Where your thoughts hang out

My daughter Jemesii was an amazingly precocious child. Highly verbal and given to preternatural wisdom. One day, at the ripe old age of maybe two, she said something that I shall never forget: ‘Dreams are where your thoughts go at night.’

Well yes, of course. Seemingly a simple observation but oh so much more.

Dreams are one of the reasons I love to sleep. When I am dreaming it is as if I have opened the door from one place to another. A magical place, strange and yet so familiar. From one self (waking) to another (sleeping).

Over the past two nights I’ve had a pair of dreams that seemed particularly powerful. In the first I am watching four elk graze when they turn and start moving toward me. Then I see the tiger. And then the tiger sees me. I begin to run and the only shelter is a screened in porch. I get there just before the tiger and quickly latch the door. To my surprise and great relief, the tiger simply regards me through the flimsy wood frame and wire mesh and then turns to go. I think to myself that sometimes a simple barrier is enough to protect oneself from danger. But there is more. Because this barrier is transparent, I can still see the tiger. Now he is far below and menacing a group of people gathered on the beach. They do the oddest thing (or perhaps it is the only thing to do, although I think I would have jumped into the water). They simply turn their backs to the tiger and of course this does nothing to stop him from attacking.

In the second dream I am standing in a series of lines, waiting to get into a cafeteria. At one point a number of us sit together on a wall and I share the fact that the previous night I had been very stoned while looking at the night sky. And that I had been able to hear the throb and hum of the universe. This is met with silence but an Indian man, who is also some sort of teacher, approaches me later and says ‘Absolutely. It is all moving, all the time, and that is what you heard. I too have felt it.’ The subtle (or not so subtle) wind of existence. Life. Energy. It. Us. Connected.