dreams – Page 6 – Deborah Makarios

This month proved a struggle, looking at abundance – primarily in terms of material abundance – when all I seemed to abound in was phlegm. Such Fun.

I think Julia Cameron is really on to something here: “For many of us, raised to believe that money is the real source of security, a dependence on God feels foolhardy, suicidal, even laughable.” (p.105)

I was raised by two people who were most definitely dependent on God rather than money, and I still struggle with wanting to be financially secure all the time, not to risk having nothing to fall back on.

“We have tried to be sensible – as though we have any proof at all that God is sensible…”
“Snowflakes, of course are the ultimate exercise in sheer creative glee. No two alike.” (p.107)

Dare we dream that God has something better for us than we have at present? Not necessarily something easier, or safer, to be sure, but better?

Now, Cameron and I do differ in places. She characterises common belief as “Hard work is good. A terrible job must be building our moral fiber.” (p.106)

And you know what? I think hard work is good. I think a terrible job can build your strength, your endurance. I think I have become a better writer by having to struggle to write. I’ve had to ask myself – how much do I want this? I’ve had to develop discipline, and you can’t tell me that’s a waste of time.

But that doesn’t mean that the Dreaded Day Job is all there is, in perpetuity. People don’t keep going to school once they’ve passed their last exams. Soldiers don’t stay in basic training forever.

But here’s what scares me: once you leave training is when the work really starts.

And here’s another thought: your dreams and God’s dreams for you aren’t necessarily the same dreams (although they can be). But given a clash, God’s dreams are always better. And bigger. And scarier, because we don’t think we can do it, and he knows we can (with his help), and he’s just got to keep pushing us til we reach the place where we’re prepared to try.

An acorn may be content to become a modest shrub, but God will not be content until he has made it an oak.

You can’t out-dream God.

Cameron moves on to discuss the idea of creative luxury – not wallowing in plutocratic plushiness, but allowing yourself those non-utilitarian things which feed your soul. Things that make you feel rich in life – doesn’t have to be expensive. An old LP of great music. A monthly packet of chocolate biscuits. Really nice paper to write on, instead of a ratty old exercise book. A beautiful cup and saucer, second-hand.

I freely admit that I didn’t do most of the exercises this month. For some reason, this is the month with all the practical stuff in it. Go outside and find five interesting rocks. (I have bronchitis.) Find five flowers. (It’s winter. Plus I have bronchitis.) Bake something. (It’s winter in the kitchen too.)

Things that I didn’t do but still intend to once I recover: purge 5 old ratty items of clothing; send 5 postcards to friends you’d like to hear from; make some changes to the [cluttered, messy] home environment.
I can’t decide whether to go for this:

or this:

Dreaming too big? Mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow.

And DDJ – your days are numbered. Even though I don’t know the number yet. God’s got dreams…

When I was younger, I suffered from nightmares.

Not unusual, you might think, but this was Every Night. At first I escaped by the simple method of forcing my eyelids to open. Of course, it was only a matter of time before my subconscious caught on to this, and I ‘woke’ into another layer of dream which rapidly became nightmare.

So I came up with a new, sure-fire way of waking myself up: screaming. Of course, this had the side-effect of waking up everyone else in the house (and, at peak lung capacity, neighbouring houses) but at least I wasn’t trapped in my nightmare any more.

But as they say:

what has been seen cannot be unseen.

And once I was past the age where my screams would summon a soothing parent (i.e. into double digits), I would spend what seemed like the rest of the night either too scared to close my eyes or too scared to get my head out from under the bedding. Or both.

But then I had an epiphany. (Or it could have been the lack of oxygen under the blankets. Hard to tell.)

What terrified me could be useful fodder for writing – after all, how much more primal and high-stakes could you get?

It still took forever to get back to sleep, but at least now I woke screaming “pen and paper!!!” and not just “aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrgggggghh!!!” Sometimes I even tried to get back into the dream if I couldn’t figure out what happened next.

I haven’t gone as far as Sheridan Le Fanu, mind you – he used to intentionally eat foods that would make for disturbed sleep and then weave his nightmare into his draft on waking. (This may be partly because my nightmares aren’t due to eating lobster: they are due to going to sleep.)

Admittedly, this also works for dreams that do not qualify as nightmares, but they are harder to harvest as they are less likely to wake you up suddenly – and I have yet to acquire the talent of taking notes while still dreaming. Even the notes I have taken shortly after waking are mostly illegible, except possibly as a pigeon tap-dancing sequence.

Some of the dream-nuggets I’ve mined over the years include alien royalty being abducted from a fashionable restaurant, a Questing Aunt getting stuck on an enchanted stone bed, and the gut-dropping moment before the ‘reveal’ when you realise the ‘stunt’ lava tank the apprentice has been lowered into is real – and the stage magician knows.

Eventually it dawned on me that my sub-conscious is actually a much better writer than I am, and after a while I got over being jealous and came to terms with it.

Now I will even go to sleep thinking about my story problems in the hope that my sub-conscious will sort it out for me while I sleep. It used to work (Form Three?) but once again my sub-conscious has wised up to me and will derail my train of thought with the sudden appearance of a gytrash to swallow me whole.

I’d be interested to know if anyone else finds inspiration in their sleep – and what they pull up on the long-line of their dreams.

But one word of caution: when falling, always wake up before you hit earth.
If necessary, scream.

Tag: dreams

June: a Sense of Abundance

Mining Nightmares