The Dream Matrix: A Memoir of Connection

By Nancy J Myers

Many people have been both part of and awaiting the return of a spirituality that is more vibrant than what they learned growing up. In her quest, Nancy J. Myers takes us on her journey of discovery into the deep, rich world of communal dreaming. The two women in the story Nancy tells find and forge a spirituality that is their own as individuals but becomes shared in their friendship and grows far beyond that to become a gift to their communities. The dreaming has entered the arenas of church and environmental policy, as well as the lives of individuals, bringing healing, joy, instruction, and luminous connection with the Divine.

This story demonstrates how to share dream time with a community and bring that dreaming reality to the awake world. To those who struggle to do good in a difficult world it brings a comforting message: this soulwork is possible.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nancy J Myers
• Release date: Jan 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301840939

Nancy J Myers

Nancy J. Myers founded The Orb Connection in to share her experiences and knowledge gained from photographing orbs, a phenomenon she was introduced to after the unexpected passing of her son, Robbie in 2010. As an orb photographer and medium, she works with the orbs to interpret the important messages they wish us to hear. She has worked tirelessly with her photography and her orb library exceeds 10,000 photos. Nancy shares this knowledge on her website, through demonstrations, presentations, private readings and in her books; “Entering the Light Fantastic” and “Encircled by the Light Fantastic”.Her work as a Reiki Master, Certified Angel Card Reader and medium have been greatly enhanced because of the relationship Nancy has cultivated with orbs. She has learned to trust their guidance and companionship and Nancy’s wish is that one day, we will all learn to trust spirit’s guidance. Https://theorbconnection.com

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THE DREAM MATRIX

A Memoir of Connection

By Nancy J. Myers

Copyright 2013 Nancy J. Myers

Smashwords Edition

To the Dreamgiver

Table of Contents

Prologue

Part I – The Dream Exchange

Chapter 1 – Carolyn and Nancy

Chapter 2 – Seals of approval

Chapter 3 – Vocabulary lessons

Chapter 4 – Visitations

Chapter 5 – Two worlds

Chapter 6 – Initiations

Chapter 7 – Transitions

Part II – The Responsive Universe

Chapter 8 – The well and the dolphin

Chapter 9 – Tangled webs

Chapter 10 – Alaska

Chapter 11 – Guardians

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Prologue

She made her first appearance in the car as I was driving home from work on the Eisenhower Expressway in Chicago in December 1990. I was listening to the news and paying more attention than usual because it seemed like the country was about to go to war. It was not the kind of war that was likely to involve my family or me directly. I was against it, but I am against all wars. I had been working against war in one way or another for much of my life. At the time I was an editor of an antinuclear publication, which opposed war, especially the possibility of nuclear war, but at the rather abstract geopolitical level. And so the kind of attention I was paying on that day to the news of the buildup to the first Gulf War was what you might call political. The prospect of war was not a personal matter for me; it was politics and policy. It had to do with my job and with my beliefs, but they were beliefs I took for granted because I had been immersed in them my whole life and, at the same time, held them at arm’s length, away from my heart.

So it took me by surprise when I burst into tears in the middle of the evening rush hour. What prompted the tears was the flash of an image of soldiers going off to war, preparing to die, and dying. But the weeping came from nowhere, as if it belonged to someone else.

The tears stopped when I got home but the emotion brought on by the image of dying soldiers lingered just under the surface of the normal evening. I retreated as early as I could, without attracting attention from my husband and teenage children, to the privacy of the bathtub. I lit a candle and sat in the hot water and let the weeping resume. It went on for some time and as it continued I observed it and wondered why this sudden outburst, why now? The likelihood that my country was going to be involved in a big shooting war for the first time since Vietnam disturbed me and made me angry, but I hadn’t known I cared in a grieving, hurting, emotional way, as if I were about to send my own son to the Persian Gulf.

And then the puzzle formed itself into a question, not why but who. Who are you, the weeping one? And an answer: I am Stranger.

I caught the reference. I’m just a poor, wayfaring stranger a-traveling though this world of woe. And further back from the Bible, how we are strangers and pilgrims in this world. In the next instant this weeping Stranger person gave me a name, Pilgrim, which brought in John Bunyan as well, and let me know that we were in this wayfaring business together even if we were not quite one and the same. I became, in that moment, two distinct people. Stranger and Pilgrim.

Stranger was eager to talk.

And so began an intense series of private conversations between Pilgrim—the public me; the conscious, working, problem-solving, logical, activist, wife, mother, intellectual—and Stranger, whom I came to know as the hidden, grieving, joyous, timeless side of myself. The conversations were exploratory but cryptic. We were getting to know each other, but when you’re talking to yourself you don’t have to explain much. A sample:

Stranger: Why are you going down this road? We are discussing my career.

Pilgrim: Because I must keep moving. Careers advance. That’s the idea behind them.

But why?

To get to the next place.

And why is that?

And why do you stop me?

I did not stop you. The fog stopped you.

This is true. From the moment she appeared everything I thought I knew about what I was doing disappeared in a fog. I felt like making any kind of move might take me off a cliff. So I sat nightly for six weeks, carrying on these conversations (much journal scribbling, tub babbling). In the space of those six weeks the Gulf War was fought and supposedly won but continued to affect me. This huge political catastrophe did not make me more politically active than I already was, however; it drove me deeper into myself and the mystery Stranger held for me. I didn’t know what to do about the war; I only knew that it represented failure. Something about the work I was doing and the way I was doing it, something about the way my colleagues and I thought and acted and wrote about it and against it, was failing the cause, failing the world, and failing ourselves. The war was a system failure and I felt myself to be, at worst, a part of the system or, at best, irrelevant to it, powerless against it.

Could it have been otherwise? I really did not know. I only knew, after Stranger made herself known to me, that for some time I had been working with half my brain and very little of my heart. I learned that I knew more than I thought I did but also less, and that I felt far more than I dared admit. I observed that my life—divided between personal and work, political and spiritual, feminine and professional, emotion and reason, and on and on—was not divided at all, but that in trying to keep things separate I had silenced the conversation that crossed these boundaries.

The conversation was more confusing than enlightening to me at that point. It mixed everything up—war, church, grocery shopping, the pile of manuscripts on my desk, thoughts of quitting my job to write, dreams, and the collapsing Soviet Union. It pointed in no single direction except into the fog. I had no choice but to stay confused. I made some changes in my work.

~~~

For a long time after that I forgot about Stranger. I assumed that she was no longer separate from me. What seems to have happened, however, is that she went back underground and then made herself known in other ways. She is a shape-shifter. I do believe she and the Dreamgiver were in cahoots in 1996, the year that my friend Carolyn Raffensperger and I exchanged letters in which we faithfully reported our dreams. She became a third voice in that conversation, not the Dreamgiver we recognized but a recurrent character.

It was much later, the summer of 2004, when she reappeared in a way that forced me to recognize her, in a fit of weeping that had to do with war, which she will describe in due time. This reminded me of everything that had happened before and set me on a quest to acknowledge, understand, and give voice to her. Her first act was to lay claim to the 1996 letters between Carolyn and me and identify them as the beginning of a story that needed to be told.

It is a true-adventure story. I made nothing up. If I had, I might have made it clearer, more dramatic, and perhaps more convincing. I have tried to tell the story in fits and starts over the past decade or so but never succeeded to my own satisfaction because I didn’t know what the story was or the role that Stranger played in it. I realized at some point that the story had no end point; it kept unfolding in new ways. It is still doing that. It is not over because I am still living it, and the circles of people who are living it, and living in similar ways, are expanding and multiplying, thank God.

Recently I realized that what I have been doing is collecting evidence in support of something. This is why I keep feeling that I must write in a convincing way, even as I record a story that has a beginning but no foreseeable end, and is peculiar to me and the other characters it involves. What it offers is a possibility: the possibility of a life full of beauty, meaning, and adventure, directed toward the highest good. And so, as I have attempted to pin this story down and capture it in a form that can be passed on, I have tried to define, to my own satisfaction, a thesis that is worthy of the evidence I have been collecting. The evidence has come first; the thesis has evolved gradually, to account for the evidence and suggest paths for further investigation as well how to live life in the face of it. Here it is:

This memoir is a case study in tapping into a less conscious, less defined, less logical, less limited, more creative aspect of our individual selves, which embodies and lives our connection with other people, all life, Creation, and the Divine. In that long sentence I’ve stacked up a lot of ideas that will unfurl in the report that follows. Let me add that who we are as members of this web of connection is not necessarily who we think we are in the consensual reality of Western civilization—the normal, everyday, conscious life we all know. I single out Western civilization because the experiences described here may be much more familiar and workaday in other cultures than in our own. We may be, in fact, relearning what civilization has caused us to forget. But because I am reporting on my own experiences, as a full-blooded though quirky American, they represent new discoveries. New to me and perhaps to you, but timeless, too.

The persons we learn to be in conventional Western society represent partial, limited selves. I, Nancy, the editor and analyst, am largely that self. But the author of this memoir is Stranger. We are divided and united. Just so, my friend Carolyn’s voice is also prominent in this story. It is about more than the division between conscious and unconscious or left brain and right brain, however, or even about the experiences of two individuals. It is about finding the paths to wholeness and connection that are already within us and available to us, if we pay attention. It is about growing into fuller individuality and into fuller community. It is about getting beneath the surface in order to make surface life—individual, communal, social, including at the policy level—more authentic and thus more beautiful. It is about connection. It attempts to describe the matrix for, and ecology of, that interweaving.

The paths to such wholeness that are represented most fully in this book are the conversation of dreams and the divided self. These conversations are both internal and communal. They take place in the context of friendship and bring a whole new, thrilling dimension to relationships. There are other paths to wholeness, equally or perhaps more accessible to everyone, which are also part of this story: Beauty. Art and music and story. Attention to the inexplicable through both science and intuition. Prayer and meditation. All techniques and instruction for getting beyond ego. We usually think of these as individual preoccupations or practices but they, too, acquire rich possibilities if they infuse the attention of a community.

These are paths, not necessarily ends in themselves. Dreams do not represent ultimate reality, any more than the surface of our daily lives represents ultimate reality. All are paths to integrity, to integration. Explaining the whole that results when we pursue these multiple paths is impossible. The whole is always evolving—the individual whole self as well as the communal whole, the social whole, the planetary whole. By pursuing these paths—bringing in all that we know and of which we are capable, and being open to all that we do not know and of which we are not by ourselves capable—we assist the movement toward what is good, true, and beautiful. We bring the reality that we as limited human beings understand and accept closer to the reality that is. The mystery, which I would state as God is love and all Creation is one, becomes the daily, lived fact.

We Americans are at a threshold. Despite the huge messes we have created in the world and in our own society, and despite our raucous political divisions, many people are reveling in a new freedom to be their fullest, largest, most generous selves. Many believe we can step into a new role in the world that takes the shape of wisdom and responsibility rather than coercive power and materialism. It is not simply a matter of going back to old values and ways, although we are indeed coming to a new respect for our founding principles. We need something more, new resources to draw upon within ourselves and our communities and our laws and policies, if we are to bring about the profound, far-reaching changes necessary to make human life sustainable on this planet for generations to come. I offer this story as a case study in how such resources present themselves when we need them and ask for them. I offer it on behalf of my community—friends, family, associates—which has been both context and substance for it.

~~~

My alliance with Stranger is more comfortable now. I have given her a large space of time in which to finish telling this story. We are no longer at odds, but there is still some distinction between us. Sometimes my work has required a kind of steeling of the heart that puts her on the sidelines, deferring to my more reasonable, helpful, and logical skills as I have delved into policies and laws and other public matters where there is little room for the dreadful, wonderful, inchoate feeling she bears for the world. But that division is disappearing, and the ending she chose for this story (which is ongoing, no stopping point), is testimony to the power of eradicated boundaries.

The beginning of that ending is marked by this incident. In December of 2006, I asked her to sit in on a meeting of a new environmental taskforce of Alaska Natives. When I ask things like that of her I never knows for sure if she will comply. I made a good case: I invited her as a listener and she is the ultimate silent listener. I also said the necessary prayers. And so she came. But I could not be sure of her presence until, after the stories had been told of caribou and whales and asthma, of helicopter overflights and sonic disruptions, of incredible beauty and loss, and courage in the face of insurmountable odds, we wept.

—Nancy J. Myers

Part I – The Dream Exchange

Chapter 1 – Carolyn and Nancy

December 24, 1995

Subject: Defining our friendship anew

Dear Nancy,

I write this on Christmas Eve. You probably won’t read it until next year! My goodness. We are having a quiet holiday. Friends will come over tomorrow night. The repainting and fixing up of our house is almost finished. The quarry tile floor will be complete next week.

During this quiet time, I’ve been thinking about our friendship and the changes it has undergone over the years. I write this with some trepidation, because you may not see this the way I do.

What sparked my thinking was a book I’ve been reading, We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World is Getting Worse, by James Hillman and Michael Ventura. There are shockingly original ideas in it. It has made me think about our friendship in a different way. Maybe it is time to redefine it—or name it for what it is.

There is a chapter on letter writing, and Nancy, here’s the crux of what we are doing by exchanging our dreams in written form. Hillman says, I believe we may be actually closer and more truly communicating in letters than when talking. The vertical connection downwards and inwards, each on his solitary own, may be making a connection of souls through imagination, a connection that does not necessarily happen in live conversation or on the telephone. . . . This is less a communication than a cosmic enterprise that is really not bound by time or space.

So I believe that this new stage in our relationship is defined less by how often we meet and more by depth—particularly as we share our dreams in writing. This carries with it the Biblical metaphors of the dream interpreters. It is a cosmic enterprise because it invokes the lyricism of our souls.

Here is my dream of last night.

I am riding the el in Chicago, mindlessly trying to get to work. I look up from my reverie and realize I am on the Ravenswood line rather than the nameless el that goes downtown. I figure I will get out at the next stop and retrace my steps until I can get on the right el. However, when the train stops, the conductor tells us that no train will be leaving until the tide goes out. Waiting for the tide will delay me an hour and a half. So we disgruntled passengers strike up desultory conversations. The man across from me tells me some peculiar detail about himself. I am unable to think of a proper direct response so I answer with a few well-chosen words expressing a generality. The man is startled and says, How is it that a generality which explains the mystery could also account for the particular? I’m not quite sure.

I look down at my silver and turquoise bracelet. The stone is missing. But the whole bracelet now seems to be turquoise. I am not sure what to do about the loss. I am aware that the stone had symbolized the eye of God. Can I assume that God is now wholly present? Not just his eye?

When I finally get back downtown, I head toward the office of a National Park. I rummage through the brochures and find a gorgeous brochure of creamy beige paper with a soft brown image of a ground squirrel on it. The map inside leads to treasure, to mystery (much like the Anasazi parks such as Bandelier with its hidden stone lions). It is last year’s map. I put it in my purse and leave, since I want to find friends and get them maps too. An unknown friend and I go out the back door thinking we will find our way to Constitution Blvd. But we are lost. I can hear the park service woman playing a magnificent piano concerto in a concrete apartment building with concrete balconies. I am in love with the acoustics—this seems to be reason enough for having gotten lost.

I think this dream was a fair summary of my past year. Mystery, ups and downs, unexpected events, beauty, loss, lost, found, more God. When I awoke I wrote our Christmas letter.

Love,

Carolyn

January 3, 1996

Subject: Androgynous deer

Carolyn,

If I had known such a letter was waiting for me, I would not have left my computer behind over the holidays. I am back at work. I saved your letter for lunch. The answer to all you have written is, Yes! Since we have been writing, I have come to feel closer to you than any friend whom I see regularly.

The general and the particular. How is it indeed that one explains the other? I have often observed this about the best of the self-revealing writers: the more honestly they write about themselves, the deeper they resonate with universal human experience.

What a wonderful dream, spanning several years I think, with promises for the future. Your sojourn in the Wisconsin