Peaceful Knowing: Returning to Dreamwork as Spiritual Practice
Sep 03, 2025Prior to joining Laura Huff Hileman’s Dream Circle in early 2024, I had heard of dreamwork and even explored a few dreams with a therapist trained through the Haden Institute. But I hadn’t yet grasped how deeply dreams could contribute to my own spiritual well-being.
This month, after a long pause, I returned to dreamwork. The experience of feeling seen and known came rushing back with surprising intensity, leaving me wondering why I had set it aside for so long.
A Dream Called “Peace”
One of the first dreams I recorded this month wasn’t a vivid image, it was a series of words and sensations. I had followed Laura Hileman’s “Dream Catching” practices from her Field Guide to Dreaming, setting a clear intention before sleep. That night, I asked the Dreamgiver for a dream that would confirm the “aliveness” I was feeling as I engaged this month’s reading material.
Earlier that day, my sister had gifted me a kiwi jasper stone, said to support dream recall. So, with my prayed intention, my “dream stone,” and my iPhone’s Notes app ready on the nightstand, I went to sleep.
I woke in the middle of the night with the words “peaceful knowing” and a buzzing sensation in my arms. I noted it and drifted back to sleep. By morning, the chorus of the Eagles’ song “Peaceful Easy Feeling” was playing in my head: “I’ve got a peaceful easy feeling, and I know you won’t let me down, ’cause I’m already standing on the ground.”
Journaling the Dream
Following Laura’s journaling method, I wrote the phrases on the left side of the page and my associations on the right in a different color. I noted my intention, the kiwi jasper, and the tingling in my arms—which reminded me of a moment in a Gospel of Thomas lectio group when I had journaled about feeling “solidity and groundedness.”
Other associations surfaced: prison ministry, an impending execution at Riverbend, and my daughter’s frustration with “the system” as she treated a young inmate in her cardiac ICU. The dream seemed to hold all of it—grief, hope, and a longing for peace.
Embodying the Dream
In this month’s video from our Dreamwork classes, Laura encouraged us to embody the dream—to create a relationship with it. I wrote the phrases and lyrics on a post-it note and placed it on my vanity mirror. I also chose to “poet” the dream, using Lisa Gonzales-Barnes’ technique from her article Dreamwork: Four Techniques for Spiritual Direction.
Here’s the haiku that emerged:
Ease. Peaceful knowing.
Simply standing where I am,
I can trust the ground.
Lisa Gonzales-Barnes invites us to ask, “How is this poem a reflection of your
spiritual life?”
In this season, I’ve been wrestling with what is mine to do in the face of so much injustice. That night, my intention felt like a plea, asking God to confirm that my draw toward dreams and shadow work could somehow matter.
The poem’s invitation was clear: Be at ease. Trust the place where you stand. The Ground of all Being is holding me up. And to borrow Glenn Frey’s words, “I know you won’t let me down.”
For me, creating a poem was the perfect entry point. I wasn’t working with images, but with words and sensations. And in that simplicity, I found something sacred.
Beth Bernard, a first-year student of WTC’s Spiritual Direction School
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