I have had several dreams through my life where the dream “I” is someone else than I in my waking life identity.
As I wrote about in Dreams & Ground in 2005, these dreams are an invitation to explore my more fundamental identity.
Who or what am I more fundamentally in my own first-person experience?
WHAT AM I MORE FUNDAMENTALLY?
In my dreams, it seems I can be anyone or anything. I can be a different gender, a different age, a different species.
At the same time, what I am still here. What I more fundamentally am is still here.
So what is that?
When I look, I find I am capacity for all of it. I am the consciousness that forms itself into any and all content of experience, including what “I” or “me” points to.
AN INVITATION
These dreams are an invitation….
To find curiosity about my nature. If I can be anyone or anything in my dreams, what does it say about who or what I more fundamentally am in my own first person experience?
To explore all kinds of identities. The world is my mirror. I can take whatever story I have about anyone or anything in the world, turn it to be about me, and find genuine and specific examples of how it’s true. I am as rich as the world. How is it to explore, get to know, and live from more of that richness?
For my nature to notice itself, to find itself as what forms itself into all content of experience including identities and what they point to.
To explore how it is for this human self to live within and from that noticing.
A FEW DREAM EXAMPLES
Here are a few examples of dreams where the dream “I” is different from in my waking life.
Dream: I am pre-teen and going to see a movie with my girlfriend – where I am about twelve years old and someone different from who I take myself to be in waking life (2025)
Dream: Systems change project in Iceland – where I am a female journalist working with scientists and journalists to map toxins and support systems change (2025)
Dream: I am the murderer they are looking for – where I am someone far from my conscious identity, later explored as shadow material and self-understanding (2025)
Dream: I am a young black man at university – where I am a young Black student in the US in the 1950s (2024)
I am the nursery, growing – where I am the nursery at Finca Milagros, growing (2024)
I am black – where I have become a black man one with Finca Milagros (2023)
Dream: Russian anarchist – from my teens where I am a Russian intellectual and anarchist in the 1860s (2011)
Dream: Mortal and vulnerable – where I am a soldier in a war and experience vulnerability and mortality (2011)
Dream: The Master – where I am a young British upper-class / aristocratic man who has lost access to his former life and capacities (2005)
Dream: An intentional community and I am half woman – where I experience being both woman and man, with a woman’s body integrated with my own (2005)
Dreams & Ground – Reflection on frequently having dreams where I am a quite different person, with different age, body, gender, personality, and circumstances (2005)
THE PERSONAL AND UNIVERSAL
Why do I write about this?
If it was just about me, it would be boring and not necessarily worth mentioning.
But it’s not just about me. There is something universal in all of my experiences. In this case, I know that others have similar kinds of dreams. Some already use it as a pointer to notice their nature, and some may find curiosity about it and start exploring it. It’s an interesting landscape to explore.