The title of this drawing was inspired by the winner of
a game I posted on FB, where I invited everyone to share a bit of prose or poetry inspired by this piece. The winner (Katherine Brown) wrote something actually quite simple, but really striking:
"Where dreams begin... and thoughts become reality."
There were a lot of other wonderful entries, but Katherine's line caught my attention because I feel like it really captured the spirit of the piece. It wasn't so literal, and gave me something to sink my teeth into philosophically. Now, of course, I get to run with my own interpretation of what she wrote, and the art inspiring art continues!
Dreams are amazing ephemeral things.
This drawing feels like that liminal space we all step into when we lay down to sleep, when the mind begins to drift off into nothing, and we set sail on timeless spaceless adventures.
Oftentimes, this is when a new song will capture my heart. It's in that space in between wake and sleep (when the mind settles down) when some really incredible gifts from the muse come in. Thoughts don't get in the way, they're somewhere else. It's just pure creative flow. Many nights, I've quietly recorded the beginning of a song in a voice memo so as not to wake my husband or child.
And at the same time, when thinking of the second part of Katherine's phrase, dreams are also the place where, although our thoughts seem to disappear when we drift off to sleep, they can still very much inform the plot of our dream adventures. They go through some special kind of dream filter, and shape our sleeping reality. Perhaps you are overjoyed at the sight of a little girl blowing bubbles earlier that day, and later that night you are swimming through the air in a room filled with bubbles! Or, you have a fight with your beloved, and that night in dreams, you call her name but your voice has no sound. Or, perhaps you can't stop thinking about teaching people something you are super passionate about, and so in dreams, you go about teaching people how to fly, like magic! All prime examples of how thoughts or emotions become "reality"... whether we are asleep or awake.
Of course, there are many other kinds of dreams that are not influenced by our previous waking experiences at all, but I'll save that for another letter.
I tell my daughter that the dream world is just as real as our waking world. It's just a different dimension, that's all, with totally different rules of physics and what not. There are so many different dimensions of reality, all with different qualities... there's the space we enter into when we are in ceremony, or thoroughly engaged in intense creativity, or drumming with others for hours, visits to the fae realms, astral travel, making tantric love, or the places spirits go when they pass over... There are so many different realms of consciousness, so many places to explore where energy goes and moves in all these different ways...
And then of course, there is the concept of dreams being the stuff that hopes are made of, which is perhaps what Katherine's line alluded to most. I think it's safe to assume by now that if you're reading this, you know at least a little bit about how your waking thoughts are tools for manifestation, and that what you think (and how often you think it) creates your reality. Thoughts do indeed become reality. I've seen how this happens time and time again in my own life, which reminds me of that line I've seen running around lately: If you think you can't, you're right. If you think you can, you're right.
Thanks for reading my riff today about Where Dreams Begin... I hope it leaves you feeling inspired, curious and delighted about thought forms and the percolation of dreams.