Another Breakfast with My Shrink - Dealing with Dreaming

Another Breakfast with My Shrink
Dealing with Dreaming

I have written a handful of essays about my shrink, Chris, who is probably one of the smartest people that I know. Therefore, I avail every opportunity to undergo his intensive psychiatric analysis. We have met for breakfast and psychotherapy at many restaurants in the Chicagoland. The sessions often extend for more than a couple of hours and countless cups of coffee long after our breakfasts were finished. I usually come to the sessions with a long list of things that haunt me. Rarely, do we complete one item.

The previous session dealt with the issue of delineating the difference between being a dreamer and premonitions. Chris challenged whether I was just dreaming or whether I was experiencing moments of intuition. Since he was my shrink, I told him the truth; I didn’t know where the line is drawn when mere dreaming morphs into foretelling the future. Chris’ response was that he didn’t know either.

Well, I’m asking for help and paying for our breakfasts, and my shrink doesn’t know? That haunts me, which is good. Without some pain, there is no gain. Over the weeks since our last session, I spent a lot of time parsing dreaming. I began with Bobby Kennedy’s statement, “Some men see things as they are and say, why; I dream things that never were and say, why not.”

“I dream things that never were and say, why not.”

Bobby paraphrased something that George Bernard Shaw wrote in Methuselah. Nonetheless, that single sentence is me, or, at least, I try to follow that advice. That has been the signature on all my emails for decades.

Another mentor of mine is T.E. Lawrence. As with Bobby, I read and followed his instruction. Recently, I wrote another essay about Lawrence of Arabia and his dreaming issue.

Lawrence of Arabia

T.E. Lawrence addressed dreaming per se also. However, he attempted to define types of dreaming. One type is essentially worthless. For Lawrence, dreaming at night isn’t of any importance. However, dreamers who dream when wide awake are those that have intentionality in their dreams. He wrote,

All men dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible.

If you morph Kennedy and Lawrence’s insights together, I feel comfortable about how that addresses where I am in life. I can live with abandon. It isn’t carelessness that drives me; it is quite the opposite. I have danced with death twice, and doing the dance caused me to come alive. I know that I have limited amount of time as my clock is ticking. You know that you have limited time also. You realize that you are finite. However, you know that at an intellectual level but not at an emotional level.

This is where daytime dreaming morphs into premonition. To be clear, the dreaming and the premonition aspect is positive. I’m not dealing with dreadful types of premonitions. I believe that the dreaming process informs our positive premonitions. Become a person who takes note of things. Get into the moment. Be aware of what is happening and could happen. Premonitions can be the foundation to building your new world. However, it is up to you to dream during your waking hours.

In a couple of weeks, I’ll be in Burma. Talk about dreams that could be. Time will tell.

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