“Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations,
smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields.
But every animal can only tap into a small fraction of reality’s fullness.
Each is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble,
perceiving but a tiny sliver of an immense world.”
-Ed Yong

 

I can’t see ultraviolet light like ants or make ultrasonic calls like hummingbirds. Nor can I sense another organism’s electrical field like bees and rays, or follow Earth’s magnetic fields like sea turtles and moths. 

All of these might sound like the stuff of dreams, but they are a mere handful of examples from award winning author Ed Yong’s new book An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. Yong investigates a broad spectrum of organisms and all of their unique sensory bubbles. 

This, of course, got me thinking…what role do dreams play in revealing our tiny sliver of reality as well as our many hidden realms? 

Our waking consciousness has its limitations, but dreams have a way of helping us expand beyond these limits. Something happens when we enter our dream state.  We enter a world within worlds, one that allows us to access the realm of the soul. The thing is, if we could think our way through dreams, humanity would’ve stabbed a flag atop that mountain and claimed conquering rights a long time ago. Yet our dreams remained elusive, rebellious even, to this intellectual dominance. For some people, their dreams remain unsolved riddles or, even worse, meaningless.

Perhaps then, the open sesame to this hidden realm of our dreams lies not with the typical rubik’s-cubing of our brains but through our ability to feel. In Natural Dreamwork, feeling opens us up to our own hidden worlds. Feeling enables us to move from ego to soul. Feeling enables us to access the medicine and guidance within the images and encounters of our dreams.

Our ability to feel is based on something that wants to be unfurled, not ignored or sliced open with a scalpel. Our dream moments want to be felt with the tenderness of a flower blossoming into being. If our dreams take the time to create a situation, be sure that there is a gift enfolded within the petals of feeling. But we cannot think our way through feelings any more than we can use our nose to marvel at a shooting star.  Dreamwork requires feelingwork. 

Dreams are here to help disclose the shallows and depths hidden from our conscious selves during waking hours; they are here to help reveal our connections and disconnections with the realm of the higher self.  Our dreams provide us with an accurate mirror, but they are not concerned with helping us use this mirror to dominate the world of humankind. They are concerned with helping us get in right relationship with the world of soul.  

So maybe it’s a dream highlighting a conditioning I picked up when I was twelve, something in my blind spot that’s holding me back. Maybe it’s a dream revealing a judgment I’ve rationalized that keeps disconnecting me.  Maybe it’s a lost sense of self calling back to me, some piece that I didn’t even know was missing. Maybe it’s the healing presence of a place, an animal, an object, a loved one that provides an insight or catharsis.  

With Natural Dreamwork, we re-enter each of these moments and feel, allowing each flower to blossom forth its own very special gift. 

Yes, Mr. Yong, it really is an immense world –one where we absolutely contain multitudes.  There are worlds within worlds to explore in every facet of life.  When it comes to the dreamworld, Natural Dreamwork helps people connect to their own hidden worlds within.

 

 

“Are you sure that the human world is a terminal point in the evolution of the cosmos?
Is it not conceivable that there is still another dimension, a world beyond man’s world…?”
-Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search For Meaning  

 

 

Ali Meyer is a passionate student and lover of dreams. She is a former English teacher, traveler, philosopher, Reiki student, writer, and graduate of Conscious Feminine Leadership Training and co-facilitator at Women Writing for a Change in Bloomington, IN. You can contact her via email: aventada84@gmail.com. Read more about her work on the About Us page.