By Daniel Rigney
Returning recently from an urban retreat in California, where I took a couple of short courses in religious philosophy, I’m back in Houston, spiritual capital of Southeast Texas, and reflecting on the rapid approach of my next birthday. I’ll be hitting the big six-five.
When that day arrives, I’ll be a discountable “senior” by anyone’s definition of the word, as time’s mechanical conveyer belt continues to carry me, and all of us, toward that final graduation day and its complimentary membership in the Human Alumni Association (HAA).
Hitting the big six-five is enough to make a body mindful of the passage of years, and of the closing chapters of one’s life story – chapters yet to be lived and creatively written.
At this contemplative time in my life, I seem to have begun the daily practice of waking up gradually from my last feature-length dream of the night and reflecting on its meanings in a state of quiet reverie. You too may have experienced this pleasant daydreaming state between sleep and full wakefulness, when we let our minds drift pleasantly and carelessly from thought to thought. Messages from our creative Jungian unconscious float up from the depths to be half-consciously savored and enjoyed (or not). Fleeting insights and creative conjectures arise without much effort in these shamelessly lazy moments.
These are what we may call “dawndreams” -- neither night dreams nor daytime thoughts, but a hybrid of the two. Dozedreams, dazedreams. Call them what you will.
Dawndreaming is a state of consciousness that my former writing teacher, Ms. Nancy, a finely-aged deep Southern woman, refers to as “hife-awike time.” It took me awhile to realize that “hife-awike” was Mississippian for “half awake.” Ms. Nancy rightly understands that in hife-awike time our creative imaginations are at their fullest bloom and deserve to be appreciated as such.
In my previous life, before I retired from a demanding teaching and administrative career, I would typically be jolted awake from my night's feature-length film by an alarm clock and yanked rudely into the unforgiving world of vertical life. Nowadays, I like to make a softer, smoother transition to wakefulness, spending a few minutes or even hours pleasantly reviewing and interpreting my last dream movie, and from there, exploring whatever my creative unconscious feels like exploring that morning.
Lately my dreams have been mainly about going back to a high school or college I’ve previously attended or taught at, and finding it surrealistically strange and unfamiliar. In the dream, I’m different now. The people I knew there are different. The campus is different. Everything is weirdly transformed.
Not coincidentally, these back-to-school dreams are coming at a time in my waking life when I’ve been enrolling in a wide variety of short courses, as a former college teacher returning to his much earlier life as a curious and inquisitive young student with a beginner’s mind.
I’ve also been participating actively for the past year in meditation groups in the Buddhist tradition, as a respectful visitor from another world. This has been my “year of learning Buddhistly,” and I’m quite sure that my Vipassana and Zen experiences of the past year have been streaming subtly into my dawndreams.
I rarely make recommendations, but I do recommend that if you have the occasional luxury of staying in bed some mornings, you might let yourself linger in the “hife-awike” state for a few minutes or hours. Let your thoughts drift from your night dreams to wherever they want to go. See what phantasms the deep ocean of your creative unconscious is washing up onto your mind's shore this morning.
Life is short. Why not spend more of it half awake?
Danagram
Returning recently from an urban retreat in California, where I took a couple of short courses in religious philosophy, I’m back in Houston, spiritual capital of Southeast Texas, and reflecting on the rapid approach of my next birthday. I’ll be hitting the big six-five.
When that day arrives, I’ll be a discountable “senior” by anyone’s definition of the word, as time’s mechanical conveyer belt continues to carry me, and all of us, toward that final graduation day and its complimentary membership in the Human Alumni Association (HAA).
Hitting the big six-five is enough to make a body mindful of the passage of years, and of the closing chapters of one’s life story – chapters yet to be lived and creatively written.
At this contemplative time in my life, I seem to have begun the daily practice of waking up gradually from my last feature-length dream of the night and reflecting on its meanings in a state of quiet reverie. You too may have experienced this pleasant daydreaming state between sleep and full wakefulness, when we let our minds drift pleasantly and carelessly from thought to thought. Messages from our creative Jungian unconscious float up from the depths to be half-consciously savored and enjoyed (or not). Fleeting insights and creative conjectures arise without much effort in these shamelessly lazy moments.
These are what we may call “dawndreams” -- neither night dreams nor daytime thoughts, but a hybrid of the two. Dozedreams, dazedreams. Call them what you will.
Dawndreaming is a state of consciousness that my former writing teacher, Ms. Nancy, a finely-aged deep Southern woman, refers to as “hife-awike time.” It took me awhile to realize that “hife-awike” was Mississippian for “half awake.” Ms. Nancy rightly understands that in hife-awike time our creative imaginations are at their fullest bloom and deserve to be appreciated as such.
In my previous life, before I retired from a demanding teaching and administrative career, I would typically be jolted awake from my night's feature-length film by an alarm clock and yanked rudely into the unforgiving world of vertical life. Nowadays, I like to make a softer, smoother transition to wakefulness, spending a few minutes or even hours pleasantly reviewing and interpreting my last dream movie, and from there, exploring whatever my creative unconscious feels like exploring that morning.
Lately my dreams have been mainly about going back to a high school or college I’ve previously attended or taught at, and finding it surrealistically strange and unfamiliar. In the dream, I’m different now. The people I knew there are different. The campus is different. Everything is weirdly transformed.
Not coincidentally, these back-to-school dreams are coming at a time in my waking life when I’ve been enrolling in a wide variety of short courses, as a former college teacher returning to his much earlier life as a curious and inquisitive young student with a beginner’s mind.
I’ve also been participating actively for the past year in meditation groups in the Buddhist tradition, as a respectful visitor from another world. This has been my “year of learning Buddhistly,” and I’m quite sure that my Vipassana and Zen experiences of the past year have been streaming subtly into my dawndreams.
I rarely make recommendations, but I do recommend that if you have the occasional luxury of staying in bed some mornings, you might let yourself linger in the “hife-awike” state for a few minutes or hours. Let your thoughts drift from your night dreams to wherever they want to go. See what phantasms the deep ocean of your creative unconscious is washing up onto your mind's shore this morning.
Life is short. Why not spend more of it half awake?
Danagram
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