Dreaming has always caught our imagination. It has prompted massive research agendas mobilizing millions of dollars, triggering new theories in neuroscience and psychoanalysis; it has informed art from renaissance painters to Salvador Dali’s 1944 “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second before Waking”; it has tantalized philosophers in their explorations on epistemology, ontology, and philosophy of mind. And from the beginnings of time, it has been deeply intertwined with our quest for understanding ourselves as part of a much wider whole. For the last 60.000 years the Australian aborigines’ Dreamtime and dreaming have been pivotal frames for understanding the paths of eternal becoming. It’s here where this story begins.
Dreamtime is the time in which life came to be. It is the time when all existence was free of form and empty, and when the powerful movement of Jwia, the light, unfolded all events of creation. It is a beginning that never ends, a timeless continuum where past, present and future coexist. In the beginning conflating empty space, compassionate energy and primordial presence gave birth to Jwia whose dance liberated the wind of creation.
Sound and rays arising creating primordial heat and fire;
dew, rime and later water;
earth following, matter.
Niankua and Serakua born blended the elements with the primordial wind,
bearing all external and internal multiverses into existence.
In the beginning, there was a blackness.
Only the sea.
The sea was the Mother. The Mother was not people, she was not anything.
Nothing at all.
She was memory and potential.
She was Aluna.
These are the words of Omama, and of the xapiri, that manifest in dreamtime and are engraved in our stream of consciousness. They explain how the world came to be, is and will be. Dreaming is the bridge, not linear nor static, but constantly shifting so we can understand why the flux of life manifests in the now as it does. It is a state of being by which we commune with Aluna, the nature of our mind, the Great Mother, Source. But only if we know how to suspend and surrender to the whispers of the xapiri can we hear the silence of her speech and in its wholeness the primordial wisdom, the recognition of her face in all reflections.
If not acquainted with any expression of ancestral wisdom, —with the whispers of Aluna and the xapiri that aborigines, Krenak and Yanomami, Arahuac, Wiwa and Kogi, Ngakpas, Babalawo, Hermits and Pajes have all learnt to hear, dreaming becomes untamed, chaotic and unpredictable. The dreamer continues to be an ordinary person with a hole in the chest, with numb ignorance over the warmth of the center, the pathway to wisdom. Dreaming is then only a doorway to unknown disembodied experiences of shadows, colors, riddles and rhymes, fragments and fears. A door of access to the mysteries of existence, to the display of energy and forms, that takes the untrained eye into a wild ride of disorientation and confusion.
A visual frenzy that starts with a gentle breeze of drowsiness, with light turning into shadow, casting a spell that holds us numb through the labyrinth, only to devour us later through the night, in its daily display of unforeseen and unrestrained extravaganza. And so we walk asleep to our daily encounter with the Minotaur.
Dreaming, that deeply experiential and visual passage, where a myriad of images in black and white, in color, blurred or oversaturated, underscored by themes brought up from the depths of Dreamtime are fully on display in a non-space and non-time.
Deaf to the whispers of Aluna, the witness is lost, and the untamed winds of the known and the unknown, of memories and fears, alight in splendor. Bizarre and impossible scenes, misplacements, surreal and disjoined narratives, deception as we think awake while we are not.
“You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’
But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’”
– George Bernard Shaw
And why not while in numbness dream to be awake? I say “Why not?” is the Ariadne thread to escape the grasping, a return to witness, a pathway back to Aluna. The possibility of a profound insight that unveils the mystery, working our way out of the shadows to later recognize the illusory nature of both labyrinth and Minotaur.
Duermo poco,
Sueño mucho
As the insight matures, shadows and content are displaced from our attention, and as in Magritte’s Empire of Light, an unsettling luminosity emerges, making the darkness of shadows more accentuated and acute. As entering a rite of passage where the scene transmutes only to allow us to break free of the constraints and explore the liberty bestowed, the emotional charge of the vision subdues and the attention is drawn more to the forms and colors. Narratives become noise, fragmentation adornment, tensions released, engagement loosens.
Dreaming shifts.
As the realm of light expands, the intractable darkness of the vision slowly recedes. Jwia’s light begins casting a clearer light that brightens the dreaming, dissipating a fog we had taken for granted. Colors seem richer and alive, detail appears with more clarity, a natural fluidity arises, and in the midst of it all a brilliance that announces an imminent reconnection, a recognition, a doorway to Aluna.
The sages of the high plateaus, Altomisayocs, Mamos, Tulkus, the holders of the power of Ocelotl, ruler of time, night and the underworld of dreams, all instruct to keep a relaxed presence in the brilliance that emerges.
Dream shifts
Now form begins to recede and leave the vision, allowing more space for brilliance to expand. Less clutter, less distractions, it is clear light in its dawn.
Jwia.
The base of Dreamtime starts to be unveiled, the innate base of all.
Od sel, a clarity that inundates the experience, dreaming in Dreamtime, knowing and becoming all at once.
Aluna
The alarm gently rings to the tunes of birds in a forest. 30 minutes more. I need more sleep. The sounds of day awakening gently recede and the drowsiness takes over once again.
Rapid Eye Movement.
The vision of shadows, fragments and figments re-emerges.
A hour passes in a blink. A strong proof that dreaming happens in non-space and non-time.
Back to the body, feeling the sheets and the cover, the cold air breezing from the AC, the temperature in hands and face, the arms and legs awaken, the eyes slowly open. In a flash of a second the certainty of space and time settles in. I am awake.
A pause
A gaze
The brilliance of the light seeping below the curtains.
Am I really awake?
Are Aluna and the xapiri calling me back?
Disclaimer:
This writing blends together elements of diverse traditions in a personal exploration of reflective insight, writing and photography.
It is not meant to be an explanation of the myths of origin of Australian aborigines, nor of the indigenous populations from the Colombian Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. or the Brazilian Amazon. It is not an explanation of Dzogchen teaching cycles, nor of Bon cosmology.
If you’re interested in any of these themes please see some resources made available below.
Resources
Aluna and the indigenous people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta
Aluna (video)
Clear Light
Dreamtime
Dreams and Dreaming
Dream Research
Omama and the xapiri
A Queda do Céu Palavras de um xamã yanomami
Me hiciste pensar en quienes soñamos pero despiertos, tenemos intersecciones con quienes sueñan durmiendo. Las visiones que creamos alimentan nuestro interes y nos propulsan en muchos casos a explorar, intentar, hacer realidad esos sueños. Very cool my friend, I love the pics!
Great story Santiago, really loved it and the creative intertwining of the images! Bravo!