I was reading The World of Dreams, edited by Ralph L. Woods, when I came upon a little dream poem:

Walker with one eye,
Walker with two,
Something to live for,
And nothing to do.

The author of the article, Edward Carpenter, commented that “…even though the poetry produced was not of a very high order,(!) still, one must feel that the ideal of ‘something to live for, and nothing to do’ was a very blessed and beautiful one in its way.”

Further in the volume I read an article by Frederik Van Eeden, who began in 1898 to keep a separate account of his lucid dreams. “I can move and float in all directions; yet I know that my body is at the same time dead tired and fast asleep. Sometimes I conceive of what appears as a symbol, warning, consoling, approving. A cloud gathers or the light brightens. Only once could I see the disc of the sun.”

That night I had the following dream: I’m walking toward low hills on the horizon, as the sun is going down behind them. I put my left hand over my eye and see the sun’s disc with my right eye, behind hills to my right; I put my right hand over my other eye and see the sun’s disc with my left eye, behind hills to my left.

My dream, not my conscious Ego, had not only solved Carpenter’s problem of understanding the poem as being more than “blessed and beautiful,” but my dream also showed unconscious problem-solving abilities by out-doing Van Eeden and manifesting two discs of the sun!

I have a noetic Insight;

I have nothing to do; my Deep Self enlivens me.

– Allen Flagg

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