Hi all,
I recently had a conversation with a newer friend where we were sharing some of our “histories” with each other. It is always fascinating to hear how I talk about my histories now in relationship to how I used to tell them when I was younger and even just from a few years ago. So different.
Sometimes, my dreamers will tell me that they appreciate how I “reframe” something that we are working on in their work. It’s so funny because I don’t feel like I reframe, I feel the dreams have taught me – and my dreamers – how to move the lens around.
Actually, reframing can sometimes take us away from a truth, not toward. And even justify destructive behaviour.
Like, on a personal level, I could say that being mean and even emotionally abusive to someone who was mean and emotionally abusive to me – like my mom was – is not just okay but necessary, is “setting boundaries”. No. Setting boundaries can be done assertively, yes, especially when working with someone who is abusive, but it is not about being abusive back and it does not have to be mean.
Like, on a cultural level, reframing abduction, deportation and enslavement of people as “immigration” or that “slavery wasn’t so bad” for the enslaved. Like, building camps that feel a lot like concentration camps to hold people based on racism as humane and important for the safety of a country.
But changing the lens, or widening the lens, to the lenses offered by the dreams is different.
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Last week, we talked about how, at the root of many things, is a narrative war. We are seeing and experiencing this in my country now in even more obvious extremes than usual – all sides of all the fences weaving or “reframing” their own agendas and narratives. Narratives that are becoming laws that hurt folks. Laws and policies based on twisted narratives that are excusing the funding of genocide and other acts in the world.
And we do this in our personal lives – especially when public narratives and culture cultivate and give permission to this kind of “reframing” or twisting of truth.
Thinking of all of this and telling my story with a new friend brought me back to some of what happened for me when I was part of a dream organization many years ago. Because it is where I learned we can even use dreams to twist narratives in our internal war of narratives.
When I was part of this organization that was dedicated to dreamwork, it was a process that was truly exciting and magical in the beginning. We had a narrative, when we began, that the purpose was to create a space for people to grow in their own work and, if they wanted, to learn how to work with other people and their dreams. We formed and grew the organization, at first, in a very natural and organic way – from a place of excitement and purpose and devotion to the dreams.
But, like many organizations, the narrative changed after a while. While we still held the narrative of making space for people, it became more and more about making space for a few of the teachers and their ideas of dreams and the dreams of others in the community. The narrative slid to the idea of making sure the few teachers were to be in the world and that this would help everyone. It became about promoting their ideas and ideology and not about the actual dreams and teachings from the dreams about dreams.
A “reframing” using the original intention, but shifting it to, really, the opposite. Not about all, but about a few. Not about exploring dreams in a larger, evolutionary way, but through one or two people’s personal beliefs. And when people began to object or question this, they were “outed” and their dreams were used against them. Meaning, their dreams were “reframed” to focus on a “pathological” aspect and twisting that to be only about the organization.
This happened to me, of course. It happened to many people. I had a simple dream where a bright and brilliant girl told me that she “hated” the organization. Not in a hateful way, just calmly, stating fact. The “reframing” of this dream was not about being curious about why my girl in a dream would say that, not about exploring this. It became about how I was a person of “hate” and was not to be trusted in the organization.
To be fair, I did carry anger then – which is different from hate – and I was questioning how we were doing things in the organization.
But not from a place of hate – from a place of worry. And concern. A place of finding my voice. This part of me, this soul part of me that was the girl in the dream, did not like what was happening in the organization.
And, to be transparent, I also participated in the “reframing” of the original narrative. As a teacher and leader in the organization, I often was active in this process, really believing that it was the right way. That putting all of our energy into creating space for a few people, we were doing what was best for everyone. That we could be “fierce” with each other as a way of being fierce in the work.
This, of course, fed into my old narratives – better for me to be small. The whole “reframing” also fed into an internal reality within the organization of competition and worry about “power”. And the old narrative I inherited from my mom that to be mean and abusive was just being “fierce” and “honest”.
It took me some time to navigate this dream and the “reframing” of it because part of my old narrative was that I was “a hateful person”, something my mother had told me many times. I carried a deep fear that I was, indeed, that. A fear that was exploited.
It was a high level of gaslighting that I believed for a time because of my own trauma and trauma survival.
And, I did have to reckon with some of my behaviour in the organization around promoting a system that was opposite of what we had set out to create. Places where I had been mean under the “reframing” of being “fierce”. Just like my mom [oof].
But I eventually did navigate out – the girl in me, that calm voice, won out and I left the organization when I realized the depth of what was happening and also realized I couldn’t change the culture from within. It was hard because I doubted myself, could point to places where I had been difficult in the organization over the years and, as I said, was part of the problem for a while. The girl in my dream did not like the organization AND how I was actively creating it – unconsciously or not. She was trying to wake me up.
Publisher José María Marés, Spanish [1864]
The “reframed” narrative had really resonated in my closed system narrative about who I am and could be and how I should be. My biggest fear was that I would become like my mom. So it resonated – especially when it was a former teacher-become-colleague and a colleague/friend who were the ones who made this “reframing” of my dream.
What saved me from completely buying into staying in my closed systems were my dreams and the strength of my own intuition that the dreams had been building in me for years. So I could, even when faced with a situation like this, eventually turn away from something that had turned into a toxic place for me and for others.
What also saved me, and this is important, was community. I was not the only one in the community who decided to leave when I did, who was going through a similar process that I was. We did need each other to blow the roof off the closed system our organization had become and, at least, stop participating in it. My partner, Bill, really helped me in particular during that very messy time.
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What is profound for me in being with this part of my history, is that the narrative I tell now about it is very different than what I might have said many years ago. Years ago, I had a great deal of shame, of doubt, of self-blame, of anger – mostly at myself – for my part of what happened in that organization. Even after I left, even after I worked on making amends. Horror at how I had stayed in my closed system and then helped to form a closed system around the organization in my own fear. How I had been, in fact, even mean in that system.
Now, I have so much compassion for the part of me that was just fledging in her ability to trust herself. That part of me that wondered if I could dare believe another story about myself and about the world outside my closed systems and the world’s closed systems. That part of me that was just daring. The part of me that did not want any more closed systems, even if they felt comfortable and even “true” in some way, based on my old survival trauma fears and survival techniques.
I have compassion, too, for everyone in the situation. Even my colleagues who were scared and so needed to “reframe” the organization in a toxic “reframing” to make it “safe” in some way for their own unhealed traumas.
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This has been in my heart not just because I recently told the story but also because I do want to explore what it is to build community again with our deep work as the center AND with an intention of holding space for people to grow and blow off as many roofs as is needed in their own lives.
What could that look like, feel like? I have been a little afraid to try to grow this possibility because of my past, but really, that is also an old narrative. What would it be to trust my intuition and other people’s, too, around what community could be – around discovering it based on what we all need. Based on growing it together.
Based truly on the dreams.
More on that next article.