Deepening Dream Intimacy

A transmutation from escape to epiphany

Alchemizing Your Readiness poem dreamed into majesty by Michelle Beck. Adorn your liminal space with the original creation, available for an artist’s fee here.

I’ve long had an aversion to personality tests.

Quite possibly because they can be mirrors. And at times, I’ve found their reflections distasteful.

A podcaster I enjoy went on (and on, and on) in a recent episode about the Enneagram.

I took it years ago. Felt resistance to the results. And promptly discarded my assigned type from memory.

As I watched her eyes light up, I thought, “My number has to have changed. I mean, I’ve changed. Surely the output will feel more connected this time.”

I pulled up the quiz and answered zero questions with logic. Only feeling.

My result: 9 wing 8.

The first number was the overwhelming, “This is what you’re most like.”

The Enneagram Institute wrote that Nines are called, “The Peacemaker, devoted to the quest for internal and external peace for themselves and others. They are typically spiritual seekers who have a great yearning for connection with the cosmos, as well as with other people.”

This felt true.

The wing number was the overwhelming, “This is what you’re next most like.”

“We have named personality type Eight The Challenger,” the Institute stated, “because Eights enjoy taking on challenges, as well as giving others opportunities that challenge them to exceed themselves in some way.”

This felt true, too.

Along with the light sides, each type had some shadows. Nines were at risk of prioritizing peace to the extent that they numb out to deaden discomfort. An Eight’s out-of-control ego might shut down emotionally to avoid pain.

These echoes made me shudder.

Because while it may not have been visible on the outside, I used to be really good at numbing out and shutting down on the inside.

This was in waking life.

In sleeping life, dreams offered liminal zones where I often experienced full expression, felt fully connected.

At the risk of sounding dramatic, to some extent, for many years, I lived to sleep.

I never deeply questioned why I dreamed. I just saw it as a welcomed escape.

Until near the end of 2022 when I had one—so visceral—that it made me undeniably, somatically aware of something my Peacemaker denied in consciousness.

Because acknowledging it meant feeling it. And feeling it was going to hurt.

So my dream maker took the reins. Was like, “Hey. Hi, Amy. I know you’re sleeping. But it’s time to wake, the fuck, up.”

So I did.

Unleashed lioness

In a dream on February 10, 2023, I was walking at night in the middle of a dark street. Lightless.

“I’m surprisingly unafraid,” I journaled. “I feel pure joy. Guy on a bike passes. He’s singing. So beautifully I thought it was the radio.

“I’m trying to get to my car, which I can’t find, and start to feel tired, frustrated. I keep clicking the clicker to sound a beep, a location beacon. Silence.

“I come to a drop-off leading down to some sort of urban zoo. See a lioness. Fear creeps in. I slowly scramble back up and notice she’s tied by a rope at the neck. Fear subsides. She looks defeated, lays down. Peering closer I realize the other end is swirled loose on the ground, unattached.”

For context, this dream came at a time of being in between “who I was before” and “who I was becoming.” At a standstill, where after 20 years in partnership I was sitting with the questions, “Do I stay? Or do I go?”

It came before finding a therapist trained to work dreams.

Before seeing them as riddle-wrapped invitations to expand beyond who we thought we were and what we thought we knew.

Before cultivating a deep reverence for the messages they deliver, from the inner-most depths to the sleepy-eyed surface.

Before learning that the opposite gender represented a guide to the deeper realms of our souls. (In this dream, mine was full of vitality. Cycling, moving, sounding.)

Before learning that cars often represented personal identity. (In this dream, mine was lost. No matter how hard I searched.)

Before learning that animals represented the sacred. That felines represented the feminine. (In this dream, my divine feminine was lifeless. Tethered by an untethered chain.)

I woke, fixated on the creature. Her nature should be fierce. Nurturing and protective. Graceful and strong. But she was so attuned to the constraint around her neck that she couldn’t even see she was actually unbound. That there was nothing holding her back from her wild beauty.

I was overcome by deep sorrow. And yet despite all the befores and all the seemingly dark and heavy, I was also consumed by hope.

The lioness revealed to me that I had a choice. I just needed to revive the dormant lioness within.

Dialoging with the dream maker

At the end of 2024, I joined a community of dreamers and dream interpreters through This Jungian Life’s Dream School. While I’m fortunate to receive richly resonant one-on-one personal dream meaning sessions with my therapist—where I’ve learned, so, much—I’ve immersed myself in Dream School to explore more how to make sense of our dreams.

So far, one of the most fascinating learnings has been that we all have a dream maker, unique to us, who chooses what material—from our psyche or from the collective—to showcase in a dream. A dream maker who builds the plot, who writes the script, who decides the cliffhanger or the happy-ever-after. In this way, the dream maker speaks a language that may sound foreign at first. But it’s one we can become fluent in. We can even engage in conversation, building a deeper relationship.

I had a single intimate experience with someone that both shot me straight to the heavens and plunged me into the fires of hell. It was exactly as it needed to be. Grabbing my attention with the soulful connection I desired, and using the opportunity to show me a few of the hurts that needed my attention, if I wanted to break patterns and heal core wounds.

After months of silence between us, that someone reached back out, opening a door that had been closed in my mind.

And I was conflicted on how to respond, if at all.

Before bed, I asked for guidance.

“Dream maker, show me what I need to know about this scenario.”

My dream maker is a playful fucker, so I threw in that little rhyme.

Also aware that my dream maker is divinely guided as past dreams can attest, I closed as I often do, with a prayer: May my ears be open to hear you, my eyes be open to see you, and my heart be open to feel you.

It was a dreamless night.

> The ritual: It’s important that if you make a request, you trust your dream maker to do what’s best for you. Sometimes dreams don’t come. Sometimes dreams come, yet seem completely irrelevant or unrelated—until hidden messages are uncovered that may be unexpected, but also exactly what you need.

Tucked under covers the next evening, I asked again.

This time, in the early morning hours of sleep, I received and remembered.

That someone appeared. And an emotional scene played out on the dream screen, triggering a feeling of being forgotten. I got the wind knocked out of me. Then came a backdraft of heat. I let my body absorb the shock, the anger, and pass them through. This cleared space for my dream ego to explore the situation with leveled curiosity.

I awoke feeling guided. If I chose to reengage, I should do so with caution.

And in doing so, I should take care to never forget myself.

Courting the night

There’s an element of seduction required to create an opening where dreams freely arrive and can be remembered. Like a romantic pursuit of the unconscious.

I court my dream maker the way I’d fantasize being courted by an emotionally intelligent, spiritually attuned, and soulfully available human being.

Here are some hot tips to prepare for dream dates.

• Minimize distractions. When I cut out social media and the mindless scrolling that came with it, my dream maker was so turned on by my presence. They really enjoyed the attention and sent some dreams I will never, forget. Maybe you have a different distraction. Consider stepping away for a while in waking life and notice what happens at night.

• Whisper sweet nothings. Before sleep, let your dream maker know you’re thinking about them. You want to discover what makes them tick. You want to spend quality time together, with no expectations. Remember your words have to match your feelings. So no expectations means no expectations. (Easier said than done, speaking from experience.)

• Demonstrate appreciation. Find a dream diary that’s so gorgeous it gives you butterflies every time you see it. Upon waking, acknowledge—in writing—the dream maker’s presence or absence. If you had a cinema-worthy dream, document it. If you only remember a fragment, document it. If you don’t remember anything, document it.

• Never, ever, dismiss. No matter how fantastical, maniacal, diabolical, or paradoxical, your dreams carry wisdom waiting to be discovered, medicinal tinctures to be taken. Don’t dismiss them as weird. Instead, learn to decipher them (the book Dream Wise is a wise starting point) or seek support from someone with experience working dreams.

Warming the numbed-out Nine

I still have some thawing to do. Decoding my dreams has massively helped me defrost.

At times in a therapy session, I’ll show up with a smile and not much to say, aside from, “I’m fine.” The telltale sign that not, everything’s, fine.

“Want to talk about a dream?”

My therapist’s invitation always leads to a surprise party full of feelings crouched behind couches. Or discovery of rushing water under a frozen lake top.

We discuss the details and she’ll share her perspective on its potential meanings. Ask how it lands.

I’m so often stunned by how, once nighttime secrets are out in the open I’m like, “That’s exactly how I feel.” And if it’s off, we keep on the quest of exploring the dream in search of what it is I’m not seeing, or hearing, or feeling. What it is that needs to be seen, heard, or felt.

Dreaming is scary sometimes. Each night as darkness descends, we step into the unknown, never sure what will be unveiled.

But once it’s made known, we can welcome it in.

And like medicine, we’re made all the better for it.

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Alchemizing Your Readiness

You left with my lifeline
Given freely so you could soar
Now I’m left frantically searching
For some way to survive 

Lost in a maze
Of halls going nowhere
Alone in a room
Of feelingless faces

You stood among crowds
Proclaiming truth
Revered for your knowing
I put you on a pedestal too

A sleight of hand
A disappearing act
Taking with you who I thought I was
And who I was becoming

How could you go
Without a word
How could I stay
In such darkness

Fire in my breasts
Despair in my bones
I ran from all familiar 
And into the unknown   

Unsure if I could keep going
Or if I would implode
When a stranger took my hand 
And my whole, body, froze

With her motherly touch
Fear turned to faith
Horror to hope
Awed by the shift I asked

“What
Are 
You 
Doing?”

Placing more pressure
That also felt light as a feather
She proclaimed without pause
“Alchemizing your readiness” 

My cells understood
Intuitive surrender
And so I let her in
And then she let me go

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May your dreams show you what you need to see, tell you what you need to hear, and foster what you need to feel, dearest Everyday Alchemist.

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Hi, I’m Amy, your storyteller