Dream Weaver

I was supposed to have posted this week's third installment on Friday. It's now Sunday. I was really busy on Friday and got distracted and sat up in bed that night and said "SHIT." 

I totally forgot about it. Even with multiple Google reminders. (Which ultimately didn't matter because I had absolutely no idea what to write about anyway).

And then I fell asleep and dreamt about tornadoes. I haven't done that in a long time. 

I used to dream about tornadoes all the time - it's been a super-fun recurring adventure inside my head since I was a kid. Big fat ones. Little skinny ones. Parades of relentless funnel clouds twisting their way out of my subconscious and dancing toward my imminent doom. 

I don't really remember much about Friday night's dream, except that everything was normal and life was grand until I peeked out my living room windows and saw several purplish funnel clouds dangling from the sky like twitchy, evil sky-kraken tentacles, right above our house. I screamed for Mark to get the dogs into the bathroom - apparently the cats can fend for themselves - and then I immediately woke up in a panic, paralyzed with fear. 

I'm such a puss sometimes.

The last twister terror-fest I can remember was a few years ago, and set at my parents' house in Michigan. I dreamt I was being eaten by a massive, apocalyptic, Kansas-is-not-for-crybabies tornado. It was coming directly for me and my dad (which was also strange, because he passed away in 2007), who managed to remain weirdly apathetic and emotionless while I went bat-shit crazy trying to frantically collect everything of importance in my life and get it into the basement and out of the way of the GIANT, MAN-EATING TORNADO. All of my pets were there, of course - what kind of a Fenderson Freak Fest would it be if they weren't? - and you just KNOW you can never, ever, ever find the goddamn cats when your life depends on it.

So I'm desperately running through the house as fast as I possibly can, trying to get all of my pets safely below-ground, while pausing to, you know, walk outside for a moment and stand in awe of the end of the world as it bears down on me - because we all know it's extremely important to appreciate and live in "the moment." Not the past - not the future - but right freaking NOW, this very minute, because NOW is healthy. NOW is happy. NOW is living. And NOW is the Universe sucking everything in its path into a giant, rotating black hole funnel cloud of doom, shredding everything to bits before it disappears into oblivion. And it's coming for ME. It's right across the street. The noise is deafening, the fear : epic. Oddly, there is no rain. Only a frothing mass of angry, rotating destruction. And I'm standing at Ground Zero.

{ Stranger still, my inner dreamscape somehow ended up in an XBox game }...

You'd think this is where I'd shit my pants, because that's exactly what I would do in real life. I'd be a goner. But I don't. Instead, I apparently decide that's quite enough Eckhart Tolle for the day, because I'm suddenly Jack-be-fucking-Nimble and run back inside and manage to get all the wayward furballs into the basement in under two seconds flat. My dad just continues to stare quizzically at me, like I've lost my damn mind and he cannot figure out why. At this point I'm PISSED and screaming wildly at him, because I simply can't seem to impress upon him just how incredibly important it is that he get his ass below ground RIGHT THIS GODDAMN MINUTE BECAUSE WE'RE ALL ABOUT TO DIE HORRIBLY.

So I pull him and his total lack of enthusiasm into the basement just as the house starts to shake violently, and I can feel the walls beginning to rip away. And that's when I wake up : right before the world ends and I have complete heart failure and shit my pants.

I have a long history of chaos-driven dreams. But all's been quiet for a long time - until Friday night, which actually kind of makes sense because of all the "YOUR FEAR IS FULL OF SHIT" work I've been doing lately. I've been stirring thing up, and my subconscious is doing its part to spit out the chaos swirling around up there in my noggin. Tornadoes are symbolic of lot of things - but they tend to show up in our dreams as harbingers of change. There are lots of different interpretations of what tornado dreams mean - emotional upheaval, sudden changes or dynamic situations in life, feeling overwhelmed or out of control - and I've no doubt experienced them as a result of all of those things throughout my life. But of all the interpretations out there, I think this one is my favorite:
​

​To have and remember such a dream is an invitation to the individual dreamer to search even more deeply within for the creative energies that are given shape in the "dream tornado" itself, for this image is, at another important level, a spontaneous symbolic meditation on the divine, as-yet unknown, unconscious creative energy that resides within each evolving human psyche. The dream tornado is an indication of the as-yet-unused-and only-intuited power of our own human ability to grow and change and evolve - the creative ability to change both ourselves and our planet in the process of our development. As long as such dreams continue to be remembered, there is every reason to believe that we can and will grow beyond even these "earth shaking" problems that our incomplete sorcerer's apprenticeship in consciousness itself have created. At this level, the "dream tornadoes" are a manifestation of that archetypal creative energy bubbling up in the collective psyche, asking for morally responsible creative expression in waking life.
​
                                                                                                                                                                   - Jeremy Taylor

Tornadoes not as a metaphor for getting our overwhelming, over-stressed, life-consuming, out-of-control shit together, but as a subconscious call for creative expression, growth and change in our waking lives. 

​I like that idea. A lot. It's much preferable to feeling like you're about to be devoured by life itself. 

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.
​Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.      
— Carl Jung

Sweet dreams!


#    #    #