We all know what dreams are, don't we? They are those extraordinary, mysterious, magnificent wanderings which come with sleep and take us far beyond our ordinary existence and understanding.
The Cheetah and the Eagle: I was assigned by someone, I don't remember whom, to pick up a man at the airport.
He lived in Minneapolis and had a 348 phone number--that seemed terribly important somehow.
For some reason I had trouble understanding him--perhaps he had a slight accent, perhaps it was merely the noise of the planes at the airport.
As I spent some time with him I discovered that he was quite a jokester.
I also discovered that he was writing a new book, the galleys of which he shared with me.
They were magnificent! The picture on page 101 especially drew my attention--it was a painting of a pair of mythological creatures that drew some kind of chariot.
Their heads were those of a cheetah and an eagle, a bald eagle which had symbols on the white part of its head.
In the book, the heads were alive--they actually moved and rubbed against each other, as though the two animals weren't enemies.
I found it quite extraordinary.
Whether you believe that dreams are filled with meaning, perhaps even portents of the future, or not, they are powerful entities.
They can chill us to our bones, or fill us with delight, without our knowing why.
What are these nightly visitations? The Arcade Dictionary of Word Origins offers two possibilities for the origin of the English word "dream": one meaning "deception," the other meaning "joy, merrymaking, music.
" Dreams are deceptive.
They speak to us in a language with which most of us are unfamiliar.
This language is the language of symbols.
Since symbols can be both universal and personal, this makes the deciphering of this language very difficult.
When the symbols are universal, one can simply look them up in a dream dictionary to discover their meaning.
But when the symbols are personal which, I believe, is most of the time, then a new kind of dictionary must be developed--an individualized dream dictionary.
Each dreamer must develop his or her own such dictionary by discovering over time what a particular symbol means to them.
Dreams are also joyful.
My response to seeing the moving heads in the book described above was pure delight, and that sensation remained with me upon waking, and returns each time I reread the dream.
I also experience joy when I decide to work with a dream and discover something about myself or my life that I hadn't known before.
I have even reached a point where I can celebrate the mystery of a dream whose meaning or importance remains elusive to me.
I can enjoy it for itself, for the story which it is.
In fact, dreams make for great storytelling.
By now most of us have heard of cultures in which people live by their dreams--they sleep in dream circles, awake and immediately share their dreams with each other, then spend the day watching to see how their dream will appear in their "waking" lives.
Many of us long for that kind of community, but shake our heads sadly with the thought, "not in my lifetime.
" What are we waiting for? All we need is one other person who is willing to listen, as well as a personal commitment to begin the sharing.
If we wake up with a listener beside us, great.
If not, we can use the phone.
If that isn't an option, we can write the dream down and share it with a listener later.
The only requirement is that we must be willing to listen, without judgment or agenda, in return.
Interestingly, the people at Mythos Institute of Frontenac, MN, see dreams and storytelling as two of four major powers (including ritual and meditation) which help in the process of regenerating the Mythos--that body of images, metaphors, stories, dreams, and rites that make human life meaningful and infuse it with Mystery.
Thus, they see dreams as giving us a personal, direct connection to the larger mythic patterns, while storytelling helps incarnate the Mythos in community, ritual embodies the images, and meditation returns us to the formless source of all images, myths, and metaphors.
In fact, dreams can serve all of these functions, as they can be shared as stories or acted out as rituals, and their images can be meditated upon.
It is precisely when these different factors begin to feed each other that the Mythos is regenerated.
You might wonder why this is important.
Morris Berman addresses this question in The Reenchantment of the World.
It is his contention "that the fundamental issues confronted by any civilization in its history, or by any person in his or her life, are issues of meaning," and that the loss of this happened for us in the Scientific Revolution.
"The view of nature which predominated in the West down to the eve of the Scientific Revolution was that of an enchanted world" in which "rocks, trees, rivers, and clouds were all seen as wondrous and alive.
" What was lost when this enchantment disappeared was meaning and metaphor--the Mythos--and along with it went our interest, wonder, and joy in being alive.
I have been accused of being addicted to metaphor, of finding meaning everywhere--in the "coincidences" which life brings me, in the headache I am experiencing, in the fact that a particular cat has walked into my life, or in the dreams which visit me.
My response is that this makes life more interesting, stimulating, and provocative.
It doesn't necessarily matter if I find the "right" meaning, or even if meaning truly exists.
I actually create meaning in my life through my decision to live this way.
My life then becomes one great big story, and we all love stories.