Preface
In this article Shamai Currim takes us on a journey through
some of the Dreamtime material currently available. While she is able
to pose some of the questions, and walk us through some of her
journey, she does not posit that she has any of the answers. That is
for you, the reader, to find.
Shamai Currim is a Therapist, Educator, and Educational Consultant
and Trainer. She holds a BA in Applied Social Science, an MS in
Education, and a PhD in Transpersonal Psychology. She is an Early
Childhood and Family Life Educator, a Massotherapist, Aromatherapist,
and Reflexologist. She has Certified Polarity Educator/Registered
Polarity Practitioner status with the American Polarity Therapy
Association and has advanced training in Cranio Sacral and Myofascial
work. As a Psychosynthesist, she works with Deep Trauma. She is
capable of working eclectically, has been trained to use the Energy
Psychologies (EMDR, EFT) and is a Colour/light and Sound Therapist.
Shamai has worked with children and families with special needs, has
been active in working with the AIDS and Prison communities, was the
Director of a Senior Citizen's Summer Residence and Children's Day
Camp for 17 years, believes in being active in reform and has sat on
the Steering Committee of the Association for the Advancement of
Psychosynthesis, the board of the International Organization of the
Helen Prize for Women, the board of the Association of Early
Childhood Educators, and as the Executive Director of Eduporta
International Education Agency. She was a chosen attendee at the
Leadership Training Course at the Canadian Jewish Congress and the
first recipient of the Ross-Seaman Memorial Leadership Award at
Concordia University.
Shamai is an accomplice with Oh Shinnah FastWolf , a Shishindi elder,
and is an initiate of Sant Mat/Surat Shabd Yoga and a disciple of the
current living master, Sant Rajinder Singh Ji Maharaj.
The Dreamtime: What is it really?
My first thought on entering into and researching material for
writing this paper on working with the Dreamtime was that I would be
reviewing material that spoke to the dream space. In my naiveté I
didn't include the dreaming wish, the other worlds, or the steps
beyond. While I have done much inner growth, have practiced mediation
for many years, and have worked over the years with Shamans, Elders,
Traditional Dreamers, Mystics and Saints, I had not been aware of the
multitude of information that had in the past, and now in the present
been revealed, with accuracy and with determination of spirit, to
provide the physical provings so necessary in today's concrete world.
I had moved well beyond the symbolic language, journals, and lucid
practices. I was eager to find, put into words, the experiences I
have been living.
Malcolm Godwin takes us into the world of lucid dreaming. He
suggests that we become active participants in the dream world,
encouraging us to find the true reality. Wolf, when referring to the
stages of self-awareness, tells us that the 'observer' is actually
a more advanced stage of consciousness. Godwin goes on to say that we
should move beyond the assumption that the observer is outside of the
observed, but is, in actuality, an affecter of its observations. Of
course we know that lucid dreaming actually means taking
responsibility for ones own actions/life, choosing reflection over
reaction. When the restlessness of change brings with it greater
responsibility for choice of action/non action, the dreamer must
choose between devotion and devouration. Godwin suggests that the
role of sleep is biological as well as psychological, carrying the
significance of practicing our waking environment, and he reminds us
that "lucidity, or alert attentiveness is closest to the original
state of witnessing consciousness". (Godwin, P.77).
Dreams can be used as a tool to empower or disempower. Through
the act of visualization or the action of Gestalt, a therapist can
move the client from believed helplessness to a felt sense of
empowerment, from a loss of self to a strengthened sense of ego. The
dreamtime state can also be used to take power away from those that
are most vulnerable. Much of my work over the past few years has
dealt with the Dissociative state, another form of dreaming. Fred
Wolf's introduction of Libet's work and the importance of the
perception/time marker signal could be compared to the programming
procedures done on Satanic Ritual Abuse survivors. If the abuse is
done quickly, and at a very young age, and the stimulus does not
reach the brain's perceptive understanding, then, in fact, the abused
will feel like he is in a dreamlike state, unable to differentiate
physical fact from fiction (dissociation). "They separated their
bodies into parts in their minds" (Wolf, P.99) Since, as Wolf says,
the ability to consciously veto an action is not the same mechanism
as the ability to become aware of the intention to act, and, because
inhibitory mechanisms delimit the spread of activity in the cortex,
we can understand the use of psychoactive drug induced awareness
which depresses inhibition (the cults use of inhibitory and analgesic
drugs). He further goes on to speculate that, with electrical
activity, or sensory cortex manipulation, the same type of imagery
could be experienced by different people, giving possible proof of
collective consciousness. Since unification and consolidation form
the concept of an "I", largely through the activities of the dreaming
brain, the cult keeps the mind of its members in a fantasy reality
where they can direct and exploit the victim's inability to reason
within moral inhibitions. Wolf also refers to the work of Crick and
Mitchison, proposing that since brain neurons are excitory rather
than inhibitory, they have the capacity for associative memory. He
refers to using memory overload to create memory extinction, leaving
certain memories stronger and easier to access, the dream of a person
seeking mind control over another.
Wolf, when he refers to the aboriginal people, states that
the dream world is considered to be the real time, or real world,
while the physical world is considered to be the dreaming. He refers
to the objective component (the action) and the subjective component
(the awareness of the self in the observation).
He also talks about REM sleep giving us easier access to our waking
state, an aid for primitive cultures, and he refers to hypnagogic
dreaming, the space between awake and asleep, and the images which
can also occur when a person is left in a darkened room for extended
periods of time.
When Wolf talks about the essence of time, he suggests that the
chronological time line on which we put the events of our lives does
not apply to the dreaming. They are not historical-time based. "That
doesn't mean they are not real or that they didn't happen or for that
matter are not happening now" (Wolf, P.150). This reminds me of the
experiences of working with past lives, which don't always follow a
logical sequence, or may appear to have overlaps of time. He also
states that "Duration is not governed by the clock but by the
business at hand" (Wolf, P.151), which in past life language means
that it is not important whether the work is, in reality, connected
to another space and time. We need to just the work that is presented
to us, in the present moment, and is to be dealt with, in the present
moment.
I loved hearing the aboriginal story of creation, where each
part dreams the next, with the human being last. The basic driving
force of the universe is seen as the capacity to dream, to bring into
existence, to use the ability to go beyond that which is, to dream.
From here we awaken the consciousness that we are more than our
existence, and so, have a larger responsibility in the creation and
caretaking of life.
In speaking to the quantum wave theory of transactional
interpretation, one sees the stream/counter stream that is dependant
on the observer for interpretation. In this reinforcement of self and
other "they then cancel each other out in the space outside these
events and before the initial or offering event and after the final
or echoing event" (Wolf, P.163). While this refers to the
understanding that there must be two before there can be one (the
reality of consciousness), it also reverberates to the loss of
boundaries when doing balance/counterbalance exercises. In my
experience this form of movement, which goes from the physical to the
transpersonal, helps to eliminate physical barriers, aiding the
healer to see beyond and within the structure of the physical form.
This would help to explain the experiences of the Intuitive Healer or
the abilities of the psychic persona.
Whether dreams are replays of daily events, chances for
expansion, soul travel, experiences from other dimensions, re-tells,
pre-tells, post-tells, or psychic prophecy or intuition, dreams can
be worked with, encouraged, cajoled, and understood symbolically or
perceptually. We can be observers, active participants, or find
ourselves somewhere in between, and we can even 'dream storm' in
order to find an answer. We can be catalyst, pacifist, or
reactionary. We can set intention through prayer and bring potential
forward.
We can be believer, or nonbeliever, and still find ourselves falling
into the dream state.
We can believe that the dreaming is our reality, or that our reality
falls somewhere between the dreaming and the waking, or that the only
true reality lives only in the physical. The dreaming may be our
potential, our unconscious, or even guidance from our superconscious.
It may be from our state of Id or Ego, I or not I, and can be seen as
guidance, repression, or denial from our multi-faceted self. Dreams
can be objective or subjective, observed or experienced, group
oriented or soliloquy, orderly or in disarray, full of possibilities
or actualities, correlated or separated, pre, post or present
process, communal or self oriented, telepathic, conceptive,
existential, gestalt, precognitive, paranormal, prophetic, or species
connected, controlling or controlled, related or unrelated, and may
have nothing to do with any of this. Dream theory is still rather
speculative and is best understood through experience. We have proof
of some theories, perceptions of others, direct experience with
others. I like Wolf's idea that ego is constructing causality while
Id is synchronizing events and meaning that deal with feeling and
intuition, that the future is directing and correcting our actions
and always leading us forward, and that the need to see the beyond is
a result of early childhood trauma.
Now, if we add in the work of Wilder Penfield, we move into the
speculation that certain areas of the brain hold memory, and produce
a dreamlike state when electrically stimulated. The question arises,
then, whether the memory state is produced by stimulation, or whether
the memory produces the stimulation, through the induced fear.
The question that Wolf brings forward, and then answers, is the one
that states that children that have been abused, who have the
capacity for dissociation or alternate reality experiences, who have
the physical ability to suppress the self and effect the change, may
be the majority of reported cases of NDE and UFO experiences. He
appears to state that this is a physical phenomenon, capable of being
induced. Perhaps this gives us another reason for the efficacy of the
EMDR work that is being accomplished in therapeutic settings today.
It is important for me to note here, as well, that the meditative
practice of Surat Shabd Yoga can produce the same experience as NDEs,
and that not all practitioners have been abused as children.
Wolf refers to the five levels in the dream. I believe it takes
us five levels just to be able to come to a level of conscious
awareness. From here, it is said, we travel the five dream loops and
the 24 levels of dreaming (Tardiff, 2003) and, with more self-
consciousness, we can work with and from the worlds beyond. The
Kalacakra system refers to thirty-one realms. The Yogacara didn't
work with anything except the inner world. The Cuna Indians descended
vertically through eight levels of Kalus and ascended progressively
higher through eight aerial levels. My sense is that this opening to
other depends on how easily we are able to move out of illusion and
beyond the self. I have enjoyed watching my dreamtime move from black
and white, two dimensionality, to full colour, multi dimensionality,
ethnicity, and otherworldly. I also wish to mention here that age is
of no consequence. I have met children who are natural dreamers, able
to work and travel in the dreamtime at will. With support they do not
lose this ability, but rather, are capable of bringing this forward
into their everyday lives. The dreaming and awake states become one.
The questions I came into this paper with were: what is the
difference between the dream state and the meditative state? What is
the process of consciously moving through the dream loops, or many
different levels of the dream state? Is there more of an opening into
the dreamtime state now that we, as a paradigm, are moving towards
consciousness? Or will that mean that we will no longer have use for/
need of the dream state? I come out of this writing with questions
around Quantum Mechanics and the model of waves/particles. I am
intrigued by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle and its fixed law
of imperfection. It amazes me to see the copious amount of dream
work that goes on in our society. When I think of the dream state, I
think of a state of being/becoming. Our scientifically oriented
society seems to have the need to create the provings. If one would
move with Wolf's holographic ideal of real and virtual images, one
could concede that in order to reach a higher level of dreaming, one
would need more clear light, and yet it is this light that creates
the alternative action of the electrons. Perhaps when one becomes
fully conscious then there will no longer be a need to retain the
dream state. I would, to the contrary, like to propose that, when we
have reached a full state of consciousness, we would no longer have a
need for the body. We will become, reawaken, return to the dream. As
Wolf said "Matter Dreams".
What I especially liked, when the material began to come
together, is the fact that in all the work, in all the studies, in
all the different facets of the sciences, the reality of all of this
research really comes down to the one question we all continuously
ask ourselves "where do we come from?" For it is in this search for
the knowing of self/Self that we begin the journey, lucid or asleep.
It is within these travels, this life journey, that that we find our
true reason for being/becoming, matter enfolding and unfolding,
present in the finding and returning to the nature of our true
authentic selves.
References:
- Godwin, Malcolm (1994), The Lucid Dreamer: A Waking Guide for the Traveler Between Worlds, NY, Labrinthe
- Tardiff, Lisa (2003), Rattling the Bones, unpublished
- Van de Castle, Robert (1994), Our Dreaming Mind: A Sweeping Exploration of the Role that Dreams Have Played in Politics, Art, Religion, and Psychology, From Ancient Civilizations to the Present Day, NY, Ballantine
- Varela, J. (1997), Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying: An Exploration of Consciousness with The Dalai Lama, Boston, Wisdom
- Wolf, Fred Alan (1994), The Dreaming Universe: A Mind Expanding Journey into the Realm Where Psyche and Physics Meet, NY, Simon & Schuster
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