Dreams are conversations we can have with our souls.

But like any conversation, it’s far more valuable, not to mention fun, when it is an actual conversation, rather than a monologue. It’s far too easy to tune out when there’s only one speaking.
So, how does that relate to dreaming? How do you have a conversation with your dreams?
Firstly, realise that they are communication. Some come from your own mind and body, but often, they’re your soul, your spirit guides, your soul family, and even your spirit animals actively trying to talk to you.
Would you leave your phone unanswered if it was someone powerfully allied to you calling? Of course not, and the same goes for your dreams. Don’t leave them unlooked at.

What about when they don’t make sense?

I’m struck over and over how a dream that at first glance seems garbled, irrelevant, or just plain too weird to mean anything, is really showing something deeply meaningful to my life.

I’ve been sorting through some old work and several years ago, I remembered a dream that ended in a very odd manner. To begin with, the dream proceeded in the usual way of a narrative, and I was dreaming that an old lover had died a few months before, and their funeral was finally being held, to which I’d decided not to go. I was however, still carrying around a few items of this person’s clothing. An old friend approached me, someone who in waking life had suddenly cut off all communication between us without explanation, and here in the dream was working hard to convince me to go to the funeral.

So far that all was pretty straight-forward. A dream talking about moving on, letting go, not listening to outside forces that aren’t trustworthy, but keeping my own council. It very nicely pointed out too, that it was time to stop carrying around any old identification with that old relationship, something that I carried into waking life with me and made sure of. I was no longer that person, those clothes did not ever need to be worn again.

So that is all very straightforward, and if unexpected, then it was still welcome guidance. It’s the next part of the dream that really fascinates me to this day, however, and initially I had no idea what to make of it.

That was all. That was how the dream ended, and when I got up that morning, it seemed bizarre and fantastic indeed, and I had no idea what to make of it.
I recorded in my journal however, a conversation I had with Valerie that pointed the way to the meaning of this odd image.

She sifted through our library of reference books and pulled out one titled ‘Tuning the Human Biofield – Healing with Vibration and Sound Therapy’.

Flipping through the pages, she found the section that talked about energy imbalances in the area of the knees, and it was illuminating. What had seemed just a weird and garbled image suddenly made a great deal of sense.

“Overall the knees speak about the degree of inner and outer freedom the person is experiencing. People with energetically free knees are able to engage in what I call ‘spontaneously appropriate action.’ It’s sort of like dancing, where the person moves along through life, responding in the moment to the music and the movements of the other dancers, without engaging in old stories or knee-jerk reactions –  not thinking too much about the future or over-planning it. Such a person is able to release what no longer serves the purpose of living life to the fullest so as to move freely with the current of life.”

That’s the excerpt from the book by Eileen Day McKusick, and you can see how suddenly the image of the knee made sense. Part of what I consciously do every day in my life is to live in the present, rather than dwelling in the past or the future. I would once have suffered quite sever blockages in this energetic area of the knees, I imagine, as perhaps many of us would, since I spent a great deal of time imagining the future in a grass-is-greener sort of way. It wasn’t until I managed to let that thinking go, and concentrate on the bounty of this very expansive present we live in, that I found greater contentment, happiness, and well-being.

Pay really good attention to the weird.

So my dream had a great message to me – to continue following my instincts about the past, and to let go of the last remnants of its clothing. And then to make a nest – a home – in the present.
I’m glad my soul gave me such a vivid image for that last piece of wisdom. I would not have wanted to miss that, or forget it, for anything.

Living in the present is a message for all of us. It doesn’t mean to make no plans, to set no goals, not to think about the direction you are going in, but instead something far more fundamental.

The present really determines everything. It is right now that you decide how much influence you want your past to have on you, and it is right now that you set in motion what the future will hold. Here and now is the only time that you have any power over, that really, for all intents and purposes, exists.

Fortunately, it is a very spacious thing, the present. It is a great gift, to feel present, to breathe in here where you are and feel yourself alive and an integral part of the world.

Stop for a moment, wherever you are, reading this, and take a deep breath. Let it out slowly, in complete awareness of your body, your mind, the world around you. This is where you are, right here and now, and it is from this space that everything in your life must flow.

It is, in fact, the only place in which you can truly live.

Blessings on you, my dear friends. 

Katherine Genet is the author of the Wilde Grove mythic/visionary fiction series, as well as complementary non-fiction. She has been walking a pagan path for 30 years and is a shamanic Druid, spirit worker, and priestess of  Elen of the Ways.