How to Bury a Dead Dream
First, you must determine if the dream is truly dead. Place your fingers on the pulse; is there a faint, nearly indiscernible heartbeat?
If you're not sure, check for the breath. Remove your eyeglasses and place the lens against the lips of your dream. If there is a gentle fog, you can be assured your dream is not yet dead, but merely in a deep sleep. “Almost dead,” so to speak. Either resting, or uncertain if it will return to the other side to seek a life where it can be brought to fruition.
It is important to remember that if your dream dies, it becomes someone else’s dream. In this way, a dream can never die. It is simply no longer YOUR dream, and new dreams will appear to you eventually, if you will receive them. In the second half of life, dreams become more like afternoon visitors. We can set the tea table and open our home to new dreams if we need company, or feel obligated to uphold proper etiquette in our community. But we can draw the blinds, lock the door, and pretend like we’re not in, if we no longer feel such obligations and have found peace in our isolation.
If your dream is nearly dead but not dead yet, rest it gently on the sofa underneath a thick, wool blanket. Leave a glass of salt and sugar water on the side table, so that your dream can replenish its electrolytes when it begins to stir again.
If there is no heartbeat, no breath, and your dream is truly dead, then you can proceed.
It can be painful when a dream dies, especially a dream you have carried with you for as long as you can remember. Some dreams come to us in childhood. They burn with such intensity inside of us, we do not know where the dream begins and we end, or where we begin and the dream ends. We feel certain this is OUR DREAM, and fulfilling the dream informs every choice and non-choice we make throughout the course of our life.
When an as-yet lifelong dream dies, it can feel as if a part of us has died too. It is important to remember that you are not your dreams. Your dreams provide MEANING, a sense of purpose, a burning determination, perhaps. But dreams cannot belong to us, or to anybody. Dreams belong to themselves, to everybody.
The place inside of you where the dream once lived may begin to bleed. This sometimes happens when the dream dies suddenly, or is traumatically ripped from our body in an unexpectedly horrific way. No one knows why this happens, but there are many working theories. We will not be covering theory in this guide, however. Only practical application.
If you are bleeding where the dream used to be, apply pressure to the wound until the blood no longer soaks through to the other side of the compress. Do not attempt to clean the wound, as this will only reopen it or exacerbate the injury. Do not attempt to stitch up a freshly created wound. Give it time to heal first. Leave it open to the elements for a while, and then gently cover it with a bandage, removing it only to apply a balm or replace the gauze.
Some believe you can fill the place where the dream used to live with novelty; whether it’s an ayahuasca retreat, a string of first dates, or an expensive handbag, this novelty can only provide temporary relief, and may ultimately serve to prolong the healing process. Eventually, you have to be in the emptiness. This is not an emptiness that can be filled by anything except a new dream.
Take the lifeless form of your dead dream out to the backyard, beneath a tree. Bow to the tree and ask politely for permission to bury your dream by its root system. Do not assume the tree will grant the permission simply because trees, as a whole, are generous. Some trees are more forgiving than others. Some trees are old and tired. Some trees have more important concerns than yet another dead human dream lain at their feet. It is safe to say, however, that MOST trees will reply, “You may.”
Once you have received permission, you can begin to dig a hole. Remember: this hole is for your dead dream, NOT YOU. Whatever you do, do NOT dig yourself into a hole.
If, for whatever reason, you cannot seem to control the impulse to dig yourself into a hole, refer to the next chapter of this manual, How to Dig Yourself Out of a Hole You Dug Yourself Into.
Once you have dug just deep enough that you begin to smell the soil (a dream does not decompose in the same way as a human body, so it does not need to be buried as deep), take the lifeless form of your dead dream and place it in the hole.
You can say a prayer over your dead dream, if it feels appropriate. Common prayers for dead dream burials include:
May this dream be received by those who can bear it well, and bear it all the way to fruition.
May others receive what I will never receive from this dream.
May my grief become tenderness and my tenderness become humility.
May I know a new dream some day, that is truly meant for me.
Dreams are mysterious. It is impossible to know why a dream dies, but some say that the dreams we feel with particular intensity yet cannot ever seem to bring to fruition no matter how hard we try, are not our dreams at all, but the dreams of our ancestors. If you feel that your dead dream was not your dream, but was the dream of an ancestor who imparted it to you or even cursed you with their dead dream, you may want to say a simple spell of protection for your descendants to prevent them from becoming similarly haunted.
Next, cover the lifeless form of your dead dream with dirt. Once it is out of sight, you can return to the open wound.
There is no predetermined amount of time for such wounds to heal. For some, it is a matter of months. For others, years. Many wounds never heal. All healed wounds leave scar tissue.
The good news is, this scar tissue provides more resilient material for the arrival of a new dream, should you choose to receive it. Although most of us will experience many dead dreams throughout the course of our life, there is usually only one or two that leaves us badly scarred.
It is unknown how many dreams are brought to fruition, but experts estimate the number is anywhere from zero to infinity.
