Loss & Suffering – Sometimes dreams are an escape from the unbelievable horror of existence. In that case, they are our art form, and we must curate them to prepare a bearable future.
Ugly World – every religion and philosophical system has to account for the misery we see around us -storms, flood, volcanos, disease, human frustration an animal predation. Do your dream explore inner and outer pain? How much is fear, how much is anxiety, how much is collective unconscious and shared human history? We fear everyone CAN’T be happy at once. How do we educate ourselves to surf this intolerable dilemma? Let’s get out our Dream Journals.
What’s the happiest dream you’ve ever had? Why? – How could it even more satisfyingly responsive to your present crisis?
Lucid Dreaming – Is dreaming when you’re aware of it. it’s trying to guide the dream and use it to replenish your spirit. Your psyche is accessible in dreams to those you choose to include. What spirits do you invite?
Pain is Joy’s Shadow – Joy is an excess of feeling and so is suffering. When we long to “numb out”, we numb everything. If we live our lives in fear, we avoid the potential excitement of holding breath on the edge of discovery.
Challenge – What would become of us if we allowed ourselves to feel it all? Poets feel they must indulge – artist of all kinds explore and expand the edges of perception and assessment. Possible philosophical coping mechanisms can be Buddhist – “It’s all illusion” “Practice taming the wild mind” or religious – “Suffering brings us closer to God in developing compassion for all creation” and “Birth pangs are necessary to bring new life.” Any way we can keep our mind and soul responsive and deepening benefits the whole planet. Cultivate Dream Partners. Share your dreams with them.
Danger – Too much suffering breeds helplessness. Our angel needs to recover from her burns and acquire some new feathers. If we stop even trying to better our human situation we attract predators to such easy prey. Even worse, we become predators ourselves, bragging to the godless that we are the new potentates. Cruelty breeds endless cruelty. There must be a way to step off this treadmill – there’s enough suffering going around without manufacturing more.
Opportunity – Imagination itself comes from discomfort, even misery. We see a need to expand our mental repertoire, to magically increase the very dimensions of thought that seem to imprison us. As a species we have broken through this many times. There must be further epiphanies awaiting. How does this apply to you? Ask your dreams. Open and relax your mind. Keep track of your dreams in your journal – not just actual dreams, but your thought possibilities in reflection. What if you could not fail? Turn to your dream partners for ideas. Who are we really? Who could we become?
Models & Mentors – “You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered”
– Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard”
– A.A. Milne
“Only people who are capable of loving strongly can suffer such deep sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heal them”
– Leo Tolstoy
“What we once loved we can never lose for it becomes a part of us” – Helen Keller
“Death is not the greatest loss in life, the greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live” – Norman Cousins
Meditation –
#Haiku: Acceptance without Exception
Join us!
Compassion
Greets
Suffering;
Blends;
Evaporates
Tears
Gently.
Alysse Aallyn 
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