Is there a subtle and sentient level of dreaming which may appear in our childhood dreams and dreaming of different generations? And if so, what guidance or wisdom might we discover through engaging with it?
Belonging and the Natural World through Life and Research
Nearly two years after my wife Marina passed away, I find myself gradually returning to the world through a long and deep period of grief. I was asked by the Processwork Centre of Hawaii (PWCH) to teach some workshops on the theme of Attachment and Child Development, which led me to send out an inquiry questionnaire through networks across the world, inviting people to share their experiences of childhood, early childhood dreams or memories, dreams specific to generations, and whether their connection with the land and soil has been important.
This investigation is still ongoing, and you are invited to participate in this short Research Questionnaire about Attachment, Development and the Unfolding Child
Thirty-eight people have already responded to this research questionnaire from across the world — from North Ossetia in the Russian Caucasus, from Palestine, Uganda, South Africa, Greece, Scotland, Devon, Bavaria, the British Virgin Islands, Hawaiʻi, and New South Wales in Australia, among others — spanning six generations, from people now in their eighties to those in their twenties. What came back was rich and varied: stories of early childhood dreams and memories, reflections on what different cultures believe children most need, and accounts of how each person understood their connection to the specific land and soil that had shaped them. One of the most unexpected and consistent findings was how many people — regardless of culture, generation, or geography — named the natural world as their primary experience of belonging: a tree, a river, a mountain range, a forest floor, a farm. Nature emerged not as backdrop but as relationship, and in some cases as the deepest attachment of a person’s early life.
Dreams and Childhood Patterns
My teacher Dr Arnold Mindell, inspired by C.G. Jung, quantum physics, and the wisdom of animism in many cultures throughout the world, developed the concept of the Dreambody, bringing awareness of how the dreaming level comes through our bodies, relationships, organisations, and the Earth. He also worked closely with the Jungian understanding of the childhood dream as containing important patterns seeking to be lived in a lifetime.
Marina’s Story
Born in 1961, at the age of five or six years old, Marina was having a recurring nighttime dream of a Yeti. The Yeti came from the Himalayas, travelled across the world, came to Chelmsford and to her neighbourhood and to her bedroom, where he gently was present to her as a child.
Marina was often curious about the Yeti in her adult life. She explored the dream in many ways, sometimes through Processwork. One thing she began to feel about the Yeti was that the Yeti may reveal themselves at times of climate crisis. Marina was well known for her work around bringing the fringe and seemingly alternative approaches to agriculture together and into the mainstream as an important contribution to ecology and food production. She wove together biodynamic, organic, permaculture, and many other forms of regenerative agriculture in response to her concerns for the Earth in these times.
Marina was a very pragmatic person, but she also had a strong intuition, connection with the soil, and an interest in subtle energies and dreaming. This was hard to acknowledge when trying to be taken seriously in the world of agriculture; nevertheless, she did frequently connect with the more-than-human levels of reality, and she communed with the spirits in and around the land.
So in a way it is no great surprise that the Yeti should appear strongly to her in her final days. She began to tell me she was connecting with these gentle beings who were bringing great comfort and love to her.
One of her childhood friends came to me and shared that when they were young children together, they used to scare each other that the Yetis were coming to get you! I found an early Doctor Who episode that depicted Yetis as zombie-like beings threatening humanity, maybe reflecting our xenophobic dissociation from nature, the subtle realms, and dreaming.
In her very last days, Marina told me that she was surrounded by Yetis. She would tap on her heart even when she became non-verbal, and I knew she was held in love.
The childhood dream and the embodiment and lived experience of these nature and time spirits may not just be Marina’s personal dreaming — but as her dream was such a worldly dream, it is most probably a generational dream, and a dream for humanity.
If this resonates, you are invited to complete my Research Questionnaire on Attachment, Development and the Unfolding Child. Responses are anonymous and will support the development of a workshop series – every response is genuinely valuable and much appreciated.
No Comments