I do dream my dreams dreaming me, where my reality conscience is folded onto itself. We all do. It’s the world we populate nearly half of our living and breathing state. A plane of conscience we give little credence to. A powerful place and space we all know too well.
I visit that dimension each night where all my angst and triumph resides. Where I either find sanctuary or encounter my fears. It’s where I believe I complete motions, act on a promise or simply dismember the rules of nature. I see coming collisions of lives around the bend of our continuing journeys—a visitor to this Dali-esque world of a fluid vision. Giorgio de Chirico is more of a friend here, where shadows scurry to and fro. It is the precarious velvet rope of the mind that guides me back deeper into that wonderment of reality. A window into my own mysteries I cannot fathom even with the help of therapists—they just confuse me. I often yearn to linger a little longer. A place far away within us. A universe of another reality, if you will. I hear it’s a place of recognition, completion of deeds and emotions. It is a place of healing, I hear.
I’ve lived mostly in that state of dreams ever since I was a child.
“Sho’ Xhaaji anna’ ne’nidzaa?” the elders in the hogan would ask of me in my trance. “Where have you gone to, my child?”
“Shhh! Ni’chwo’ binni’n’dii’, naa’ghaal,” another voice would say. “Shhh! Let him be. He is seeing.” Seeing as in looking into the useable world of mythic heroes and monsters.
Dreams in the Dineh sense have always been viewed as messaging, as recovering and gifting the waking world with it. Great healers and medicine men and women tapped into that state in diagnosing illness and prescribing correct ceremonies—deep into that meditative state with our required company and silences. I never intentionally journeyed for answers, it just offers more questions. I tread like I am invisible where demons and angels call me love.
Powerfully moving or frightening dreams are usually related to the ears of prayer chanters to mostly calm our reactions. Dreams are treated as postcards from the soul—deep and serious. In my own great mythic journey dreams, I took on the role of the medicine man to calm my own dream angst. I wrote my dreams down on paper for years for only me.
In place of my “Jish” (medicine pouch) I took pen to paper with all the consciousness of a surgeon. I dissected my myths and mysteries, laying out the splattering mess or radiant longing there between reams of paper. Each word as a syllable to an ancient prayer, each stroke a script to the spirits of the Universal Kindness. In the days when I lived far from the threshold of any traditional medicine healers, I appointed myself the captain of my own unsteady ship containing uncertainties. The practice helped me negotiate much in life that threatened to put me down. Besides, it was a writing exercise I was hardly aware of—gratitude to my dreams.
It is those where I find myself on a precarious ledge of a yawning chasm that I fear losing my grip, my footing and my wit. These edges where there is only room for faith and courage. The vertical world of my dreamscape is where I find myself often enough.
There are dreams we consult elders for. There are dreams we dismiss with a simple yet powerful gesture of the mouth, “Paah, Paah!” (cleansing expression from evil intervention).
When we dream of our teeth, it is seen as much more than a dental situation. Teeth and its company are our power to live, it’s fairly clear. Any association of the teeth or snakes, bears and dead people are reasons to believe in dream corrections. My father was a great medicine man and his legacy continues. “Biil, yi’chwoo’,” (disturbed dreams) are words he heard often. A prayer petition to the spirits is mostly all that is required.
In my life away from being “awake,” I find me in the faces of my threats and my loves, as in my own canvas. Bloody messes are rare but they do taint my dream state. I use them to find myself again, pulling organs out to the palm of my hand. The unending entrails of glistening anatomical parts, shocking but not frightening. There is a quiet voice that tells me it is necessary. They snake back into my other palm—my right hand.
Then there is my dream that went on continuously connecting one journey, one night’s drama played out into 16 years of treading the dark alleys and empty boulevards of that mysterious city.
There is always a journey to find something or someone. I chase a wonderful profile for decades in my dream state. I see much of what I have experienced in dreams coming to pass now. Dreams change directions and methods and I am flexible with it. Then there is always a huge football field bed covered in one sheet under which I meet many people. It is not crowded, just dependable, comfortably safe and expected.
In a family of healers, these were viewed as messages, always. In a low whisper, someone would confide a teeth dream and that was heard as a spiritual emergency in my youthful ears.
Many of my own emergency dreams are safely tucked away as writing in poetry form through the years. I acknowledged them, externalized them onto paper and came to some terms in it. Some turn into paintings later, most stays with me internally, undisturbed and a part of a deep pool of my own creative life to draw from.
One of my older brothers used to abuse this knowledge where with every dream I confided in him, he found great impending calamity within it all, despite its beauty sometimes. He saw the sky constantly falling, it seemed.
“I dreamt that I got a beautiful Appaloosa!” I would tell him. “Uh oh, that means you are losing your mare. She’s a goner. I’m sorry,” he replied, walking away in feigned mourning.
Dreams as a foreboding message are always easiest to read, yet elusive in its meaning. My brother and I shared a dream many years ago. I was on the inside of aged skeletal remains of a hogan leaning on the door from outside threats. He dreamt he was on the outside of the same decaying structure. He tried to find safety, but I didn’t know it was him and I never opened the door. He succumbed to the mystery poundings of that shared dream. He put a bullet in his own head days later in our real waking world. Would it have been different if the door gave way at its rotting hinges? I do not know. I’ve never shared an ominous dream again with anyone that I know of. I do know I share beautiful dreams with a few, in my dreamscape as well as in my waking life. I hope we always remain friends when again we meet in that world.
Good night and dream calming power.
