The Magic within the Dark: Nighttime, Creativity, Dreams and YOUR power
While creativity is widely available to us throughout our embodied experience, there is a special kind of portal available to us at nighttime, which mirrors the sleeping/dreaming state.
La esperanza—hope— is what nighttime is often poetically referred to in Mexican culture. The light of the stars and moon is able to crack through to Earth, giving us context, perspective, possibility for change...for make something different happen in our worlds.
Many cultures share this framework for conceptualization of nighttime as providing a space for expansion of creative possibility.
During the night we see our environment beyond the world right in front of us which is illuminated by the sun/solar consciousness.
The sun solidifies things through its light and makes them appear lasting and unchanging.
In fact, that is what the Greeks and many other cultures praise about the sun—it is reliable, unchaning, like spirit
The moon and the nighttime represent change, the containers for our spirits which are malleable to the needs of our souls.
The darkness provides room for the possibility of everything becoming something completely new in the next second. It is the unknown.
The Unknown and the Changing
Change is a particularly frightening thing for those who cling to power, desire immortality, or lack the imagination/strength/will continue to “make it new” (to use the old Modernist slogan).
The Unknown is the enemy of stasis and of comfort
The Unknown is the best friend of creativity, adventure, and growth
The Unknown is very close to Death
The lights of the stars and the moon provide the beacons…the guidance needed to move towards growth and greater enchantment of our daytime lives.
These nightlights are akin to or mirror the lights within our unconscious mind…our ancestors and guides who can speak to us through the gossamer veil that separates the conscious and unconscious mind.
Our dreams, visionary states, creative surges, and meditation are our portals to a tiny bright clear room where the veil between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind lifts…and when this occurs, we feel a sense of completeness…bliss, joy, peace…
In my work with clients, I find it important to act a guide through the liminal lunar realms and help them clear blockages that diminish their access to their creativity, dream states, and capacity for meditative and visionary states.
A common blockage is indicated by fear of the dark…which often translates to fear of one's own creativite power.
Our culture demonizes the dark and has an unhealthy relationship with altered states of consciousness, often bounding between addiction and strict, punishing abstinence.
The inability to remember dreams is often a result of an overfocus on the material world and/or draining ones reserves of energy within it….through overconsumption, overworking, over worrying, etc.
I strive to help my clients develop both a sense of reverence for the dark and their dreams, as well as a healthy sense of autonomy.
What ARE Dreams?
The awesome thing is that scientists still don't know...the unknown wins again…
Many theories about what dreams are have been disproven in the tech age. Lucid dreams were thought to be a myth until '75. We thought people with amnesia didn't dream until recently, as well.
The standard theory is that dreams are where the brain reorganizes and "makes sense" of what happened during the days, integrating with past lessons in order to prepare the body and mind for potential hazards in the morning.
This isn't "wrong" and meshes very well with the folk idea of playing within possibilities. It's just incomplete.
The subconscious realms that we enter when we dream are in many ways a more complete reality than the one we live in during the time time….it's at the very least more v a s t…
Many cultures accept that the place we go when we dream has a somehow denser imprint on our souls or in our lives than our waking reality
All dreams are a potent release of creative potential. And all dreams make an incredible amount of meaning:
Clarissa Pinkola Estes notes what a miraculous and bounteous storyteller must live in our minds to provide us with 5 to 7 incredible illustrated stories each night!
Each of the symbols in our nights dreams: be they a chaotic jumble, a nightmarish horror, or a blissful retreat, can be interpreted in infinite meaningful ways.
Karma Yoga, Clear Light Dreams, Lucid Dreams, Journey Work are all places where our conscious minds can utilize the symbolic/magical density of this space to potentiate healing and growth.
These are also spaces where we receive messages about our paths...be it from ancestors, future selves, visions of the future/events….
We can also utilize these spaces to break bad habits, burn through karma, learn new skills and behaviors, develop spiritual and psychic gifts, and more…
Accessing these spaces require a certain about of development.
If this is something you are interested, reach out to me about for an initial consultation or apply for my one on one coaching program!