Calamus root has this way of giving me eyes outside the dream..I was just vouguing with bundles of arugula in one hand and mustard greens in the other hand..but there was a dual omnipresence of me being the invisible watcher - an existence outside the dream to make aware that the dream was a dream. I continue to have these long, brilliantly colored and relevant dreams with calamus, usually about dance and elements of my previous OR upcoming day that make this seeing-of-dream reasonably rational and colorfully relevant. Chewing on a 2 finger pinch of soft chopped root before bed every night for a month....
There's a dialogue happening, a silent nodding between my dream self and sleeping self...in fact during one journey where I was dancing in an accordion and violin-lined street in Italy, I was brought into awakeness/awareness not by an alarm, but by my asleep consciousness tapping on the window of my dreaming selfs dreAm...another time I was nudging the shoulder of myself to encourage and remind awakeness..these times have brought me out of a sleep cycle that tends to make me late to class or work...perhaps calamus has something to do with the phenomenon of me waking up, softly & comfortably at 8:45am every morning without an alarm..this gentle and functional invisible relationship between my "asleep" mind and dream realm that unifies gracefully and sometimes seamlessly with my everyday functionality.. At the Same time, sometimes these dreams are so functional that often I am already present with myself for breakfast and morning ritual that when I wake up I feel the fullness of fresh fruit and the freshness of a scraped tongue, but I have just "awoken"...three times I have dreamed of cutting papaya and eating it with friends then joined friends so late for breakfast in "reality" when I swear, I was actually there..in a cloak of invisibility.
I am continuing to explore this relationship, one thing is personally certain..after 2 days without calamus, my dreams on a waning moon became darker, more fustrating, more quests with snags and trials and unsatisfactory or unclear results before waking. This is typical for me when the moon wanes from quarter to a sliver; facing challenges, insecurities, abstract phenomena of irritation or reflections of how I can navigate towards increased clarity. Then the new moon comes and it gets a bit more sparkly, playful, often in complete dreamy solitude..but surely more glimmer, magiK, wonder, intention and clarity...not always relevance (whatever that means?!), which is what is so deeply fascinating about the calamus. For example, 2 nights ago, moon at 11%, I was dreaming of brain-mapping out a gift for my family of a trip to somewhere special that I connect with deeply...and it wasn't well received or appreciated..full of forceful explanation and hurt feelings and convincing, traffic etc. I woke up like, wham! These are elements that could easily arise, and emotions that could potentially be expressed of worry, inclusion, discomfort, language barriers and so on. So I feel as if the cloak of calamus was in this experience and relevant aid to seeing (before living) the potential paths a situation could unfold. Three days later, on the new moon..still with calamus..I was wrapped in a warm tortilla blanket of abuelitas love and woven tapestries of ancient times smiling on a windy mountain top in Oaxaca - simple, present, mystical, sensory, divine.
A fascinating element of Calamus that parallels this way I am experiencing assistance with dream awareness, patterns, and relevance is its ability to help digest. It's a bitter! A lovely, woody bitter that helps us create digestive secretions and get the oven of Agni gently going while supporting the transformation and transportation of food. Ever wake up after a night of munching out on peanut butter and dried mango or pesto and rye bread...or something heavy that you ate too late..and feel this sluggishness in our guts or slightly foggy mind? This slowness, this misty congested feeling is so well addressed with a pinch of calamus in warm water with some fresh ginger and lemon. Even a pinch of calamus alone in the morning is so helpful with moving along this stagnant Qi and progressing towards simple morning clarity. Clarity is what we are aiming for yea? As opposed to fumbling around and guessing what are daily experiences mean. Although I love sister Cannabis as an ally and powerful healing tool with massive potential, I do see the fog it generates in the mind over time with chronic use, or even after a day of use considering that many strains on the market contain pesticides and super ridiculous levels of psycho-active components. This is another avenue of where Calamus is such a great friend and agent of clarity. It has the ability to assist in digesting / processing THC onward and outward from the mind!