Chicana Dreamer

Taking an idea from a dreamer’s dream is called “extraction” and planting the seed is called “inception.” Where does this idea come from, I critically asked myself, as I watched the film I had so arduously avoided all these months. I didn’t like that the movie was billed with so many guns in sight, explosions, broken faces, etc. It’s not that I’m above violence myself, but that it gets into my nervous system like angel hair. But, this past weekend, my time was up, and I sat through it–not once, but twice. Though, the second time I fast forwarded through the violence, and savored the instruction and planning for the inception. Here’s what I liked about the film. I won’t give away the plot, and I’ll try to not over-explain myself, given that I’m not a movie critic anyway.

The first theme that comes to mind is the potential for getting lost in time and space. Di Caprio carried a totem to check his reality. He’d set it a spin, if it didn’t stop, he knew he was dreaming. Being the master of dreamers, he’d remember to pose the question. This group of dreamers could put each other to sleep in the middle of a sentence and finish the thought in another dimension. Checking for reality was crucial. And so it is for us who are trying to awaken. For one thing, you need a very strong desire to remember to even remotely question yourself. But they did it, and came back with full memory of the dream.

More frequently than not, I go into a dream and fail to challenge myself to even bring my hand up to my face to remind myself that I’m in another dimension. What my practice of dreaming has provided for me, however, is the realization that life itself is fragile, and suffering abounds. Luckily, each moment, waking or dreaming, we have the opportunity to choose a new alternative; a new place initiated by a brand new thought. Usually, we have our constructs, the props of our lives in place. We’re also very protective of keeping our mental environment exactly the way that keeps us just slightly tilted and in subtle chaos. Not too much–just enough to make us think that we’ve come up with a new idea and that things are changing. All the while, there is a place, deep underground, below the basement, where we come back to time and time again just to make sure no one has touched or moved anything. Where we keep the people we love and adore suspended in time and space with a single idea that serves to keeping in tact what we believe makes our world safe.

We keep these constructs as our little totems to assure ourselves that yes, indeed, my life is going as it should. Fortunately, we don’t have to live the perfect spiritual life, as long as we keep asking for the Truth. The dream “Going to Tlalocan” in my book, Corn Woman Sings suggests the identical point by the Ancestors “Know which god you are serving, and which world you are in. Click here for the Dream.

What I liked most about “Inception” is that it actually embeds the thought that makes one wonder, where is reality? Have I gotten stuck somewhere thinking I’m awake? In the end, the old man is simply what the Asian entrepreneur has become in his quest for power. The gift for us is that we, the viewers of the film, have actually fallen “victims” to the shape shifter/dreamer and must now live with the challenge burning within ourselves, “Know which god you are serving, and which world you are in.” It’s official: It’s time to wake up. Now.

Sweet Dreams, write when you can.
Ellie

From my dream journals

12-14-10 – Dream
I’m staying at a house like a dormitory and there is a playful atmosphere, though we are taking care of serious matters in our lives. I find myself at the top of a ladder unable to get myself down. I’m frightened, I’m high off the ground. I see a friend, a white man, who reaches up to me to kiss me, and I tell him to help me down. “Will you wait until I make it down?” I ask him. He nods happily, slowly and carefully letting the ladder tip forward and holds on to me until I reach bottom.

Notes:
I’ve been looking for information on the Anasazi and looking at pictures of their kivas. There was one picture that shows the roof of a kiva with two holes and two ladders for getting down into it.

12-16-10 – Notes:
I’m stunned at the realization that the Anasazi are amongst us. I remember hearing about them in the 60’s in an anthropology class I took at City College. It was a ho-hum class for me then. Cliff Dwellers- as though they had clawed their way into the mountainside and were a primitive people.

Through the internet, I’m finding that they thrived for a millennium, built complex cities with running water, cultural centers for worship, building complexes of 200-700 rooms, farming communities, and a highway network that connected over 1000 cities throughout the Southwest. These cities were planned and then built over several centuries. How they managed to do the planning and then carry it out over the generations is an interesting question to pause on. But I imagine it was like everything else in oral culture, passed to the next generation precisely as it was received. Of course, then there was no “Southwest,” but there have been some connections found in the linguistic patterns of the Nahua (Aztecs) amongst the Navaho, Pueblo and other descendants of the Bird People as the Anasazi were called.

In an early dream I had where I am learning to fly, my father pushes me off the top of a ladder and I sail into the air, freeze into the pose of a dead horse, and am rescued by a gentle Native American man who flies up from ground level. Then, there are these visits with the Elders in kivas.

It is because of my connection to the Elders in my dreams that I have my first book. It was they who rattled my memory and helped me put the story together. Now, they are telling me to write about the Aztec migration from somewhere “en el norte” to the Valley of Anahuac, and it’s interesting how that story is unfolding.

The reason the Anasazi are important and finding the connection between the linguistic patterns of the Aztec and the cultures of the North American Southwest, is that identity plays into this. Our identity tells us who we are, where we come from, who our people are. For people who have been colonized and then brainwashed against the very blood that flows through them, it’s important to question and challenge the assumptions of what’s been passed on. More on identity later.

Chew on identity and what it tells you about who you are.
Sweet dreams,
Ellie

I often wonder where my dreams go when I’m going through my daily life, but maybe that question isn’t as important as just remembering that they are there. in Thinking about creativity, time and space, I’m offering the following dream as a springboard for you to think about messages you have received, and what you do with them. As the Ancient Ones believed, time is NOW. So, if we believe that our past (from birth in this life time to now, determines who we are, this belief will limit us. BUT, if we take on the cloak of our dreams, why not become that which more accurately represents who we truly are and be a new person each new day?

Call from the Elders Dream:

“River water is cold in the springtime after the snow melts. This first day of warm sun after the winter blistery days that the sun is hidden behind the clouds, we’ve come to bathe and wash our hair. My sisters, entering the water timidly scream with glee when they take that first plunge. They taunt me, their eldest, to come in, and threaten to pull me in if I take much longer. I submerge myself in the freezing temperature, and they laughingly splash at me when I emerge. My younger sister sneaks up behind me and adds mayhem to the spring ritual of our first dip. I chase her and keep splashing her as she tries to get away from me. Soon, all of us are shouting and playing in the water that the sun has miraculously heated.
“I hear my brother’s voice calling my name. I know he wouldn’t be there unless there was good reason because this part of the river is off limits to the men. Besides, he is a warrior and hunter and should be away hunting. Hearing his voice so far from the village adds to the urgency. Others look up to see if I’ve heard his call “Something is happening in the village,” one says to me, “Should I come with you?” “No, no. I’ll be back soon.” I respond.
“Sorry to miss the frolicking, I quickly dry myself off with a thin deerskin and wrap myself in a soft dark brown buffalo-looking garment with holes for my arms. I put on my foot coverings that come up to my knees. The ground is still frozen, and I can feel its sharpness as I run up the path, jumping over patches of snow and mud.
“I’ve been called to the meeting room underground where the elders are gathered. My moon time finished many days ago. The kiva is for men only. I have a queasy feeling in my stomach as I step down the ladder quietly, trembling to be called by the elders. The light from a small fire reflects on their faces, and I sense a tension in the air.
“When I reach bottom, I hear the sharp crack of a drum as though announcing my arrival. It’s a loud, crisp whack from the spirit world, for I realize there are no drums or drummers present.
“And, there’s more power where that comes from,” one of the men mentions to the others. Looking directly at me, he adds, “Remember.” That’s all he says, “Remember,” as though I have consented to a previous agreement. The elders nod their heads in unison.”

This is an old dream, from the late ’70′s. My notes continued:

“The slam of a door caused by a breeze in the hallway of my apartment awakes me. I’m instantly aware of the light coming through the windows that run across my sunroom/studio. The sun is bright. It must be late in the morning, and I should have been up hours ago. I’m too groggy, and left with questions and vague feelings of having forgotten enormous chunks of my life. It’s not exactly as though I’ve actually forgotten, though. Certainly, parts I would like to overlook, but definitely there are blanks that need filling in; something I should know. Who are these elders? I know them, but they’re certainly not part of my waking community today. What am I supposed to “remember?”

Ok, so I’m cheating a little with 40 years ahead of most of you. But this is how I work with dreams today: In writing my second book, I’m putting together the concepts of time and space being right now. So, I try to practice what I preach. I went back to that dream and put myself back into it, exploring the environment, listening for sounds, feelings, sensations; and that’s when I came up with the scene at the river with my sisters.

With time being NOW, I can become that person. I see her as someone appointed by the Elders to reconstruct what has slipped through the cracks of our consciousness; traditions? dreams? values? The person who I think I am, based on my past and repetition of experiences, has doubts and fears, but with internal work with community, counselors, spiritual guides, I’ve been working through the facade. When I realized I had a mission, my passion was set afire, and that’s been the guiding light for my life. I’ve been learning that “Power” is simply having the willingness to take tiny steps at a time and do what may seem impossible at first sight.

It’s very liberating.
Blessings, El