Is the landscape of dreams only a dreamscape because our eyes are closed?

Or is there also something about the way we encounter a world when we don’t already know what’s coming next?

I began wondering about this on the flight home from a recent vacation. I hadn’t remembered many of my dreams while I was away, but somewhere on that flight I realized I had spent ten days immersed in unfamiliar landscapes, new experiences, and days that didn’t always unfold the way I expected.

It made me wonder where the dreamscape ends and our waking landscape begins. I don’t know. 

At home, we become related to the ordinary. We know our rooms. We know our roads. We know the places we visit. We know what is probably going to be around the corner.

That doesn’t mean we’ve lost our ability to see any of it. Sometimes we just forget to open our eyes. Or just don’t need to. We’ve learned to navigate that particular landscape.

Travel can make us look again. I saw that on our trip. Seeing becomes part of the experience again.

• What does the sunrise look like here?
• What does the water look like?
• How steep is that mountain?
• What’s inside that little store?
• Where does this road go?
• What happens if we turn here?

We see. We taste. We listen. We feel. We notice temperature and architecture and conversations and objects and images.

We don’t necessarily know which parts of the day will become memories while we’re living them. We simply experience them.

And thinking about all of that, I began wondering about something else.

What If Dreaming Travels Both Ways?

I’ve spent a lot of time exploring what happens when we turn our attention toward our dreams.

I’m interested in the imagery and the sensations. The landscapes. The strange changes in place that somehow make complete sense while we’re dreaming. The things we notice and the things that disappear. The experience itself before we rush to decide what any of it means.

But somewhere during the return trip, I thought: Maybe I’ve learned how to live this way a little better because I’ve been doing all this inner dream work.

Have I become more interested in noticing the experiences I’m actually having while I’m having them because I’m also noticing more about my dream world?

I don’t know if there’s a final answer to that. It doesn’t matter. I actually like the question better.

What if exploring our dreams changes the way we explore our waking lives?

What if some of the curiosity we bring to the inner world begins showing up when our eyes are open?

• Maybe we become a little more comfortable not knowing what’s around the next corner.
• Maybe we notice the image before deciding what it means.
• Maybe we become curious about a place simply because we’ve never been there.
• Maybe we take the turn.
• Maybe we ask the question.
• Maybe we look again.

And maybe that brings me back to the question I started with.

What makes a dreamscape a dreamscape?

Maybe it isn’t only the landscape we enter when our eyes are closed.

Maybe a dreamscape is also created through the experience of being somewhere while it is still unfolding around us. We enter into it without knowing everything we’re going to encounter. We see, hear, taste, feel, and notice. Some things capture our attention. Others pass by. We experience far more than we will ever remember.

And even if we return to the same place again, we can never enter exactly the same experience twice.

Perhaps that’s what I began to recognize as I thought about all of this. For ten days, I had been moving through an outward landscape with many of the same qualities I treasure in my inner one.

I hadn’t stopped dreaming.

I had begun recognizing the dreamscape with my eyes open.

Coming Home

When I came home from our trip, my routines were there waiting for me. I have cultivated dream work as part of my nights and days, and once I was home, I began noticing my dreams again. Remembering to pause. Wondering what had happened while I was asleep.

But I didn’t feel like something had been missing during those ten days. Whatever dreams I had were still mine, whether I remembered them or not.

And while I was awake, I had spent ten days wandering through unfamiliar landscapes, seeing things I’d never seen, tasting things I’d never tasted, going places I’d never been and not always knowing what would happen next.

Coming home returned me to the ordinary. My bed. My rooms. My routines. The familiar places and roads where I already know what’s around the corner. And it returned me to my dreams.

But maybe I came home seeing both a little differently. Because the dreamscape wasn’t only waiting for me when I closed my eyes.

Maybe it was also teaching me to open them.