There is a Dream, Dreaming Us

Imagine that one person in your life, maybe a wise uncle or a teacher, who takes an interest in you and challenges you to see what you’re truly made of.

For me, it was my high school art teacher. She wasn’t just teaching us about color theory or how to sketch a still life—she was teaching us how to think, how to feel, and how to wrestle with the big, unwieldy questions of existence. Every week I looked forward to walking in to her art room because she always had a new quote written on the board. Something provocative from a famous writer or artist. It made me feel cool, like I was part of Gertrude Stein’s french salon.

As the term ended I walked into her class, wearing a beret of course, for our final art exam. Instead of handing us a test or asking us to draw something, she had written a single quote on the board: “There is a dream dreaming us”. Please explain. You have 2 hours.

Now, I’d been prepared for a lot of things—still lifes, abstract expressionism, maybe a question about complimentary colors. But this?

I stood there, staring at those words, feeling like the universe had just handed me a riddle– the ultimate unanswerable Japanese koan. Two hours. That’s how long I had to answer it. But honestly, I’ve never stopped trying to explain it in the 40 years since.

At the time, I scribbled something earnest and overly philosophical, probably involving metaphors about butterflies and the cosmos. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to see that quote as a profound invitation. An invitation to untether our firm grasp on reality–to explore our lives as more loosely woven.

“Questions are telescopes” says Andrea Gibson.

Years later, I encountered another doorway into that same invitation. Psychedelics gave me that same feeling. They have whispered to me that the dream dreaming us is bigger than we can imagine. It’s a story of interconnection, of surrender, reciprocity and of trust in something greater than ourselves.

This is the gift of psychedelics when used intentionally and responsibly. They crack us open, allowing us to explore the stories we’ve been telling ourselves—some pleasant, some deeply difficult–but all very real. They invite us to surrender to the mystery. To allow the tide to pull us into places we’ve never been.The poet Scherezade Siobhan says,

“Break often. But not like porcelain. Like waves.”

Like Waves. — to release what no longer serves us, and to trust that each break makes us more expansive, more connected, and more whole. Come deeper, come closer, come undone. And when we do, we find that the dream dreaming us is alive, shimmering, and infinite.