Article

ARTICLE BY JULIE WINIFRED 

Published in Dreamtime Magazine Spring 2026.

A Publication of the International Association for the Study of Dreams

MY DREAMING LIFE

The dreaming world has been my great friend in this life. It showed me so much and prepared me for what was to come. It has illustrated my fragilities, my weak spots, and ultimately steered me towards the compassion that lay within. Glistening, vibrant, infuriating dreams had become my compass and my anchor. So many times, I have wondered if I will ever know her, the creator of these fantastical jigsaws. She who is at the root of it all. Sometimes I am certain I can feel her, but as I have tried to grasp for more, she is gone. It is as if the carousel of my own mind flashes before my eyes. It is ephemeral, though there is always a clue, a fragment that can guide me into a deeper vein. Ever deeper, that whirlwind of symbols can be so crazy; sometimes they are driven into my mind with such force, it is as though an enormous bowl of spaghetti suddenly makes complete sense. If only for a moment, the connections are brilliantly clear as my mind scoops them up and then feathers them out in obscure yet wonderful ways. And a part of me is awakened as memories are returned in a pure state.

I learned that symbols were always a conduit to a more fluid self. There was always an avenue for exploration, as symbols beckoned and we moved as one. I trusted the path as I weaved my way through, picking at some symbols like they were scabs upon my body, and scavenging for what lay below. This connected me to places I must already know, must be of, though I could not always remember. Layer upon layer of visual meaning mystified and coaxed me forward, yet this felt like only the beginning. Complex information had rolled me into circles and spun me around, as an extraordinary lightness folded me inside dazzling colours, and these have been some of my most favorite places.

Precognitive dreaming has moved alongside me since childhood, which felt entirely natural and a living illustration of the mystery of time. I like dreaming this way, but it has brought its challenges. I have dreamed alongside people and animals that are preparing for their death, which had swept a weight of seriousness across my dreamscape. I have always dreamed this way and I do not know why. Often, for those I deeply love, it begins about two years beforehand, and the descent towards death takes many twists and turns. But for others, it could be sudden and fierce, perhaps a few days or weeks, and this type of dreaming carries a different beat.

When death approaches for those close to me I can feel my mind cracking into pieces. Though this can bring comfort somehow, and freedom to move into those places that were revealed, as I had wriggled myself through those cracks. This helped and allowed me to roll myself into that place where thoughts do not exist. And it is there that something undefinable washes across me, and I breathe so deeply. A type of breathing that I cannot make happen, it simply occurs at those times all on its own. And this is when I feel closest to the departing. When I can hold their hand, if only for a short while, and travel with them as far as I can go. A voice has always told me when I can go no further, and as I have retreated, I have felt the veil of life fluttering across my face. This a sublimely gracious feeling.

Watching the person, or beloved animal, move themself into death had been a revelation. I had once believed that death marches in and takes us, sometimes unexpectedly. The Grim Reaper at its most ghastly, but what I had witnessed was so very different from this. It seemed the whole organism moved in that direction when ready, and every single part went on the walk, all of it in a dance of tandem. It knew what it was doing, and of that I became certain. A primal movement of force and energy, and of profound beauty. Not a helpless drowning in a sea of fear and confusion, though it might appear like this on the surface. But a discerning and truthful knowing of self. And seeing this had strangely flipped me around a strange loop and deposited me into the timelessness of compassion and love, a place without boundaries or barriers. And this reminded me of dreaming when it pushed through into new levels and challenged the ideas of order. It was good to move like this as it felt like freedom.

I cannot speak of death without talking about that deepest abyss called grief. Knowing it is coming has never protected me from the pain of loss. Oceans of grief had drawn me into turbulence as I had tried to hold onto those crosscurrents. At times, my hands were an inadequate chalice as I battled with myself. Were the dreams there to mobilize me into action; to find a cure; to avert the final event and stop it in its tracks? No. I came to understand that I had travelled with the departing and knew their journey more intimately than I could ever have imagined possible. It was like watching something slip from my hands that I was completely powerless to stop. But that I was also tied to by bonds that existed far beyond my understanding. And so, I came to realise that I was a watcher at the edge and that I sometimes moved as one with those who were leaving this life. I had felt death as a closing of the circle and could feel the power it took to push into life from that fecund womb, and then what it took to push back out into death and fall into the velvet darkness and beyond.

Yet on the other side of dreaming, helpers have always appeared, and given me comfort, and laughter too. That ever-changing gallery of oddness has cajoled me into opening my eyes and learning to trust in the very fabric of something I could never truly explain, even to myself. When Black Horse appears, this tells me death is coming. It is done. It is final. And across the decades, this harbinger of death has brought me great peace, albeit in a dramatic way. But other dream helpers are gentler. Like the loveliest White Llama, who has laid her cheek on mine in dreaming since I was a child. She only shows up when I cannot hold my life in my hands too well, and she always returns me to balance in her quiet way. I love her silence. This has been one of the most wonderful things in my dream life, how kindness, guidance, and healing are always given to me. Often, my dream kindnesses will then show themselves in my waking life, and so I sometimes cannot tell if I am dreaming or awake. It has always been this way, and I trust it even though it can unsettle me. It is like a ribbon of love that has always fluttered through; a moving pathway that has taught me something I cannot easily grasp but am forever thankful for.

I would like to finish with a dream from long ago, as a simple reminder of the great joy of dreaming, which so many of us are lucky to know:

I am creeping around an empty place trying to find my way out safely. In the inky darkness, death is whispering to me, and I feel so scared. But I push on determinedly until I come to a huge pane of thick glass, and I cannot see where it begins or ends. I press myself up against it and, peering through, I can see myself standing on the other side. I look at her and I look at me; how did this happen? Suddenly, everything shifts into gold, and we are connected by an incandescent golden thread, as we both fly around the indigo night sky together. Me and me, I cannot grasp this, but it feels right. Round we go on golden light. It is breathtakingly amazing, and I realise that she is the one to sort it all out, she who stands on the other side and has taken me with her.

No matter what, in sleep I retreat to that truthful place, which is my sanity, and my succour, where some part of me clicks into completion. A sigh. Home. It pushes through all the thoughts, the barriers, the wasted time, and into an honesty that feels immensely soft and tender. I have wondered what truth really means, and yet I know this is likely the closest I come to it. It shows me what I need to see, and I feel like a child here, happily playing in the rhythms. Perhaps this is the sacredness of dreaming. I like to think so.