Pop 89: You Had A Dream
By Madonna Hamel
Of all the gifts one can be given in staggering abundance, mine is dreams. But when was the last time you listened to someone’s dream? I’m not talking about their vision for the future for themselves, their families, or humankind. I’m talking about that wild and wondrous nonsense poem of a dream they had last night.
“Your dreams,” a professor once warned me, “are as interesting as my drug trips. Or slide shows of my recent vacation.” (Those were the days before Instagram and cell phones and FB pages when people had you over for beers and popcorn, and you made a night of it. I actually enjoyed slideshows- but then, I had some interesting friends. And my brother took some exquisite pictures of hikes into the wilderness).
Why are so few interested in dreams? Dreams cannot be fact-checked. However, we are willing to accept “news” reported in news “shows” by “personalities”—gone are the days of opinion-less news anchors. We’re even willing to get our news from social media.
But dreams are news about ourselves. They are not meant to tell others what to do or how to see, but help us see ourselves. There are people who make a point of examining dreams. One is my brother. He is a Jungian, an adept of the psychologist Carl Jung, who based his whole profession on taking his analysands dreams seriously. My sister, who has kept a dream journal for over forty years, studies with author and dreamworker Robert Moss. He believes, like many Indigenous peoples, that dreams are no less than the secret wishes and language of the soul.
My siblings are always asking: “had any good dreams lately?” And then, they actually listen, agog, not just to mine, but to everyone’s dreams. But why? Because the ego has no say in what comes up. And neither do corporate heads, nor lobbyists.
I fear that the human soul, at least in the Western world, is on life-support, so I believe that dream awareness is a good and even necessary habit. Some of us have lost hope, or are hoping, in a dark direction We endlessly try, like the sorcerer’s apprentice, to fill a soul-shaped hole with other gods, like: politics, or AI technology, or celebrity. But any attempt at replacing the Transcendent with material gods just can’t quite make the leap beyond our material world. That’s where dreams come in - they can reveal to us our shadowy tendencies and even offer alternate story-maps out of those shadows.
The Talmud says, “An unexamined dream is like an unopened letter.” And yet, we continue to keep the nightly correspondence sealed. Why? Is it because dreams are nonsensical, gibberish, and erratic? And our politicians aren’t?
There’s a story about a student who asked his rabbi why, in olden days, there were men who saw the face of God in their dreams and why don’t they any more? The rabbi replied, “Because nowadays, no one can stoop so low.” Our inability to listen to our dreams is due, partly, to our hyper-rational self sneering: that makes no sense.
Thankfully, many great writers, inventors, musicians, and scientists stooped low enough to listen to the still, small - if quirky - voices that came in their sleep. Some famous works are so outlandish they could only appear as dreams:
August Kekule discovered the hexagonal structure of benzene after he dreamt about a snake eating its own tail. “I dreamt was sledding with my friends at night,” wrote Einstein, “I started to slide down the hill but my sled started going faster and faster. I was going so fast that I realized I was approaching the speed of light. I looked up at that point and I saw the stars. I understood in some way that I was looking at the most important meaning in my life.” He was looking at the Theory of Relativity.
McCartney dreamed the entire hit song “Yesterday.”
Mary Shelley wrote about her 1816 classic “Frankenstein”: “I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. …he is awakened; he opens his eyes; behold, the horrid thing stands at his bedside, opening his curtains and looking at him with yellow, watery, but speculative eyes. I opened mine in terror.” And then, she wrote it all down.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge dreamt his poem, Kubla Khan, then wrote: “What if in your sleep you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven? And there, plucked a strange and beautiful flower. And what if, when you awoke, you had that flower in your hand? Ah, what then?”
I’ve had dreams that point to dream objects found later in the light of day. But most often, what comes is a single word. However, those words have nudged me forward in life. Their insight, foresight, and spirit stay with me.
The Christmas story is full of dreams - beginning with the angel who appeared to Joseph in a dream to assure him that his betrothed was pregnant via The Holy Spirit, which had to be a relief for Mary. Then Joseph dreamt a warning to get out of Egypt, now! Later, the magi were warned to avoid Herod and take the long way home. Then, after Herod died, a dream alerted Joseph that it is okay to return home. Only, as the family made their way through Judea, he had a fourth dream, warning him that Herod’s son had taken the throne, so he moved the family to Nazareth.
Is there a difference between those who listen to their dreams and those who don’t, who dismiss or trust, learn and act on them? Perhaps we need to stoop lower to drink from the stream of dreams. Thanks to my siblings, I choose to pay attention.