Sleep as an Act of Resistance

Short essay: 2 minute read

One-third of our lives is spent asleep. Why are we so quick to dismiss our dreams?

I spent many years in a religion that taught that personal revelation was the work of the Devil. Eternity in Hell could be the punishment for visions, which were to be mistrusted. There was only one source of truth. How convenient for a small group of men to have cornered the market on truth. 

Science (arguably a small group of men) too often adopts the same stance. Dissenting colleagues are tarred and feathered, the sacred assumptions upheld at all costs. The interests of those in power are protected as the scientific establishment declares, “No man cometh unto the Truth but by me.”

Yet I have found a personal portal to a world of wisdom. In my dreams I travel the depths of my psyche, returning with insights I am unable to access while awake. In my dreams, I explore the vast reaches of Consciousness, learning that the borderlines of individual ego might be more fluid than I supposed. I know transcendence, discovering experientially that the life in all things is Love. I become one with All That Is and encounter my own power. I learn to trust my vision.

I have come to judge the value of my dreams by those who fear them, who rely on Hell and Satan to preserve their status quo. I judge the value of my dreams by those who scoff at them, who insist without proof (and against my own experience) that dreams are random signals from the brain. I judge the value of my dreams by anyone who needs to summarily dismiss a category of thought as “woo-woo” in order to maintain their hegemony. 

To dream a dream is not to do battle in the streets. It is to lightly sidestep the news media and its constant call to alarm, the advertisers who tell me that my symptoms are a syndrome, and diet and exercise aren’t enough. It is to turn the other cheek – averting my eyes – from those who insist that my fulfillment lies in a party or a product, that if my life doesn’t depend on it, my happiness surely does.

When I dream, I step askew of those who would define the parameters of my thought-world for me, and I graciously let them pass. While I go on to create the world I wish to see – a world of softer edges, where magic and wonder have a place and consciousness pervades all things, a world crackling with the energy of hope and innovation. How do I know such a world is possible? 

I have seen it in my sleep.

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For more about dreams and their capacity for inspiration and guidance, you can read about my book The Shadowdancer: Field Notes of a Psychic Naturalist.

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Photo by Joshua Woroniecki

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