Category: Dreams

Dream Weaver

Published on by Alyssa KanitschLeave a comment

Sometimes a source of comfort and encouragement comes in the form of a song. This is not surprising, music carries a resonance that goes beyond words. A song can magically bypass the thinking, label-making brain and bring us in touch with the Divine.

If you have been following my blog, you will know how fascinated I am with dreams. For many years, I have written them down, sometimes analysing them or allowing them to inform my practise as an artist and also guide me along my spiritual path. To put this dream in context with my life, I had been experiencing artist block, and just a general lack of confidence and direction in my arts practise. I was working on a painting with a kind of frustrated energy, painting then painting over things, changing composition and colour endlessly. It felt like I was going round and round in circles with no sense of agency or purpose. I was hovering dangerously close to full blown depression. This dream occurred in one of those lucid moments that happen just before waking up fully.

The Dream

I was in a dark closet, playing a motivational tape by one of the teachers from ‘the Psychic Teachers’ podcast I used to listen to. There was ivy all around me. The teacher said, very clearly, “I am going to play a song and just really listen”. I recognised the song, it was ‘Dream Weaver’. My first reaction was how left field it seemed, it had never been one of my favourites or one I had connected to anything. As I heard the song I felt the presence of Jesus- a very real and palpable presence. Then I woke up.

The Investigation

I knew I needed to look into the symbolic content of this short dream. It had such a lucid and clear feel to it, like Spirit took an opportune moment to shoot an arrow into my psyche in the short moments where I was open enough to receive it. The first thing I found was the backstory to the song by Gary Wright:

“In 1972, my friend George Harrison invited me to accompany him on a trip to India. A few days before we left, he gave me a copy of the book Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda. Needless to say the book inspired me deeply, and I became totally fascinated with Indian culture and philosophy. My trip was an experience I will never forget. During the early ’70s while reading more of the writings of Paramahansa Yogananda, I came across a poem called God! God! God!. One of the lines in the poem referred to the idea of the mind weaving dreams and the thought immediately occurred to me, weaver of dreams… Dream Weaver. I wrote it down in my journal of song titles and forgot about it. Several months passed, and one weekend, while in the English countryside, I picked up my journal and came across the title ‘Dream Weaver.’ Feeling inspired, I picked up my acoustic guitar and began writing. The song was finished in an hour. The lyrics and music seemed to have flowed out of me as if written by an unseen source. After the record was released and became successful many people asked me what the song meant. I really wasn’t sure myself and would answer ‘it was about a kind of fantasy experience… a Dream Weaver train taking you through the cosmos.’ But I was never satisfied with that explanation, and as years went by I began to reflect on what the song actually meant and then it came to me: ‘Dream Weaver, I believe you can get me through the night…’ was a song about someone with infinite compassion and love carrying us through the night of our trials and suffering. None other than God Himself.”

(Source: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/gary-wright/dream-weaver)

Needless to say, these words comforted and blessed me beyond my ability to express. Even the way the song came together for him gave me so much encouragement. The alchemy and co-creation we get to participate in with God, it is truly wonderous.

Exploring Dreams through Art- a search for Divine Presence

Published on by Alyssa KanitschLeave a comment

My recent paintings have been heavily inspired by the language of dreams, and how we engage in spiritual realities when our conscious, problem-solving minds are at rest. My deep longing is to understand how God engages with us in our dreaming unconscious state…Do we fly freely in our inner world, a solitary orb? Or is the Divine Spirit a tangible presence there just as it can be in our waking life?

Perhaps God is healing and helping us during our sleeping sojourn because we are too limited and distracted otherwise, laying the foundation for connections and those ‘aha’ moments later realised in waking life.

For me, attempting to remember my dreams and writing them down has become a form of contemplative prayer, a way of yielding and accepting what God is doing in my life. This yielding is not passive- it is a kind of active open-handed-ness. It’s an attitude of co-operation borne from the belief that God is a good, kind and benevolent force in the universe who loves us perfectly and wholly as precious children.

Through this practise, I am learning to notice the details of my life- even in waking hours as being significant. When I say details, I mean emotions, reactions, memories, places or thoughts of a person. These details work in synergy with the content of my dreams, giving life as a whole a sort of super-charged meaning. It’s like a seed planted at night, which later springs up and grows.

So, I’ve developed a pretty solid habit of recording dreams. However, I have come to realise how enriching it can be to interact with and explore them creatively. My hope is to find greater depth, clarity, and an ever -increasing grounding in my spiritual life and understanding.

Carl Jung developed a technique called ‘Active Imagination’ which involves using creative expression as a way of engaging with dream elements and characters. Using the creative arts in this way seems to help us bypass the logical left hemisphere of the brain, and utilise our more intuitive, image-rich right hemisphere. Jung himself was a painter, and it is fascinating to look at his artwork and how he has been able to dive into the content of his dreams and emerge with messages from archetypal characters.

Jung’s ‘Philemon’ character from his own dream analysis. Courtesy of https://philemonfoundation.org/

How I utilised ‘Active Imagination’ to Understand my Dream

To enter into my own dream interpretation, it was important to remind myself that the technique as a whole is not about “getting an answer” or “solving a puzzle”, but to engage with it loosely and playfully. Allowing curiosity and an attitude of experimentation leads to open ended questions- “I wonder what would happen if I ….drew my dream/ interviewed a dream character/ created a song or poem? What would this character say to me if I asked who they were? What does this colour/place/animal mean? ”

Dreams are fluid, energetic and organic. Their meaning is richer and deeper than one answer or understanding. They can change over time, and bring different offerings to us according to our circumstances and emotional states. Dreams originate from a vast landscape. Their content is both particular to the dreamer and universal as part of what Jung describes as the ‘collective unconscious’. Think of the well known idea of the iceberg…our conscious mind being what is above the water, our unconscious the massive iceberg below. The invitation is to look below the surface- as deep as we would like to plummet. In this analogy the ocean represents all of us- the collective unconscious where we are all united and knit together as one.

Iceberg courtesy of https://octavianreport.com

I engaged with a recent dream by creating a painting about it. It is much shorter than most of my dreams, however, since the colours and imagery were so rich, it demonstrates how much can be gleaned by just a little bit of material. As such, I had a very strong idea of what I wanted to depict. I also found it beneficial to give dreams a title.

Here’s a brief overview of the dream.

Three Birds

I was by the sea, and there were 3 budgies in a cage. One was orange, one was blue and the third was a colour I cannot recall. I took them out and they were tame. I was wearing orange, so the orange bird felt comfortable with me. My youngest son was with me, and he was wearing blue, so he held the blue bird.

The process of painting this, with my dream as a guide was interesting and different. I was very aware of allowing the painting to become what it needed to whilst maintaining some of the main features. I changed the image of the woman holding the canary- which in my dream was me- based on an imaginative dialogue where I interviewed her as a separate part of me. In my journal I asked, “What is your name?” and the answer came, ‘Golden Shadow’. Many dream analysts suggest doing this by writing the question in your dominant hand, and the answer in your non-dominant hand. However, another way is through getting into a meditative and ‘attentive’ attitude by focusing on relaxing and being aware of the breath. (I found this way works best for me). After this, the woman holding the orange bird changed from having dark hair, and being almost like a self-portrait, to a ‘separate’ person altogether.

The water element is also very important. In this dream, the ocean speaks of the unconscious, going below the surface (this is not always the case as water has a strong connection to emotions). In my imaginative meeting with the dream character in the orangey/red dress, she took me from the window down a staircase where there was another window showing under the water. I could see jellyfish and tropical fish. She took me down another staircase leading to a window of a deeper sea- telling me “keep going” “You can go as deep as you want”. The invitation was also, significant to the birds, to allow myself to be affected by “the little ones”: in other words, it is safe to be soft and tender of heart in the world, rather than trying to shield myself from it.

So, the woman in my painting became ‘Golden Shadow’, with red-gold hair. Her message to me was to encourage me to ‘keep going’ . Notably, the orange bird became a canary. Canaries are symbolic of joy and compassion as well as freedom from limitations or shackles (especially pertinent because the symbol of a cage was also in my dream). I added tears to the woman’s eyes, which is serendipitous since part of her message to me was to allow myself to feel and be affected by the world. The birdcage became a pretty decorative planter- a container of life as opposed to captivity or oppression.

Here’s a little snippet of my painting process- as I said it changed quite dramatically as I engaged with both the dream and the emerging artwork itself.

Finished painting, “Three Birds”

The Serendipity of Dreamwork

Published on by Alyssa KanitschLeave a comment

Something is calling me towards re-engaging more fully with my dreams.

What started as decluttering my house led to a kind of decluttering of the mind: holding on to the valuable, letting go of the things that had been weighing me down. I found long-forgotten treasures like dream journals, some from recent years, and others from many years ago.

I want to follow the staircase down into my dreaming world because I believe the unconscious has new and wonderful offerings there for me. Wonderful, in the sense of revealing both shadow and light. But it seems to me that one cannot feel joy unless there is a willingness to dive into the shadowlands too. After all, that is how we become fully human.

I’ve been researching, as is so easy for us, when we find a subject of interest. There’s a plethora of information out there to be had on everything, and dreams are no exception! I zeroed in on the work of Carl Jung. He’s always fascinated me, especially in the way he fleshed out the idea of archetypes and used visual art extensively to explore dreams.

According to Jung, dreams are revelatory. In other words they present content that we are completely unaware of in the daily chatter of our conscious minds. This may seem obvious at first to those who have dabbled in the practise of dreamwork. However, when you think about it, having an idea or concept presented to us, about us, which is outside of our inner dialogue feels miraculous. We are lifted away from the physical entanglements of our material existence into the unknown of the Divine.

Our dreams have an eternal quality- dreams from long ago can evolve in meaning. Rather than being like deadwood of the past, dreams are more like facets of a diamond ever revealing different aspects from the deep waters of the psyche. This is why it was so serendipitous for me to re-discover old dream journals and the artwork I did around them.

Feather

This piece ‘Feather’ was a collage around a dream character from more than 15 years ago, when I was studying counselling. When I found it, I felt compelled to do some more work around this drawing by asking questions and writing intuitive insights down. Not surprisingly, I found these archetypes just as relevant for me now as they were then, and the meaning has deepened and developed.

Interestingly, the owl-like creature represented God for me, which is comforting now as a mother who has lost a child. I see my heart being held in this picture. Not long after he passed, my angel son Jordan sent us many signs in the form of owls. Because of this, it speaks as reassurance that just like the girl in the picture (an aspect of me), his heart is also safe in God’s care. It’s hard to describe the utter wordless wonder I feel in my soul with these deep symbols. They tell a much larger story.

Our lives, all of our lives, are truly a labyrinth of treasure.

I wrote a short poem about this dream character, which illustrates one aspect of the Jungian way of dream analysis. Unlike Freud, who used free association to decode dreams, Jung’s method is a way of bypassing the logical mind by trying to examine the images and archetypes as if you had never seen them before. As if you are trying to explain something to an alien or a small child.

Feathers are light
They are lifted by the air
They are soft to touch.
With feathers, a bird can
fly and enter into the 
heavenly space.
They shelter and comfort gently,
so quietly.
God has wings, too.
We gather under,
allowing them to enfold us,
Like a Mother Hen.









			
		

	
	



			
				



			

			
				
			
		

	
	

		
		
Water Baptism- a dream reflection

				

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I want to share with you a dream I had, as the imagery was so powerful, it has given me much to reflect on. I’ve called the dream (and the painting above) ‘Water Baptism’


In the dream I was up in the clouds. There was a teacher with me, relating all sorts of wonderful things about a global perspective. I could see the horizon and the earth below, and it was glorious. But somehow I was slipping and wasn’t able to stay in the sky. So I fell. But the fall wasn’t dramatic as in many dreams, it was soft. I gently landed in the ocean, and woke up as I emerged, face first from the water, which was a beautiful aquamarine blue.


It feels like sacred ground to try to interpret this dream in a linear fashion. I think I will only be able to catch the overarching message, and trust that my deepest soul understands more than my conscious understanding. The most obvious metaphor to me, of the water at least, is baptism. Baptism is a way of representing an inner surrender, as death yields to life.


Submerged in the ocean, we are utterly engulfed by the water, but also buoyed up by it- if we relax. When we are drowning, they say the more we struggle to stay afloat, the more likely we are to actually drown because we are expending so much energy in our panic. To swim, one must learn the skill of relaxing into the water and thereby the body becomes its own life raft and floats. There is a humble beauty in yielding. To circumstances, to God, to who we are. In dreams every element can also be understood as parts of ourselves. So, even the body of water that held me is a part of me, perhaps that sacred space in my heart where God also dwells.


Dreams provide wonderful inspiration for art, and this one is no exception. For me, to paint a dream is a way of imprinting it onto my psyche, and I’m sure the meaning of this one will evolve just as I am evolving. Hopefully others too will be able to resonate with it, since after all, dream symbols are part of our collective unconscious.


St Theresa of Avila describes spiritual metamorphosis in terms of a butterfly which emerges after days and days of being in a cocoon spun around it’s body. It is changed on a cellular level, no longer resembling in any way the lumpen worm that chews its way through mulberry leaves. It’s not merely a worm with wings, it is utterly different, transformed. This body of water can also be seen in terms of a chrysalis. When we are in our mothers’ womb, we float in water, before we emerge into another reality…Truly, as the psalmist says; “Your ways are too wonderful for me too lofty to attain”. Some things are so beautiful and true that we can only trust that somewhere deep in our soul there is a flicker of understanding.


May we all find quiet trust in these waters as we surrender to it’s depths.


			
		

	
	



			
				



			

			
				
			
		

	
	

		
		
Light and Shadow: a Meditation

				

			Published on  by Alyssa KanitschLeave a comment		

			



			


			
They move with the time of day and make visible the dance of the breeze. Dappling the world shadows are darkly mystifying. When I paint shadows, I often use all of the primary colours, undiluted and concentrated, so that the eye reads them as shades. Darkness gives depth, or at least the illusion of depth. The world is flat and bleached without shadows. In art and life, we need a “Yin” or negative space to balance out the bright and dynamic ‘Yang’ energy. The reflective yielding light of the moon to balance the sharp rays of the sun. We need winters’ solstice to make space for the active growth cycle of spring and summer.


In spiritual terms, the shadow is neither good nor bad, it just is. It’s a part of us that has much to teach us if we let it. It contains spaces that we can only just make out, like something in the corner of our eye, hazy and nondescript. We see reality as ‘through a glass darkly’ (1 Corinthians 13:12). Like the deep ocean, our shadow also contains things we cannot see at all. There is a universe inside of us. Often, we get snippets of our mysterious shadow selves when we remember our dreams, and wake, perhaps realising that there is a lot more going on in our psyches that what we are consciously aware. But we don’t need to remember dreams in order to gain the wisdom and insight of our shadow.  It resides in all of our frailties, our insecurities and failures. It’s our very weaknesses that lead us to God, who is completely present both within our being and outside of us as an anchor for our soul. We discover the life of God in these hazy, elusive impressions. We come to understand that our worth is not found in achievements or the identity we have spent years trying to carefully construct.


Sometimes, every answer to every question seems to be a resounding “I don’t know”. Like tree in a storm, it’s delicate branches billowing in strong winds, we may feel that there is neither gravity nor ground. St John of the Cross says likens this shadow experience as ‘the dark night of the soul’. He says; “In the dark night of the soul, bright flows the river of God”. The shadow place is being content in the mystery. Laying aside manipulations and grasping, and with open hands, we are fully immersed in the river of God.