On Dreams, Speech, and the Lwa
The spirit, as Papa says, is clear. People, not so much.
A thing I have found true of speaking to the lwa in dreams is this: there’s a lot going on, in the form of symbols. If I were giving advice: the whole dream matters, but pay real close attention to the visuals. We interpret symbols a lot more accurately than we do words, despite words being more comfortable for us to use. Part of the reason for this is the symbols invoke vast and frankly mysterious clusters of meaning, which is a lot closer to communication than what a word can invoke.
Having spent a lot of time running face-first in communication problems in my everyday life, I have a love-hate relationship with talking. I love the illusion of clarity words will give you, the feeling of having been understood. I love feeling as if I have done my duty to communicate, discharged it so that I can leave it up to the listener to interpret it.
This is ironic, because I know it’s an illusion to think that speaking results in clarity. We don’t hear or understand squat, and my duty to communicate does not necessarily end when the sound dies in the air.
I fucking wish it did, because while I can’t necessarily make people understand me, I am responsible to the energy, not just the physical phenomena of sound. I am responsible for changing the energy as much as (and more than) I am to speak the necessary words so that someone can get to understanding. I’m not responsible alone—the lwa do a lot of work there, as does the elevated version of the person I’m talking to—but I’m responsible for the capacities I have, and the work involved in them.
If I notice it, it’s mine to work with, and no one is particularly interested in me playing ignorant (nor will they tolerate it.)
I hate that I still seem to want words, even knowing that they never do as promised. It’s laziness, you understand. The desire for thing to be simple and easy.
All of this is to say that when you dream of a lwa, be wary of the desire to keep your interpretation to the words you hear.
It is often in the symbols that they tell you who they are.
