There are nights I only know I’ve slept because I dreamt. It is in the dreaming that I know my mind and body have released enough resistance that another reality is possible. Our dreams are a way of processing our experiences, digesting, composting, making sense of the world such that we can move on and experience it anew. We quite literally get to work things out, try on new ways of seeing and being and then decide in our wakefulness how we want to live. Our dreamstate is also where we can access other realms, and they us. We may receive messages, travel out of our bodies for a bit and check out what’s happening in other dimensions. And that’s just when we’re sleeping.
Our precious capacity to imagine is dreaming while awake. Since we know we have the capacity for it, simply by releasing resistance we can activate and direct that state while conscious. Without any special clairvoyant gifts, when awake, anyone can dream other realities, possibilities and outcomes.
With such an incredible power living within us, why wouldn’t we use that to imagine the lives and worlds we want to live in?
As a lifelong dreamer, I’ve loved escaping into fantasy. I can daydream like the best of em. I can conjure up visions and transport myself there. I can also dream up the worst possibilities. My capacity for imagination has been hijacked by protectors within who want to keep me limited so I stay safe, by all the anxieties and “what if’s” that would stop me from moving in the direction of what I envision. I know firsthand that just because we can imagine something, doesn’t mean it’s good for us to do so.
I want us to utilize the power of our capacity to dream to create and live into what we want to experience.
Some may think this is a naive endeavor, not worth the time. Some woo woo shit people obsessed with the law of attraction go on about. To those, I would say that someone dreamt of you. Someone imagined the reality you’re living in, whether you like it or not. We have evolved this capacity for imagining the future for some reason. It is powerful. It is the seed of creation. Why not utilize it?
For years I worked in social justice organizations, on campaigns and issues fighting against all manner of oppressions. Systems and structures that people who wanted power over others dreamt up and recreate every day. We would spin our wheels, coming up with sane and reality-based messages that spoke to why whatever we were fighting against was wrong. Hardly ever did we take the time to really vision and describe what we wanted beyond “a better policy.” We didn’t get funded to dream, we got funded to fight. It was exhausting and soul-sucking and the fight only seemed to bring about more fighting within our movements and beyond.
I can turn on the fight when I need to, as I believe all of us can when under immediate threat, but my natural state where I feel I have the most power is as a dreamer and creator. It felt wrong to be in spaces where I couldn’t dream beyond the systems, structures and cultures we were stuck in. I wanted to be able to use my gifts, not simply fall in line with the collective strategy. It felt futile to spin our wheels but not know to what end. It felt boring to only craft 3 sentence vision statements to plop on our website to make our funders and boards happy, then ignore the rest of the time in favor of toiling away at our obviously failed strategies. I was a part of retreats where we were supposed to be visioning, but my fellow participants would scoff at the visionary statements as unrealistic, pollyanna, out there and impossible.
Bleh.
I believe we can imagine, experience and yes even ENJOY a new way of being even while the systemic realities we’re in suck. I don’t believe in the sole strategy of dismantling without also creating the things we want. I understand that there are many points at which to stop the flow of harm: some folks need to tend to the wounded, some to stop it as the source, some to look up and see what the land ahead looks like where the harm has ceased. All are necessary, but for too long we’ve been focused only on the tending and the telling of the harm. I have participated in it all and have come to see my role in supporting people to look ahead, imagine and create those environments we want to live in NOW so that when the things that are rooted in harm inevitably fall away (and they will), there we will be, with our intricate systems and life-giving cultures and malleable structures ready to embrace those who said it was all impossible. Even those who held onto their arms until the last possible moment. There will be room for them, too. There will be repair and rest.
And speaking of repair and rest, that is what our bodies do when we dream. Our bodies know how to do this. We have the blueprint within us. We need only surrender to the darkness, stillness, ease and allow the life that wants us, to have us.
