For a World in Need of Dreams
Dreams: tonight’s answers for tomorrow’s questions.1
– Mark Thurston
Alone, circling the dark side of the moon and cut off from radio contact, the astronaut Michael Collins reflected on his unique perspective as he peered through the window of the Apollo 11 command module. Looking out at the moon, where his fellow Apollo astronauts had landed, and beyond to Earth, blue and white against the black backdrop of space, Collins reflected, ‘I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it. If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus God knows what on this side.’2
Similarly, it can feel this way when we look upon the dreamscape, aware that we dream, and yet recalling our earthly life beyond the dream. From the perspective of a lucid dream, we may think, like Collins, that no one stands behind us looking on. Yet an entire universe awaits, vibrant with life about which we know next to nothing.
Collins returned to Earth with deep insight into the planet’s fragile, silent beauty, one that eradicates borders and silences arguments. We can extend this insight to our dreams, for when we explore and share our dreams, we realise the nature of our common humanity – earthlings inhabiting a wondrous planet.
Fifty years on from the moon landing, the human population has nearly tripled.3 As the needs and desires of humanity exhaust Earth’s resources, the wounds upon the planet have become more visible from space. Satellite images display the dull grey smears of air pollution by day over cities, and the unnatural glare of electric lights by night. Time-lapse imagery compiled from footage over the past 20 years dramatically highlights the loss of coral reefs, forests and glaciers.4
Only radical changes in human attitudes and behaviours can give hope for the future.5 Technological and economic restructuring will not happen without insight, intuition and imagination, guided by empathy, courage and compassion. Dream awareness can help us to draw on the inspiration needed to overcome limited worldviews, empowering us to transform ourselves and the world in which live.
To help us to contain our fears so that we can respond with grace even as we face the threat of the extinction of life on Earth, we need the vision and emotional depth that dream awareness can impart. In becoming attentive to the world within, we become attentive to the world without, in reciprocity.
Sometimes a dream gives us a down-to-earth insight. Consider, for instance, a dream of a creature of the earth, the humble beetle. The man who shared the following dream with me had been undergoing many life changes that involved him in worldly concerns he could never have foreseen:
I was in a house where horrible things kept happening. Black beetles crawling, unpleasant scenes everywhere, like a haunting. I realised I was creating this disturbance with my mind and decided to stop. Then everything soon came right ... I was the one generating the ‘hauntings’, not the others who were present. But they were happy to find me back to normal. I think there was another dream earlier in the night when, in despair, I called on God for help.
When relating the dream to me, the dreamer expressed surprise at how distressed he felt by the beetles. Naming the cause of his haunted feeling was the challenge the dream left him to ponder. Yet, the dream holds great promise not only for the dreamer but for all of us, for when we recognise that we ourselves create the disturbances with our thoughts, we can instead direct our will towards ways of being that serve us better.
Although the dreamer associated the ‘hauntings’ with the beetles, at the same time the beetles can be considered as living creatures in their own right. Beetles are necessary for life on the planet. Some half a million known species of beetles go about moving waste, aerating soil and pollinating flowers. Their presence in nature indicates the freshness of the water and soil that supports life. Beetles have their place in the natural world, and we need them to help sustain life on Earth.
This man shared how, around the time of this dream, beetles had been overrunning his home in spite of his efforts to catch them and put them back outside. The dream weaves a waking-world preoccupation into this dreamer’s personal psychology. But such a dream becomes the opportunity for all of us to consider our relationship to the ‘hauntings’ that plague the Earth as a consequence of our thoughts and actions. Our dreams remind us that we too are born of the Earth and cannot live apart from it.
We can take heart in knowing that at times of great crisis, dreams often throw us a lifeline. As this book started by the seashore, I now invite you to return there, this time with a dream set near the sea. The dreamer, a woman whose husband of many years had recently died, had the dream during her bereavement, when she felt especially low:
I was being swept along in a broad, swirling river towards the open sea. It was a wild, stormy day, with dark rain clouds racing along overhead. The trees on the banks of the river were being tossed hither and thither in the wind which blew over the face of the waters. I must perish in such turbulence! As I was being swept along, I heard a quiet voice saying, ‘Take hold of the rope’, and lying beside me in the water I saw the end of a strong rope. ‘Hold it firmly, but easily,’ said the voice. I took hold of it in the way I had been told, and imperceptibly the raging waters became calm – or I quiet in their midst. I looked again at the rope and saw that it was no longer an end that I held; it stretched before me and behind me and I knew that I only needed to hold it in this way to be taken to the sea. I knew too that it had been there all the time. I was no longer afraid, and the waters that had before seemed so hostile, sweeping me to the sea against my will, now seemed friendly.6
This woman adds: ‘I awoke from this dream to feel that I had discovered the key to all life – the whole secret of being.’ She recounts how, after the dream, she bought an old piece of rope, like the one in the dream, and, holding it, lay on her bed in the same position as when she lay in the water. Doing so helped her to accept her loss and to reconnect her with the will to live.
The dream tells all who will listen to ‘take the rope and to hold it firmly but easily’, to go forward in life not in fear but with trust, and so to live the dream of the awakened heart.