Thoughts on Dreaming and "The Dreamweaver"

I want to write about something that is a fascinating subject to me - the world of dreams. Dreaming is an immense and infinite subject, but I want to touch on a few key points at least. Dreams (the actual sleeping kind of dreams, not goals) can be many different things to many different people, the important thing to remember is that they are very subjective of course. Although some have tried to devise a 'standard' to understanding dreams, it is always a very unique and personal process.

Dreams can be your fantasies, your plans, your worries, simply a reaction to eating junk food, your wants and needs, a carry-over from your daily life, a form of telepathic communication, a way to gain insight into your mind, a portal to spiritual dimensions and many other things. Some people claim that they don't dream, but this is not true - everybody dreams, you may just not remember them. Keeping a notepad by the side of the bed is one way to start helping you to remember them, and the more you write day after day, the more of your dreams you will remember.

Speaking of dreaming practices, let me tell you about one of the most fascinating books I have honestly ever read - Carlos Castaneda's The Art of Dreaming. Back in the day, Dr. Castaneda was just an anthropological student searching for an authentic old-school teacher when he found Don Juan. Don Juan taught Carlos many things and he wrote it all down in a series of books. Among these teachings is one set aimed at understanding the lucid dreaming process more fully, which Carlos gives us in this book.

Lucid dreaming is the state of mind you reach when, in your dreams you know absolutely that it is a dream, remaining asleep but attaining a kind of half-conscious state in the dream. The more skill you have in your lucid dreaming the more conscious you are and the more control you have. As I said, the book is a set of practices for improving one's lucid dreaming skills, set inside of a narrative. Some people debate the existence of Castaneda's Don Juan, but whether it exactly happened the way he wrote it or not, the information he provides in this book and all of his books is simply mind-blowing.

"Judged by the subjective standards of orderly thoughts, orderly visual and auditory sensory input, orderly responses on my part, my experiences, for as long as they lasted, were as real as any situation in our daily world."

- Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming.

One way that Don Juan describes the dreamworld to Carlos is that he says it is like the skins of an onion. The more you peel the more you discover, and every layer is entirely different than the last. In the background of my sketch below you can see a kind of layered-gate or portal with a figure standing in front of it; he is The Dreamweaver. I did this around the time I was reading the book for the first time several years ago.

The Dreamweaver by Ed T. © 2008

One of the things that Don Juan prescribes to Carlos to help him enter the lucid dreaming state, is that he tells him to try and remember to look at his hands. Simply focus on this idea over and over as you fall asleep and in the dream if you remember to do that it can trigger lucid dreaming. Seeing your hand in the dream not only bridges the gap to your conscious mind (which you employed for this exact purpose) it forces you to focus and look at detail in the dream. So that's why The Dreamweaver's hand in my drawing is so big.

But what about dreams as an analytical tool? Not only are dreams a tool for understanding your self and your mind, they can be tools for understanding information in an entirely new way. For example, some mathematicians claim dreams can help them gain perspective and answers even to unsolvable equations. Dreams provide inspiration not only to problem-solvers but to artists, inventors, philosophers, writers, and anyone that has ever gained insight from a dream. The key being the unconscious mind's ability to process information in a much more abstract method than the conscious can ever hope to do. Take this quote from Carl Jung on the subject:

"The unconscious seems to be able to examine and to draw conclusions from facts, much as consciousness does. It can even use certain facts, and anticipate their possible results, just because we are not conscious of them."

- Carl Jung, Man and his symbols.

I once had a dream where there was this absurdly large cowboy, almost like in those Zippy cartoons where those large store icons come to life and talk to him. This giant cowboy went to shake my hand and proceeded to crush it. It didn't hurt but I woke up and remembered feeling shocked that it was happening. At the time, a fellow employee that I was working with at my job was studying dreams and psychology in college. He immediately aked if there was a situation I was feeling overwhelmed by. And in fact there was, I was planning on moving out of state for the first time soon, and was definitely concerned about leaving my home city.

I was amazed that the key to understanding the dream was so simple and that he got it so fast, and that it was very true. More true than I realized at the time even. Then I was feeling mostly just excitement and readiness. But months later, without going into too much detail, I did experience that realization of being overwhelmed by being in a completely new place with new people, I guess that's what you call culture shock?

So I hope you enjoyed my short journey into the world of dreams. Feel free to share your own dreams in the comments, or any insights you want to share about dreaming. If you have a longer entry, feel free to email it to me and I will post it here at Modern Art Quotes, make sure and include a link to your homepage if you want.