No Privacy

Before you conclude that every dream is dealing with a weighty personal issue, take a look at what was going on around you, and in the world, the day or two before you had the dream.
The Dream: I'm living with other people in an apartment. The boy in the next room is playing a kind of music I don't like at ear-splitting volume. I'm very angry and go to his door, banging on it with a large pair of garden shears. It occurs to me that if he opens the door quickly I'll probably bang him with them.

At last he opens up, and I tell him how disturbing his music is, that not everyone has the same taste, and I suggest that he use ears buds. He agrees, and the music quiets down.

When I get back to my room I realize there is a window between our rooms. I can see him; he has no privacy. I wonder if he can see me, but then realize it's one-way glass. However, I think there might be another window that I'm not aware of through which another room looks into mine.

Interpretation: A few threads from the previous day's news and entertainment were woven together in this dream. Once I remembered them I marveled at the ability of the unconscious to make a narrative out of these diverse elements. I had the dream on a day when the Snowdon revelations of massive government snooping were being talked of everywhere. I had watched a video on how to use iPhone ear buds. I saw a mystery in which perps were being interviewed and observed through a one-way mirror. The mystery contained a knife attack (the shears) and banging on doors.

Did this dream have any deeper meaning for me? I'd say it pointed to some concerns, but that these concerns have more to do with our society than with my personal life. The issues of the dream are: privacy, peace and quiet, potential threats from strangers. The dream says that I don't like some of the things I'm hearing, and I'm angry about it. It tells me it's possible to cooperate with my neighbor, and that once I see into his world I have more sympathy for him. It seems we're all in the same boat.

Interview With Travis Wernet

Every so often The Daily Dreamer interviews a dream worker with the hope that readers will get a sense of the many different ways that people can learn about themselves from their dreams.  Today's interviewee, Travis Wernet,  specializes in sound healing. Starting in February he will be leading a tele-conference dream group.

DD: You have said that music is medicine. Did a particular event in your life inspire you to look at the connection between sound and healing?

TW: I can actually think of many instances of inspiration, but I'd have to say that one which stands out relates to my first trip to Egypt in 2010. I was invited to join a group of travelers from diverse backgrounds and to play Didjeridu in a ritual-ceremony for 24 folks in the Kings Chamber in the Great Pyramids at Giza. We gathered quietly in the space and each individual was supported to lie down in the sarcophagus as I played over their bodies and created sound in the room. The energy of that and the experiences people shared following this experience, as well as my own feeling afterwards, deepened my interest and commitment to finding more ways to knit the experience of listening to certain kinds of sounds together with the intention for finding and receiving healing.

DD: Have you ever tried sound healing with someone who was not particularly musical? Did it affect her response to the technique?

TW: Most definitely. I have found that folks who are less exposed to or involved in music of any sort have quite strong responses and feel very affected by the music and tones. It's almost as if these folks easily enter into what the Buddhists call 'Beginners Mind' and are usually deeply and wonderfully impacted by the musical element of the work. The beauty of sound healing is that the actual tones and vibrations of the instrument have a foundational effect, so it's like taking vitamin C, in a sense, in that the sound will always create an outcome that is related to the properties of the resonance and the frequencies of the tones. It's possible to build on this foundation with further intention and surrender or release into the experience.

DD: When we work with dreams it's often a highly verbal process: in other words, we talk or write about our dreams and try to untangle, and perhaps rationalize, their symbolic messages. Does  your non-verbal, musical process supplement this verbal one? How do the two techniques work together in your dream groups?

TW: This is a great question and describes the crux of the approaches I take to doing both forms of work. I find that the verbal and non-verbal elements gracefully support one another. We do engage in quite a bit of discussion in the groups I lead. I consider this a sort of contemporary oral tradition. The music and sound enter in as tools for sinking into the feeling-scapes and images of the dreams, and provide a lovely counter-balance to the verbal experience. We also do incubatory practices to support the recall and invitation of our sleeping and waking dreams. So, I tend to seek to create a balance of sound and discussion in the groups, often by starting out with some chanting of Sanskrit seed syllables (like 'Aum', but there's more than this one sound - in fact there are chants for each chakra center in the physical-spiritual body) or I will play the Didjeridu, Native American Flute or Tibetan/Toning Bowls. After we've worked a dream, we'll also often take some time at the end to bring some pure sound to the work upon closing that piece by also playing and listening to the above instruments. We also close the meetings with grounding tones and I always make the effort to create some space where the talking can branch out into a less mental or thought-oriented domain and this is where we can enter the universality of sound and feeling as a punctuation or new opening to further felt layers of the work. Dreamers have reported that this often has the effect of inspiring further dreams and recall as well as varying non-spoken levels of insight.