When Dreams Speak, We Listen Together By Adam Elmaghraby
I have been working with my dreams since I began my herbalism journey with Plant Spirit Talk ten years ago. One theme keeps surprising me: old dreams return when I meet new circumstances. Recently, flashes of a nightmare I had nine years ago came back, and my whole body was swept into it again.
I was a young boy on my bike, my prized possession in those years, riding along a creek bed as I often did, upstream toward the far reaches of that small patch of wild nature. As I rode, the banks grew steeper and the water murkier. I could feel the water's resistance as I tried to maneuver through the rocks, and without warning, it began to flood. Muddy, brackish water encircled me as whole trees and debris rushed past. I had to let go of my bike and scramble up the sides. Even after letting go, I was swept away.
This nightmare was not comforting, but it was vital nonetheless. It sits with me now as an important dream. It speaks to the overwhelm of my youth and to how much I still have to learn about nature and my own inner wilds.
Dreams do not pander to our comfort.
They invite us into the deep psyche, into a wisdom already ours, and into the continuous work of adapting to our circumstances and lifeways. The gift, for me, has been discovering a community to share that work with, and extending it now through Moon Garden and the Plant Spirit Talk community.
I keep turning to my dreams, and to the dreams of others, because they speak to something only we can know.
No one can hold our dreams for us.
Dreamwork is a practice that guides us toward more agency, individually and collectively. That is the core of my work: supporting each dreamer in the initiation of their own dream life.
Moon Garden begins with the fundamentals of dream recall and navigation. How does it happen? What helps us catch a dream before it dissolves by morning? Much of the early work is simple tinkering to discover what works for you. Most people who believe they don't dream simply haven't yet learned to catch them; recall is a practice, not a gift you either have or don't.
My approach to dream navigation focuses on shifting our understanding of a dream from a memory we can't visit into a place we can. This is not only a way to understand dreams as a state of consciousness; it is a way to meet our imagination as a felt experience. Dreams become a place to touch the myths we live inside, the ones we quietly cultivate within us. Throughout, we use the somatic wisdom of the body as ballast in the psyche's waters, and in our encounter with the more-than-human world.
What about nightmares?
Nightmares are designed to feel unwelcome, stark, and deeply unsettling. This summer, I will guide us in meeting them as a vital and rich part of shadow work and the dreamer's journey. As with so much in life, the gift waits behind the wound, and learning to swim into the dark waters of a nightmare teaches us to see ourselves more courageously. We do this gently and at our own pace. This is dreamwork, not therapy; no one is asked to go anywhere they are not ready to go, and you can always step back to the shore.
The heart of Moon Garden is the circle.
Each week, we co-create a container in which we bear witness to one another's dreams, a living pathway toward ourselves and toward shared healing. The method we practice is projective dreamwork, a tool that allows us to consciously and with attention inhabit one another's dreams. A dreamer offers their dream. Then, one by one, the rest of us respond as if it were our own: "if it were my dream, I would feel…" No one tells the dreamer what their dream means. The dreamer holds full authority over their own images and keeps only what rings true. What the group offers is not interpretation but reflection. As a collective, we offer many mirrors and angles, the dream made larger by being held together. We learn to do this with depth and tenderness, honoring how each person's journey is itself the gift at the heart of the practice.
The gift of doing this work within the Plant Spirit Talk container is that we are steeped in lifeways that honor plants as allies, sentient beings who expand our sense of what it means to be alive. Dreams, in particular, meet plants in a more-than-human terrain, where they sink their roots into our fertile imagination and ripen the psyche toward more than we can know alone. Plants become an intricate part of our collective beings with their own dreaming that unfolds alongside our human experience.
Moon Garden is an invitation to all dreamers.
No prior experience with dreams or with herbalism is needed; all are welcome. What the circle asks is presence. We come as both dreamer and listener, and we hold what is shared with care. I offer Moon Garden as an extension of my own journey with dreams and plants, the fruits of my Egyptian ancestors, who taught me the power of gathering as an act of reciprocity.
Bring your dreams, bring your nightmares, bring your willingness to be expanded by what you meet there.
Moon Garden meets on six Wednesday evenings, July 15 through August 19. Come dream with us.