The Dreaming
I was 17 and in a sociology class when I first encountered the concept of The Dreaming being a place and not some nebulous intangible abstract that is created and destroyed by each person’s subconscious at night.
I was a freshman in college and I happened to sit next to Daphne (who is still my friend 20 years later) and she told me about The Sandman. Nay, I believe she gave me the first book. I had never read a graphic novel before in my life and I had never heard of Neil Gaiman and I really didn’t know what I was getting into.
Looking back, I can tell with certainty that that particular novel series shaped a lot of who I am, not only as a person or an artist but as a spiritual mentor and witch.
The DEPTH and BREADTH of information that writer has, at least on a sub-perceptive level is insane to me. It shows up in every single one of his books and stories, if you know what you’re looking at, as with most things pop culture. Not to say that Neil Gaiman is pop culture (well maybe now he became pop and then canceled) but you never know how the downloads show up and through whom and what medium. Which is why I often talk about spiritual learnings via pop culture. But I digress.
What I know now about The Dreaming, based on my own personal investigation and working with clients, is this:
The Dreaming is a place made up of layers of realms
Not everything that happens in the dreaming is real but a lot of it is
The layers of the Dreaming go like this:
Lowest (as in, the most approachable to us, the closest to the physical realm) is the one that a lot of psychologists say - your brain just making sense of what happened in your day, etc
Next layer of the dream cake is the liminal - where you end up in the in-between spaces that are in-between spaces. These coexist with other realms and they are places which everyone can access.
Deeper layers become more obscure because the information we pull from there doesn’t always make it back to our current realm in a way we can articulate.
Portal realms that lead us to other parts of spacetime, other galaxies, other paradigms where we might have a role to play in those as well. Looking at all of you who sleep but don’t rest… You’re probably working hard in the spirit realm.
The liminal layer has many versions - you can meet spirits, tutelary and otherwise, dearly departed ones, and living folk who have ended up at the same spacetime you have. You can also meet other creatures here like fae and angels etc.
The meeting spaces seem to be the most accessible to people because we often end up there due to desire - we desire to see our loved one who is lost, we desire to get answers to specific questions. And without really noticing it, we set the intention to do so when we are falling asleep so this accidental dreamwork happens.
There is so much more I can say about dreams but I’ll leave it at that for now.
If you’re one of the people who dream very easily and find that you get information you need from dreams but don’t know what to do with it - let’s talk. I’m putting together some dream resources and I’d love to hear from you -
what is it that you need clarity and guidance on when it comes to dreams?
If it’s something you want to work with, I recommend the 7 days of magic email series to get you going a little.
And in the meantime, you too can be one of the people who send me vms of their dreams! I do some basic mirroring* when needed literally for free, that’s how much I love my schtick.
*mirroring is a dream interpretation method, for lack of a better term.