On dreams

 Dear Future Historian,

 

Let’s talk about dreams. The, so called, 5^th dimension. This mythopoetic realm of Chronos. Where time is irrelevant, and continuity unnecessary. The best efforts of our subconscious to talk to us, according to Carl Jung.

I was asked recently if I can interpret dreams. I am not an expert. All I know is that dreams use the language of stories (or maybe stories use the language of dreams.) Just like a director can transmit clearly a message that moves the plot forward with a single frame, like a certain close-up on an object, or a gesture, or even a fake-like coughing, just like that dreams send ‘clear’ messages. And just like the director was building the moment of that close-up, so the audience knows, when the time comes, how to read that message, just like that the context (environment and personal thoughts) of the individual having the dream, is the one that the ‘writer of that individual dreams,’ is using to create metaphors with.

But you probably know all that already, my dear future Historian, and you must be waiting to hear some examples and my own dreams. And I am going to offer you two of them (I admit I don’t usually remember lots of them.)

The first one was a very clear metaphor of the period that I saw it. My passing from Christianity, to my personal ongoing spiritual journey.

I was in my sister’s car. She was driving. We where going to the house of our meditation teacher/friend, who happened to have a born-again Christian partner. These were real people, keeping their identities in my dream. But they were more than that. They represented for me, respectively, Christianity and personal spirituality.

When we were reaching the house, after a turn, the road became a river, the car a raft, and the 7-floors buildings became huge trees, creating a jungle-like forest. As usual in dreams, that didn’t seam weird to either me or my sister. We were surprised though when we saw under the water, swimming like crocodiles somehow (I remember thinking that,) many lionesses!

We rushed to the shore, where we left our raft to some kind of plaza, with the typical plane tree that they have in village’s centres. There our path was blocked by two more of these lionesses.

We paused. On our rear there was one more now. We were trapped. Both of us frozen, we suddenly see a lady that we’ve never seen before greeting us from a distance; around 40-50years old, with style like the girl from the Notre Dame Disney movie. Long, dark hair, long skirt, multicoloured, multiple jewelries and.. two lionesses, one on each side!

She made a gesture to the ones near us, from afar, and the immediately left. The one on the other side, left too.

There she was, with the lionesses still on her side; she smiled at us.. and left. The animals followed her.

What was that about? We wondered. And continued our way, to our friend’s house.

When we reached the door and pressed the bell, we were told to wait there because he is going out. We can join him, he said.

The door opens and a bunch of people, friends and relatives of our friend’s Christian partner, come out, all at once. We tell them about our ‘adventure,’ and the reaction was quite unexpected (if we miss my own, personal, context;) they start warning us that that lady, the lady that seamed to me to represent Gaia herself, was a witch, and should be avoided at any cost. As for the danger of the lionesses, they are the reason why we should stick with them, and follow them to church, the only place that we’ll be actually safe!

Our meditation teacher didn’t seam to have any desire to contradict them or start any conversation. He suggested we follow them for a walk. My sister agreed.

‘I’ll stay here.’

‘Here, where? What are you going to do?’ my sister asked me.

‘I’ll stay here, by this tree,’ I said. And soon they were gone.

That tree. There was a tree, near the building’s door. A tree that was going a bit horizontally and was kind of easy to climb it. On it, mushrooms were growing.

Oo, mushrooms. Me like mushrooms. If only I knew how to use them, and recognise the eatable ones, etc.

Right at this moment, the building door opens again. And two kids appear. A girl and little boy (that dream was before I had my two kids, a girl and then a boy!) and they start climbing up and down the tree. They are very chatty and friendly with me. I show them the mushrooms, and they reassure me that they know everything about mushrooms, and they will teach me.

Then I wake up.

What does it mean?

Well.. apart from the coincidence of the gender and the age difference, of the boy and the girl, all the rest is easily explained with typical ‘Hollywood storytelling terms.’

It was still echoing in my head.. the Christian warning that anything non-declaring-it’s-self-as-Christian was in fact satanic and dangerous. Thus, the warning from the Christians about the priestess (/goddess, whatever she was.) Yet the dream was a sign, a message from within me, that I was ready to stop following the fear, and seek for knowledge in Nature.

Yes, there are dangerous lionesses out there, but even if they should be dealt with awe and respect, they should also be identified as an indication of the power of femininity, that I had suppressed in my Christianity years, that it was time for me to stop being afraid of it.

And last, the two children.. how true that one turned out to be. They are the first and the most important step, in my hero-journey to discover how the World works, the deepest lesson, the most fulfilling, the most beautiful.

But that brings me to my second dream, tonight (09:18pm 28/08/2020.)

I was breastfeeding my first, in the middle of the night. Outside was cold, but there I was, in my worm and safe living room, watching Jason Silva in ‘Mind Games,’ sitting comfortably. Well, as it turned out it was a bit too comfortable, because I soon fell asleep.

There, with my baby on the breastfeeding pillow, a portal suddenly appeared. And.. on the other side, there was one of my prehistoric ancestors, holding her own baby, breastfeeding, hidden, to avoid some kind of danger (it’s funny how we usually don’t question in our dreams how do we know so much of backstories, details we didn’t see and stuff.) Apparently, it was supposed that she was some kind of witch, and she opened up this portal to see if in the future her progeny would still survive, if she will be able to raise her baby, if there was any point, any hope, in her struggles.

And she saw me. I know she did. She looked straight at me. And she smiled. And she relaxed. And her life had a meaning from then on that reached thousands of years in the future, in me, in my baby.. And now it was up to me to keep her thread on Earth, and pass on that blessing to my children.

Because a blessing it is. The lust for life, an internal unstoppable urge to reach so far in the future, through the legacy you leave to the babies you raise, or the books you write, or the art you create.

But there is another aspect to it. The one that links the two dreams, the one that would be the main theme of the theoretical-bible-that-I-would-write-if-I-would.

Imagine something like the opposite of the Chinese traditional religion. One that would not focus on the ancestors, but on the generations to come. The one that the sacrifices would not go to people-long-dead, but there would provide a real benefit to living-future-people. A religion of progeny; a religion where you, my dear future Historian, would be the subject of worship; but when you turn comes, when you will actually read these lines.. then you’ll have to remember that you have to pass the worship, the godliness of you, to the next generations.

The Greek mythology, thousands of years ago, spoke about that. In the beginning Kronos had to fight Ouranos, his father, to take the throne, and then he himself didn’t want to pass on the throne and had to be defeated by Zeus and his siblings.

But did we, humans, learn anything out of that tale? Thousands of years latter we still think that we have more to teach to the children, than what our children have to teach us.

Yes, we have things to, and we ought to, teach them what we know. But it should be with humility, with mutual respect, with opened eyes and ears to not miss their lessons for us.

But now I must leave you again, my dear future historian, and you my contemporary reader. And my summer challenge is coming to an end. At the end of August, I will stop regular posting, to focus on uni.

Stay safe and take care. 

art by Christina Christidou