TheDreamstersUnion

(Saturday, August 3, 2013)  I’ve spent a little time this week reading Mary Ziemer‘s alchemy website about lucid and clear light dreams (click link on Mary’s name or see the Dreamsters link page). Also learning about Tai Chi breathing: the instruction is to breathe in from the abdomen, and then “dissolve” with the out-breath.

Last night as I was lying in bed, preparing to sleep, I fell into a moment when I had no thoughts, no images at all in my mind. No body. Just awareness. With my eyes closed, the inner light was clear, not black. This morning I awoke again with vertigo, but not as overwhelming as the episode I had this spring.

(Thursday, August 1. 2013)  I am in Hollywood, but standing on the beach. I am aware that this makes no sense: I know Hollywood is in the hills. I face east, and the ocean is to the east, as in Virginia Beach. Again, awareness of no sense.

The locals are talking about how the ice just went out for the season. This is another physical impossibility.

A small wooden railroad trestle reaches out into the sea. In my gut I “get” the incongruity of a bridge able to span the breadth of an ocean. Yet I can smell the creosote in the old, heavy timbers.

A smiling dark-haired woman appears and stretches her left arm gracefully over the water. Very relaxed, like a move in Tai Chi. As her hand and arm extend, I see another, much larger wooden bridge magically begin to appear, flowing from her fingertips like pixels in a CGI movie. Her arm is a visual reality paintbrush. She is playing, delightfully, at the edge of the sea of the unconscious.

She says, “Oh look at the saba grapes!” A green vine, full of grapes, clings to the dark, spicy wood of the trestle. “You don’t have saba grapes in America.”

Where am I?

Day notes:

This dream offers a multitude of opportunities for lucidity. It’s as though I am being teased by incongruity.

I had never heard of saba grapes. I looked it up: it’s not a variety of grape, but an ancient Italian recipe. Grape must is slowly reduced over heat to become a thick, sweet syrup.

Saba is also the smallest Dutch municipality, an island five miles square, in the Dutch Carribbean.

(Saturday, July 27, 2013) I dream of a wellness conference, like the one my employer held at the U of M McNamara Alumni Center July 17. My dream event takes place there, it seems, as the walls and floor are rosy Minnesota granite.

An older woman and I leave the main hall of the conference and head back toward a private room we share. I have never met her before. She is very short and a little bit stout, with curly red hair. She has an air of both authority and great compassion. I explain to her that my interest in health is not as a certified professional: it’s an interest that has grown organically over the years because of things that have happened in my personal life. The study and practice of wellness techniques has become a central focus for me.

My roommate is a healer and educator. She reminds me of the herbalist/wisewoman named Edie in my Cornwall dream. She is warmer to me than Edie was.

We are going to open a kind of safety deposit box. I dig into my jeans pocket with my right hand, trying to locate the key. My pockets, ordinarily empty, are full of lint and other odds and ends. I pull out a tiny black fob but there are no keys attached to the ring. I panic momentarily, digging deeper into the pocket.

I find two small fairy-sized keys at the very bottom seam. One key is smaller than the other. It’s gold. The slightly larger key is shiny black, perhaps iron or steel.

Day notes:

In the Cornwall dream, I share a voice mailbox and password (key) with my researcher coworker (male). In this dream I share a safety deposit box with a healer and teacher (female). In the Cornwall dream, there is a flight of fairy stairs that run alongside regular, human-sized steps.

The theme of the double locks, from Rolduc Abbey, reappears in this dream. I never see the box and I do not know what is inside.

The red-haired healer also makes me think of Mary Ziemer from the IASD conference. Mary lives in Britain, and although she is 8 years younger than I, her wisdom is profound. She is a very old soul. Hers was the last presentation I saw in Virginia Beach and it was transcendent. She also published an article in the Lucid Dream Exchange last week that was deeply inspiring to me.

Scott Sparrow and Nigel Hamilton shared the IASD session with Mary Ziemer. It came up in the question and answer part of the presentation that the three of them had had profound kundalini experiences when they were young. This, of course, affected everything, including their dreams. It was a relief to me to hear kundalini discussed in such a natural way.

The key to the treasure is right at hand.