The Dreambody as a Path out of Western Dissociation

Karen Jaenke

The dreambody is a little-known phenomenon, yet when attended to with disciplined practice, transmits potentially potent transformative effects, even reorganizing fundamental dimensions of the Western self. The esoteric concept of the dreambody and dreambody practices are herein explored for their role in dissolving the masterful ego of the Western self, healing Western dissociation, and generating a more porous selfhood.

The role of the body in dreaming has largely been overlooked, as the dream literature tends to focus on the symbolic and emotional aspects of dreams. The general emphasis on symbolic interpretation can result in a mentalized approach to dreams, neglecting the deeper truth that dreams arise from the body and generate shape-shifting alterations to the dreamer’s body sense. In The Power of Myth, 20^th century mythologist Joseph Campbell emphasizes the bodily foundations that underlie human imagination, dreams and myths. Campbell asserts that dreams come from the imagination and “imagination is grounded in the energy of the organs of the body, and these are the same in all human beings. Since imagination comes out of one biological ground, it is bound to produce certain themes” (1988, p. 42).

For Campbell, myths and dreams are storied depictions of the struggles, conflicts and potentials found within the body.

[D]reams are manifestations in image form of the energies of the body in conflict with each other…. Myth is a manifestation in symbolic images, in metaphorical images, of the energies of the organs of the body in conflict with each other. This organ wants this, that organ wants that. The brain is one of the organs (Campbell, 1988, p. 39).

Dreams transmit not only images, emotions and sensations, but also energy. Our dreams animate the organs and zones of the body with psychic energy, thereby illuminating somatic patterns that otherwise drop below the radar of conscious awareness. By infusing the body with psychic energy along with corresponding imagery, dreams shine a laser beam on underlying bodily conflicts and tensions, heightening awareness of subliminal body processes. For example, a threat in a dream that escalates to a crisis, in which the dreamer is unable to scream for help, will likely be accompanied by sensations of constriction within the throat. Witnessing a horrific scene of evil may be accompanied by shock and constriction in the eyes. Dreams of flying may be matched by a sense of lightness and freedom within the body. Especially beatific scenes fill the body with expansiveness and bliss. In other words, imagery and bodily responses together form a highly interactive system within the dreaming body. With a willing participant, dreams persist in illuminating both conflicts and higher potentials stored in the body, ultimately driving towards “a completely awakened body… and vitalized person” (Jaenke, 2004, p. 9).

Concept of the Dreambody

The dreambody can be defined as a subtle dimension of perception whose expression is especially heightened in dreaming and post-dream states. Other closely-related concepts for the dreambody are the subtle body, energy body and inner body, terms mainly found in esoteric spiritual writings. Dreambody awareness, while inherently subtle, can be accessed and cultivated by means of spiritual or contemplative practices. Yet today’s radically precarious ecological plight calls for this ancient esoteric wisdom to become more generally-shared human knowledge, as subtle body awareness enhances field awareness, generates resonance between separate beings or entities, and sensitizes one to the delicate balance of life.

Arnold Mindell (2002) coined the term dreambody, which he defined as “a multi-channeled information sender asking you to receive its message in many ways and notice how its information appears over and over again in dreams and body symptoms” (2002, p. 33). Mindell differentiates several different channels or modes through which dreams and body processes seek to communicate information: the visual, auditory, kinesthetic, proprioceptive, and world channels. The first four refer to seeing, hearing, moving, and sensing/feeling, while the last refers to outer events that grab our attention. The proprioceptive channel, of special concern here, refers to inner body awareness, or sensing and feeling the messages and sensations occurring inside the body, such as pain, tightness, cramping, pressure, blockage, constriction, tingling, pleasure, etc.

On A Personal Note

My personal interest in the phenomenon of the dreambody was foisted upon me through dramatic and chaotic energetic openings that accompanied my dreams. As a young adult, the reality of the dreambody was thrust upon me through overwhelming energy releases accompanying my dreams, especially those carrying potent archetypal content. Having intentionally opened a channel to my dreams, in turn my dreams opened a channel into my energy body.

The concept of the dreambody provided a mental map to make sense of these energetic upheavals that spontaneously overpowered my familiar grasp on reality, tossing aside my well-honed cognitive schemas and personality structures, dramatically rearranging my somatic awareness. Dreams regularly appeared with shape-shifting effect, with different zones of my body amplified and illuminated by intense infusions of energy. The energetic upheaval accompanying my dreams persisted across multiple decades, gradually whittling away my ordinary bounded Western self. Moreover, the energy releases were not neutral. If I resisted or blocked them in any way, they would turn darkly into a migraine, absolutely leveling and disabling me for the rest of the day. On a practical level, I was repeatedly confronted with the underlying reality of an energy body and the challenge of how to work with it.

Seeking to relate to the explosive energetic openings, I noticed they were often localized in a specific zone of the body, as if a laser beam shone on that area. Eventually I came to surmise that the multiple early traumas I suffered, including birth trauma and a near-death experience at age two, entailed a severe assault on my young and permeable self; these early traumas disrupted the coalescing of the psycho-somatic-energetic ground of my nascent being. Since my helplessness made it impossible to fight or flee the traumatic threats, the alternative, hard-wired response of freezing took over. In Waking the Tiger, Peter Levine (1997) developer of the somatic experiencing method for healing trauma, estimates that the organism’s physiological and energetic response to an imminent vital threat is many times greater than orgasm.

For me, maternal bonding and attachment that potentially could have ameliorated some of the freezing and body armoring did not occur. My dreams, I concluded, became the vehicle for surfacing and releasing the trapped energies leftover from the early traumas, with imagery providing insight into these processes. However, the release of these repressed energies, as part of my biographical healing, simultaneously opened a cosmic portal into the underlying energetic dimension of reality. Physicist David Bohm calls this underlying generative ground the “implicate order,” as distinguished from the explicate forms of surface phenomena (1980).

Energetic Worldview

Due to widespread unfamiliarity and some inherent difficulty in grasping the dreambody concept, it’s helpful to consider the worldview in which the notion of the energy body arose. The dreambody, energy body and subtle body—roughly interchangeable terms—emerge from a worldview that recognizes the energetic foundations of reality. This energetic view of reality was revived in modern times with Einstein’s famous equation E=mc², indicating that the mass of solid objects is convertible into energy. Within a conventional Newtonian view of the universe, which focuses on solid objects rather than the underlying energetic basis of reality, the concept of the dreambody will remain forever elusive. Yet it is noteworthy that the modern energetic worldview of quantum science has an ancient counterpart in shamanism and mysticism, predating the object-oriented worldview of Newtonian physics.

Many traditional cultures have viewed this world as being filled with energy, conceived in various ways. The Greek pneuma, Indian prana, Tibetan loong, Chinese qi, Japanese ki, and Native American mana are all believed to be present in the human body and the surrounding environment. Mana, like the energy of the physicists, is thought to underlie, empower and regulate all physical and mental phenomena (Wallace, p. 15).

If one accepts that energy is the underlying essence of the cosmos—that the objects we see and interact with are but energy posing in different solid forms—then logically, the human body is also, by extension, most fundamentally composed of energy.

The revelation of energy as the essence underlying all of creation leads to a worldview in which the microcosm of the human being and the macrocosm of the universe are intrinsically related. This vision of the cosmos, in which the part reflects the whole and vice versa, is “present in all esoteric schools of thinking” (Riffard, 1983, p. 34). The dreambody, energy body or subtle body is the faculty of perception that mediates our experience of the interconnectedness of macrocosm and microcosm. Without access to the energy body, we lose perception of the interconnected wholeness between self and world. This radical idea points to the positive contribution of the dreambody in fostering a sense of intimacy between self and world—a vital awareness necessary to motivate our care for the planet.

The Subtle Body

Despite its general unfamiliarity in mainstream circles, the concept of the subtle body enjoys a long and esteemed history in esoteric spiritual traditions, along with cross-cultural attestation. The Eastern model presented here is useful, accessible, and intact, though it is just one cultural mapping of subtle realities. Other models and maps can be found in Indigenous, African, Middle Eastern and Western traditions.

The earliest written mention of the subtle body, found in the Upanishads, 4^th-5^th century BCE, speaks of psycho-spiritual proclivities arising from a subtle anatomy, loosely associated with the anatomy of the gross physical body. This system of subtle awareness can be explained in modern terms by the complex neural networks that extend like branches on a tree throughout the human body. The neural networks feed the major organs of the body located along the spinal column.

According to ancient spiritual traditions, the subtle body is composed of both energy centers and energy channels. The centers are known in Sanskrit as chakras, literally wheels, while the channels connect the various centers. In Chinese medicine, these channels are called meridians, circuits through which chi, or vital energy, travels.

In classic Hindu teachings, the chakras are anatomically overlaid onto the major organs systems located along the spinal column—brain, visual cortex, throat, heart, solar plexus and lungs, stomach, reproductive organs, and organs of elimination near the base of the spine. Each of these centers is fed by intricate neural networks, making possible the heightened powers of perception in these zones of the body. Carl Jung referred to the chakras as “psychic localizations” or “localizations of consciousness” (1976, p. 11), suggesting that the lens of perception can vary depending on which zone of the body is neurologically activated.

The value of distinguishing discrete perceptual centers within the body lies in the increased differentiation it offers to the more general notion of “the energy body.” Each bodily center relates to a distinct set of physiological and psychological sensitivities. These different zones of sensitivity contribute specific lenses of awareness to the total knowing system. For example, the third eye is associated with intuition and perception of invisible dimensions; the heart is the source of feeling and relational capacity; the belly digests life, but also signals the presence of something inimical to life through nausea.

Eckhart Tolle (1999, 2005) introduced the term “the inner body,” referring to “an intensely alive energy field” that lies beyond the outer form of the body, carrying “a feeling of aliveness inside it”, towards which one can cultivate awareness (2005, p. 52). According to Tolle, inner body awareness “not only anchors you in the present moment, it is a doorway out of the prison that is the ego” (2005, p. 53). The inner body only becomes accessible to awareness when the ego loosens its grip; hence this concept remains forever elusive to the egoic mind.

By whatever term it is known, the subtle body transmits the vital life force and alternates between states of openness and flow versus blockage and constriction. When a person is optimally balanced, energy flows freely through the channels and chakras; these pleasant streams of subtle vibration running throughout the body both reflect and add to inner coherence. In flow states, the nervous system is optimally regulated.

Additionally, when the chakras are open rather than blocked, they provide an extremely refined mode of perception beyond the five senses, that contributes to attunement with both self and other. The chakras register nuanced disturbances and fluctuations in vitality and energy. This highly-discriminating perceptual system is internally keyed into the organism’s balance and well-being, while also translating into keen awareness of others and the surrounding field, mediating awareness of fluctuations in the surrounding environment.

However, blockages and disturbances in the energy body occur through many factors, including injury, trauma, physical distress, emotional and mental stress, false belief systems, dysfunctional habits, limiting social conditioning, and environmental stress. Energy medicine emerged in order to address these blockages and the reduced functioning that ensues. Energy medicine “is an umbrella term for any therapy that addresses the energy circuits in our physical or subtle bodies to regain balance and facilitate our body’s innate healing mechanisms” (Retrieved from: http://www.healingenergy.com.au/what-is-energetic-healing/ July 24, 2019).

Subtle body awareness is generally not accessible to normal egoic consciousness, due to the barrier that the ego erects, but this subliminal form of perception is activated during non-ordinary states of consciousness, especially dreams. A primary impetus behind our dreams is to monitor and report on the state of our vital life force, or libido, and balance. Dreams operate as a feedback loop by generating images and storylines about our underlying state of being. Dream imagery is further amplified by the accompanying emotions, sensations, and energetic stirrings. When the dreamer intentionally adopts practices to attend to these subtler elements of dreams, the somatic and energetic layers of dream experience are opened up. Thus, an attentive and disciplined dreamer may observe that dreams progressively seek to awaken, animate, and open every major zone or chakra of the body.

Dual Aspect Monism

One challenge of the chakra model coming from the East is the tendency to create a reification of these structures, losing the sense of living, moving, changing active process. A noteworthy alternative explanation for the perception into the energetic dimension of reality comes from Jeffrey Kripal (2017). He suggests that the intense suffering of trauma creates a crack in the self that dissolves the socialized ego or egoic mind, and acts as a trigger for altered states and cosmic consciousness, leading to perceptions of nondual reality. Before him, William James posited “the existence of a Sea of Consciousness or Ocean of Mind”, from which little dribbles drip into space-time as human personalities and into which these same human egos dissolve again at death” (Kripal, 2017, p 195). Other explorers of the farther reaches of consciousness have adopted similar terms, such as the superconscious, the SuperMind, and the Mind at Large. The egoic mind or socialized ego normally filters out the objective SuperMind, resulting in a reductive and fragmented approach to knowledge (Kripal, 2017, p. 195). Though screened out by our everyday selves, the deeper, more comprehensive truth, arising from the Mind at Large, includes perception of this underlying field of oneness, to which trauma can serve as an opening. When the reality-splitting ego temporarily collapses or disappears, it becomes possible to enter a mystical state and merge with the cosmos.

In this model, known as dual aspect monism, reality is “ontologically or fundamentally ‘one’ but epistemologically or experientially ‘two’” (Kripal, 2017, p. 197). That is, we can perceive reality in two different ways—either according smaller fragmented bits from our socialized ego, or from an expanded altered state of consciousness that glimpses the underlying cosmic unity. The One World, our true cosmic condition, emerges from a deeper quantum substratum (or super-stratum), from which our ordinary phenomenal experience has been split off. Thus this model of reality posits as primary the seamless cosmic oneness.

Practices for Accessing the Dreambody

According to Mindell (2002), the proprioceptive channel of inner body sensing, along with the visual channel of imagery, are activated and amplified during states of dreaming and upon awakening. Through the dreambody, body tensions are released and growth potentials are unleashed. By intentionally bringing observing awareness to this boiling psycho-somatic cauldron of heightened imagery, emotions and body sensations, keen insights at the level of subtle body knowing, our deepest mode of perception, can occur.

Moreover, according to Eugene Gendlin, author of Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams (1986), the body provides a reliable guide and check on the potential symbolic meanings of the dream. The dream leaves an impression in the body, and this impression, or felt sense, offers a somatically-grounded means for discerning the dream’s meaning. If we are not attending to the somatic aspect of our dreams, but only to the symbolism and emotions (the focus of most dream literature), we are missing a significant component of the total dreaming experience, as well as a vital guide and corrective to the dream’s meaning.

Dream symbolism inherently carries a multiplicity of potential meanings, due to the way that symbols operate. The etymological roots of the word symbol point to this array of possible meanings; sym = together and ballien = “to throw”, so a symbol throws together any number of images and potential meanings. In order to discern among the plethora of potential interpretations, we can consult the body, which grounds our dream interpretations in the deepest meaning possible, the embodied one.

Gendlin recommends attending to the body’s felt sense and growth direction. The felt sense “is not a mental experience but a physical one. Physical. A bodily awareness of a situation or person or event. An internal aura that encompasses everything you feel and know about the given subject at a given time—encompasses it and communicates it to you all at once rather than detail by detail” (1981, p. 32).

Gendlin’s felt sense, akin to Mindell’s proprioception, both refer to inner body awareness, or sensing and feeling the messages and sensations occurring inside the body, such as pain, tightness, cramping, pressure, blockage, constriction, tingling, streaming, and pleasure. The felt sense is especially amplified during the period of awakening. This liminal phase between sleeping and waking presents a special “transition point in consciousness where there is a vortex or opening to enter the somatic underbelly of the dream, the place that the dream images are literally born and carried in the flesh” (Jaenke, 2004, p. 8).

The term for this transitional state between sleeping and waking, hypnopompia, is derived from Hypnos, referring to the Greek god of sleep, and pompia, literally meaning “sending away,” i.e., the process of being sent away from sleep. Neurologically, the state of hypnopompia is associated with depressed frontal lobe function, and experientially with lingering vivid imagery, creative insights, and heightened bodily sensations. This non-ordinary state of consciousness, a natural part of every 24-hour cycle, offers “a vast gold mine for deep exploration of a cellular, bodily, ancestral kind of knowing” (Jaenke, 2004, p. 8-9). In this naturally-occurring altered state, the dreambody is enlivened and animated.

Gendlin encourages dreamers to adopt a welcoming attitude towards the inchoate, nonverbal felt sense that often accompanies dreams, putting one’s attention on the “felt sense,” and seeing where the energy wants to move, where it opens, expands, or releases. This inner stirring is how life-energy feels when it moves forward. The pro-life, forward-moving, expansive direction acts as an affirmation and guide to the dream’s meaning. Conversely, resistance to life energy brings constriction, tightness and narrowing. With practice, one learns to differentiate the expansive, life-enhancing growth direction, from blockages where there is life-limitation, opposition, and constriction. In other words, among all possible meanings generated by dream symbolism, the most trustworthy one is affirmed by energy stirrings and vitality in the body.

The “felt sense” and the movement of vital energy offer clues to the expansive “growth direction”, or incremental shifts seeking to emerge from within the dreambody. The felt sense is meaningful, but the meaning is initially unknown. Hence this practice requires suspending rational knowing, in favor of trusting and following an emergent process within the body. This preverbal somatic-energetic dimension of the total dreaming process offers a primary indication of the emerging growth possibilities of personhood. In other words, growth happens as we welcome into consciousness the unfamiliar stirrings, inchoate processes, and openings of the dreambody. Inherent in Gendlin’s approach is a profound trust in the deep, guiding wisdom of the body.

By adopting this somatic-energetic approach to our dreams, through attending to the felt sense, we come in touch with the pre-representational dimension of being, or Bohm’s implicate order. Through

a practice of deep sensory awareness during the hypnopompic state, the attentive mind is carried into deep and unknown caverns of cellular memory and somatic awareness, into a primal knowing. [The] return to an archaic way of knowing…[transmits] contact with the primitive igniting spark of the life force. This descent into primeval origins, into an archaic awareness of a primordial animating force, quickens and refreshes the tired stasis of the (post)modern mind. It has the potential to counterbalance and heal the dominant evolutionary direction of human culture… an ever-increasing dissociation from nature (Jaenke, 2004, p. 9).

The felt sense of the dreambody is best accessed in the hypnopompic phase of awakening by laying still, intentionally refraining from making any physical movements. Gross motor movements disturb and dissipate the subtler consciousness of interior body awareness. However, if one does inadvertently move the physical body, by then resuming the exact position of the body at awakening, sometimes the subtler sensations of the dreambody can be recovered. During the transitional phase of hypnopompia, it is also important to short-circuit the waking mind that wants to race forward into planning the activities and solving the problems of the day ahead. Thought patterns of the habitual mind will readily trounce the emergent but fleeting dream images and subtle sensations.

The Dreambody as a Path out of Western Dissociation

The typical Western person may carry in the body-psyche personal trauma along with layers of multi-generational trauma. Since our automatic response to trauma is one of dissociation, layers of trauma also means layers of dissociation. Due to the cumulative effects that accrue from unresolved historic and biographical trauma, the psyche of the typical Westerner typically forms in cultural and familial milieu of trauma and dissociation. Moreover, these pervasive dissociative complexes tend to be institutionalized and normalized by the culture at large, a process known as normative dissociation (Kremer, 2014). Rather amazingly, our dreams, arising from the depths of the collective unconscious, access an archaic place of connected knowing that both predates and dissipates our dissociative patterns. While the surrounding culture at large may not challenge our dissociative patterns, due to its embeddedness in them, our dreams most certainly will.

As the novel imagery of dreams breaks through, a dream practice is needed that undercuts the tendency to filter our dreams through the same dissociative interpretive schemas in which we are already personally and culturally embedded. Gendlin’s somatic practice of checking the dream’s meaning against the body’s response offers a corrective to disembodied interpretations. Noting whether a possible meaning being tried on produces constriction or expansion in the soma-psyche helps to ensure that our dreams are not recycled together with dissociative meaning-making. The dream and felt sense together yield a standpoint outside of the entrenched patterns of dissociation.

When the Western mind surrenders its tendency to repress dreams and bodily knowing, by respecting and honoring the foreignness of dream imagery and the unfamiliar somatic openings, a precious pathway out of dissociation can emerge. Following the movement of life energy—not controllable by the rational mind—places a vital check on overly-mentalized dream interpretation. Whether we stifle and suppress, or welcome and appreciate, the fresh stirrings of subtle energy, positions us either within a life-negating or life-affirming stance at an elemental level. The vitality principle, signaled by this movement of vital energy, becomes a trustworthy guide to the dream’s meaning, grounded in the natural knowing systems of the body. Intrinsically pro-life, the vitality principle refers to that which animates, sustains, and serves the flow of physical and psychic life in oneself and others. It is the underground river of imagination and being. Conscious alignment with the vitality principle means championing the life force energy not only within oneself, but also in others.

Dreams and Nature

A growing body of literature, including Jungian and evolutionary psychology, links dreams with the forces of evolution, nature and the earth. Jung asserted that dreams are the direct voice of nature, and that the archetypes of the collective unconscious actually spring from the earth:

Dreams … are pure nature; they show us the unvarnished natural truth, and … give us back an attitude that accords with basic human nature when our consciousness has strayed too far from its foundation and run into an impasse. (Jung 1970, par 317-18).

[A]rchetypes are … the hidden foundations of the conscious mind, or, to use another comparison, the roots which the psyche has sunk not only in the earth in the narrow sense but in the world in general (Jung, 1970, par. 53).

Meredith Sabini situates our dreams as an invention of evolution: dreams are not limited to our individual lives but arise out of the cumulative experience of our species, which has been millions of years in the making. Based on contemporary neuroscience, it is now established that REM dreaming is a 140-million-year-old function in all mammals and associated with survival via the development of the nervous system and long-term memory storage. (Sabini, 2020).

Moreover, the dreaming function is connected with an evolutionary impulse to maintain balance: In an attempt to maintain homeostasis, the evolved dreaming mind will point out when we are out of balance with ourselves or at risk of jeopardizing the balance of other living systems… (Sabini, 2020).

The Subtle and the Global

It is not patently obvious that the cultivation of subtle awareness bears a significant link to the global ecological crisis. Such an unorthodox claim links a) the subtle, ephemeral awareness associated with dreams and other altered states to b) the stranglehold of the manmade global-industrial complex now threatening every habitat and all living beings across the planet. How can something so fleeting as a flickering moment of lucidity, possibly bear a relationship to our perilous planetary predicament? Or more simply, how does the subtle relate to the global?

Today it is apparent that typical Western self lacks intrinsic relatedness to the planet, as is found among indigenous peoples. A genuine feeling and sensing relationship to the Earth, along with sensitivity to the requirements for ecological balance, are not standard features of Western selfhood. The typical Western personality, a masterful and separate self, overrides and excludes the subtle perceptions mediated by the dreambody. From an ecological standpoint, what is sorely missing in the West’s relations with the planet is the subtle mediating and merging capacities supplied by the dreambody or energy body, allowing for a feeling and sensing kinship with the surrounding environment and the Earth.

The Wisdom of the Subtle

The special value of subtle, inner knowing is highlighted in archetypal and mythological wisdom, especially during unsettling apocalyptic times. According to Michael Meade, in stories found the world over, during precarious times of sweeping change and loss

[t]he inner dream is the only safe haven when the storms rage and the floods of change come around…. When the usual solutions fail to keep things afloat and the mainstream becomes flooded with anomalies, it becomes more important to follow a dream … wiser to reconnect to the intuitive and instinctive realm the way animals sense a storm coming and head for higher ground (2008, p. 106).

As the tide of uncertainty rises in the world, it is time to “depart from the mainstream and seek unfamiliar tributaries of knowledge”… as “something dreaming within us best knows how to shape a vessel for… troubles and tribulations” (Meade, 2008, p. 106). The subtle body, with its subtle knowing system, enables connection to the hidden forces of creation, to the unseen threads woven into the fragile balance of life.

According to Meade, and contrary to conventional wisdom, attending to a hidden aspect of life, heeding the subtle voice, carries secret power to unleash creative energies. At a precarious moment, small shifts in awareness can reverberate through others levels of life, replacing storms of destruction with new waves of creation. Humanity, by awakening to subtle knowing, can unleash generative forces that circumvent the blind spots afflicting the shared collective mindset (Meade, 2008, p.111).

“God turns out to be dwelling in little things that might be overlooked or dismissed as unworthy of our full attention” (Meade, 2008 p. 113). Rather than expecting help from above, the redemptive divine energy is to be found inside oneself (2008, p. 113). “The divine hides in the things of the world causing the smallest entity to have some hidden divinity” (2008, p. 114). Yet to access this hidden creative energy, people must “become willing to bow to the reverence of life and bend low enough so that the heart can rise above the head with its fixed attitudes and strange need to be superior to other elements of creation” (Meade, 2008, p. 115).

The Dreambody and Participatory Consciousness

The presence of numinous psychic energy, infused into the body, emanating from potent archetypal dreams, can shift the dreamer’s consciousness from object-oriented perception into an energetic mode of perception. When object-oriented perception dissolves into energetic perception, boundaries between self and world fade. Self and surrounding environment shift into a single, seamless field of energy and vibrating vitality (Jaenke, 2018). This dissolution of boundaries between self and world generates a form of consciousness known as participatory consciousness, which has been defined as “states of consciousness which are unobstructed by a delusionary sense of a separate self” (Aftab Omer, personal communication, October 28, 2008).

The emergence of participatory consciousness relates to the awakening of the ecological self. A term coined by Arne Naess, the ecological self emerges as one’s sphere of concern expands from the limited personal survival concerns of the ego, to encompass the ecological well-being of the planet (Naess, 1988). Through widening circles of identification, the boundaries of self-interest become extended from egoic self to social self to metaphysical self to ecological self, with an enhancement of life’s meaning. The enlargement of the ego-self to the eco-self translates into environmentally responsible behavior as an expression of self-interest. Similarly, for Warwick Fox, the awakening of the ecological self, a type of a transpersonal self, restores self-interest to the communal ecosphere in which the self is eternally embedded (1990).

Naess’ Deep Ecology entails a rejection of “the man-in-environment image in favor of the relational, total-field image” (1972, p. 95). The common view of “organisms as knots in the biospherical net” is replaced by a “field of intrinsic relations,” (1972), in which the mutual well-being of related entities are perceived as interdependent. This relational view is a participatory worldview.

In “Shallow and Deep,” Naess (1972) critiques one-sided technological approaches to environmental dilemmas, an attitude he named shallow ecology, and argues that only a “deep” transformation of modern society could avert ecological collapse. The creation of sustainable lifeways should be considered not only a matter of environmental technology and economy, but also as a more fundamental issue of worldviews and attitudes toward life. A transformation of human consciousness is now urgently necessary on a wide scale to mitigate ecological catastrophe.

In practice, how does the egoic self shift towards an ecological self? What types of experiences engender a shift along this continuum? Repetitive experiences with the dreambody can erode the egoic self, allowing for the emergence of a more permeable ecological self, along with sensitivity to field phenomena. Through its mediating and merging functions, the dreambody allows one to experience fundamental similitudes between self and other. Dreambody awareness serves as a vital perceptual capacity that opens doorways to intimacy, starting with self-intimacy and then extending into wider circles of interpersonal, communal and planetary intimacy.

Especially potent experiences of the dreambody bring dissolution of the dreamer’s egoic boundaries and an energetic extension into the surrounding space. The diffuse mode of perception engendered by the dreambody permits the egoic self to soften its boundaries and realize that self and environment are not separate. As a recurring experience, this eventually erodes the Western egoic self, making possible movement towards the ecological self.

All photos by author

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Endnotes

¹ Dreams possess a form of intelligence built not only on the anatomy of the human body, as Campbell emphasizes, but also on the foundation of sensation (Jaenke, 2004). Dreams express their truths not only through imagery, but also as bodily impressions. Dreams carry a somatic understructure; that is, dreams amplify certain sensory impressions and energy patterns in the body.

² For more on subtle body dimensions of dreaming, see my article “Expansion and Contraction in the Dreaming Body”. ReVision: Journal of Consciousness and Transformation, 34:1, Winter 2022.

³ According to Tolle, the “inner energy field of your body” serves as the doorway into Being, accessed by feeling the body from within (1999, p. 26-27). The inner body conveys the “life energy, the bridge between form and formlessness” (2005, p. 53). It also strengthens the immune system and the body’s ability to heal itself” (2005, p. 53).

⁴ The most familiar chakra system, originating in Hinduism, identifies seven chakras, while other systems specify between five to nine centers. In German mythology, the nine worlds found along the cosmic tree of Yggdrasil have similarly been associated with nine vertically-arranged perceptual centers of the human body. Western alchemy also contains references to a subtle body. A Native American teacher of mine, Apela Colorado, of the Oneida tribe, confided that all native tribes possessed understanding and maps of the subtle body, passed down via the oral tradition (personal communication, August 8, 2002).

⁵ Energetic healing facilitates the healing process by clearing blocks in the energy fields, repairing and rebalancing the energy so that the body can move to its optimal level of balance from where it is able to access its inherent ability to heal itself. (Retrieved from: http://www.healingenergy.com.au/what-is-energetic-healing/ July 24, 2019).

⁶ Jürgen Kremer and R. Jackson-Paton define normative dissociation as “the disconnection and splitting off of individuals from the cycle of nurturing and being nurtured … as social norm. [It is] a cultural process … that changes Indigenous selves into individualistic, well-bounded modern selves, though the separation is largely unconscious. It leads to the pervasive disregard of emotion, somatic, sexual, dream, nature-connected, other processes that then at least partially become cultural shadow material.” (Ethnoautobiography, 2014, Sebastopol: ReVision Publishing, p. 432-3.)

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