During the early '90s, the Bay Area Dreamworkers Group (BADG) hosted several
Play Day meetings. This year, the Play Day returns for an encore. Events feature
dreamplay, a pot luck and barbecue, swimming in a pool and floating in a spa.
Folks also bring playful dreams to share round the group circle. These include
humorous, punny and creative dreams as well as lucid, psychic, mutual, psionic
and epic-adventure dreams. But the most intriguing dreams of all are those about
Play Day itself.
Sometimes the participants at the event incubate a dream ahead of time to
test their precognitive skills. They bring these dreams to share and compare
with the day as it unfolds before their very eyes.
But often there are "unseen" guests from afar. These are people at
a distance who have been invited to Play Day, but can't come in the waking
state. So they come in the dream. Prior to or during the weekend of the Play
Day, they incubate a dream, then send it by e-mail so it can be compared with
the actual waking state event. This year Fly-By-Night Club (FBNC) sponsors the
dreaming side of Play Day.
In the past, dreamers have dreamt up portions of the menu, the toys in the
water, the figurines in the sand tray, the water events and descriptions of the
backyard, house and people at the event. Once a dreamer dreamt up some dreamplay
from the previous year. It was the making a dream mask out of white plaster tape
using a dreamer's face as the mold. (The mask eventually became part of a dream
character costume).
Some of these dreams are literal; many are symbolic. And often the dreams
don't respond directly to the daytime events, but do resonate with other dreams.
It's as if the dreaming selves have a party in the dream state.
Although the in-dream party might indeed look like the physical experience,
the dreaming selves are not constrained by the rules of physical reality. Not
only can they slip and slide in time, they can look and act differently than
their waking counterparts. For instance, I might look like a Caucasian woman in
waking reality, but in the land of dreams, you might see me as an Afro-American
woman, a man or a cat. My dreaming self can play any of those roles and more. In
waking reality, I walk and talk. In dream reality I fly and sing with perfect
pitch. (Now that's wish-fulfillment!)
Physical reality is the Play Day. Dreaming reality is the Fly-In. In the
waking state we can stroll, lounge, munch, float and swim. But in the dream
state we fly. And you, yes, YOU, are invited to Fly-In to Play Day, along with
BADG, FBNC and the readers of the Jungian magazine, *Common Boundary.*
By the way, the July 25th date was chosen as the closest weekend to the
anniversary of the moon landing.
|