Dreams within dreams

I have the most amazingly detailed dreams. Every morning I wake up with some memory of these nightly travels and sometimes, I lay back in awe at just how detailed they are. Am I living two lives at once? Some people see dreams as the subconscious working out issues and even say that without this nightly relief valve, we would lose our marbles. Others see deep meaning in these dreams to be deciphered and chased recording the dreams on awakening in an attempt to recall them more fully. Perhaps others might see them as fragmentary memories of another life in a parallel universe. I have no preference for any of the above ideas. But I do have to marvel at the act of dreaming.

There must be a part of memory dedicated to our dream life for periodically, I dream of this castle come stately home. It is a very large rambling building that has been constructed at various times in history. It has ancient parts of brand new ultra modern bits. It has parts so old, they are now ruins of a former glory. Each time I dream of this place I am thrilled by the place. It is somehow precious to me and I have dreamed of living there – in a small set of rooms – in the past. There are places in that building that I am more familiar with than the place I live in now. I dreamt of it again a few nights ago and awoke deeply saddened that I could not actually live there. I have often wondered if this place is a representation of me as a spiritual creature perhaps having lived many lives through time each represented as an add on to the original and now ruined parts of the building? I do not know.

The other morning I awoke though from a dream with a different sense of dreaming. In this instance, the interaction with a person in my dream left me in no doubt that deep in my psyche, I am wounded and still in pain. The wound is deeply hidden, even ignored as irrelevant at this stage in my life yet waking up from that dream, I realized I was still pained and wounded. As I lay rubbing sleep from my eyes, I wondered what I needed to do to heal and the answer was a strange one. Nothing. I can only be the way I am with the person I dreamt about and wait to see if I will ever figure out the circumstances that caused my hurt.

I realized that I am a wounded King. Not just this wound and pain but a whole litany of them. I suspect we all are even if we do not know it. It is how I chose to view the wound that I think counts though. Is the wound festering? Gangrenous and life threatening? or, is more of a cross I need to bear? In this instance, it is more a cross I need to bear I think until such time as I can come to an understanding of it and truly let it go. It is a hurt that doesn’t cause me daily pain nor does it ask for revenge nor eat at me insidiously coloring my life negatively. At least I think and hope it does not. I do not need to hide from it in sorrow, drink or drugs…. I must just watch and learn and try to understand forgiving myself and the person involved. I must understand you see. I must learn.

When I dream of that wonderful building, I see and sense areas of darkness and sorrow. Places that are unfinished. I suspect these are the parts of me where I am carrying a wound. As I look at the building, I realize also it has a history that goes back into the farthest reaches of time. It may even be timeless existing in another world – my inner world. And, as I awoke the other morning with momentary tears in my heart, I also knew what it means to say time is a great healer. For in time, I will understand, reconcile and heal. There is no point in forcing it. The building has a plan and it will be finished according to that plan.

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