"Let's Hear Your Dream"

The difficulty in being human is that one can never be merely human. Whether we like it or not, each one of us has kinship with the divine. ... It is puzzling that in the Western world, we have concentrated on the divine intellect and the divine will. Yet the breathtaking flow of
difference in the world suggests the beauty of the Divine Imagination. When we bring in the notion of the imagination, we begin to discover a whole new sense of God." -- John O'Donohue, Beauty

I  have learned that one of the best ways to avoid exploiting dreams, even unintentionally, is to greet each dreamer and each dream first with a bow, as one would greet an honored guest. Bowing is one way we honor the divine presence in another. The idea is that we acknowledge that our relationship with the dream is a holy one, and dreamworld is holy ground. This is how the first dream I ever told my teacher was greeted, and it made all the difference. Although we had been working together for quite some time, a few years in fact, I had not yet told him any of my dreams. But one day, I went in, sat down, and said rather tentatively, "I had this dream." And after waiting a moment, he smiled the kindest, warmest smile I had ever seen, sat forward, folded his hands in his lap in a prayer mudra, looked deeply at me and said with quiet but complete attention: "Let's hear your dream." 

My teacher had enough experience and enough wisdom to avoid being too eager, which would have been frightening, or too matter-of-fact, which would have been hurtful. Striking just the right chord is not easy and it takes practice. Further, it is tempting to just jump in and respond immediately to a dream, particularly when it flutters something in us, when it feels urgent or frightening, or too beautiful or numinous to bear. We want comfort and answers. We want to give comfort and answers. Talk damps terror. So it has become my practice - and I do have to continually practice - to let wonder and silence be my guides when a dream is especially potent. The more strongly I feel the urge to speak, the more I recognize the need to restrain myself, breathe and let the imagery settle. My teacher did not say, "Let me interpret your dream. Let me tell you what your dream means. Let me explain your dream." He said, "Let's hear your dream." Together, let us be present to Mystery. 


To hear is a prerequisite to listening. And to listen deeply, to bear witness, can be deceptively difficult, as Jerome Bernstein emphasizes again and again in Living in the Borderland. He writes, "The challenge is not to interpret at all – certainly not in the moment – [but] to hold an experience that can feel between language, that can leave one with the tension of holding one's intellectual and rational breath for far longer than any of us can imagine doing. To not seek the comfort of rational understanding, but to come to some kind of knowing through a holding and a wonderment."

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