Light in Dreams
Last weekend I went to the conference of the 
International Association for the Study of Dreams held at Sonoma State. I could only attend for one day, but fortunately it was the same day that Fariba Bogzaran presented a panel on “The Phenomenology of Light in Dreams.”
In her presentation she talked about different ways she has experienced light in dreams. She is a gifted lucid dreamer and artist, so she spoke of her attempts to translate her lucid experiences, which were filled with different qualities of light, into the medium of paint. It was a fascinating presentation, followed by three other speakers who each had something unique and personal to say about how they experienced light in dreams.
An African-American woman in the audience stood up and made a comment about the racist implications of the language of light and dark, where light is always valued more highly, seen as closer to God, and darkness is viewed as inferior and less “enlightened.” All of the panelists responded to this, and Bob Van de Castle gave what I thought was the best response.
He said that first of all there is a big difference between light and dark as qualities of 
light, and black, brown, pink and white as pigmented skin colors. The English language is such that it blends the words for different qualities with those of different colors. This linguistic quirk and the sloppy thinking it encourages have only added to the racism which causes so much harm to people all over the world.
Second, he made the observation that the brightest light is not necessarily the closest to Divine, even in dreams. There are a lot of accounts of illumination coming from the depths of darkness, and he in particular noted the darkness of space which gives birth to light, a major theme in world mythology. I am glad he mentioned this, because it got me thinking of my own experiences of light in dreams.
I have had a couple dreams of figures surrounded in a bright white/golden light. These were powerful dreams, but these visions of Divinity don’t stand out for me as much as my dreams of being in the darkness. In one memorable dream I am walking rather quickly through a house, down this hallway with rooms on either side. I am about to leave the house and go back outside, when I decide to go into this one last room to my right. I open the door and am instantly gone, as in disappeared.
The room is full and dense, but nothing exists in it. My mind is active but I have no body, and though I know I am still in that room, there is no door, no walls, nothing. The closest color I can use to describe the room is gray. All there is is a dense gray matter, and I understand that this is a fertile, creative place where anything I imagine can take form. I think of writing, and instantly in the middle of this gray field there is a scroll of parchment with handwritten text on it. I start to think of all the other amazing things I could do in this room, but then something startles me (probably my kids) and I wake up.
Sometimes in dreams I am in utter blackness and need to find my way somewhere. Always, I feel currents on the wind, which in the dream I perceive as paths of light unfolding, shifting and changing all around me. They are etheric but somehow palpable to me, with curved edges I can sense and move with. I know that if I follow these currents of energy, I will be on the right path and reach my destination.
These experiences of movement and creation coming from the void are very powerful for me, and have been a comfort in some rather desperate times. They have validated my intuition and encouraged me to trust my awareness in every moment, rather than relying on a preconceived idea of where I am and where I need to go.
Can we ever separate spirituality and creativity? These dreams of the darkness of inner/outer space bring me closer to a feeling of Source than any others. They also help me remember that to create something, all we have to do is start down the path sparked by our ideas and the way will unfold before us.
July 8th, 2007 at 10:54 am
Can it be any coincidence that the last door on the right, if you were running down the hallway in our parents’ house from their bedroom (or mine!) to the front door, is the door to your own room? I’m sure you’ve already thought of that, so forgive me for stating the obvious…..
I’d love to hear more about that dream (especially why you would be running away from my room — what have I ever done to you??); then again, OH so many other fish to fry!
July 8th, 2007 at 4:45 pm
I had not even thought of that, probably because in my dream the house is so different than the one we grew up in. See why it’s good to have other people help look at your dreams? Especially those who’ve known you for a long (ahem!) time…
July 16th, 2007 at 6:30 pm
Hello Anne. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your synopsis on this wonderful talk on light! {No wonder Jeremy told me that I should make your acquaintance ;) }
I have dreamed qualities of light and darkness, and of striving to bring light into the darkness. JT considers these experiences a call to an awakening consiousness.
Your own dream about the gray room of creativity and possibility seems like an incredible gift! Another luminous teacher whom I think we both have an interest in, Robert Moss, teaches a method of “dream re-entry”- which is a journey back into the fertile “portals” that our dream images present.
If this were my dream, I would heed this invitation to re-visit the last room on the right (MY room), to see what other gifts may lie therein.
Blessings, Yiskah
July 16th, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Thank you for sharing your dreams. I so seldom remember any of my own dreams that I am often envious of folks who are capable of remebering their own, much less those folks who are lucid dreamers!
To answer the question you pose at the end of the post, NO! I don’t think you can seperate creativity and spirituality because I think that the creative act brings one in better touch with the Creator.
Peace,
Pax
July 29th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Hi Yiskah, well met. I have a couple favorite ways of looking at that dream. One is that the hallway leading to the door at the end is a metaphor for life and our options for taking on various “rooms” of karma as we travel from one end to the other. I think sometimes we pop into a room and spend our whole lives there working out stuff, forgetting that it is but one room of many and we have the option of just leaving and wandering down the hall if we want.
The other way I look at the room is as a metaphor for the creative process. Particularly now while I’m writing quite a bit, I recognize the act of creation as being quite similar to being in that gray room. There is a feeling of pressure, kind of like matter compressed before the big bang, and each strand of thought I can express is a way to unravel, little by little, the incredible store of matter and ideas in that room.
Maybe it is an inside view of the brain, I don’t know. It is not a particularly comfortable process, as any writer can tell you, but neither is birth. And books don’t talk back or need rides everywhere, so there is that.