What Dreams May Bring
by John Graham
I have worked for almost thirty years as an academic psychologist in the Irish university
system. I taught many different courses during this time. The one that always drew most
interest was a class I taught on dream interpretation. I particularly liked this class because
it helped students connect with the richness of their souls in ways that more theoretical
courses could never permit. I have also been long used to checking my own dreams for
news of what developments were trying to happen in my life at particular times, and what
steps I might take to facilitate rather than inhibit these developments. This is important
because dreams routinely present information about aspects of our unrealised potential
that are currently pressing for recognition, together with information concerning aspects
of our psychological make-up that act to frustrate this process. These streams derive from
our super- and sub-conscious minds respectively. Rather than trying to convince you of
this intellectually, I will present some examples from my own recent dreaming which
make the case very clear. Here is the first:
I am waiting for a bus, a red double-decker, in London. Several pass but none stops.
I was feeling quite low at the time of this dream. This is unusual for me because I am
used to riding the ‘winds’ of my Unconscious. I knew that something significant was
waiting to break, something that my consciousness hadn’t previously been equipped to
integrate. This dream provided my first clue. I miss several buses, as a surfer might miss
choice waves. The buses are red. This detail associates with passion, the base chakra and
survival. Aha! I am failing to engage my Passion in this moment because of a subconscious blockage that has to do with a tender, vulnerable part of me which fears for its
life. What can I do to move beyond this realisation? I resolve to welcome further news
from my Unconscious and prepare for a new dream. It comes the very next night.
I’m in my childhood home with another cowboy. Apaches are attacking. I rush to the
basement, where they’re trying to force entry from the back. My colleague defends the
front. I break a hole in the rear basement window with my Winchester and kill two
Apaches who are sneaking down the garden path. Three others rush in. I kill them also
with repeated firing. Then there is quiet. It seems there are no more. I go back upstairs
but there is no sign of my friend. Everything looks calm on the street. The house is
fortified and I feel very lonely.
You can see that there is action in this dream. Something is trying to happen. It’s not
getting very far because something about my conscious disposition, represented by my
‘cowboy’ ego, is preventing this by shooting whatever the Apaches signify. Since I have
experience with dream interpretation, just reviewing the text gives me lots of information
straightaway. I’m one of two cowboys, for example, which tells me I’m internally
divided with regard to whatever the issue is. The Apaches represent this. That they are
‘attacking’ means I have been resisting their approach. The action takes place in my
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childhood home, which suggests that the subconscious attitude responsible for my
dividedness was engendered there.
The house is also a metaphor for my embodied self. Its condition is a reflection of my
condition at this time. I go to the basement, which represents the subconscious, and
defend against attack from behind, which represents the past. Apaches, I know from
childhood, are the cruellest of hostile Indians. They represent savages – dangerous and
untamed. The part of me that is still a lawful cowboy, childish and immature, kills them
for fear of what they might unleash. I feel absolutely ruthless, desperate and afraid as I do
this in the dream. I can’t afford to let savages into my house for fear they will annihilate
me. Thus when more appear I blast them to oblivion as well. Having thus secured the
frontier of my subconscious, I return upstairs to find no evidence of an attack out front.
My cowboy friend has disappeared. All is quiet. My house is closed and fortified.
Nothing happens because my actions have prevented this. I am alone and lonely inside.
But that is not all. I now know why I have been missing the ‘bus’ (vehicle) of my red
passion, which also explains why my energy is low, or ‘depressed’. I even know from
basement décor around what age my survival-related fears were laid down. In fact, I have
a pretty full interpretation of the dream but my problem remains unsolved. I can know
exactly what a dream means – in this case that I’m deeply conflicted with respect to basic
instinctual energies that are now ready to return for integration – and still not have access
to its gift. Understanding, even when it’s accurate and comprehensive, doesn’t guarantee
transformation. To benefit fully from working with dreams, we need to do more than
interpret them. We need to engage the energies they bring to our attention. Towards this
end, we must acknowledge that everything in the dream – absolutely everything – is a
reflection of some aspect of the dreamer.
For me, this implies that the conscious cowboys and unconscious Apaches represent
different aspects of my Self and that these aspects are at war with each other. Not very
flattering perhaps, after almost thirty years! On the other hand, I know that if I can
reconcile these energies a huge gift from my Unconscious will become available to me –
nothing less, I intuit, than the gift of my true Passion. To find my Passion, I go to a lonely
beach the next day, intent on integrating the divided energetic streams apparent in my
dream. Having accepted that all aspects of the dream are reflections of my Self, I set
myself the task of experiencing the reality of the dream from the perspective of all these
aspects. That is, I resolve to enact the dream from the positions of each of its main
characters with a view to seeing how these perspectives and the energy potentials they
represent can be most creatively reconciled.
I begin with the defensive cowboy, crouched behind a rock, clutching his rifle, sighting
down its barrel into the coloured tunic of the first Apache. My body becomes taut with
fear as I sink deep into this posture. My finger curls around the trigger in anticipation. I
allow the Apaches to come closer, noting that they are actually moving very slowly,
tentatively almost. Recognising this, I suddenly feel miserable and grief-stricken. I kill
them nevertheless as my dream dictates and afterwards lie sobbing on the rock, feeling
hollow and sick.
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Finally, I muster energy to go looking for the second cowboy. As he looks forward from
the front of the house, I name him ‘Cowboy of the Future’. Instinctively, I know his place
is on top of a huge rock facing the ocean, symbolising the upper floor of my house. I
make my way there but he isn’t to be found. I realise that this is because First Cowboy,
the cowboy of my past, carries so little energy that the world offers him no prospect. He
operates with such a tight vision, framed by a gun-sight, that nothing can be projected
through him. I cannot discern the path of my highest future because I have yet to enter
into right relationship with my past. Put another way: when First Cowboy leaves nothing
of his past alive (by killing the Apaches which represent it), Second Cowboy has nothing
to live from, because the promise of his future was sustained by repressed ‘Apache’
energies. Intuiting this in a flash, I turn my attention back to the Apaches.
Refocusing, I steal down the garden path as one of the lead pair. My movements are
stealthy but not aggressive. I approach the back door of the house, hoping against hope to
be admitted. Then I am shot once, twice, repeatedly. As I lie dying I feel dishonoured,
bewildered and betrayed. I enact this scenario five times, once for each of the Apaches.
Each time I am shot, I feel more and more hopeless and dismayed. Each time I revert to
the role of Cowboy, I feel more and more leaden, mechanical and ashamed.
By the time I return again to the front of the house, I feel utterly energy-less, alone and
disconnected. My legs trail like stone. I throw my rifle aside in disgust. Intuition calls me
back to where the dead Apaches lie. I kneel beside the first and take him in my arms,
singing a death song for him. As this happens, I sense his energy rising into my body,
animating it towards a slow dance of hesitant wakefulness that eventually becomes a
faltering, exploratory run. I sing then over the body of the second Apache. His spirit
enters me also and likewise the third. Each time I sing my dance gets stronger and the
running more sustained. By the time a fourth Apache comes to life in me I am running at
breakneck speed, emitting wild cries as I hurdle obstacles on the rock-strewn beach. The
fifth Apache releases a proclamation loudly sung in a language I have never heard that I
want to be a part of life again, ALL LIFE.
I clamber back up Second Cowboy’s rock formation and face the Ocean, singing how we
want to connect again with stones, Stone People, to be one with People of Stone (Age),
elder beings who hold the memory of Earth and know the inter-connectedness of All That
Is. Ancient voices weave through me as I dance ecstatically to the music of pounding
waves. We want to enter life again. We want our wisdom and our learning recognised.
These chants were neither explicit nor intelligible but my awakened reptilian brain
translates instantly, drawing me deep into the consciousness of Earth.
As the song abates I realise, having viewed the world as Cowboy of my Past that it would
have been impossible for (the part of me that was) him to hold a greater sense of life than
he had ever known in his isolation and his fear. Remembering him, I remember episodes
which his character dramatises in my dream, parts of me still held in trauma, defending
against an attack that never ends. Filled with compassion, I return to where his energetic
imprint still lies sobbing at the rock and take him into my Heart. He is, of course, a little
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boy, anxious and afraid. Having thawed in my arms, he thrills to scampering over rocks
with Apache finesse, running flat out, jumping stones and dodging imaginary obstacles.
We come to a halt a hundred metres from the rock where I had earlier taken cover as First
Cowboy. I see the back wall of my childhood home interposed. Mustering all my
Cowboy and Indian selves we charge the wall, smash through the back gate and sprint
recklessly, screaming, on to the rifles, untroubled by their rapid fire. Numbering
multitudes, we overwhelm the defensive post of the rear basement window, absorb its
defenders and swarm riotously up to the top floor of the rock manned by Cowboy of the
Future. There, merging with him, we intone a deeply passionate chant to the incoming
waves. As the chant fades ‘I’ feel thoroughly renewed and deeply connected with Earth,
Ocean, Cosmos, Sun and Stone. I recalibrate seals on the back gate and basement
window of my dream and hear from within the words ‘I look forward with confidence
and hope now that I can clearly see around in all directions.’
Dream sequences are progressive once their vital messages are integrated. The next night,
for example, I had another dream:
I’m at a workshop venue, bathing a newly born baby girl in a plastic tub. She loves this
and has no difficulty slipping under water and breathing there. The workshop hasn’t
begun. All the intending participants are women I know.
The baby represents a manifestation of newly awakened feminine potential in me. It is no
accident that this comes directly after I have brought the affairs of my male side into a
new order. It indicates a constant movement towards ever more complete sacred marriage
in all human hearts. A baby is a symbol of pure developmental potential. This one
promises a beautiful renewal in the adventure of my life, such as always happens when
we face and resolve inner conflicts. She can breathe in Water as well as Air. This means
she is comfortable with the Unconscious and can move easily between it and
consciousness. She is thus a source of inspiration. The other women stand for different
aspects of my already established feminine potentials. They gather for a workshop which
will soon begin, suggesting that a new synthesis is being prepared on my feminine side in
response to changes already introduced to my maleness. This theme was elaborated in
further dreams over subsequent nights.
In fact, the whole sequence unfolded days before I was due to present a workshop called
‘Earth Initiation’. This aims to reconnect the Passion of Humanity with that of Earth and
assist the Goddess’ rising in our time. It does so by restoring lived awareness of human
links with mineral, plant, animal and other spiritual realms. The sensibility of ‘savages’
and Stone People contributed greatly to this remembering. I mention it here to remind us
of deep gifts that dreams can bring, beyond anything interpretation alone could deliver.
The unfolding of our dreams anticipates the opening of our lives in ways that facilitate
realisation of our soul purpose. Not only do they yield information about the direction our
lives are waiting to take, they allow us to access energies which provide the momentum
needed to realise the underlying promise of our dreaming. Our souls open dramatically
as we attend to this process.
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Such opening is endless because dreams, in the end, are expressions of Mystery. This
means that they cannot be fully interpreted, or understood. To understand a dream fully
would be to kill dreaming, but we don’t have this option. We can only live our dreams
with more or less clarity and awareness. Imagine how clear and flowing our lives would
be, for example, if we consistently integrated ‘Apache’ energies as above.
I will offer workshops soon to show how dreams project the essential destiny of our souls
and how moving with them opens a true path to fulfilment. Please call me via website if
you would like to be informed.
John Graham (MA, PhD) is a philosopher, psychologist and spirit dancer. Details of his
work are available at www.sacredplay.info
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