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Dreamtime in Dreamland

(“Dreaming Gaia”, 2020, original encaustic)

Dreamtime in Dreamland

Over the years I’ve logged a lot of time sleeping
With much of that time in dreamland.

I’ve had plenty of mundane dreams,
Years and years of them
Sometimes the dreams themselves
Even lasting for decades
And the experience is not much different
Than watching wet paint dry
Or just living a regular life one day at a time.

But I’ve also had some remarkable dreams.
I don’t think this makes me special
Or comes from being special,
More like the luck of the draw,
Although I think paying attention to all this dreaming
Has set me up to remember more.

In my dreams I have over time 
Created a whole world
One with wonderful cliffs and mountains
Coastlines and villages,
Even cities and concert halls.
I’ve explored a lot of it, sometimes repeatedly,
But there are still whole regions
I know I haven’t explored yet
Like they wait on my own dreamtime bucket-list.

I’ve dreamt of feeling my greatest pain
And greatest pleasure,
Deepest grief and sadness,
And most unexpectedly real happiness.
I’ve been beaten and broken, shot, chopped and stabbed 
Killed and been killed, 
Died and gone to Heaven.
I’ve met great lamas, sadhus and sages
Received their teachings and blessings
And even visited their Purelands.

I’ve been to foreign countries,
And been a foreign person there
Speaking a foreign language
I don’t even understand.

I’ve dreamt of doing things I can’t do
And being things I can’t be
Recently I even dreamt of being a bridge.
I’ve flown, in a car like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
And with my arms outstretched like Superman.
I’ve swum with dolphins and whales
Breathed underwater 
While sitting at the bottom of the sea,
And once became a Humpback whale,
And interestingly enough that experience
Became unrememberable at that point.

I’ve gone on pilgrimages 
And dreamt of doing lots of meditation retreats
In a variety of forms and traditions
With a variety of others, some familiar, many not.
I’ve done psychedelic drugs and gotten high
And done them with no effect.
Once after being in hospital without sleep for eight days
I fought zombies up and down the West Coast
In a lucid dream that lasted for two years
While I slept for 17 hours straight.

I’ve dreamt of past lives
That help make sense of this one.
While often in this life’s I’m not my familiar self.
Sometimes I’m in a play on stage
Where I don’t even know my role or lines.
Many times I’ve been back at school
Needing to find my locker or classroom, 
To take a test or final
In a class I’ve never attended or studied for.
Sometimes these dreams are like time warps
Where I’m back again doing the same thing, 
Maybe a few months or year ahead 
Of where it finished off last time.
Sometimes these are of relationships
Or jobs, or places I lived 
With people I loved,
Which I’d thought I’d resolved long before.

I have seen this world destroyed
Like a modern day Book of Revelations.
But it isn’t my dreamtime world that’s ever destroyed
It just grows more and more familiar.

When I can’t take a photograph
Or have trouble just walking up the street
Having to use my arms instead to swim 
Through the thick almost solid air
Or the breaks don’t work when driving
I’m reminded I’m dreaming,
But it doesn’t allow me to take that photo
Or move my body or stop the car any easier.

I’ve confronted other dream beings
Asking them where they are from
Where they were born
And who were their parents
Only to have them run away
Protesting, “No, no, no…”
With fingers in their ears.
And that was all because I knew
They were only aspects of my own mind,
Just trying to trap me in the reality of the illusion.
While other times I’m pretty sure the beings I meet
Are real, and not something I have created
Let alone could.

I’ve met beings of other dimensions
Who are clearly superior
And communicate with telepathy,
And I have been healed by such beings
In profoundly deep and lasting ways.
Once after being taken by aliens
And given electroshock therapy
In their space craft.
Once at a party with beings who looked human
But operated at a quantum level higher, 
And then when done, given an elixir
That transported me back to this world 
Through a sky blue portal.

I’ve had dreams within dreams
That have lasted a lifetime, 
Only to awake within them with relief
To a parallel life more real 
Than any I’ve lived elsewhere.

In my dreamworld I’ve climbed a lot of rocks
And fallen off more than a few.
Sometimes I wake up 
And am able to go back into the same dream.
Once I awoke and remembered 
Having just been meditating 
In nondual one pointed samadhi
And then tried in vain to sustain it when awake in bed,
Only to realize perhaps I dream of such things
From time to time
Without ever even knowing it,
Because in nondual samadhi there is nothing
To remember.

And that that is good enough,
Since in the dream, 
I have truly been there and done that,
And that in the end
This is true of every dream;
A real experience in dreamtime 
Which effects and changes us,
Adds years of experience
Or maybe even subtracts some,
Whether we know it or not,
Whether we care or not.

Clearly dreamtime doesn’t care what we think,
Or even if we think.
What it seems to care more about
Is that we have simply connected.

(8/21/25)

Copyright © James Moore | Year Posted 2025

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