Volume XC- With Love, Dream

Dear Dream Tending and Deep Imagination Community,

Today’s Tending Tuesday is brought to you by Monica Tweet, Dream Tending  Mentor and member of The Academy of Imaginal Arts and Sciences.

I’m walking along an ancient lake.  As sunset approaches, he comes along beside me.  We walk together, talking. We reminisce about a lifetime of shared experiences. His baseball hat sits high on his head, tipped a bit sideways.  He smiles.  “It’s time,” he says.  “I am tired of doctors and hospitals.  No more.  I want to go home.”

I wake, abruptly. I’m feeling unsettled and worried.  Questions begin to race through my analytical mind as I try to extract meaning and make sense of the dream.  I wonder if this is a precognitive dream.  Is this in preparation for making end-of-life decisions?  A representation of some small death? Is it about transition, transformation, or fear of change?

This dream visited during a recent camping trip.  We had been recalling collective memories.  While sharing our collective memories, appreciating landscape, and admiring the flora and fauna particular to this climate, a unique attunement between landscape, memories, ordinary reality worries, and dream converged.  When Psyche’s conversations with land, body, and lived experience were heard by imagination; dream answered.

Tuning into the essence of the dream itself, I stop trying to extract meaning.  I let go of preconceived ideas around particular dream themes.  I release my ideas around how a dream should feel.  Letting go of the confines I had placed on the dream; I soften and become curious.  An intelligent figure, with its own unique life spark, reveals itself.  Becoming a witness to the dream’s desire allows me to meet an exceptional figure and listen to his story.  In tending to this deeper conversation, I experience connection and relationship, life spark to life spark, with a dear soul companion.

Listening to his call to remember, a deep, unconditional, timeless sense of Love moves through me.  A gentle familiar I know in both ordinary reality and in dream time is beside me.  The genius of the dream’s desire and the figure’s experience emerge.  I recognize the divine timing of this dream’s visit.  At a time when ordinary reality conversations about difficult topics are too tender, interaction with this gentle companion offers love and perspective.

When a figure with the capacity to love you deeply and unconditionally visits in dream time; notice who walks beside you.  It may be a likeness of someone familiar, or you may be meeting this figure for the first time.  Either way, a soul companion has come to share their story, wisdom, and love with you.

With love and appreciation for imagination and dream, take 10 or 15 minutes to walk alongside a beloved dream figure today.  In nature, or in imagination, journey together.  Follow the figure about.  Listen closely as the image tells you their story.  What is the dream’s desire?  What is the dream asking of you?  How do you and the image accompany and support one another in dream work and in ordinary reality?

I am reminded of the following quote:

“When those dear loved ones, those familiars in likeness or essence come near to walk along beside us in dream or ordinary life, quiet your mind and open your heart.  Become genuinely curious.  Listen attentively to the story of the dream, to what the dream figure has to say.  Imagine and dream together, with love. “

In love of dream,
Monica Tweet, PT, CST-D
Mentor of the Academy of Imaginal Arts and Sciences