Why Dreams, why now? Part one

The first time I experienced dreamwork was at a Wild Mind intensive during a crisp February in Joshua Tree National Park. For years I’d been meditating, therapizing, and risking many unboundaried nights exploring psychedelics in search of a freedom I sensed was possible. Shifts happened, but I found through all that work, I remained locked behind layers of unresolved wounding. Yes, I’d cultivated an authentic inner life and recognized a deeper part of myself, but I couldn’t seem to live it into the world. I fell back on old, small roles and identities in most social situations and I was scared to take the leap into a five day encounter that I knew would require a new depth of vulnerability. I also sensed that if I wanted to take the next step in my life, I had to go.

It was on the fourth morning, emerging into the crisp winter air, that I woke with a dream I knew was important. Each previous morning over breakfast, one participant brought a dream forward to be “worked” by the guides while the other participants ate and listened. Each time, I marveled at how deep these dreams took people and when I thought about sharing mine, I was terrified. But when we were all gathered under the gazebo roof with our steaming bowls of oatmeal and Brian, the guide, quietly asked if anyone had a dream to work, I couldn’t hold back my voice.

    “I do.”

    Nodding, he took off his sunglasses and settled into a cool, unassuming gaze. The floor was mine.

    “Remember, share this in present tense, as if you’re in the dream right now. Really slow down with it. Feel it.”

    I nodded, feeling the anxiety of exposure squirming in my belly. 

    “Okay…” I began, letting myself sink into the images. “I’m in an alley, walking through a dark city…”

    “What do you notice about the concrete?” Brian interrupted.

    I slowed down, falling deeper into my imagination.

    “Well, it’s really smooth, like there’s no texture on it. It seems slick.”

    “Mmhmm,” Brian grunted. “Say more.”

I said more and on the dreamwork went, with me sharing what I was experiencing and Brian asking questions. I didn’t understand where he was leading me but he seemed to be tracking something important. Finally, once I told the whole dream and Brian asked all his clarifying questions, he nodded, grinning. 

    “Go back to that part with your friend on the tennis court. What did he say to you?”

    My heart pounded. Like some kind of bucket-capped wizard, he had honed in on the most vulnerable part of the dream.

    “He said…’you’re just a fucking exile.’”

    “Right. You’re just a fucking exile. That’s great. Can you say that with more power, maybe imagine embodying your friend, and saying it just how he said it?”

I stood up with a rush, fully in the experience now, the anxiety fallen away. 

    “You’re just a fucking exile!” I shouted, pointing my finger, just as my friend had in the dream. I felt the power of his clarity, the force of the statement move through my whole body. And surprisingly, when I sat back down and opened my eyes, that sense of power remained.

Brian smiled at me. 

    “An exile huh? Well, that sounds pretty clear to me. I think, my friend, your old life is over.”

It was like a piston piercing my skull. Not because of what he said, but because of the truth contained in the words. My old life was over. It was what, deep down, I’d come to the intensive to admit to myself. For years I was trying to stitch together the fragments of stories that didn’t fit anymore, falling backwards into identities that dragged like outworn shoes. This dream, featuring a friend who had died some years before, was announcing to me that I was exiled from the life I’d known. It was the beginning of my journey to what Bill Plotkin calls “the underworld.” 

    “You might want to try taking the name ‘Exile’ for the rest of this intensive and really claim this shift,” Brian said, still smiling. “Or,” he continued, “I guess the other option is that you ignore the dream and keep trying to make that old life work.”

I stared back at him. There really was no escaping the realization. I felt the truth of what he said, the truth of what the dream was saying, in the very core of my being. My old life was over. And even though it was indeed a vulnerable thing to stand before a group of people and ask them to call me Exile when the feeling of exile was such a part of the deep wounding in my life, it was the beginning movement into an authentic life, the one that I’m still learning to live today.

On the final morning of the intensive, I sat on a hill among the joshua trees and cactuses, watching the sun rise over the eastern rim of the park. And I wept. Uncontrollable sobs of gratitude poured out as the recognition of a new beginning stretched before me, and the grief of leaving what, in five short days, had begun to feel like a soulful desert family. I finally knew what life had been telling me for years. I could finally give myself permission to stop being Kris the skier, Kris the party guy. Kris the nice guy, Kris the broken guy. I didn’t know what that meant or what I’d be stepping into, but I knew for maybe the first time that there was no going back. 

Read part two to learn about what I’ve come to see about that experience years later and why I think dreamwork is one of the most important ways of connecting to mystery at this historical moment.