In Dreams, What Magic May Come?

We have an endless terrain of discovery available to us every night, all we have to do is go to sleep.

I’ve been thinking lately about all the dream visits I’ve received from departed loved ones over the years. I sit atop an embarrassment of riches. To be sure many of the dream visits were my own conjurings, especially with regards to my wife, to give myself comfort.

But so many of the dreams have so clearly been from the departed themselves. Discerning the differences between my own conjurings and authentic visits is an art, but one that relies mostly on self-awareness. What was the presence of this person like in my dream? Was it beyond what I could invent? How powerful was their impact? What were the qualities of the dream? How did it change me?

Of course all of this requires that we trust ourselves. I find that when most people ask “yes, but was it really real?”, what they’re really asking is “can I trust myself enough to believe my experience?” Almost universally we know if it was really the person or not, but we’ve been taught by our modern culture to mistrust our dreams. They’re exercises of ego, machinations of a chemical brain that hasn’t fully shut down for the night.

Michael Harner, in his paper “A Shamanic Theory of Dreams” writes that it is spirits that give us dreams. It can be one’s own spirit or a collusion of other spirits. It’s still the case that not all dreams are important or deeply transformative. But most of us do receive dreams that are significant to us, impactful at some point in our lives.

In my grieving, in my letting go of my late wife Terry, I’ve found it’s the most mundane dreams that I love the most. Getting to have just a little time with her and friends to sit again, sharing the simple things. The quote below is from the post at the bottom of this article, “Tenderness and Time”.

“Terry is letting me say goodbye to her in dreams, giving me the romantic moments I wanted so much at the end. She’s still sick when I see her, but I can feel the vitality of her body. I get to love her through the small gestures of familiar couples one last time. We went to the market together, had a meal with our friends Lora and Don, held hands on our way home to rest. I could still feel her strength as we walked, even though we both knew her body was fading. We made plans for how her passing would go, I found great peace in that knowing.

She probably feels so close because this is our anniversary.”

I make sure to share with my kids some details about my dreams with their Mother. Not all details of course but just that we spent time together and she’s with us, she loves them. It’s a way of brining her into our lives and planting the seed that they too can have special dreams that nourish them and change their lives.

I’ve been working on a course offering about visitations from those who have passed on. It includes a healthy section on dreams. It’s been exciting to develop material that honors the importance of dreaming in our lives. It’s incredible how much dreams give us and how little value we place on them in our culture.

We have an endless terrain of discovery available to us every night, all we have to do is go to sleep.

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