Ep. 1 “Muesum of Moments” — Dreaming Across Time & Space, Part II
Dreams are an experimental, experiential simulation.
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SHER: I noted how it was an old version of herself shedding.
MICHAELA: I could definitely say that. We have to go into realms beyond the ordinary, to do things that are beyond the ordinary. We have to expand beyond our common expectations of what’s possible. Beyond common roles and routines, to be able to really fit this information into our life.
The idea I picked up on when she said that, “Mark Henry says my name and asks if it’s me. I cannot remember the sound of my own name.” That’s really interesting. I’ve never heard that in a dream.
It’s very unique to her and this situation. It’s not a common theme. This is a detail unique to her and her life, for sure. It does relate to the overall theme of her grandfather dying from Alzheimer’s, because that’s a memory loss. One could assume that people with Alzheimer’s would forget their own name, like they could forget the sound of their own name.
It could be a lot of things. It could be, like you said, an invitation to shed identity and to step into an expanded part of myself or to let go of things that I’m holding on to in terms of who I think I am or who I think I need to be.
It can also be an experience of empathy where I have an actual experience that I can now empathize with people who are suffering from things like Alzheimer’s because we can sympathize, but until we actually have our own experience of something, we can’t actually. It’s hard to relate. How could we? That’s not really an experience we could have in the waking world.
It’s possible, but it’s not probable — that we have a waking experience where we forget the sound of our own names. It’s one of those things that dreams are so good for: simulating experiences that we wouldn’t be able to have in our waking lives so that we can — for many reasons, but empathy is a big one. And also being able to know what to do in certain situations. It can be so many things at once.
SHER: A simulation, yeah. Dreams are an experimental, experiential simulation.
MICHAELA: They really, really are.
SHER: That’s why they say we’re in a dream now. Cause when we’re in the dreams, it does feel so real. It’s an emotional experience, the fear, all of it is 100 percent happening to our nervous system.
MICHAELA: Oh yeah, it’s happening. Once in a lucid dream I made it my intention to study the dream as an image to see if I could find any flaw, or a signature that could distinguish a waking image from a dream. Just based on the image alone. I was in my childhood home.
In the dream I thought, “I’m going to see if I can recognize any detail, any flaw, any difference between this experience, especially visuals. And there is none. There is none. It’s absolutely perfect. Which begs a different question, maybe another topic for another day, but it begs a question: Is the dream a perfect replica of the waking world? Or, I think, it has to be the other way around.
That’s a whole exploration there. Take a note, we’ll make a theme episode on that. Is waking life mirroring dreams? Which is the replica of which?
SHER: I like that. There’s this myth that you can’t read [in dreams], but I’ve read in my dreams many times.
MICHAELA: People like to say really definitive things about the experience of dreaming, and we don’t have a lot of information about it. I mean, we might have had a lot of information at one point, different cultures and different timelines and societies and stuff, but where we are right now, we’re re-exploring and re-pioneering. Which makes it fun.
We can definitely say we recognize commonalities and patterns and draw conclusions from that, sure. Like I said, statistically when people dream of departed loved ones in very literal dreams of encounters, they are usually younger, vibrant, youthful — like that. That’s a common theme that we can take out from many, many, many reports and then say that this is common, but when people say things like “you can’t do this in a dream…” It’s like, who got that information? Where’s that coming from?
We definitely do not know enough about dreams to draw conclusions like that. Especially conclusions that are limitations about what a dream can and cannot do or be. That’s pretty ridiculous. Because the dream… it’s pretty fucking unlimited.
SHER: It’s really a reflection of science, for example. From what people have experienced so far is what we create the basis and facts of our reality. Most people don’t go super deep with their dreams. Very few, I would say, or maybe they don’t even think about it.
I find that in a way, “not being able to read,” like not having that clarity to read, is almost a reflection of not solidifying the dream world more. And so if most people haven’t explored the dream world, then there’s this consensus, “Oh, it doesn’t seem clear.” So that’s just what it is.
MICHAELA: Right. Exactly. That’s the limitation. It’s also what’s exciting about doing things like this, coming together to talk about dreams, and sharing our dreams. You don’t need to be a psychologist to do it. You don’t need to have a PhD. You don’t need anything to make real contributions to this as a line of study. You just have to bring a dream, your natural experience. Whatever occurred to you is contributing to this. You’re the subject matter.
There’s no barrier to entry to be able to seriously contribute to something in a really important way. It’s super inclusive and it’s deeply human. Dreaming, and coming together to share dreams, they seem super alien and out there, weird and crazy but they’re actually a deeply humanizing experience — in terms of them being shared and explored.
SHER: The openness to acknowledging that too is just like the other side, like what Jung says, that things have to be expressed either consciously or unconsciously. The dream is the natural other side of this life experience that we have. We forget to acknowledge it sometimes.
Tying it back in with everything we just discussed, and going back to her dream: Is there anything else to clarify or answer? I feel we did answer, actually, most of her questions.
MICHAELA: I still like to go back to the question of what the person wants to know, which is an inability to recognize the sound of my own name.
We touched on the symbolism of identity, and shedding that identity. And we talked about her dream as a simulated experience in order to have a direct experience with being able to empathize with a certain situation [Alzhiemers].
We talked about the metaphorical masculine, the materialistic, being more weighted towards the material reality… If it were my dream my literal interaction or dynamic with the masculine would be in focus. She said “He embraces me. He kisses me on the cheek. He says he thinks about me, but doesn’t know how to reach out, and I tell him I’m single now, maybe we can get together.” So there’s hints of romance, and personal dynamics with the masculine. There’s also the grandfather… he’s in this museum buying art for his second wife. Then Carl noticed he [Mark] has a wedding band…
There are themes of romance, and marriage, and male/female dynamics that exist in the waking world, the common world. Perhaps, if this were my dream, and I can’t remember the sound of my own name, thinking about parts of myself, like you were saying, in terms of my identity in relation to romantic dynamics and how my identity might, come and go depending on the situation, or have I lost myself in this dynamic? Have I gained a lot of myself in this dynamic?
SHER: When I think of her and Mark and he’s saying, “I don’t know how to reach out,” it feels there’s a yearning there, of missing each other. It’s like there’s a history there. Does she leave a part of herself? Is there something locked in about her that’s holding her back? That maybe has to do with something she created or believed about herself from that relationship.
When I have lingering aspects in relationships, I think about what beliefs I may have created, from how this relationship turned out, or how the dynamic was overall in the relationship. How I implemented that I’m this or that, or I wasn’t worthy because it didn’t work out. They chose someone over me or something, or they’ve moved on.
Like, what is it about me that hasn’t — why can’t I get over it? It feels like some aspect of worthiness, or touching on insecurities. That’s my personal experience.
MICHAELA: Yeah, no, that’s really good. I think that hits for sure. That hits for me. It’s also fun, just ironically, how he’s like, oh, I don’t know how to reach out. Everybody has this experience of being this person, like I want to reach out to them, but I don’t know how, and yet, the next experience is the dream being my deceased grandfather being able to reach out and contact me.
It’s ironic the limitations we put on ourselves when really I could die and still reach out to you, you know? Yet we think, “Oh, they’re just 10 miles away, but I don’t know how to reach out.” Again, that’s structure holding us back. Fear of limitations holding us back.
SHER: Perceived limitations. Also, I’m personally curious about the pasta. It was something I noted I was curious about because she just threw that in there. “I’m getting ingredients to make pasta dinner.” That feels like something. I’m curious how she felt about that.
Was it rushed? Was it comforting because she’s in this new house with people she can’t name, yet she’s able to find ingredients to make pasta? I feel like for me and most people, pasta is one of those things you learn to make early on because it’s so easy. There’s clear instructions.
MICHAELA: Right. Yeah, I like that part of the dream. That makes perfect sense to me.
SHER: The first line, I’m scavenging for food and supplies. She’s searching for something. It’s like a need or survival, looking for something that leads her there. She’s seeking something. There’s confusion and curiosity or things coming back. It feels like she’s really seeking guidance. She talks about getting ingredients to make pasta dinner so it’s almost like she’s gathering information.
MICHAELA: If we put that as a story arc, or a general narrative, it kind of fits…I could tell a story–I’m not saying that this is the dream, this is just a hypothetical interpretation–where I’m scavenging for something, it having to do with myself and how I see myself and relate to the world.
So whether that’s through, “I’m scavenging for nourishment,” or comfort, or new ingredients–new things to add to my world, whatever it is I’m looking for that this pasta or food is representing within this environment. It’s a search.
There’s all these themes and hints of male-female romantic dynamics, which could just direct the identity theme, and put it in a more focused place. There’s a loss of identity, which ties to when “I can’t remember the sound of my own name.”
Then there’s this huge exaltation of that storyline that’s very common, familiar, relatable, and very limited. It’s a very limited storyline of “Oh, me and myself.” Anything that we’re identifying with is usually pretty limited. So there’s an exalted storyline of reality and the truth of who we are, which is: this man who died of Alzheimer’s, who had this whole experience of completely losing his identity of not remembering who he is, like not being able to associate with anything. Or, I don’t know how Alzheimer’s typically is. I don’t know anybody personally, so I don’t have the experience, and I can’t say much about it, but what I would imagine it would be something like this.
When we’re not in a limited experience of our bodies, and we’re on the other side, we see the truth of everything. Our identity — who am I, what do I need, what am I missing, how do I need more support, how do I need more guidance, where am I limited — none of that matters, you know? The storyline ends with this proof that at the end of the day, we are whole, and we are complete, and no matter what, he is him. His consciousness is reunited with his body. Not the physical, but his holographic body, his energy.
They’re not real, you know? All of the limiting beliefs of the dynamics and the things we create based on the dynamics, and our experiences, and our needs, and desires, and wants and what’s missing — is also not real.
And, at the end of the day, we come back to ourselves in our true forms and we’re still held and connected within lines of generations of love and connection. The ability to be as one and it’s a place of proof that death is more than nothingness, that it’s not nothingness on the other side.
SHER: It’s rooted.
MICHAELA: Yeah, it’s rooted, and what we’re experiencing now with our limitations is very temporary. Creating a life based on a reliance on the material world and the limited world is fine. We all do that. But there’s also more than that that we can also rely on and look forward to. It’s a way to let go before we’re forced to, and live a life where we are more in our true selves.
SHER: There’s a few things that you brought up. I feel like one, the very beginning almost sets up the theme of the rest of it. It’s almost like she’s seeking and then she finds her answers from beginning to end.
One, gathering things, and then the rest of it is like grabbing bits and pieces. Also, from what I’ve heard with Alzheimer’s, that reflects her dream, is that you sometimes remember and then sometimes you don’t. Throughout the dream she’s like I know these people, but I don’t know these people. It’s like selective memory.
And with seeking comfort in the food as you said, she’s seeking comfort in connection, but then she finds this deep rootedness in her family and her lineage, in the love that transcends time and space. Versus when she’s seeking comfort in this limited perspective, of finding tangible, materialistic things to make something work.
MICHAELA: Yes, that’s exactly. Thank you. That’s exactly what I was trying to say, but in a much more simple and direct way, that’s exactly it. I think that’s the larger theme of the dream, I mean, it’s a theme of everything, but especially this dream is such a beautiful representation of that theme, of turning our energy, psychologically reorienting ourselves to find comfort in the the eternal world rather than the temporary world. This is what we’ve done forever.
This is also another topic for another day, because I could talk for an hour about it, but our earliest ancestors based their entire lives on mythology, and not only the big life things, like birth and death and coming of age and marriage. But also every day, in the way they hunt, the way they gather, the way they harvest, the way they come together, the way they unite, the way they eat dinner, sleep, wake up, all of this had a mythological component. It was all channeled through the stories of the eternal world.
Everything they did actually reinforced and connected them with the eternal world. It reinforced the internal world. Now, we’re doing the opposite. Everything we do reinforces the limited and temporary world. Oh, I’m gonna work so I can get money so I can buy this plastic toy. Because that’s what matters or something, you know?
We’re doing the exact opposite. And that’s where we find we run up constantly against walls and we’re constantly dissatisfied and unfulfilled. Searching, searching, searching, searching, because everything we finally get that suit, the car or the house or the relationship… but it ends. It dies, it goes away, and then if we’re still alive, we’re like, well, fuck, what now?
This was the oldest thing that we did. The more we can orient and identify ourselves with everything we do in the eternal world, then we can psychologically orient ourselves to create true satisfaction. Then people can die and it’s okay because we can go to sleep and talk to them tonight. I can still go talk to them tonight. It’s chill, you know?
SHER: That’s so powerful, what you just touched on. The fact that we’ve separated ourselves from mythology and from connecting to the unconscious. And having that be something substantial that leads to the feeling of dissatisfaction and seeking for comfort that reflects so perfectly in this dream. Yet again, of seeking for external things, trying to figure it out, feeling confused, and yet finding solace and resolution in being connected with her ancestors, her lineage, essentially. And that thread of love.
MICHAELA: Yeah, exactly. And in very archaic coming of age rituals, these were more specifically for men, boys becoming men, where that would happen… There’s a switch in a 12 year old, I don’t know what age, maybe 12 where boys start becoming men, where they start getting very interested in fighting and fucking, basically. They become aggressive and sexually excited. That is when they know that they need their coming of age ritual.
And this rite of passage, or ritual, is often really intense. A little bit traumatizing. It’s like a vision quest. It could involve fasting. It’s really traumatizing to starve your body and have your body in overdrive. That’s an intense experience. So, in fasting and having the vision quest, or going out alone, being afraid, having that experience of being involved in a mythological reenactment or ceremony, where the tribe gathers to create a mythological reenactment of a storyline. And having to play out the character in the storyline, it’s all very real.
It’s not a theater show, it’s a real thing. They call the mythic time down, linear time stops, and we’re in the eternal world, and you gotta do this thing. So in whatever form the mythological reenactment, the ceremony or ritual, takes place in, it’s designed to reorient them psychologically to instead of being focused on their individual temporary goals, like fighting, hierarchies, and having sex, they’re directed towards doing what’s best for their community. Being a contributor and a protector, and fulfilling a role that the community leads.
Whether that’s a warrior, or a king, or a priest, whatever the archetype you want to say. In the ritual, it gets channeled.
They get their identity through a vision, or dream — something comes to them. Somebody comes in the vision or dream and they’re like, “This is who you are.” or “This is your role. This is who you’re supposed to be. This is your purpose.”
It’s always oriented towards being integrated within the larger community, in a way that serves you and everybody. It’s like training the dog. I mean, dogs are really smart and have a lot of energy. And if you don’t focus and orient them towards a purpose and a goal, an identity, then they would just wreak havoc. When they have a purpose, a goal and an identity, they can save your life. They’re endlessly useful, you know? But obviously it’s more complex than that.
My father is the sky, my mother is the earth, and my brothers and sisters include all plants and animals. Our identity gets expanded beyond our limited circumstances to include all things throughout time. Including our ancestry, the earth, plants and animals, others, and including a function and purpose in life that doesn’t end when we die.
That carries on through our impact and the layers that we leave behind. It carries on through our ancestry of what’s come before us. It’s all a circle.
SHER: This is such an important topic. The initiation, the coming of age — what you just said explains so many other things. It’s just like a reflection of all the issues that we’re facing today, but the big one that’s coming up with what you’re saying of how important it is to have mythos in yourself and in the world is that because of the lack of, we birthed what has become new age spirituality and have gotten sucked into that versus utilizing it to be in this world, instead creating a world of its own where you’re leaving this world now.
When they’re identifying with the mythos in that situation, they’re receiving a purpose for the whole. Whereas often now when we identify with a mythos, it becomes where we’re like the protagonists and no one else matters. It’s just our own story. It feels that what we’re seeing today, from everything you just said, is an imbalance of not acknowledging and finding importance in the unconscious and mythological world.
MICHAELA: It’s the over identification with the limits of the material world. Basically, we’ve limited our minds to what we can see and taste and touch and smell to what we can measure. We’ve limited our minds basically to what we can measure repetitively in a laboratory.
SHER: Something I heard recently that helped me is that God, or the formless eternal one, is beyond all of this, it’s beyond our senses. So, it cannot be named or understood through these senses.
MICHAELA: Exactly. You’ll have experiences like a near death experience, for example, or a dream, or a vision quest experience, where you get the download, but it’s usually something you can’t go and tell to somebody else in a way that does it justice, you know?
SHER: Yeah. It’s like sharing your whole life story. You have to experience it, is what you’re saying.
MICHAELA: Yeah, and I think this is why I like actually sharing dreams. I think sharing dreams is really important rather than just talking about dreaming. I’ve noticed that I’ve made circles where we just talk about dreaming as opposed to sharing a dream and then talking about it. The energy is completely different. I can’t even explain it yet. The impact, it’s very deeply felt. The dream itself Carries an energy of its own that cannot be recreated just by conversation.
SHER: Yeah, it’s expanding the world of the dream, like this whole conversation that we’ve had so far. All the ideas have come up and tied back to the dream. It is all reflecting something the dream was trying to say. We’re almost expanding that world.
On another hand, it’s like if you read a book and then discuss the themes, it’s so much more impactful, or watch a movie to get the message of the movie. You can get that message. Someone could just tell you the message, like what you’re saying, “talking about dreaming.” This is what it is and this is what it means. But taking you through the experience of the story — it hits more.
MICHAELA: Dreams carry energy. They are energy, like she said, energy signature. Signature is a great word. They have their own energy signature and energy to be able to work with.
SHER: It’s in a way giving us a doorway to an experience to relate to.
MICHAELA: Absolutely. It’s so much fun. It’s a way of relating to each other.
Well, on the surface, it seems like the opposite, like sharing dreams is strange. You would think, “Oh, I don’t know how to relate to that. That’s just weird.” It’s nonlinear, random, this, that, and the other. But when you get into it, when we take the time to actually ask the right questions, get the right information, of how you feel, your intention, the background context, it’s really just about that. Learning what to ask or say. We just don’t have that. We’ve lost the language to talk about dreams, we’ve lost the language to talk about non linear experiences because our language structure is completely linear. It’s designed to describe and communicate linear experiences, so when we have non-linear experiences our language somehow fails.
There’s the lightning dream work process created by Robert Moss. It’s super simple. Anybody can do it. It’s designed to be quick, fast, effective and efficient. It opens up right away when you ask the right questions, when you know which questions to ask. Then sharing dreams becomes a way of relational storytelling.
Dreams automatically override the way we identify with our experience, and try to fit our experience into a sense of self that we then want to present to the world.
Somebody says, “Oh, who are you? What’s your story?” We’ll take our experience, form it in a way that makes us look like the person we want to look like, or be who we want to be: “I’m a writer. I grew up here and I got really inspired by this, and I started writing and I wrote this novel and now I write…” That’s great, that’s fine, and you can learn something about somebody, but we’re seeing right now, especially with such heavy multiculturalism and extreme mixing of cultures all around the world that a lot of our identity stories, and our surface experience of the waking world, and the stories that come along with it, will not be shared by other people.
And by telling those stories, some people will say, “That’s great, but I have no way to relate to that.” We’re hitting social blocks where now it’s getting really inflamed, especially with the very extreme encouragement to identify with the surface features of our experience.
We’re being encouraged to identify even more with all the surface things about our experience. It’s like, oh my god, opposite lands. That is the exact opposite of any important text has ever advised us to do. It’s not that. And now we’re being told that we should identify even more with what we look like and what age you are and how much money you have and what your natural skill sets are. Ah, no, no, no.
Dreams are really good to skip over all of that. They don’t give a shit about that cause it’s not important. Dreams will go all the way over and right down to something that matters. And the things that matter are the things that are naturally human. They’re the things that matter to everyone.
The things that matter are universal. I’m being chased down a hallway by a stranger. People can relate to that. You know how scary it feels to be in the room with a stranger and not know who or what may happen, you know, everyone can relate to that.
Everyone can relate to what it feels like to be late, to be rushing, to feel awkward, to feel uncomfortable, to be scared, to be really happy, to have a romantic interaction. All of these things that are universal, if we start being able to tell those stories with each other, we can actually start relating, and building bridges of connection. No matter if it’s a ninety year-old from Lithuania talking to a nineteen year old from Australia, you know? On the surface, they might have nothing in common, but all of a sudden you share a dream and these frequencies equalize into realizing, oh, we’re both human. Even if we have nothing in common.
I’ve had plenty of times where I will meet somebody on the surface level socially and it doesn’t seem that we have anything in common. I assume we have nothing to talk about. Then you sit in a dream circle with them and you’re like, oh my God, yeah, there’s an instant connection. It really is amazing. It’s something you have to experience for yourself to really understand.
SHER: Thinking back of being in school, what I remember most were what stories people shared, especially from the teachers. When teachers tell stories we were so engaged. I mean, since you were a kid, I don’t know if that’s everyone’s experience, but I know most students enjoy when teachers share stories versus just giving us instructions on this week’s textbook chapter.
MICHAELA: Yeah, of course. That’s a different frequency.
SHER: It’s making the teacher human. What you’re saying is, it makes us more human and easy to connect to.
MICHAELA: Yes, exactly. I think it’s a really important social tool that we’ve practiced since the dawn of time that we’ve lost. But it’s coming back now. It’s often reflected as a personal tool, like a tool for personal growth, which is true.
But as a social tool, I think it’s even more impactful and more important.
