Dreams and Story
I see human beings as story animals. Birds make nests, beavers make dams, spiders weave webs, and humans make stories.
We can’t help it.
It probably started with tracking. Certainly, if story didn’t feed us, we wouldn’t tell them, or create them. And so tracking embodies our hunger for story. See the deer tracks. Follow the deer tracks. Harvest (or lose!) the deer.
Stories have a three-act structure, in this sense. Beginning, Middle, and End.
Lo and behold, wouldn’t you know, as story-making animals, our dreams often have three-act structures. We can’t help it.
The next time you have a vivid dream, lay it out. See if you can observe the three acts: Beginning, Middle, and End.
If you can, then ask yourself:
If the Beginning says, “When these events occur…”
And the Middle says, “And you then do (or did) this…”
The End then says, “It therefore has these results”
So, this could mean your dream has advice (‘doing this particular action will have these beneficial results’) or your dream may just want to alert you to something you haven’t noticed (‘doing this particular action always causes this other thing to occur, that you don’t see connecting’).
Dreams have a poetic and subtle structure, definitely. You can’t crack them open by chasing literal meanings. But seeing at least this dream story-structure will start you down the road to receiving real help from your dreams.
Resources:
Gayle Delaney’s All About Dreams
Tom Brown Jr.’s Awakening Spirits
March 5th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
As I watch my two year-old son’s language and identification skills develop, I see the amazing ability that humans have to recognize patterns and tie them together. He not only knows that this thing that walks around on 4 legs and pants goes by the name of “dog” but he knows that the howling in the night next door and that the prints in the mud also belong to “dog”. But even more than that, I feel amazed at how well children can recognize even really sloppy patterns. I can draw a lame picture of a dog and he knows to call it “dog” verses my lame picture of a cat (which he calls “meow”.) He recognizes the differences between vacuums and hats and books and trucks — and each one has a whole set of cues that let him know which word goes with the wobbly picture or the sound outside or the print in the mud or the tracks in the carpet.
Also, I see how he eagerly anticipates the thing that he expects to come next. Just like we start singing the lyrics to the next song on the CD immediately after the first song ends, he waits and watches for patterns in the actions around him. He knows that brushing his teeth comes before kissing Mommy goodnight. He knows what happens on the next page of the bedtime book.
I can’t help but think that all these things point to the importance of recognizing signs and patterns and how we as humans have depended on them in order to eat. It stands as one of the things that makes us human.
March 5th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
What fun you have with that kid.
Yep, humans: readers of signs, tellers of stories.
March 6th, 2008 at 12:20 am
http://www.moosehunt.doigriverfn.com/page.php?sectionid=3&pageid=8
July 15th, 2008 at 12:15 pm
[...] Dreams and Story [...]