The Daydream (Part Two)
(Or) The Mythic Self
This post is part two of two: part one.
Our daydreams have been belittled to the distracting side-effects of an unfocused mind. Meanwhile, our nightdreams enjoy a special veneration and have long had their mystique emphasised. There are understandable reasons for this. We are, after all, entirely enthralled by the imaginal realm when locked into dream-sleep. The distinction between subject and object no longer exists: the dreamer is the dream.
When the dream becomes total reality – when there is no separation between the perceiver and the perceived – then we have no choice but to pay attention. We’re a captive audience (and participant) cocooning and cocooned inside prolonged dream-sequences, where the unconscious can finally talk to us at length through its irreducible language of symbols.
This undivided state of attention quickly dissolves when we re-enter the waking world. The unconscious still speaks to us, but we often only become aware of the fact when our minds wander. When we drift from so-called reality into so-called fantasy, caught up in a notorious daydream.
Notorious because somewhere along the way it’s been decided that there’s an appropriate time and place for dreaming. Dream all you want while the body is paralysed and eyes roll under sealed lids. But when the outside world once again comes streaming in, when the body is up and running, then dreaming must be left alone, returned to in its proper place at the proper time.
For there are practical matters to attend to. The business of busyness, the mounting tasks and evolving situations, the micro-and-macro-quests of our lives above-covers arrest us. There, dreaming can only interfere in the ‘progress-making’ that is so revered in an age that equates our worth to productivity.
Should one find themselves still dreaming while awake, then the dream has overstepped its territory. A spillage that must be cleaned up post-haste. But the truth is that you can’t tidy away such things. For ‘dream reality’ is not separate from ‘waking reality.’
Dream imagery is ever-present in the waking experience. Just as the unconscious recycles waking experience to speak to us in the fully-fledged dream-state. In the same way, the ‘daydream’ and the ‘nightdream’ are not two distinct channels of communication. They are simply transmissions from the dreamworld received by us in different states of consciousness.
Tune into the Dreaming
The dreamworld’s open availability gives us opportunity. At any moment there’s a symbolic message from our soul to potentially decipher, to draw us closer to a more individuated state of being and to give us invaluable feedback on how we are genuinely situated in response to life events.
However, we are not typically conditioned to give our daydreams space to breathe. And whatever space does exist is increasingly diminishing; our minds and attention-spans are prime pieces of real estate for corporate and political interests who have everything to gain by hacking our dopamine receptors and flooding us with constant images, videos, advertisements and propaganda.
Even should we wrest free our attention, there’s still a preponderance of daydream imagery to sort through. How are we to assess the imaginings of fleeting romantic encounters in dark, sealed-away rooms? What are we to think of the sudden fantasies urging us to scream aloud in the library? Or of those impulses to step over the rooftop’s edge and exit the game?
Sure, such cravings and glimpses of parallel realities might have something to tell us about our present human condition, needs and desires, but how helpful are they to us? No doubt, a healthy discernment is required. We must ask ourselves which daydreams are worth examining and which, for the time being, are better left alone.
The Daily Dream
We’re on the lookout for those daydreams which speak to our true purpose for existence. Those which are not just momentary escapes from disagreeable waking realities, but offer us greater chances at meaning-making in our lives.
My suggestion here is that we look to our recurring daydreams. The daydream during which, though the outward guises may change, the unifying theme is consistent. Some might know this dream to be as old as they are. Perhaps it has shapeshifted over the course of their life, even refined itself or come more greatly into focus, but there’s a sense that – at its core essence – it has remained the same.
This dream might have entered in with us. Grown alongside us since childhood. So that – just as the oak tree emerges out of the acorn – its true nature has matured and found greater visibility. This is the dream which arrives in blissful ambushes; sometimes in harrowing pains; in successive flashes of an alternative timeline awaiting us, if only we could execute on certain decisions to make our way there.
When this daydream returns it’s like being struck with a recognition of fate. An image both new and familiar crests the horizon. And you recognise that you’ve been moving towards it all along. Everything has been driving you towards this outcome. It’s the sense-maker of all your collected impressions, triumphs, blusters and mishaps: all of them stringing together a timeline you couldn’t help walk down.
This particular daydream I call the Daily Dream. Named so for its longing that routinely nibbles at our edges. It’s as persistent as a dog locked out, clawing at the door, whimpering to be let inside. This Daily Dream is unique to us. It is The Idea of Who We Could Be: our Mythic Counterpart that demands to be answered.
The Mythic Self
How this dream appears depends entirely on the individual. Though, in order to seize our attention, it often speaks in extremes or exaggeration. It has no interest in shrinking to match our limitations – whether those limitations are wrongly or rightly perceived.
Most probably our Mythic Self has a distinct look to reflect this.
When my own stares back at me in the mirror, he often has a shaved head, a punk mohawk, or something in between the two. Occasionally he has a grown-out goatee, frayed and greying at the ends. There are visible scars he hasn’t bothered to hide. He’s also lined his eyelids with kohl and his body is near-completely covered in tattoos, rising from the feet and stopping short only at a waterline below the jaw.
This outer-shell is a sort of stamp. A pictorial representation of how I might look if the vault of my dream-naggings were followed towards their ends. Somehow, for me, the look represents a symbiosis of the mature masculine and mature feminine within, fully lived-out in a harmonious interplay. There’s also a hard-earned wisdom in his grizzled eyes; they belong to a lifelong traveller, as does his scarred body – each scar a lesson picked up along his pilgrim’s way.
There are also visual clues of my many passions in his appearance: working in theatre; developing mytho-theatrical workshops; regularly writing as an act of sacred devotion; creating novels, plays, poetry; illustrating and getting my artwork out there; maybe even working as a tattoo artist.
This outer-shell becomes a symbolic container to all of these activated soul-callings. It doesn’t care for time, energy or resource constraints. It doesn’t ask whether it’s realistic or physically possible for one to achieve all of these things in a single lifetime. It urges us on impatiently - who or what says these things are impossible? – and asks us to find out for ourselves. It is a many-limbed God-image, octopus-like in its dexterity, a multitude of arms pointing to our heart’s desires.
Choose an Arm
Perhaps we have to be selective. At least in the beginning. We might isolate our focus on a single arm rather than spread ourselves too thin. Choosing to follow any arm, wherever it’s pointing, might just be the first step in aligning to our personal heroic journey. An energised aliveness takes over: a full-body feeling that can feel exhilarating, terrifying, and maybe even longer to sustain than mortally possible.
But, hey now, you’re actually frickin’ doing it. Daring to indulge, to listen, to follow. No longer are you resigning yourself to the exchange of your life-hours to be another cog in the machine at odds with your soul’s yearning. Congratulations. You’re finally stepping out to carve your own path.
Fair warning: to do so is not for the faint-hearted. To answer the demands of the Mythic Self, to work at realising the Daily Dream, is one of the boldest decisions a human can make. So many don’t because, well, life is difficult enough as it is.
There’s a soundbite from David Bowie (hail), on the Charlie Rose show in ’98, musing over the probability of dysfunction and irrationality as being innate to an artist. I’d wager a similar thing can be said of those who dare to pursue the dream. He ponders:
“Being an artist in any way, any nature, is a sign of a certain kind of dysfunction – a social dysfunctionalism anyway. It’s an extraordinary thing to want to do. To express yourself in such rarefied terms … I think the saner and rational approach to life is to survive steadfastly and create a protective home, and create a warm, loving environment for one’s family and get food for them – that’s about it. Anything else is extra. All culture is extra.”
Of course, Bowie is speaking somewhat ironically. But it’s not for nothing he points out that to ask for something extra and to set out in one’s own direction often asks us to live without a mattress to fall back on. Without security. To not rely on the support system the conventional route offers.
Take Cormac McCarthy, one of the late great American novelists, who was committed so darn doggedly to his craft that he famously shirked any work or exhaust of time that would have taken him off-course. He got by on little, spending stretches in poverty, surviving on beans and bathing in lakes, even getting thrown out of a $40-a-month hotel.
How you rate this extremity might be telling of your own place in the cosmos. I’m not telling you to imitate McCarthy’s model exactly. I’m merely pointing out the eye-watering sacrifices one may have to make to reach their highest potential and live out their own version of greatness.
And, somehow, it always seems to boil down to that question: what are you prepared to sacrifice for your dream?
Afterword: Does my Dream Feed the World?
There’s an argument to be made that to follow your dreams is a tired, clichéd piece of advice. Somebody might even raise the point: what’s the use of going after your individual dream when the world as a whole needs attending to, healing, improving? Surely, a better course of action to follow is one hinged on the consideration: what does the world need right now and how might I be of service to that need?
Rutger Bregman, author of Utopia for Realists and Humankind, made a similar point:
“To be honest I think this is terrible advice. All this navel-gazing is not what the world needs, and I wonder whether it's even making people happier. Gandalf never asked Frodo: 'What’s your passion, Frodo?' He said: 'This really needs to happen, and I think you can do it!'
So, a much better question to start with would be: what are the biggest problems in my community, in my country, and in the world, and how can I make a substantial difference?”
Or, as he puts it in another way:
“We don’t need more introspection, but more ‘outrospection.”
It’s a fair point. No doubt we must ask: how would my dream contribute to the greater body? It is helpful, nourishing, life-sustaining or life-enhancing? Or might it be a parasitic force?
I’d argue that if we’ve truly spent time with our Daily Dream, peeling back its layers and stripping it down to its core meaning, we would discover it as a source of life-enhancement. Not only to ourselves, but to those around us. If we discover that our dream is a drain on society, on life, on love and relationships, then we’re off the mark somehow. A deeper mining is required.
I wholeheartedly agree with a need for more “outrospection.” An entire lifetime can be spent in fantasy if we don’t take action in the physical world. And taking action is the only way to really answering the calls of the Mythic Self. But instead of leaning in favour towards one than the other, it seems we are asked to balance our introspection with extrospection.
The outer work emanates from the inner work. The inner work is aligned and intensified by the outer. We can only go as deeply in one as we have journeyed in the other.
The images drawn by the Daily Dream are in no way random or superfluous. They contain the clues as to how we – in our uniqueness of being – can answer the needs of the time. The Dream presumes that we are not born here accidentally, but as a necessary part of evolution. All the while it is coaxing us towards greater integration of our internal world so the better our contribution to the external.
I wish you all the best with your own dreaming.
With love,
Josh