Excerpt from Dreams

We Stop Them Here (p. 503)

From chapter "Knowledge"

Here’s another thought. Perhaps no one has stepped in to stop the dominant culture from killing the planet because the actions of the dominant culture on this planet are one battle in a larger conflict or war. Certainly many mythologies have been based on the concept of cosmic wars between good and evil, although because of the co-optation of the words “good” and “evil” by monotheism (and indeed by capitalism and patriotism, both of which declare the acquisition of power to be good), we may wish to describe these conflicts as between those who serve life and those who wish for whatever reasons (please note I’m still not asking what those reasons are) to destroy life. And certainly one can win a war while still losing some battles; perhaps those who serve life are busy elsewhere. Or perhaps they are losing on many fronts. I obviously have no knowledge of this, and I can think of no way I can gain this knowledge except by asking for a dream.

So I ask.

***

I have a dream. I don’t know how, or if, it applies. In this dream I am at a house in the town where I grew up. There are others in this house. I look behind the house and I see an irrigation ditch. I look in the ditch, and begin to cry, because when I was a child the ditch behind my house was full of crawdads and garter snakes and fish and birds; this ditch is empty of life. Several of us begin walking down the ditch, looking for life. We don’t see any. The ditch joins a stream, and still we see no life. The others take me inside an empty house, tell me I can rest there, that this is a safe house they often use when they need to hide. I take off my shoes, go into the bedroom to lie down. But there is an old woman lying in the bed. She evidently now lives in the safe house, which is somehow thus no longer safe. I put on my shoes and run from the house. I reach the stream. The others have gone ahead. I can still see them, and I try to catch up. The terrain on this side of the stream becomes rocky and impassible, so I need to cross the stream. I get wet. Now on the other side, I need to squeeze past some high-tech device that is sucking water and life out of the stream. I don’t know why it is doing that. I squeeze past, and see the others, still ahead of me.

***

It does not surprise me that I do not understand this dream. I do not feel that right now I am in prime shape to enter the place of large dreams. I am still recuperating, still in pain, still preoccupied with questions of whether I should have had this surgery, preoccupied with questions of how long it will be till I am able to go home, preoccupied with not liking this feeling of dependence, and so on. In other words, preoccupied.

And while certainly large dreams can come to us at any time, I think for me at least they feel more likely to come when I give them my full attention, when entering that space of dreams is itself treated for what it is, a form of sacrament and a place and time of learning.

I think there is much to this dream, and even much that is clear to me, but I think there is much that is unclear, and much more I can or could learn.

***

It is the morning after the following night, and this night I dreamed that I went home, and found my house had been burgled again and again. I do not know if this is an anxiety (or precognitive) dream about what I shall find when I finally go home, an anxiety dream about the trial of the thief who is pretending he was not a thief, or a part of the answer to my question above, and a comment on the insatiability of the thieves who are this culture.

***

It is later that same day, and now I understand at least this most recent dream. The dream is telling me to not worry so much about what happens in other places, but rather to focus on those who are stealing from and destroying my home, that is, the earth. Practically, it does not matter so much whether what is happening here is part of a larger cosmic struggle; what is important is that we stop them here.