a girl and her dreams

There is this amazing thing called astral travel, it’s something we do in dreams when we travel out of these earthly bounds to the astral layer while asleep. It requires careful boundaries and comes with protocol, which I was given extension knowledge about when I was 15. I had been couch surfing and was finding that my dreams were slipping away, due to stress I had mental fatigue. I was always one to magnetize people with a background in mystical and metaphysical healing. I met a boy who was playing didgeridoo at a gathering, and we ended up hanging out for a few weeks and talked about dreams mostly. I shared my dream experiences and confided in him about my deep sadness and longing to go back to them. He understood my frustrations and offered some guidance. First he taught me about the astral layer, that some have even met there and interacted with other people, maybe even beings not of this world. Kinda cool right? I gained some experienced with this by following his instructions, and was grateful for the assistance, it helped me both with my dreams and my mental health.

I worked on these skills and found that they not only helped in dream vision, but while watching television also. Maybe this is outlandish to you. But if you think of the word “television” it can be broken down into 2 parts: 1. tele and 2. vision. So, essentially when we watch TV we are watching a vision from far away, someone else’s vision through the eyes of the camera – very far away. Can you tell I love the word vision? The TV gives us a telescopic view of someone’s vision that they have created from their imagination, in collaboration. With the support of a creative team, artists have produced films, media content, movies, series etc and broadcasted it publicly from afar. What I came to realize it that I have astral travelled to many places in many films since early childhood, naturally because I have a fluid ability to leave my body and be in the places I see, have seen or will see. It sounds crazy and it is. But when I began to realize that my dreams were not going to co-exist well with this reality for many scientific reasons, my brain automatically looked for ways to keep the juices flowing while in waking state.

I have sunken deep into some of my most relaxed shapes while watching TV, where I have certainly found myself in trance like states. I can almost feel the architecture that I see on a show as if it were around me. My sense of sight shifts as if I were actually in the camera’s place, or simply in the scene I’m watching – like a fly on the wall maybe at times. I take in the sounds, colors, textures and even develop feelings as if I were part of the fictitious (or not) world I see on the set and essentially disappear from reality. This used to happen a lot, believe it or not, when I watched soap operas as a teen. After school when I was the only one home, I would throw on the afternoon soaps and get lost in a very unrealistic world in my head, letting the real world dissipate. On commercial breaks I would jet to the kitchen for cereal and peanut butter sandwiches, but land right back in the drama. It is no wonder I went into acting on stage when I was an adolescent, and why my parents had a video camera on all the time filming me like a movie star. I still disappear just like that, as soon as I’m watching a show, even right to this very day.

My emotional connection with the camera, even with basic photography, has always been an indicator that I have circuitry in my brain designed for vision in another dimension. My ability to essentially travel the world of film, has also been one of the very things that has helped me to soften and rewire my hardwired brain. When I was little, I started to notice signs of family trauma lines surfacing. I became devoted to forming sacred spaces for myself that included imaginary places in television as a form of emotional safety and comfort. Films gave me a view into my own figmental world that is safe from things that were really out of my control in my life growing up. The juggle to balance demands from school socially and academically were exhausting, I was different and constantly struggling. I felt very vulnerable in my teen, the repercussions of my parent trauma eventually surfaced and they didn’t have the skills to keep me safe or protect me.

think subconsciously I had been secretly trying to utilize this “gift” of vision everywhere I went; it was my escape even in class. One day we were all pulling out our microscopes to dissect a lamb eyeball in grade 8, my teacher gave us the option to just watch and take a hit on our final grade. I was definitely not going to dissect a lamb eyeball for personal reasons. We were still required to use our microscopes to learn how they worked, I think we were given an amoeba in a petri dish or something to look at. I actually spent the entire hour looking in and out of my microscope at my eyes. I saw a lot that day, and I’m sure the teacher was wondering why I was so intrigued. He didn’t seem opposed to me experimenting.

I think it is important when comparing the “real world” to “the astral world”, to note that working with dreams is absolutely not without its risks. But I think anyone would agree that the real world is definitely more dangerous. I personally feel safer in my dreams. It is important to stay connected to the real-world during dream travel, and there are exercises to practice safety and ways to maintain boundaries in dreams. Safety always comes first. Full stop. The astral world is an endless realm of landscapes, strong feelings, abstract visuals and otherworldly sensations. How could one not want to know what the dream world holds?

I am so grateful astral travel was a skill that was available for me to develop. I am certain it is built into me, as was my inner compass. These skills are as essential as the ones I use in the waking world and mundane reality. I don’t necessarily want to bring attention to mental illness here, that is a different subject for another time. However, I do want to draw on the way mental health (which I feel is its own subject apart from mental illness) contributes to better dream states and the understanding of dreams.

My setbacks with mental health and spiritual wellness started even before birth, and I was aware of that at a very young age. I willingly came here to witness this dimension and bring “home” wisdom through experience. I recognize that I have not only adapted to a very different environment than where I am from, but have also been actively healing my nervous system since the shock of “leaving”. My brain is highly neurodivergent, I don’t think in a linear fashion or learn in chronological steps – pretty much ever. More often than not, I am sporadically jumping all over my own map and making up my own rules. I highly rely on my own theories and think more than I do talk – in my own language. It has been difficult to develop psychologically in a world that is not built for a neurodivergent girl who perhaps spends more time in her dreams than in this physical existence. On top of my already predisposed psychosomatic issues like anxiety and depression, my nervous system goes into automatic protection mode easily from being overstimulated in this concrete reality.

Some people hang out on the couch and get lost in a show, I get lost in the whole world around the show that my imagination creates. It has been one of the ways I have worked through some of the hardest things I have had to face. I’m not kidding when I say that some of my darkest times have felt like what I’m seeing in a series I am watching. I am in no way saying TV is a therapist, in fact I am an advocate for sitting in the uncomfortable space life holds for us. I meditate, I cry, I just sit or lay in bed sometimes in quiet. But when I am super frustrated, I find television holds a space for constructively engaging with pent up parts of myself. Parts that want to express themselves by going for a run, but I have to be home with the kids and they need dinner and an early bedtime. Or I want to go shopping and treat myself, but they aren’t happy at the mall, and I am a single mom without anyone to babysit most of the time. So I ask them if they want to watch some funky fashion television and we dress up and dance to the runway music. Sometimes TV has just the inspiration I need, without the risks or costs that come with the real world. It’s simple. It was created to offer an outlet right in our own homes.

My mom and dad loved indie, foreign and old films and watched movies a lot together, ever since I was very young it was a favorite downtime. They worked around the clock as restaurant owners at their diner and deli in the 1980s and 90s, then eventually they joined the entrepreneurial world as business owners. Watching movies was also one of the ways we bonded as a family. I don’t know if they thought very deeply about what they were watching, they usually had glasses of wine at their sides, and almost nothing was able to break my dads concentration. My mom couldn’t sit through a movie if her life depended on it. She would go get laundry and fold it, then make tea, then put dinner leftovers away, then take a phone call. For me, I would move around and stretch, even practice a whole yoga sequence sometimes. I would talk a lot and ask questions and response to shocking events in movies. And when my parents finally went to bed I would stay up and watch a movie by myself, wrapped up in a blanket on the floor. Sometimes I would stay up all night and in my visual cortex was a kaleidoscope of scenes from whatever I had watched.

My brain was wired to conjure up stories, I can relate everything I watch to what is going on inside of me and in my life. I build my whole world on the dreams I have when sleeping – and my dreams have always been inspired by the characters and events I watch. Additional built in features of my brain is my photographic memory for dreams, and my memory for songs. When I hear a song just a few times, the muscle memory that lyrics and music are embedded into shapes itself. It’s autonomous, I am almost channeling the music by the 3rd or 4th time I hear it…if I like the song. Similarly, my dreams seem to store themselves in a place where I can almost go back to the actual dream itself. Though dreaming has been blessing it has also been a distraction, I’m constantly thinking about them and sometimes nothing else. A big part of that is my longing to go “home”. Dreams are my connection to my true home. My transition into this world felt urgent, and it’s a pretty crazy world, I strongly feel the need to protect my vision and abilities which has come down to making them top priority, no compromises. Because they have been endangered during my more difficult mental health battles, I don’t risk them by getting too busy to keep them alive. My memory has become extremely fragile at times. I’m in awe of the memory and how it works. Many people memorize information, I memorize pathways in my dreams.

We moved around a lot as a family, like sometimes 2 times in a year. There was a time I was so burnt out from trying to make friends so many times. It was wearing on me trying to stay true to my purpose while meeting the demands and pressures of society. I was so mentally exhausted, I was insecure, I thought my dreams were just a blur that had no real place in existence. But something within me fought these self-doubts and I started consciously drawing meaning from my dreams into the real world. I started having dreams on new levels, with more insight into my mind and my purpose. I realized how important my dreams were, especially when going through a breakdown like this one. After I came through the crisis, I got a job at a movie store. Watching movies and dreaming were my life aside from working and being a mom, movies were my books if I were a bookworm.

In 2008 I was unemployed and I entered a phase where all I could afford to do was watch VHS movies that I would buy from thrift stores. I was so poor I couldn’t afford DVDs or going to the movie theater, shopping at a mall or going out for dinner. I was a divorced woman, living in a small apartment with my kids, single mother with no cable television. All I had was a tiny little 20 inch or so television with bunny ears, this thing must have dated back to the late 1980s. One day I was offered a 32inch tube tv from my sister’s partner, they were moving and had upgraded to a flat screen. Of course, I accepted without hesitation. I was so excited, and the day I got it as soon as the kids were asleep, I hooked up the VHS player and got ready to roll. Even though I didn’t have cable I screwed the long white cord – that came with every apartment – into the back of the television so the kids didn’t get a hold of it. Suddenly out of nowhere cable appeared on the TV. It was Mad Men, one of – if not the very first episode. The beginning credits were playing, and the classy theme song was bouncing around the room as my eyes followed the abstract black and white graphics. I was glued to the TV for the whole episode, as you can imagine, the “surprise cable” was a shot of pure dopamine. I felt like I had just time travelled to the 1950s straight into New York. I feel a strong connection with midcentury modern textures, colors, patterns; my colors with my brown eyes and hair are the classic midcentury fall tones. The 1960s bring out a naturally psychedelic side of me – a little bit hippie, a little bit flower child. I always wished I could live in that time because trends weren’t a daily thing, they were seasonal. Furniture was a statement, photographs and movies were created with real film, carpet was shaggy. Connection was human.

Those decades were also amazing in terms of scientific development, especially when it comes to the psychedelics. There was a pretty significant gap between people who used alcohol to cope with stress and people who explored the benefits of psychedelics. If we only knew then what we know now. We are just skimming the surface of how psychedelics encourage neural plasticity and even new growth of neurons, if this had been possible during the cultural movement we would be more advanced now in healing and recovery than we could ever imagine.

Mad Men is a psychedelic television experience for me, not only because it is a trip back in time, but also because the intimate encounters with characters would be mind-altering experiences in today’s world. My depth perception of psychological issues hit a new level watching it, in particular through the leading male character. Don Draper’s neurotic tendencies seemed to drive him further into his addictions, leading to severe repression that wound up hindering his ability to keep up with his own genius – or even his own identity. The complex trauma of his childhood stalked him, no matter how much he manipulated himself with sensualities and pleasure, his painful memories still drove him mad. He seemed to always seize the moment in the way he expanded his creative genius, despite his severe triggers, he widened his vision from the narrow tunnel of the human life span. I saw into the physiological effects of being wrapped up in a double life, literally, it was like having 2 hearts. One storyline became two, I wanted more than anything for him to grieve his past and find a deep appreciation for what he had. But in his lifelong isolation who could console him? Not even the most nurturing of souls. My empathy skyrocketed constantly for the whole generation, I wished over and over that he could just replace the life he had suffered with the life he accidentally took on. My radical view of existence was now an all-encompassing, expanding radius of lifetimes, intergenerational layers and my memory opened up even more to the possibility of existing in multiple dimensions.

Advertising was the primary connection between reality and the outer limits at that time; their imaginations were all those men of the industry had to draw from in order to depict the most utopic and extraordinary life everyone “dreamed” of. I think some of the heaviest influences of that time were space-age concepts and futurist themes. Ground-breaking technological advancements enabled the economy to provide affordable luxurious, lavish, lifestyles to anyone captured through just a page in a magazine.

In a counter struggle, psychiatrists and doctors who grew concerned for the welfare and well-being of humanity, objected to the American Dream claiming that the ideologies presented in advertisements were misleading and masking the truth. Many medical professionals published works about their research on the adverse effects that many products had on health, such as alcohol and tobacco use. These professionals urged advertising firms and companies to include warnings and medical information on their products and in their ads. The exercise of authority to essentially control the advertising part of the media still exists, while everyone has a mind of their own, we all share basic needs.

Despite the fact that this series was a fiction inspired only somewhat by real political movements and true events, it awakened my conscience to the many ways advertising permeated our anatomy back then. Our minds have been manipulated and our senses have been dulled by the exaggerations of everyday life on commercials. Our social habits and behaviors in relationship have been misaligned with what we were designed for as a species. Upon getting to know Draper through Mad Men, I came to understand that we have been stimulated and shaped by brands, logos, and slogans that have desensitized us. It’s mind-blowing how far we have come, in just half a century we acclimatized from nothing but the sun, moon and stars to the technology that today dominates most of the world.

Advertising has benefited hugely from technology, but only few in comparison have benefited from advertising. It supports market growth that drives the cost of our resources up for mass working populations. Inflation is a subtle force that increases profits for companies while putting strain on “average” consumers. The detrimental effects of this imbalance of shared global wealth have remained hidden by distractions. The media uses tactics like manipulation and causing a sense of urgency to deter people from thinking about and for themselves. By using geographical barriers, extreme poverty, war, famine, political unrest and violence television networks occupy all of our time. They have been able to keep us so busy and on high alert that we don’t have time to truly devote to ourselves. We are dependent on working enough to meet not only our own needs but also the needs of people we don’t even know. People in politics through taxes, in baking through interest rates and inflation, through advertising in product and of course in entertainment. An exhaustive list of critical global issues has risen just as quickly as the population; many people have slipped through the cracks. Yet the economy is still higher in priority than the basic fundamental needs of humanity not being met.

The show gave me a window to the way life was when my mother was a child in the 1960s growing up as a ward of the court in foster care. In the big city of Manhattan miles and miles away there was a class of wealthy people who were struggling to keep companies above water and hook consumers in buying, for the sake of the economy. My mom loved fashion, her dream was to not have to work and be able to buy whatever she wanted, this was the exact illusion that most people were living in -and many still are. Who wouldn’t want financial freedom? To me it’s a dream that would be more possible without money, because money has divided us. The people who invented money also created the illusion that consumers would benefit equally despite having less money than the people at the top running the companies.

The economy in Mad Men required consumers to be subservient, companies provided advertising firms with profits. When not enough people were consuming because the gap between the wealthy and average workers grew, advertising was at risk of collapsing. That’s when new housing would get built, people would move closer to the mirage and companies would see more money. It was almost as if the wealthy had a superiority complex, thinking that there was only room for so many at the top. As if the CEO of a razor company didn’t use a razor just like anyone else. Apples are free, cultivating them is something anyone can learn to do, charing someone for an apple is like charging someone to look at clouds.

Back then it all made sense, The American Dream. There was enough work to go around so that you could get your needs met. But if you wanted beauty, it was in expensive makeup. If you wanted enjoyment, you needed to fly on the most popular airline. If you wanted to relax you needed alcohol. If you wanted to look good, you needed tight jeans. Nothing was ever enough. And is it now? Are we ever satisfied with what we get?

Companies were demanding, as soon as numbers dropped they would storm up the elevator and throw a tantrum. This was when Don knew exactly how to take the edge off. Even when he hit a wall it just drove him to take his anguish back to the drawing table and turn it into gold. He could advertise lies, and they would sell.

One thing no one can advertise is dreams. You can talk about them, describe them, promote them, try and draw or paint them and even sing about them or like me, write about them.

They aren’t like apples though, or hay, or wheat. The universe works in the most intelligent ways when it comes to dreams. You need emotional wealth to invest in dreams, to be in touch with the Universe, and have emotional intelligence. Dreams are not for sale; they can’t be harvested like potatoes. You can pour all the vodka you want into a tumbler and sell it in a magazine. But dreams are protected.

And at the end of the day, dreams are what I reach for.

a girls and her dreams