often
read
stories in his dreams, and as he developed the ambition to become a writer, it dawned on him that a clever way to get his material would be to transcribe what he was reading in his sleep. “When he lay down to prepare himself for sleep, he no longer sought amusement, but printable and profitable tales.” And his dream producers accommodated him. He noticed they became especially industrious when he was under a tight deadline. When “the bank begins to send letters” his “sleepless Brownies” worked overtime, turning out marketable stories.

“Who are the Little People? They are near connections of the dreamer's, beyond doubt. . . .What shall I say they are but just my Brownies, God bless them! who do one-half my work for me while I am fast asleep, and in all human likelihood, do the rest for me as well, when I am wide awake and fondly suppose I do it for myself. That part which is done while I am sleeping is the Brownies' part beyond contention; but that which is done when I am up and about is by no means necessarily mine, since all goes to show the Brownies have a hand in it even then. . . .My Brownies are somewhat fantastic, like their stories hot and hot, full of passion and the picturesque, alive with animating incident; and they have no prejudice against the supernatural.” And have no morals at all.

7. DREAMS HELP US TO MEND
OUR DIVIDED SELVES

“The soul is something that is always trying to leave,” announced a sad young woman in one of my workshops — sad until she received the gift of soul recovery, and the light came back on in her eyes and her life.

Most of us know what it feels like to be missing a part of ourselves, or to encounter someone who is “not all there.” This is reflected in our everyday speech. We might say of ourselves, “I was out to lunch,” or of someone else, “He is a few sandwiches short of a picnic.”

Western psychology offers many tools and models for dealing with aspects of the self that are present within an individual. It rarely addresses the problem of what to do when aspects of the self are missing.

Soul loss may be caused by pain or abuse, trauma or heartbreak. We are hurt or scarred so deeply that a part of ourselves leaves the body and does not come back because it does not want to suffer the same grief or trauma again.

Soul loss also results from life choices. We decide to leave a relationship, a home, a job, a country, a lifestyle — and part of us resists that choice, sometimes to the point of splitting away and withdrawing its energy from our lives.

We lose soul when we make the choice to give up on our
big
dreams, when we refuse to make that creative leap of faith, or to trust ourselves to love.

We lose soul when we take up the habit of lying, to ourselves or others.

Our dreams show us how to heal our divided selves and bring missing parts of our energy and identity back into the body, where they belong.

Dream Invitations to Soul Recovery

Here are some of the ways in which dreams introduce soul matters and open paths for soul energy to come home.

Dreams about Shoes
Shoes have “soles” and dreams of shoes often involve “soul” in the deeper sense. In dreams, the state of your shoes — especially if one or more is missing — may be telling you about something that has happened to your soul.

Dreams of the Old Place
Dreams in which we go back to a scene from our earlier lives, especially when this happens over and over, may indicate that a vital part of our energy and identity is still in that old place. We may find ourselves returning in dreams, again and again, to a childhood home, or the home we shared with a former partner. These dreams may be an invitation to reach back into that place and recover one of our soul-selves that is stuck there. The “old place” may also prove to be a place of encounter with family members and loved ones who have passed on — or need help in passing on.

Dreams of Our Younger Self as a Separate Individual
These types of dreams may be nudging us to recognize and recover a part of ourselves we lost at that younger age. Sometimes we do not know who that beautiful child is, until we take a closer look.

Sometimes we see our missing parts in that magic mirror. Roger dreamed he looked in a mirror and saw many selves, aspects of himself at many different ages. He was thrilled as he watched them coming together, hugging each other, and uniting — all except for a shy five-year-old who drew further and further away.

Roger went back inside the dream — through a technique we call dream reentry — and offered his five-year-old self toys he had loved, coaxing him with thoughts like: “You don't
have
to come over here. But if you want to have some fun . . .”When his five-year-old self finally came back, Roger felt lighter and charged with energy.

Maggie shared a dream in which she recognized a lovely three-year-old who was hiding out in Grandma's yard — and realized,
in the dream
, that it was time to get her lost child out of the old place. “My three-year-old wouldn't come over the fence until I offered her a cute little stuffed lion. Then she came with me. We had a picnic and sang over and over, ‘Lock her up and take her home, take her home, take her home.’ I know my little girl is with me now.”

Animal Helpers Guide Us to Our Missing Selves
Many
big
dreams that offer an invitation to soul recovery involve animal guides.

A woman named Peggy told me a dream in which she was standing on a hillside, surrounded by other figures she slowly began to recognize as aspects of herself — a baby self, a lively teenager, and a sad and estranged eleven-year-old. She wanted to bring the whole group together, but the eleven-year-old turned her back and moved off.

Peggy looked down across the valley and saw an animal feeding in the distance. It raised its head, and she saw it was a large black bear. The force and directness of its gaze were shocking. The bear came racing toward Peggy, climbing the hill at amazing speed. As it neared her, it raised up on its hind legs. Peggy stood frozen before the bear. The bear took her hand in its great paw and told her, “I am your very best friend.”

Peggy woke elated, charged with energy, feeling that her life was full of possibility. I shared her joy, because the dream offered so many gifts and such profound and immediate healing. In her dream, Peggy was able to recognize different aspects of herself — including younger selves who had been missing for many years through soul loss — and bring them together. And she acquired a powerful ally. The dream left something important to be resolved: how to bring home the energy of that eleven-year-old self. Peggy decided to work with the help of her “very best friend,” through the dream reentry technique, to bring that eleven-year-old child home.

Sometimes the process of soul recovery and integration may be completed with the help of dream animals inside a single night dream. A woman named Holly dreamed a dog and a fox rescued four younger versions of herself — pieces that had been missing for many years — from a place deep underground. The dream animals brought Holly and her four child selves to a blue lake of healing where they bathed and played together and became one.

The Absence of Dream Recall

A primary symptom of soul loss is the inability to remember one's dreams — as if the part of the sufferer that knows how to dream and travel in deeper reality has gone away, out of pain or disgust. We begin to practice soul recovery for ourselves, and support it in others, when we agree to make a little room each day for our dreams to come back. We start by agreeing that when we wake up, we will recall something from the night — even if it is not a dream. In this way, we signal to our dream source that we are ready to receive.

“Hidden within the grown-up heart,” as Rilke sings of those who have been hurt and have hurt others, is “a longing for the first world, the ancient one.” In German, that “longing” (
ein Atemholen
) can also be rendered as a “breathing toward.” The breath of our longing reaches for the wonder and vitality and innocence of our beautiful lost boys and girls and their “first world” of dreams and enchantment. When we open the dream door, we will find our way to them, and they to us.

8. DREAMING IS A KEY
TO BETTER RELATIONSHIPS

We can dream our way to the partner who fulfills us emotionally, spiritually, and physically. Working with dreams and sharing them in the right way can help us deepen and renew exciting relationships. In dreams, we also learn when it is time to cut our losses and move away from a cramped or destructive relationship.

Gabby dreamed she was with a tall, attractive Jewish man who resembled the TV host of
America's Funniest Home Videos
. Like Bob Saget, the man in her dream was funny and had great theatrical flair. In the dream, Gabby took this man to visit her family in South Korea, introducing him as “the man I'm going to marry.” They loved him, too.

Gabby was amazed by this dream — especially by her family's reaction to her intended, since they had long made it clear that they wished her to marry a Korean in a traditional ceremony.

Nine months later, she met the man from her dream — in one of my workshops in Manhattan. Like Bob Saget, Roger is over six feet tall and Jewish, has a great sense of humor, and is both an actor and a playwright. As they got to know each other, Roger realized he had been dreaming of Gabby. Their interweaving dreams grew until they were married on a beach on Long Island in the summer of 2006.

Maybe we would do better with our relationships if we
required
each other to dream on what wants to happen between us.

There is a very illuminating story about this in an Icelandic saga. The king of Denmark wanted to marry a woman named Thyri, the beautiful daughter of the earl of Holstein.

Thyri's father — clearly an enlightened man — informed the king that his daughter must choose for herself, “since she is much wiser than I am.”

Thyri told the king that he must build himself a new house, just big enough for a bed, where no house has stood before. He must sleep alone in this place — a dream incubator — for three nights and pay close attention to his dreams. Then he must send a messenger to her with an exact report of what he has dreamed. “If you don't dream,” Thyri cautioned the king, “don't bother to call on me again.”

The king remembered his dreams, and Thyri must have approved of the content, because she agreed to marry him and became first among his counselors. She is remembered as the wisest queen of Denmark, who helped the king — through her dream tracking — to see the hidden forces behind events and make good choices.

Dreams Show Us How to Move On — or Move Out

Dreams hold up a mirror to our relationships. A Japanese American woman concerned about her marriage dreamed that she and her husband were at the beach. She wanted to plunge in the surf, but he complained that the ocean was “dirty.” He took her to a shallow ornamental pool where the water was only a few inches deep and told her it was okay to bathe there. She recognized that this was a fairly exact video clip of her situation; she resolved that she would try find a way to get her husband beyond the formality and shallowness of their marriage — and failing that, move beyond it.

Dreams can also help us renew and regrow a relationship by showing us depths of power and passion in ourselves and our partners that we may now be able to claim. A man who had been getting bored in his marriage dreamed he was making love with a voluptuous goddess whose body seemed to take form from the living Earth, then changed into the shape of his wife. He approached his wife with new eyes, and something like awe. “How come it took you all this time to wake up to the fact you're married to a goddess?” his wife teased him when he finally found the courage to tell her the dream.