Posted on by The Book of Dreams blog

When the Waking World and Sleeping World Dreams Converge

(Also posted 6-10-25 in The Book of Dreams blog)

Pedestrian tunnel that runs through the rock mountain in the Peñon de Ifach natural park in the city of Calpe, province of Alicante, Valencian Community, Spain.

[Because this is both a regular dream and also reflects dealing with a nightmare I’m posting it in both blogs.] 

Last night I found myself lost in caves and tunnels filled with salons, beauty shops a Buddhist Temple, and a bubbling brook used for meditation. I can’t find my way out. Everywhere I turn I’m lost. I’m frustrated in that every tunnel I go down takes me deeper into my lostness. It feels as though I’m starting to give up hope.

This is clearly an overwhelming and depressing dream. Because it’s an expression of what I’m experiencing in the waking world where chaos is everywhere and there seem to be few sane people left to turn to. Is there any way out of this nightmare? This dream is urging me to take some personal action, to transcend the tendency to retreat into myself.

The cave is my inner self, my deeper being. The tunnels are resources that I can use to get to where I want and need to be. The dream suggests that meditation and caring for my own well-being (Buddhist temple, babbling brook [calm down in order to see the way, the Tao], and salons) might help if not for the lostness, then for the calm needed to get through the craziness. The dream also suggests that I keep going and keep looking for an answer despite the frustration and helplessness.

Posted on by The Book of Dreams blog

The winter of discontent

I’ve been dreaming a number of very dark and scary dreams over the past month. In one it’s a cold overcast day when a young toe-headed boy loses his head in a guillotine while in another dream several young women are in a cold-water cistern that is draining rapidly and they begin to circle the drain before going under.

The toe-headed boy may be my own innocence being decapitated as well as the morality and values of the country that are being thrown out as the people vote against their best interest for people who promise them something they’ll probably never give. 

The women circling the drain may represent compassion, caring, and inclusiveness dying all around me in a world gone mad with populism.

It has become a very dark world where the light of the candle is sputtering and the fire near the hearth barely crackles, leaving the room to grow cold.

Politically and socially, it is the ‘winter of our discontent.’ In Steinbeck’s novel of the same name a man seems willing to give up his morality to his desire for success through unethical means. Our world seems ready to do the same and is taking frightening form in my dreams.

May the new year bring less frightening dreams as well as less frightening events.

Posted on by The Book of Dreams blog

Lost and panic creeps in

Nightmares will haunt you until you pay attention to them. And it’s not only about big traumas pushed into corners of the mind and praying they stay hidden. You can be suffering through some low grade stress and trauma that you’d just as soon ignore and are often able to shove into some corner of your everyday mind and it would stay there if it weren’t for nightmares. But the psyche doesn’t like to be ignored. It likes balance, it likes resolution.

When I ignore my everyday dreams on something that’s annoying me eventually I’ll be visted by a night time panic.

Lately the dark knight begins with me wandering out of some hotel conference into a city I don’t know and after a few twists and turns I find myself totally lost with no idea of which way to go to find my way back. Frequently it’s my car that I’m desperately trying to find or it’s the keys to said car. In either case the dream is suggesting a loss of independence, control, escape, or power.

That’s when the panic begins to swell within and confusion sets in. These are all symptoms of my sense of loss and control over my life and the direction that it’s taking. Lately it has been my sense of justice and what is right and honorable that’s being tested in a world that rewards lies and hate and glorifies ignorance. It’s become a world where violence wins out over love and chaos reigns supreme and its all showing up in my nightmarish dreams.

This kind of nightmare often comes to me more than once and will continue to do so until I deal with it. It is nudging me to pay attention to what is bothering me but not necessarily so that I can work to find a solution but to acknowledge what’s going on in me that I’m suppressing i.e., the first step out of denial toward resolution.

As with all dreams nightmares are there for a reason. They too are there for one’s health and well-being.

Posted on by The Book of Dreams blog · 2 Comments

Want to know what the Dark Knight looks like?

It was a dreary, overcast morning when I entered the local coffee shop down the street. It was Saturday, so the usual bustle of people going in and out of the shop was reduced to almost nothing. This was the end of a long and painful walk I had taken that morning, having gotten up before the sun to take advantage of the early morning coolness.

“How are you doing today?” the barista asked as I ordered my coffee. 

My mind was just finishing up with a poor-me-diatribe born of a bruised ego conversation I’d had with one of my daughters earlier in the week. What I wanted to say was…

“As my daughter keeps saying, any time there’s an upset, “This isn’t about you, Dad!” Never mind that I have feelings and thoughts; they’re irrelevant to what’s going on. But she’s probably right. I don’t feel very relevant these days, and wonder if I never was, but my ego was too busy to notice. 

Another side to my irrelevant self says, “So what?” Who’s to care if it’s not about me?

I want to think I’ve lived my life with at least giving and taking in equal measure, if not a little more to the giving side. Still, I’m not the determiner of that because the ego nearly always tries to weigh its experience toward the self-interest positive end of the spectrum. 

Others in the family will write the story of my life that will be handed down, and from what I hear, I’ve failed miserably to live up to their expectations. It also seems a universal opinion that I failed and made it too much about me. But so what? I can’t change it now; soon, my ego will be dead, and how relevant I was won’t make any difference; the damage was done. I’m also not sure that the soul cares one way or the other, either. 

It’s starting to feel like I’ve wasted my once-only time here. But again, that’s the ego talking, and the soul doesn’t care; the ego did its job by giving the soul a vehicle for entering the world.”

But all I said was, “Fine, just fine. How’s yours been going?” And then I thanked him for my coffee and said, “Have a good one!” as my ‘irrelevant self’ walked out the door. It was no use wasting a perfectly good ‘poor me’ and spreading my “down-eristic” self on an innocent barista. 

I have had these Dark Night experiences many times throughout my life. For many years, I used to run from them, which only got me mired and stuck, but now I periodically embrace them as a means of transcending them and moving through into the light.

“How’s your day going so far?”