Why Dreams?

All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.
~ Jack Kerouac

When you nestle yourself into bed, turn off the bedside lamp, and close your eyes to your daytime reality, your conscious self goes to sleep. Meanwhile, your dreaming self slips out of the covers and tiptoes upstairs to the attic of your mind to explore the enchanted realm of dreams.

Within this nocturnal territory you are transported beyond the ego’s five senses to a vast, multidimensional playground of unlimited possibilities. In the realm of dreams you can peruse the tale of your past or future; learn a topic of fascination; converse with a departed loved one; study at the feet of a master; find an answer to a perplexing question; discover the solutions to a health challenge; or explore the larger story of your life.

All of this takes place while you are asleep. Yet for most people, by the time the alarm blares and the morning coffee is guzzled, the exploration of the vast landscape of their multidimensional soul is shrugged off as just a dream. This just a dream scenario can be compared to spellbound lovers on a shipboard romance who profess undying love to one another by moonlight, and then find, in the harsh light of morning, back on dry land, the glow is gone. In the swirl of real world demands, the lovers revert to being ordinary, sensible, earthbound mortals, vaguely recalling that something magical transpired aboard the ocean of their dreams. The experience — so real while it was happening — is now elusive as wisps of cloud. But, what if it wasn’t Just a dream?

Many of us 21st century, fast-paced jet-setters fall prey to placing too much emphasis on the tangible, the text-able, and the three-dimensional, while discounting the magical, the mystical, and the multidimensional. We would do well to learn from our ancestors who lived close to the earth and were in sync with the tides, seasons, and realms beyond the ordinary. Our indigenous grandmothers and grandfathers considered the dreamtime to be when they were most awake. They also believed that a society’s mental and psychological health was related to dreaming. The more disconnected from dreams, the more sick and out of balance the society. The more in touch with dreams, the more healthy and thriving the society.