Dreaming

We spend about a third of our lives asleep, which seems to me an amazing statistic. Although when I get tired and want to go to sleep, nothing is as sweet as climbing into bed, snuggling under the covers, and drifting off to sleep.

Today, this Sunday morning, is another time when I couldn't decide what I wanted to write about here, my thoughts going here and there, wondering what is uppermost in my mind. I thought about old regrets that keep coming up to bother me, making me wonder why I keep beating myself up about things that nobody else remembers. They are real to me, though, which means they must still have some relevance in my daily life. Those journals from the 1990s still sit accusingly on my bookshelf, daring me to delve into them.

But lately my dreams have been so real, making me feel as though I'm living another life. I ran across an interesting article on the Huffington Post by one of my favorite authors Robert Lanza (the author of Biocentrism) entitled, "Are Dreams an Extension of Physical Reality?" It got me to wondering about these dreams of mine. I wrote a while back about my old friend Garl having died this summer in a parachuting accident. I was pretty devastated by the event, and many of my friends in Boulder held a celebration of Garl's life a few weeks ago. I felt bad that I wasn't able to be there. The thing is, if I had been willing to spend a lot of money I could have gone, and it made me feel guilty that I didn't go.

The other night I dreamed that I saw Garl walking towards me, his distinctive gait assuring me that it was indeed him, and he walked over and put his arms around me. He whispered in my ear that he forgave me for not coming to his celebration. He looked and felt like the old Garl I knew, except that when I looked at his neck while he was hugging me, it was broken. I don't remember any other part of the dream, but I remember when I woke up that I kept thinking about that dream. It felt like one of those memories I won't soon forget.

I remember when Chris died, many years ago now (in 2002), I would dream about him quite often. But one dream stands out in my memory, as if it happened. Chris always shows up in my dreams as a young teenager, or a young man. He was forty when he died, but somehow his essence to me is right around nineteen or twenty. In that dream, I was standing in a beautiful forest, with the sun shining and a light breeze blowing. There's a path in the forest that opens up to a glen. Walking towards me on the path is Chris, and another old friend who died years ago in an avalanche. They are both smiling widely, their arms around each other, and Chris says, "Hi Mom, we're having a great time. Please don't worry about me, I'm fine!" And Franz (the friend) says nothing but has his arm protectively around Chris as if to affirm the truth of it.

That's all I remember about the dream, but that scene is as real to me as if I'd lived it. Or did I? That's the thing that Lanza keeps pointing out: that we really don't know the truth of our physical existence, it's not what we think, so who's to say that dreams are not real, too? Of course, there are also nightmares, dreams that I can hardly wait to escape from. Those are often dreams of loss, losing people or things and being unable to locate them. I know some people's dreams are really scary, but thinking back I can't remember any like that myself. There have been dreams where I've been glad when I woke to find it was only a dream.

As I've gotten older, I notice that I fall asleep easily and usually have a dream or two, nothing special, and then I have a period of wakefulness, where I'm not very asleep, or I'm wide awake in the middle of the night. That's the time when unresolved issues in my daily life usually come up, and sometimes I need to use deep breathing to slip back down into sleep. I find that a dab or two of lavender oil on my wrists almost always helps me relax. I breathe it in and snuggle into my covers. That next period of the night, around 2:00 or 3:00, is when I have my most memorable dreams.

I don't know if it's wishful thinking, but I do hope that one day (or one night) I'll find out what is real. Most of my life's memories have already dissolved in the mists of time, with just a few of the many days and nights I've lived still holding any significant memories. I would feel bereft, however, if I didn't have those few dreams that stand like beacons on the signposts of my dream world.