Dream of a Sufi Woman

This morning I had a dream that, upon waking, felt rather significant. Perhaps not as much so–or rather, not in the same way–as the dream I had this past Saturday (which I will post on in the next few days). Yet, still a dream of personal import. I tend to perceive, opposed to the reductionism of current science or of that now very square religion of the Freudians, that there are different kinds of dreams. I’ve based this on my own experiences. (But as LeVar Burton used to say on Reading Rainbow, “You don’t have to take my word for it…”)

Dream Theory: Types of Dreams

There are those dreams that are simply memory dumps of things encountered during the day–marketing bombardment, snippets of conversation, etc., that are sort of calisthenics for the subconscious mind–a routine workout without necessarily having any further meaning.

Then, there are dreams that, while using influences from your waking life, have reassembled them in order to communicate a specific message from your subconscious or inner self to your everday self.

In addition to these types of dreams, there are dreams that come from the Dream World–which is a world that is actually going on even while you’re awake, though a portal to it is contained within the mind. We appear as “drop ins” and strangers in this world and it often doesn’t make too much sense to us because we enter into it at random in terms its geography and dreamtime and lack the context of everything that we’ve missed while awake and away in the world or in one of the other kinds of dreams. It’s hard to tell in what relation we are perceived by the denizens of this world–as anomolies? as equals? lessers? as sprites, demons or gods?–or simply as those of the meat world? My intuition is that the folks here are as real as we are, but not in the same way–they may be mirrors or shadows of us, capable of some thing of which we are not, but unable to do other things that we do easily.

Then, there are the dreams where we have entered into the Land of the Dead. Here we find our ancestors or other deadfolk that aim to communicate with us.

Not exactly sure if I’m right on this, but my intuition says that there are also dreams that come from outside of us and outside of these other kinds of dreams–essentially, these signify the experience of intelligences beyond/outside the realms of our subconscious/inner self, the denizens of the Dream World or of the Land of the Dead–the dream exists as a medium (like a fluid) in which these intelligences, who may have things to tell us, may enter into our minds in a way we will notice. These intelligences might be what are called demons, angels, spirits that have never been human, and gods and, on rare occassions, the Eneffable-Beneficent One beyond all names and forms, divisions and dualities.

Similar to this last, because it appears to be the same, but is actually different, are dreams coming from the outside where some other living person, by means accidental, mystical or magickal has entered in spirit into your mind while you sleep or you have so entered into the dream of another (astral travel is one mode by which this might occur).

All of these distinctions, being maps, cannot possibly correspond absolutely to the reality of any given dream. But assuming these distinctions for the moment, lest it remain only implicit, there are dreams that partake of a mixing of these above levels–after all, in actuality, the boundaries are chimerical, only existing in mind. Granted, any of these types of dreams might present as pleasant or nightmarish or somewhere in between; and in all types, I’d suspect one can, perchance, become conscious of being in a dream.

That being said, all of these imaginal dinstinctions may also, only exist in mind, but I shall stick with them for the moment as I move on, finally, to describing this morning’s dream.

Morning Dream 4/5/07

I was outside, on the edge of a field of grain. Somewhere in the field, though I could not see them, I knew, there were Sufis. And they were tillers of the land. It was nighttime, probably around 3am or so, though there was a obscure and foggy light far off, seemingly hovering above the field, though it wasn’t really something I focused on. I was trying to see into the field.

The dream then shifted. I was in the second home of my childhood, the house I lived in from my junior high years up until I graduated high school. It was, again, around 3am and I was in my room, sleeping. I woke up and headed down the stairs with a dirty box in my hand, intending to go to the basement to open it. As I descended the stairs and entered the living room, I ran across my sister, standing in the passageway between the living room and the kitchen. (In this house, the door to the basement was next to the kitchen.)

I hid the box behind a newspaper that I also held in my hand. I’m not sure what I told her about what I was doing, maybe that I just wanted to sleep in the basement.
In the next moment of the dream, I was descending the stairs to the basement and when I reached the bottom, I saw, lying on the couch, in the dark, across from the dormant television, a woman wearing a head covering and middle eastern dress. I knew somehow, that she was a Sufi, though I had no indication that she should be so other than the thought entering my head. She looked at me with soft, kind eyes and I ended up laying down beside her on the couch. She held me as I lay there and I felt myself becoming calmer, somehow cleaner and I forgot all about the box or its contents or why I originally had snuck down to the basement.

Everything had changed.

Open Invitation

If anyone would like to take a crack at the symbolism of this dream or surmise what was the quality/type of dream of which this morning’s sleep-story took part, I’d love to hear your insights.