My dream teacher emphasized that our most important task in working with dreams is to simply give our full attention to the images that are presented by the dreamer. It seems like an easy thing to do, but it is really quite challenging. It is one reason I love working with dreams. The beautiful, strange, and sometimes disturbing images in dreams have the capacity to take me out of my self-centeredness so I can lend myself to them and to the creative work they do for the dreamer and for the world.
Today’s society would hold our attention hostage with our electronics and devices calling to us constantly. Forces in our world would keep us from our personal work, from our immediate connection to the world and from trusting ourselves and our own experience. That is why dream work can be considered a radical act – no corporation, organization, or government can keep us from our own dreams and our own knowing. But it requires discipline to give our attention to dreams and to what’s being asked of us on our unique personal journeys. There is a certain vigilance required to keep other entities, who may not have our best interest at heart, from distracting us. It is a daily practice for me to discipline myself and my attention as well. This poem came out of that struggle on one of my morning walks.
Leave It!
My friend tells her dog sternly,
“Leave it!”
That’s how I feel about my phone
on my morning walk.
I forget to turn it off
and it dings.
I want to check who
messaged me.
Leave it!
An intriguing bit of nature
in someone’s yard
inspires a question.
Just a quick Google search.
Leave it!
Just a quick
check of email.
Maybe a friend
responded to my last writing.
Leave it!
Looking at my phone
I miss the impossibly symmetry
of the slender bamboo canes,
dark bands ringing each green stalk.
I don’t hear the birds
singing in a
loud chorus,
welcoming the morning.
My foot crunches
on a snail
that makes a daily trek
across the sidewalk.
On less distracted days,
I have tenderly moved
these delicate creatures to the ivy,
away from careless footsteps.
The phone
steals my attention
away from the
natural world.
It robs me of
actual experience.
Yet I take it
on my solitary walk
because my friends have urged me
to not leave it behind.
They are concerned
for my safety.
I am concerned for my life,
for the beauty I
might miss,
the snails I might kill.
When the phone insists
“Pick me up!”
I tell myself
“Leave it!”
But the phone
has the same determination
as a puppy on a leash
seeing friends across the street.
It doesn’t give up so easily.
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As I considered my own difficulty with my phone, I looked up articles about how our electronics take our attention. This was a particularly good one, explaining how our capacity to focus is being changed by our devices. Here is the link, and a short poem I wrote based on the article.
“Your focus didn’t collapse. It was stolen.”
At the speed of Snapchat,
our attention is
fracturing
cracking
breaking.
Lamenting our lost capacity
for concentration,
we blame ourselves,
invasive societal forces overlooked.
Legal “right to disconnect”
is the start of a necessary fight
to reclaim our minds
while we still can.