Dreams: A Frontier into Self-Actualizing Consciousness by Analee Scott
It is nearly impossible to go throughout one single day without hearing multiple references to dreams through daily mainstream sources. They are the common moral themes in movies, plays, frequent lyrics in songs, usual platforms for goal setting, and many more. We are fluent in the language of using dreams as leverage to inspire life and direction, as well as enchant mystery and adventure. Yet, we seem to have lost touch to reality with them. We don’t grasp the truth at how powerful they literally are, for they seem to only be conceptualized as lofty, daytime fantasies and visions for our needy, materialistic wants and desires.
Needless to say, we are ripe with appetite to chase and achieve our dreams, and this is the momentum that I tapped into that did change my life. What I found was a process about the truth of dreams that I NEVER expected to find…but that’s a story for another time.
To start, this process of grasping the powerful truth of dreams begins rather simply. It starts with right now. Literally, right now:
What are you doing?
What are you thinking?
Where are you?
How are you feeling?
Do you know the answers to these questions? Can you be quiet, gentle, and patient enough to hear your own answers? I invite you to begin right now to sense your being in your environment, as it unfolds in real time. Notice more, feel more. Perhaps you can observe each hand and its posture; or notice the chair’s legs atop the floor’s surface; or see the type of lighting currently available to you that illuminates the words on this page; or watch yourself chewing and swallowing food; or perhaps you can feel how you know whether it is hot or cold in the atmosphere that surrounds you. Look around and sense your relation to your environment in any way that seems easiest and natural to you. Listen, unbiasedly, to your thoughts as you take this real time inventory. And above (and below!) all, breathe…
<< PAUSE as you explore real-time here… >>
Learning to consciously acquaint yourself to reality—as you experience it in the present moment—might be one of the most profound things any human being can ever do. It is experiential awareness of the body and mind. Staying with your breath and articulating your sensory input systems, including mental, e.g., how they serve as reciprocal feedback in your objective environment are elementary, conscious relations, such that even a baby can understand them. Watch an adult interact with a baby and you will see them instructing them with these simplistic demonstrations of relationships in perceiving and learning from the environment. And today, even though we have grown out of infancy, our lives still depend on operating from this foundation of environmental, contextual cues that give rise to our sense of self as experienced in the present moment. Yet, because they are inherently so simple, we have commonly taken them for granted in this day-in-age where our technologies, illusions, and problems have become so complex.
Learning to dive more deeply into the present moment of your life experiencing itself also opens you up to see the other part of your consciousness that is on autopilot for you, throughout every waking and non-waking moment of your life – the subconscious. It’s the stage on which your dreams entertain you with their mysteries. It’s the wide-angle, hyper-perceptive net of your larger mind that is often just below, or outside of, or deeper than your more immediate, behavioral-relational, conscious awareness. The subconscious is the experiential learning and coding that you have held onto energetically, the coding that now karmically defines who you believe yourself to be, deep down, for better or for worse. The subconscious also operates on a much finer, cellular and subtle-energy level. It is the intelligence of your eyes that blink to protect and lubricate your eye without you even telling it to do so, or the impulse you have to scratch when you feel an itch. Or a feeling that you have that then gets dictated into respiratory-rate and emotion, before you even consciously realize that you felt that feeling. The subconscious does so many things, for it is ceaselessly interpreting the infinite variability of interdependent systems in which we navigate, without requiring you to consciously understand. The same way you don’t have to become proficient in the interconnectedness of all things in order to show up and be present in real time. The subconscious has been doing this all throughout your life, and perhaps even beyond this life, making it an everlasting well of wisdom and learned experience to self-reflect.
The frontier of where your self-actualization and dreams meet then arises here – by weaving the threads of conscious awareness as it experiences the present moment, simultaneously alongside the threads of awareness that well up from the subconscious.
The fact is that we dream each time we sleep, whether we remember it or not. And each dream has a story, a story that you computed from your conscious, waking life. And all dream figures, i.e.: events, characters, objects, people, etc., symbolically represent a belief and karmic imprint that defines you, on an unimaginably deep subconscious level. At first glance, the ambiguous, mysterious, chaotic firing of senseless storylines and random rendezvous of your dreams may feel like useless, scattered pieces. But, by refining your direct experience of the present moment and looking evermore closely into your subconscious…you will then be able to see that these scattered pieces come from the mosaic that is you. And patiently, they wait for you to decide whether or not you will take your hand in artistry to claim ownership, agency, and accountability of your life to then orchestrate these pieces together into a masterpiece mosaic that further embodies your Self and potential – your Self-actualization. The choice is yours.
Lastly, for now, what makes our dreams a frontier into our Self-actualizing consciousness is that our dreams and arriving into present moment self-awareness are universal and a form of free human-technology. Meaning that no matter what, they are unconditionally available to each and every one of us, regardless of life and personhood circumstance. This furthermore makes dreaming consciousness our birthright, our equality, and shared divinity throughout all of humanity.
What reality do you create with your dreaming consciousness?
Analee Scott is founder of, One Sweet Gaia and based out of Bali, Indonesia as the resident yoga teacher and volunteer at Jiwa Damai, an organic permaculture garden and retreat center. Her site is www.onesweetgaia.com/events
