I’ve recently been reading a lot of things by the nondual teacher Robert Adams. Last night I had a dream where a bunch of things happened including being in a grocery store with a friend from high school. As I pay more attention to my dreams I realize those are two of my dream signs- being in a grocery store and being with a friend from high school. And then at the end of the dream Robert Adams who I couldn’t see but could hear was telling me when I inhale to say ‘I’ and when I exhale to say ‘am’. So I began to do that in my dream and I started to feel like my body was the present moment. And then I woke up. It wasn’t a lucid dream. But when I woke I went to meditate and I kept doing the same thing- saying ‘I’ on the in breath and ‘am’ on the out breath and for about maybe the first 45 minutes of sitting there was that same feeling in a very strong way that my body was actually the present moment.
And now here is my question. Which can perhaps be answered by @Allison or @AndyK ? Which is that I have been wondering if it would be ok to have a thread here in the general section (or wherever you see fit) that is like a journal which I can add to as I start to practice lucid dreaming. It helped me more than I can say to have an online journal in the mindful eating program and to start to really investigate and pay attention to my experiences around food and eating. And in the just few days since I have been in this community- I’ve started to be able to pay much more attention to my dreams. I’ve realized for a while there has been some fear around night and dreams and things that come up from my psyche when I sleep. So I thought that perhaps trying to turn towards some of these fears and investigate them here might help me be able to move past them and begin to wake up in my dreams. So I am wondering if it is ok to post here about this as I begin to do that? Perhaps I could just change the name of this thread to ‘Jenny Johannesson journal’ if that is ok? Or if not that’s fine too. Thank you.
Hi, @JennyJohannesson - Dream Journaling, so key! Perhaps while @AndyK and team think on more scaled solutions / if the platform or the dashboard can accommodate digital journaling, you might think about using the Private Messaging feature on the platform as an interim “hack” - You can message yourself with the title Dream Journal and just add new “replies” daily. A bit messy, but could be something to try out if you want to experiment right away and are ok with it being private to you…
Hi. Thanks for writing me back. I don’t really mean a dream journal, partly that, yes- but also noticing and starting to pay more attention to things that have made it difficult to start to explore my dreams. Like fear of the things that come up and fear of the dark. Since I’ve been in this group I’ve started to realize in a much more clear way how much fear I have of the dark. I also feel a little less afraid from just noticing it more clearly and a few times have been able to turn toward the fear instead of away from it. I used to have a lot of nightmares but now not as many. But I think there are lots of ways I’m still scared of what comes up in my dreams. So I meant more starting to investigate this knot of fear around looking at dream stuff. Recently when I think of this during the day I’ve been trying to investigate: Who is afraid? And looking for the ‘me’ that is feeling the fear…
Thank you again for your reply.
Last night I had a dream that I only remembered part of this morning but the part I remembered felt disturbing. When I woke up I was in a kind of mixed state of trying to figure out what to do and startled to realize I’d been dreaming. Then this morning the dream kept coming up. I realized it was an old abuse memory wrapped in a different package. But then I was able to welcome it- the whole thing- the scariness of the dream, old sadness, fear- the whole snagle of stuff- and it started to dissipate. It’s curious to think how I might have responded if I’d been lucid during it. I also keep noticing how the mind takes all these bits and pieces of stuff and puts them together in funny ways in dreams. And I also think that process the mind is doing- of just grabbing different stuff and lumping them together in different ways- isn’t actually very different during the waking state.
We have no reason to distrust our world, for it is not against us. If it has terrors, they are our terrors. If it has an abyss, it is ours. If dangers are there, we must try to love them. And if we would live with faith in the value of what is challenging, then what now appears to us as most alien will become our truest, most trustworthy friend. Let us not forget the ancient myths at the outset of humanity’s journey, the myths about dragons that at the last moment transform into princesses. Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps every terror is, in its deepest essence, something that needs our recognition or help.
Borgeby gärd, Sweden, August 12, 1904 Letters to a Young Poet
Barrows, Anita; Macy, Joanna. A Year with Rilke: Daily Readings from the Best of Rainer Maria Rilke (p. 192). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Two nights ago I dreamt my husband and I were in a huge grocery store buying a huge amount of gigantic pizzas and a lot of doughnuts. Grocery stores may be one of my dream signs. This coming week we are going to visit my mom and dad and some anxiety bubbles up even in my dreams around this. Last night I dreamt I was in a gym class and explaining to the teacher that I’d been molested for 25 years and spent ten years in therapy talking about it and then the last five starting to meditate and practice mindfulness. And when I woke up I felt like I should definitely not be so hard on myself about still having anxiety arise and it was interesting to me that I was basically telling myself with my own dream to be easier on myself. @ArthurG started a thread here about ‘dream art’ but sometimes almost all art feels like dream art to me. I’ve drawn all of my life and the more I meditate and practice letting go of identifying as thoughts and emotions the more I come to see what a perfect place drawing is to practice letting go. The mind has so much to say as the drawing unfolds. The last week I’ve been making this drawing and as I draw reminding myself that what comes out is none of my business and that’s felt like an excellent exercise in letting go. I continue to feel a lot of fear about what comes up in my dreams but it feels like being in this community makes me feel less afraid to begin to pay more attention to my dreams and I am grateful for that.
I joined this community in March but I’d not yet begun trying to have a lucid dream- I was just very interested in it. Then last week I began to get up in the middle of the nights to meditate as a way to begin a lucid dream practice. I’ve been writing about my experiences and sharing them in the forum my sangha online has and also a mindful eating community I am in. I’m not sure how it would work but vast quantities of junk food may be a dream sign for me.
I’ve also been posting a drawing or two each day from a catalog for an art exhibit I saw a few years ago called ‘The archive of the dream’. So I thought I would also post these things here in this community and maybe other lucid dreamers here will be able to help me as I get my lucid dreaming path started.
I am going to post my first week of writing all at once and then I will just add them as I write every day or two.
Thank you.
Right after Magnus and I got married we went on a honeymoon and one of the places we went was Paris. And there we saw one of the best exhibitions of drawings I’d ever seen in my life. It was at l’Orangerie which is a small museum very close to d’Orsay. They both have major collections of Impressionist and Post Impressionist art. L’Orangerie is where the gigantic paintings of Monet’s waterlilies are. When you walk in there is a huge light and white room and his giant waterlily paintings line the walls and it’s like a chapel. Incredible. I won’t even get started on the magic that is d’Orsay- I’d never stop. So we just happened to be there during this exhibition at l’Orangerie which was a collection of drawings from d’Orsay. The title of the exhibit was “Les Archives du Rêve”. Which means: The archive of the dream. The drawings were picked out by Werner Spies for their dream like qualities. It was a mix of both Impressionist and contemporary drawings. The catalog was only available in French but the reproductions are amazing and I’ve never been upset that I’ve not been able to understand the words in the catalog.
For the last few weeks I’ve been hauling this catalog around and taking it out again and again. For a while now I’ve wanted to begin getting up in the middle of the night to meditate because that is one of the things people do when they want to begin to wake up in their dreams- lucid dreaming. I got up in the middle of Wednesday night and sat for thirty minutes but then not last night. I’ve had this idea that if I start to write about trying to start a lucid dreaming practice it will help me get it going and I am also going to share drawings from this book because the drawings really are exquisite.
As I look more at my own mind it makes more and more sense to me why waking up in my nighttime dreams could be very beneficial to my daytime practices. And as I’ve looked more closely at why I’m having trouble getting the practice started- I’ve been starting to see some areas of resistance. Again- writing about these things is one of the tools that has helped me get past some of these blocks.
One of the reasons I’ve not really been wanting to wake up in the middle of the night I am realizing is because for basically all of my life I’ve looked at sleep as an escape. I really see this. Life has felt very difficult much of the time and sleep has felt like a massive respite from that. Except now I understand it’s not life that has felt difficult- it’s been my own mind. And my mind actually doesn’t rest very much while I sleep it dreams a lot of wild dreams. I also understand that what I actually am doesn’t sleep. The body sleeps but the awareness that is aware of my thoughts and emotions and the world during the day- is ever present and aware of dreams or deep dreamless sleep on the rare times that happens. People practice becoming awake in their dreams as another way to help them realize that what we are is actually that ever present awareness and not this limited body/mind. So the first resistance is this feeling of wanting to hide in sleep but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from mindfulness practice it’s that we don’t get free from anything by running away. We get free from stuff by turning towards it and facing it and realizing we’ve not understood what was happening- thoughts and feelings can’t actually mess up or disturb what we really are. It feels like that only because we’ve not really seen and understood what we are. Another resistance- I’ve had a lot of nightmares and that whole realm just freaks me out a bit. When I say ‘me’ here though I clearly am referring back to my own mind and emotions- because I’m certain the light of pure knowing that I actually am is seriously not bothered by even the craziest of my dreams. Which is of course the reason to undertake this practice- to realize there’s actually nothing to fear and that what I am is undisturbed perpetually but that I’ve been struggling still because there’s still in many places deep identification as mind and emotions. So then I will add this one last area of resistance to my list for now which is this- for the ten years prior to meeting Magnus I rambled endlessly in therapy about not wonderful events from my childhood. But when I met him I began the process of speaking about any of that less and less until now I hardly bring it up at all. But also right after I met him I started to have this one giant fear that when I’d get up in the middle of the night to pee- that there would be a man in our apartment. And I think that fear is like a bubble of weirdness of old stuff that is still caught in me. And it just needs to release but I’ve kind of shoved it away and now present ly manifests as this disturbing thought that I am scared there will be a man in our house in the middle of the night. Which is: mind and a knot of emotions. So I am just naming that to see it more clearly but because I don’t want to be run around by the fear in my psyche any longer- I decided two nights ago that the way I am going to work with this bubble of a fear thought is to plan that if I meet a stranger in the dark in the middle of the night in our apartment is that I am going to hug him or at least shake his hand and tell him how glad I am to finally meet him because I’ve been anticipating this with fear for so long and it will be great to finally just have it happen. Or maybe no one will be there and I will continue on this path of realizing that what I’ve actually been so disturbed by are just a clump of thoughts.
Magnus goes hiking tomorrow and I’ve been doing better around that so I’m not going to force myself to get up in the middle of the night tonight but if it seems within reach I will do it. Otherwise I will begin hopefully this Sunday night.
Also- on the food/eating front- it was a good week and there was just one little blip when I was feeling kind of run down and tired and I started to eat some chips. I could see just stopping myself wasn’t going to happen but I was able to S L O W W A Y D O W N. And then I was able to stop after not that many. The thing I keep seeing is that if there are still times when I turn to food - I can’t always just not go there but when that whole pattern starts up- what I can do is REALLY slow down. Which means I’m becoming more present and the momentum isn’t building up to that of a binge- mindless, fast-paced shoveling. And when I slow down I can see some decision points that otherwise I would have just blown right by. Also- then I was a bit too full after dinner and it was a good moment to see: This isn’t pleasure at all- it’s suffering. Noted.
Here is the cover to the catalog for the exhibit. I’m not sure who the cover drawing is by at the moment. It will be in the book by itself somewhere though. And then the first drawing from the book- it’s by David Hockney. David Hockney is such a great artist. And in the few intro to drawing classes I’ve taught he’s always one of the first examples I use to show drawings because he has drawn all of his life and he’s also just playful and clearly loves making art. I love the way the red and green look here. And the dark shadowy lines of scribbles on the one side of his shirt. And most of all I love the way he’s made one of his eyes somewhat obscured and foggy and it reads almost more like a bruise. A good metaphor here for not clear seeing.
Ok- I shall report back on how my project to begin lucid dreaming goes.
I got up last night in the middle of the night and sat for thirty minutes. After all that storm of story/mind- it was easy and the sit was quiet and went fast. It’s just endlessly amazing to keep seeing the crazy mess the mind makes up and then being able to not get as lost in it. The fear about ‘what if there’s someone in the house’ popped up and I thought of what I’d written yesterday- I’ll shake his hand- and I almost laughed out loud. I watched myself jump when the A/C clicked on and when there was a creaky noise somewhere but other than that it was no big deal at all. Yay.
Here is the second drawing from the book. By Millet. I’ve been looking at this drawing a lot the past week and trying to figure out why I love it so much. But I can’t really say and I guess that is a big part of the reason- because there’s something about art that is beyond words. It’s amazing how much the fuzziness of his beard and hair are on the one hand so nondescript and at the exact same time describe so perfectly the qualities of a fuzzy beard and hair. I also think the use of light and shadow is in large part what makes the drawing so exquisite. The way the lightest part- the white of his nose- is just the white of the paper and then that his whole face is built of varying shades of darkness from there.
Last night I didn’t wake up until 4 AM. I got up to go to the bathroom and then went back to bed. This morning I was telling Magnus that I’m going to have to really become aware of this moment when there is a fork in the road between going with the heavily grooved habit of just going straight back to bed and making a new path/habit of going to go meditate for thirty minutes before I go back to sleep. This morning I was trying come up with a pithy little line I could say to myself at this moment when there’s tiredness and the pull to just go with the old pattern- something about wanting to become free or something like that- but nothing was coming to mind that seemed right. Two hours later a friend in my sangha replied to something I’d written a couple of days ago when I was talking about trying to get this practice going- I’d written that I was realizing that I’ve looked at sleep as an escape and he responded to that line with this one: Being awake is the only escape.
So this is the line I will say to myself when I get to that fork and need to take a turn onto the new path. Being awake is the only escape. We can’t really run away from anything. We have to turn towards all of it and face it and that ability to be with all of it- that’s freedom.
There’s also a way that after I’ve been awake for a while and go back to bed- the sleep is much different and lighter than before. And in the past I have definitely thought of this kind of sleep as ‘not a good sleep’. So I’m going to have to just recognize this little disturbance and again remind myself that the way to freedom is not through avoidance. Deeper peace will come through more fully coming to understand that what I actually am is undisturbed. Not through trying to ‘hide in sleep’ which won’t really work anyway.
This drawing is by Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux. I love that it looks like a head sort of floating over a landscape with no body. And another eye almost completely darkened out.
June 17, 2019
Last night we went out to dinner with friends and it was harder to eat in a really mindful way. And when the not eating in a mindful way begins- it’s like fuel on the fire. Eating just a little too much leads to an uncomfortableness that one wants to push away with- eating more. Oh what a horrible loop to get caught in. So last night after dinner I just sat quietly and was able to remember that the next best thing to do was non-action and eventually the whole wave calmed down and dissipated.
Last night it was easier to get up in the middle of the night to sit. When I went back to bed it was like I never went back into a deep sleep at all and there kept being the feeling of waiting to fall back asleep but it not happening and it seemed to go on for hours but I was in some level of sleep because I was dreaming and then it was morning. Julia Roberts had a prosthetic hand and was explaining to a group of women how to make money selling giant cupcakes. There seems to be a lot of things about food that come up in my sleeping dreams too.
I am looking at the adjustments around starting the dream yoga practice as something like how it was when I began to do the two hours of sitting each day- at first it was so uncomfortable I could barely stand it and it slowly shifted over time and is now a completely different experience- one that is more frequently very calm and peaceful. Thinking is like the top part of the ocean- the choppy waves that just keep coming relentlessly. But if we can learn to sit through that choppy uncomfortable part- eventually we start sinking down and there the ocean is not choppy at all but still and quiet and deeply peaceful. So I am imagining the start of the lucid dreaming practice will maybe be similar- awkward at first but then it will become easier and also probably quite fun and illuminating when I get to the waking up in my sleep part of it.
Here are two drawings for today- ‘Autoportrait’ by Henri Fantin-Latour (made in 1860) and Yan Pei-Ming’s painting he made from the drawing in 2013.
June 19, 2019
I wrote the other day that I understand why waking up in my dreams could be beneficial but I didn’t explain the reasons. This morning a friend in my sangha wrote about a dream he’d had last night. He’s a long time lucid dreamer and sometimes shares both lucid and non-lucid dreams. In the dream he was at an event and his transportation was stolen and then he went to try to find a ticket for a taxi and it took him on this gigantic journey which eventually led to him being out in a desert and struggling to get through the sand and thinking he might never get back to his family. When I first read his words I thought: it’s crazy how much stuff the mind can make up. And then I thought of the past two days- I keep having this cold hanging on and haven’t been feeling good and my mind starts to wonder if something larger is wrong, I have an appointment at the rheumatologist next week and I keep thinking of my mom saying that her rheumatoid arthritis and fibromyalgia began with the symptoms I have right now and Magnus has been very stressed about work. In a minute I will be trying to make my way through hot sand.
When you realize suddenly in your dream that you’re dreaming- you can then navigate your dream. You also realize: Oh, I’m actually ok- this is just a dream. I’m actually safe in my bed. And you start to see the more you look at what your mind is doing - the crazy stuff it’s making up during the day really isn’t very different from a crazy dream or a nightmare.
The cold, the doctor appointment, worried Magnus- really I’m just sitting still in a room right now and I’m absolutely fine.
The cold, the appointment, Magnus upset- what I actually am is the open, empty, knowing space of awareness but I keep getting mixed up with and identified as the things happening in that space. Oh- I’m ok- awareness is always safe at home in bed only dreaming.
And then the way we relate to what is happening changes enormously and we are not ruled by, caught in and acting out of fear.
The night before last I got up and sat for just 15 minutes and then last night not at all. There’s a lot less fear about getting up in the night already. And today has been much more quiet so tonight I will try again to get up and sit. My mind has also been like Goldilocks around the middle of the night sit- I’m too cold, I’m too hot, this chair is too hard, the other one too soft. So I’m continuing to practice just being able to get up and do it and also seeing how the resistance is coming out in a bunch of goofy ways and the night sits are presently very much like when I first started to first sit at all. After the fifteen minute sit the other night and then also last night when I just woke up but went right back to sleep- both times the sleep was the much more shallow kind but I was also much less disturbed by that.
Magnus and I go to bed around 10:30 PM each night so last night when I woke for the first time at 12:30 AM, it seemed too early to get up and sit so I went back to sleep. Then I got up at 3:30 and sat for 40 minutes. I was kind of tired and mostly sat with my eyes open and watched my mind. For the past year and a half I’ve been doing body scans to fall asleep but now I’m trying something different that my friend suggested which is meditating for a few minutes and then trying to watch my mind fall asleep. So when I got back into bed that is what I did. And it seemed like it was taking a little while to get to sleep again and that perhaps the light and restless thing that had been happening was starting- but then I fell asleep, had a huge dream and then woke in the morning. And when I woke up it took me a few minutes to even understand the dream. For a moment I thought- was that a lucid dream? But then I realized I’d been dreaming that I was asleep and having a lucid dream. Lately I’ve been feeling more aware of the details of my dreams and it feels like I was much more aware of this one. In my dream that I was awake in the dream- different scenarios kept happening and I was loving being awake in my dream and then the dream would change. So it was also a lesson about impermanence and grasping. And it felt like there were 10 or 20 completely wild scenarios only a couple of which I could remember really clearly this morning and then I was at a convenience store with my lucid dreaming friend and we were buying snacks and I was trying to tell him about the dreams I’d been awake in but I kept laughing a lot and I had to keep starting over at the beginning. And then I woke up. And it took me a minute to realize I’d not actually been awake in my dream but that I’d dreamt that I was. Pretty wild. But then this morning when I got up- I had the most incredible spacious feeling of my mind. There was this feeling that if all of that could happen in my mind- that it must be far more vast than I have been able to grasp. I’m not really saying that part very well but when the usual cadance of worry about being sick, etc, etc, began- it just seemed kind of small and I felt very aware that this same mind that is upset about this ongoing cold had just 20 minutes ago imagined me upside down in a rollercoaster in Japan and it made me feel like I just wasn’t going to be able to take it with the same degree of seriousness. I’d been afraid that the meditating in the middle of the night would make me sleepy or more tired during the day. But for most of the morning- my mind had a feeling of brightness which I’ve never really known or experienced before. With the brightness there was a wonderful feeling of much more energy. But then that brightness slowly went away and by lunch my mind was back on its regular track of worrying that this ongoing cold is maybe a bigger problem.
The other thing I felt very aware of when I woke up was that my attention had been for a time so completely freed from the usual loops of worries and concerns. And it felt absolutely wonderful. And it also showed it’s possible to move attention to something else.
It feels like getting up in the middle of the tonight will be a bit easier tonight because the dream and the feelings from last night and how my mind felt this morning was wonderful.
Also- when I woke up at 3:30 before I even stood there was the big twinge of not wanting to go sit and it surprised me that I could catch it (see it) so early. It was right at the start and so it was really small and easy to just see and drop. So that also felt kind of great to have that happen and then there was basically no hesitation to go meditate at all.
Here are two drawings. The first by Achille Laugé done in 1893 “Portrait of a man” and the second by Jean-Michel Alberola in 2013 “Achille Laugé Continuation”. I really love both of these and especially the contemporary deconstruction of the first one.
Hi Jenny,
I enjoyed reading all of your posts about your dreams, meditation, experiences and the artwork! I also struggle to get up during the night and have lots of excuses, mostly around feeling tired. The funny thing is, if I do get up, I’m usually not tired the next day. Sometimes I think I sabotage my own attempts to get up and try WBTB so that I don’t end up disappointed if I don’t have a lucid dream. Ah, the mental games we play!
Do you often dream about art and artwork?
Best of luck with your meditation. What has worked some for me is to have a “plan” in advance. If I know just sitting has been challenging, then I plan to meditate in a different spot, have a book handy that inspires my dreams, or listen to something.
Thanks for sharing!
Lisa
Thank you so much for writing here! I have only gotten up a few times so far in the night but I’ve seen this too- not being tired the next day. So I am just going to pay a lot of attention to this and keep examining to see what my actual experience is.
I don’t think I’ve dreamt much about art or making art but I’ve also really just started to pay a lot more attention to my dreams.
And I know what you mean about having a plan- I have all my drawing stuff out and always tell myself I could draw if the sitting doesn’t work.
Today my absolute favorite thing happened. That is when something happens that would have caused my psyche to completely flip out in the past happens now and the flip out doesn’t occur.
For the past couple of weeks- along with the ongoing cold/sinus thing- my calves and feet have been hurting. I thought it was just from the bug and being kind of worn down- but it has continued to get worse and by the end of the day yesterday my feet hurt so much I could have cried. Magnus and I were laying in bed and I said I thought I had to go to the doctor and he said he would go with me the next day in the afternoon. I said that’s ok- I will just go first thing in the morning by myself and get it done. He has always gone to all doctor appointments with me. Because for almost all of the five years we’ve been together my story about the past incest & abuse & different weird things that have happened to my body has been so thick I’ve almost been blinded by it. But last night I declared that I was ok to go alone. And then this morning I did just that. The doctor put me on a heavy duty course of antibiotics for 14 days because he thinks it’s a chronic sinus infection and took blood to make sure everything else was ok. And all the blood tests came back normal. I went to the pharmacy and then came home and when I saw Magnus I raised my arms the way people do at the end of a long race in victory and I yelled: I WENT TO THE DOCTOR ALL BY MYSELF AND THE WHEELS DIDN’T COME OFF!! As I drove from the clinic to the pharmacy I felt so calm- it was like I was living a completely different life than the one I used to know. And it felt amazing. Where in the past there would have been a giant snaggle of fear and anxiety and upset- there was calm. Holy smokes it was amazing.
And then I came home and ate a bit too much. But I have seen this whole pattern too- the one where I am suddenly able to do something without the craziness coming up inside and then sometime later a much smaller version of the weirdness appears. I’ve seen it a bunch of times and a lot as the binge eating habit shifted and has broken down. I’m certain that as I start to go to medical appointments by myself- I will get more and more used to it and ok.
But today was very fun. I realize now I’d been just imagining that I would need Magnus to go with me to every medical appointment I had for the rest of my life. It’s amazing how much I haven’t been able to imagine what it would be like to just be ok.
I didn’t get up to meditate in the middle of the night last night because it felt like too much with the solo doctor appointment looming. And also because I keep having this idea that if I get up in the middle of the night to sit- that I’ll be tired the next day. Even though a few times this past week I’ve seen that’s actually not true. So I am just really going to pay a lot of attention to my actual experience around this whole issue and see what it really is.
The meditation email that I get each day this morning said this: “The quality of mind that you have when you fall asleep is the quality of mind that you wake up with. If you fall asleep in a wandering, hazy state, you will wake up in a similar state. The defilements make the mind tired.” We have this idea that we’re tired because the body is tired but people who have really studied and examined the mind say that what is actually making us tired is the noise the mind makes. I’ve always wanted to go to sleep to escape all of that but as I continue to learn and pay attention to my own experience- I’m understanding more and more that that is not the way to get free from the mess mind makes.
Ok. Tonight I plan to get up in the middle of the night to sit. I will remind myself that all I have to do is get up and just sit in a chair. Nothing fancy.
I also think I have to start to look at the night and sleep in a whole different way. It’s clear to me as I look at my life and all of the anxiety and struggles and non-peace that I’ve felt- that the majority of the things I’ve tried as ways to not have such a hard time have really not worked at all. The sitting which was once so difficult is not hard in the same way. And it’s not hard to make time for it either- because it’s so obvious about how much it helps every day. So I am just going to keep trying to do this and see what the results are from it- will it move me towards more non-peace or peace? That’s really the only thing that matters.
I WENT TO THE DOCTOR ALONE AND I WAS OK!! I just had to type that one more time in all caps. We are not our struggles. We are not our anxieties. We are not our worried minds. HOORAY!!!
The drawing for today from the Dream Archive book is by Degas. A self portrait he made. It’s amazing how powerful so few marks and even so very light can be.
There seems to be a lot of things about food that come up in my sleeping dreams too.
A self portrait he made. It’s amazing how powerful so few marks and even so very light can be.