Ever since my first major bicycle tour 20 years ago, bicycle touring has become a central recurring theme in my dreams. In fact, I find myself bicycle touring in dreams so often that from time to time I’ve wondered whether my dream-self is simply on bicycle tour all the time, and that the places I dream of are places I’ve arrived at by bicycle. The other night, in my dreams, I was in such a place, a stopover on a bicycle tour. In this dream, my dream-self was enjoying incredibly vivid, sensuous memories of previous places passed through on bicycle tour. And as I began to wake, still in that liminal space between dreaming and full waking consciousness, I continued to savor these vivid memories, never doubting their validity, until I realized with a start that I had never actually been to these places that, just a moment before, I had “remembered” with such stunning clarity and realism.
But my dream-self, tracing its own contiguous route through elastic landscapes, recognizes these places, these memories, without doubt.
Thanks, Julian…some thoughts about dreams…
“A dream not understood is like a letter not opened.” Talmud
“Suppose someone told you that there was something that spoke to you every night, that always presented you with a truth about your life and soul, that was tailor-made to your individual needs and particular life-story, and that offered to guide you throughout your lifetime and connect you with a source of wisdom beyond yourself. And, furthermore, suppose all of this was absolutely free. Naturally you would be astonished that something like this existed. Yet this is exactly the way it is with dreams.” John Sanford
So, Julian, what is the truth about your life and soul in this dream? It cannot merely be that you prefer bike travel to planes, trains or automobiles. John Neafsey wrties, “The Dream is revealed or shown to us in our mind’s eye as a kind of guiding image for our life.” Tell us more about this guiding image of your life…..
All the best–keep dreaming big dreams! kc
Hi Julian,
Fabulus picture! Hope all is well. Laurene