Dreams are enigmas. They are multi-dimensional expressions of our multi-dimensional selves. And dreamwork can be as multi-faceted and multi-layered as the dream itself. There are many different ways to approach our dreams, but essentially all dreamwork is focused on bridging the worlds between our different states of consciousness, and bringing gifts from the deeper wisdom of our unconscious dreaming nature into the light of our conscious waking minds.
If we can imagine our linear waking state of consciousness symbolically as our ‘Sun’ Mind, and our non-linear dreaming state symbolically as our ‘Moon’ Mind, then dreamwork can be seen as the creative marriage and interpretive-dance-like interaction between these two quite different states of mind. The dualistic energies of our waking and dreaming minds have been symbolised throughout the ages in many cultures as sun/moon, yang/yin, mind/soul and masculine/feminine. They are recognised as archetypes of our psyches, representing nodes on a spectrum of consciousness, between which our human experience oscillates. Both have their own magical powers that shape our existence, and both when out-of-balance can be extremely destructive to our well-being.
Its important to note that our Sun Mind and Moon Mind are never mutually exclusive; just as the yin-yang symbol demonstrates, each contains a good-sized splodge of the other. Also, we don’t need to be asleep to dream; we have the ability to enter our Moon Mind state of consciousness while awake through altered states of consciousness such as dancing, love making, shamanic journeying, and sacred ceremony. Likewise we can also access our Sun Mind while we are sleeping, especially through the practice of lucid dreaming.
Both our Sun Mind and Moon Mind each have their archetypal light and shadow aspects. Our waking Sun Mind is a master of order and rationality, of linear time, law and justice, and mastery over the physical world. Efficient, analytical and burning with yang energy, the light of our Sun Mind powers our action and expansion, our ability to control and manipulate the physical world through physical means. His shadow however is to over-dominate, control and expand without limit or compassion.
Our dreamy Moon Mind is the expression of our wild and untamed heart. Deeply passionate and emotional, intuitive and creative, her home is the non-linear world of the Dreaming. Her light powers our mystical experiences, the ‘knowings’ in our bones, our imagination, our creativity, and our ancient mythic connections to the universe around us and everything in it. In her shadows however, we can be overwhelmed by our emotions, fall prey to low self-esteem, become overly fearful, superstitious, or paranoid, and lose our ability to function effectively within consensus reality.
Our patriarchal culture currently has a ‘glaring’ imbalance towards our collective Sun Mind and this has resulted in a break-down of relationship with our dreams and with our collective Moon Mind, to the point of draining the magic, mystery and spontaneity out of our experience of the world. As well as physically destroying the earth’s wild nature and psychologically destroying our connection to our own wild inner-natures, which happen to be our only source to creatively imagine our way out of this mess. Meanwhile, our Moon Mind is held in exile in the shadows by our collective consciousness, expressing herself in our repressed fear, pain, anxiety, rage, grief, loneliness, depression and alienation—the results of her rejection and betrayal by our collective Sun Mind.
If we want magic to come alive in our lives, we must tend to our everyday relationship with it. Toko-pa Turner
Dreamwork is the excellent practice of returning harmony and balance to this sacred marriage of opposites, and as we weave the dreaming Moon Mind back into living-connection with our waking Sun Mind, we restore the magic and mystery of divine dreaming to its rightful place as the guiding spirit of our lives. We also invite the Dreaming back into our collective world, as one by one we add the voices of our dreaming to the symphony of our shared waking dream.
The Dreaming is the Oneness from which all individual dreams are dreamt. Our feminine Moon Mind understands this Oneness, and sees each individual as an essential voice in the great uni-verse, the combined song of life.
Our dreaming Moon Mind encourages us to sing our unique gifts into being. She guides us through our dreams in a synesthesic tapestry of mythic story and medicinal metaphor. Its a kind of poetry-of-form that can be completely baffling to our rational and linear-based Sun Mind. Verbal and written languages have been learned by our Sun Mind through imitation and study, but the Dreaming language of metaphor emerges from within our bones. The Moon Mind speaks the fundamental language of our consciousness; it is the language of Nature as she creates through us, her creations.
As we follow our dreams one-by-one, we step-by-step bring our natural feminine wisdom out of the shadows and into the light of our conscious Sun Mind. This journey follows the path of an archetypal initiation as we shed the layers of unconscious falsehoods and pretensions like serpentine skins entering a new season’s growth. Our inner dragons lie dormant inside of us, awaiting and guarding the treasures hidden deep inside our soul. Our dreamworking is our heroines journey into the underworld, befriending the dragon of our wild instincts, recovering the gold of our divine child, and returning to the surface world forever changed.
Every dreamwork journey of recovery and integration brings intimacy and trust to the divine marriage of Sun and Moon within us. As they join together in love, we become whole again.