We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Walter Berry a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Walter, appreciate you joining us today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

I tell this story in more detail in my book- Drawn into the Dream, The experience was the defining moment in my life. In my high school years, I picked up a summer job at a local summer stock theater, The Camden County Music Fair in Southern New Jersey. In July 1967—July 10–15, 1967 to be exact—along came this broken-down old lady named Judy Garland, who was scheduled to sing.  What a bore, thought I. I had never liked The Wizard of Oz, and as a 17-year-old kid, this was an old people’s thing, but I had a job to do. On opening night, the lights went down, and that was my cue to make sure Madam Finicky got to the stage. I led her down the dark aisle and onto the round stage, making sure she didn’t fall. The music had started, and the crowd roared. The lights came up as I dashed back up the aisle, unseen. There she was, in her hideous sequined paisley pantsuit, holding court in the center of a ring of adoring fans. She smiled and waved, music vamping in the background, as she took control of the room. This is going to be a long night, I thought. She’s milking this Wizard of Oz celebrity thing to the max. And then it happened. She opened her mouth and started singing. Maybe singing isn’t quite the word. I have no succinct words for what happened at that moment when the angry, dour woman I had met before the show suddenly tore open the heavens. When she stretched her hand out as she sang, sweeping it across the entire circle of the theater, it reached inside everyone’s body and grabbed their soul and shook it to life. I was thunderstruck. I mean, she was mesmerizing. And all this happened in the very first note that came out of her. Resistance was futile. She was the queen of everything at that moment, and she knew it. You could feel the immense waves of energy pouring out across the crowd from her diminutive frame. It was a brand new experience for me, so new that I was utterly confused. Why did my body feel this way? It was as though a switch deep inside me that I had no idea was there had magically been activated. And it didn’t stop. For the next two hours or so, she held 2,000 people in the palm of her hand. I was in sync with something for the first time in my life, which was totally unexpected and a huge shock to my system. It was my introduction to life, really. Everything I do with dreamwork, the way I now listen to people’s hearts and souls, results from that moment. It changed me forever. Forever. But then something even more amazing happened. At the end of the show, people mobbed the stage and it was my job to get her safely back to her dressing room. I slipped my right arm under her knees, put my left arm around her back, and picked her up. She was small, so she fit nicely into my embrace. She leaned into me, her right arm over my left shoulder waving at people and her left arm grabbing me around my chest for stability. I guess on some level I understood the theatricality of the moment. I lifted her enough that she was higher than I was, so the crowd could see her, and a cheer went up. I yelled “Go! Go! Go!” to my guys, and we slowly moved up the aisle, cutting through the sea of people that enveloped us and then filled in behind as we moved. I could feel people tugging at me, grabbing for Judy’s hand, but we managed to creep up towards the backstage area. And here is where things got just weird. Now that we were on the move, and the panic of getting things under control was over, suddenly I became more aware of my own feelings. How do I put this? Well, frankly, I became Judy Garland at that moment, as embarrassingly odd as that sounds. Somehow, I was completely aware that that thing Judy Garland possessed was pouring from her body into and through mine. I felt like I was connected to everyone in the room and feeling love from them, making love to them. This was weird. Somehow by having Judy Garland in my arms while she was in this moment of blazing glory made me a conduit of feeling—of awesome love and empathy. And what a feeling! It was the most electric transference of energy from another human I have ever felt.

And this was a defining moment in my life. It completely changed me from that day until this, I always look for a connection with people by trying to feel their energy, And I find that connection now through working on people’s dreams. The essence of people’s souls can be found in their dreams and what a delight to be able to carry around a dream in the same way I carried Judy Garland, feeling the power and spirit a dream brings to my soul.

Walter, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a dreamworker and I work with people’s nighttime dreams. And what a thrill it is to do that. I do workshops, conduct in-person and online dream groups, and appear on podcasts and various programs to talk about the amazing world of dreams. Most people want to know what their dreams mean, and that can be part of what I do, but it is not the most important part of the work, The most important part of working with a dream is experiencing the dream. In experiencing a dream by investigating it like a mystery, profound things happen to the dreamer. They are suddenly having an experience of understanding and feeling their own unconscious and the emotions and sense of awe that reside there. Experiencing your dream can change your life.
I began doing dreamwork about 20 years ago. It is a passion I fell into by mistake. I was in the habit of writing down my dreams. It turned out one rather bland dream I wrote down changed my entire life. Two weeks after I had the dream, my mother, who was the central focus of the dream called me up and started saying the exact words that I had written down. As a fairly cynical person at the time, this flabbergasted me. I actually stopped her mid-sentence and retrieved the journal and followed along as she continued to rant about a family matter. The exact words were there in front of me as she did so!
Well, this was so strange, I had to find out more about dreams and I dove into the world of dreams headfirst, studying with Jeremy Taylor and others and becoming a certified dreamworker. It was a calling that swept me away into being my true self. Helping others with their dreams and their lives is now what I do. When I am in the thick of working dreams, I feel alive, vital, tuned, and in touch with my own emotions.
There is a certain magic and mystery involved in working with your dreams. In my book-“Drawn into the Dream” I chronicle one woman’s dream that we worked. In the dream, she was “walking in the shoes of her dead husband.” who had died exactly 3 years previous to the dream of the deadly brain cancer glioblastoma. I have people draw their dreams and I was struck by these hiking boots with the bright red laces that she had drawn. There were other things in the drawing- a boat with a sea lion and lots more, but my intuitive self zeroed in on those boots. We did work on much more in the dream, but those boots screamed at me as an ominous reminder of the dead husband’s cancer, and I suggested she see her physician just to be safe.
She paid little attention to that until two weeks later when she had horrible headaches. She went to the doctor, who gave her medication to alleviate the problem, but she remembered our work on the dream and adamantly insisted on an MRI which discovered that she had that same glioblastoma. Because of the dream and our work on it, they caught it early and she is now 10 years cancer-free of a death sentence few escape.
That is an extreme example, but dreams come for our health and wholeness and my job is to help people experience their dreams in a way that brings them awe and perhaps joy or change.
What sets me apart from most dream workers is my use of drawings to work the dreams. With a crude and quickly executed sketch in front of us, no matter the drawing skill, the dream comes alive in front of us as we work it.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

I am a certified Dream worker, having graduated from the Marin Institute for Projective Dreamwork, and have studied with many dream teachers and read extensively, but all that pales in comparison to the lessons I have experienced working closely with people. I have found that every single person I have worked a dream with has a fascinating and compelling story that their life has brought to them. I am in awe of the power of compassion and empathy that pours out of people if you simply and truly listen with an open heart and mind.
That deep place of empathy and true listening is the secret to the success I have achieved. Life is about relationships and how you honor them.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Here’s a story of where my dreams were trying to save my life, but I didn’t listen. It ended up causing a huge pivot in my life. Some years ago I had emergency surgery to have my gallbladder removed. My god, that was a level of pain I never want to visit again. When I was somewhat recovered, I went to my doctor’s office for a follow-up visit. Dr. Childs opened her door and said to me, “Get in here.”
That sounded a bit ominous, but I obeyed.
“I want to show you something,” she said with briskness.
She laid out a series of gory pictures on her desktop.
“These are pictures of your gallbladder that I removed from your body three days ago. Look at them,” she demanded.
I perused the pictures with difficulty. She then held up one of the pictures close to my face.
“So, tell me, Walter, what color is your gallbladder in these pictures?”
“Why, it appears to be grey I guess,” I replied, not sure where this was going.
“And exactly what color do you think it should be, Walter?” she inquired.
Well, grey, I suppose.”
“No! Wrong answer. Healthy organs in the body are pink.” She slammed the picture down on the desk and continued. “Your gallbladder should be pink, but no, not yours. Yours is grey. Do you know what that means?”
I had no reply.
Onward she plunged. “It means that you let your gallbladder die. That’s what it means. And guess what? Your body knew it. It absolutely knew it and was screaming at you to fix it. I daresay that it was vociferously sending out pain signals for months with a level of pain few people can tolerate. Am I right?”
“Well, yes, I did have a lot of pain for months before this,” I sheepishly replied.
“And, what exactly, genius man, did you think was causing that pain—indigestion?” She queried.
“Yes, Indigestion, and bad diet, and perhaps my ex-wife who is a real pain,” I said.
“Not funny,” she replied. “You came extremely close to dying, whether you know it or not.
If you remember nothing but one thing from this experience, let it be this simple thing—you need to listen to your body. And I mean listen to it. You have a high tolerance for pain, but your body gave you all sorts of warnings and indications that something was radically wrong and you were deaf to it. You absolutely from now on must listen carefully to what your body is saying and don’t be cavalier and downright stupid. If something feels wrong, seek help. Can you promise me that?”
“Yes, I promise,” I quietly uttered. “And thanks for saving my life.”
I have never forgotten that pointed conversation and ever since then I have strived to listen to my body and have been relatively successful at it. It was great advice that I took to heart that changed my life and how I live it.
Hindsight is 20/20, of course, so let’s look back and see what warnings my body and dreams were giving me that might have saved my gallbladder and a lot of needless pain.
In the case of the body, it was screaming at me loudly every day with constant pain that I attempted unsuccessfully to mask with over-the-counter painkillers and a heavy dose of ignoring. When my negligence finally killed my gallbladder, my loyal body sent me into a state of pain so great I ended up on the floor screaming for help.
So, the body was clear and present telling me to get help, which my ego-centered cavalier self suppressed all this and trudged on.
And what about the dreams? Did they try to say anything that would be clues to the mystery of this pain I was suffering? My experience in working dreams for so many years for so many people has shown that dreams talk to us not only about our psychology but also about the needs of the body.
Looking back on the dreams I had for the two months before my operation, a pattern appears.
Dream after dream involved some sort of war footing or violence. First, it was a Civil War battle where both sides were decimated. Then it was a witch who stabs me in the eye. Then it was more war dreams with Nazis invading a valley and finally this one:

DREAM— TAKING UP THE SWORD
I am at a conference. There is a woman who has to leave and die, and since I am the guy in charge of pain and death, it falls to me to facilitate her death. I will have to run her through with my sword, so I prepare my sword. I am not pleased that I have to do this, but it will be fine. It’s my job. There are no real bad feelings here about it. At the last minute, she doubles over in pain and decides she will kill herself. Thank God, what a relief.
A Japanese warrior and his son show up. They both have beautiful Samurai swords. The three of us bow to each other, then we do something strange. We bundle our right hands into fists and we pound the fist into the spot just below the sternum, which really hurts.
Suddenly the Samurai warrior’s wife appears. It seems that they live separately and have independent lives and there is something secret about their marriage. She is very exotic and beautiful. She is from India and dresses in veils. She has large eyes that see through you. She raises her hands to the sky and telepathically says in a whisper to me, “Death is within you.” Well, that is weird, so I ignore her and turn to the Japanese warrior.
The Japanese warrior and I are meant to go on some sort of quest, but he refuses to take up his sword and do battle with the invaders. I am with him in a bed chamber and I am trying to talk him into taking the sword and being the warrior that he has trained to be. He is asleep and dreaming as I talk to him, so, I talk to him in his dreams.
The son, meanwhile is out in the world, which is this giant circle of open outdoor space with an earthen floor. It is like an arena of some sort with a wooden circled edge and he is dancing proudly with his Samurai sword. I do battle with him and kill him. There is no anger in the killing. I run my sword through his abdomen and he dies gracefully and bloodlessly.
This is the son of both the Japanese warrior and the exotic wife. It is a secret that they have had this son together. When I kill the son, the mother, who has also been asleep and dreaming, wakes up with a start, fully knowing somehow that her son has been killed at that instant.
Meanwhile, I am in the bed chamber with the father and the ghost of the son appears in the room at the left side of the sleeping father. He is in spirit form— sort of like a see-through cloud and he has a ghost sword. The son takes his ghost sword and slides it into the warrior sword, as though the ghost sword is the spirit inside the physical sword. The father wakes up and sees him and realizes that he now has to pick up the sword and be the warrior that he has always been.

This dream works on many levels and is what I would consider a “Big Dream.” However, in light of when it came—just before I ended up in the hospital, we can look at the parts that are absolutely screaming at me to do something about the pain I was feeling as my gallbladder was dying inside of me.
Let’s look at the symbolic messaging that the dream offers to help me.

First, The woman in the opening is doubled over in pain and goes off to kill herself. The possible message seeping up from my own unconscious and my body is simple: “If you don’t do something about this pain that is making you double over in pain, it will kill you.” Did I get this clear connection? Of course not.
Dream—1, Dunderhead—0.

Next, we have three guys with swords bowing to each other and then pounding their fists into that spot right below the sternum. Well, guess where Dr. Childs made three incisions to remove the gallbladder? Precisely in that spot where we are hitting ourselves. And coincidently she used three sword-like scalpels to make the incisions.
When I woke up from the dream, that very spot was in extreme pain. Did I understand the relationship? Did I see the connection? Nope.
Dream—2, Dreamer—0.

Now my anima appears in the form of the exotic woman who can see right through my shenanigans. So, the feminine, or the anima, appears a second time to affirm that I am killing myself. The first time she goes off to kill herself, and this time she is here to look right through me and says to me, “Death is within you,” which I totally ignore. I mean someone says, “Death is within you” in a dream and you don’t think twice about it?
Do I get it that I am killing myself? Not a chance.
Dream—3, Man who ignores things—0.

So, now I hang out with the sleeping warrior— possibly the being who can solve all this, and he refuses to “take up his sword.” When he does that, I pursue him all the way into his dreams. If he takes up the sword, whatever is awry here can be fixed. The dream is trying, (loudly) to indicate I should listen to my dreams in order to keep myself from dying. I have to take up the sword to save myself. The warrior is a stand-in for me, of course, and the dream is asking me, again and again, to wake up to what is happening. There was a deep emotional feeling of danger and distress that came over me during my attempts to persuade the warrior to wake up. And just in case I missed that symbolic message, the dream sends a scene where I kill the son of the Samurai, running him through in that same spot where the gallbladder is. And to really pummel me with truth, the dream has my anima (the Samurai’s wife) who told me I had death within me wake the minute I kill her son, who is again a stand-in for the guy with the dying gallbladder. She was right, I had death within me, but do I get it that it is me that is dying here? Hell no.

Well, that makes three more attempts the dream makes to get its clear message across. As usual, the Walter misses the entire point, three times.
Dream—6, Walter—0.

And now the dream wants to give me a chance to see the positive way this whole thing could turn out if I woke up to it. The ghost of the vanquished son appears and slips his ghost sword inside the sword of the sleeping warrior. In doing so, it wakes up the warrior to what he must do. He must listen to the spirit inside himself, step out of the shadows, and vanquish the clogged-up gallbladder. The dream ends on that invitation to solve this whole thing. In some ways, that spirit sword being inserted inside the Samurai’s sword reminds me of Dr. Childs making her incisions to remove the gallbladder, but that is a bit of hindsight.
And you know what? When I woke from the dream for a quiet moment I had the feeling that the pain I was feeling in my chest had something to do with this dream.
And did I allow that feeling to continue or lead me to anything? Hell, no.

Final score: Dream—7, The Stoic One—0.

And to think this is just one dream of many that were so clearly trying to save my life. The dream I had a few days before this one was about being in the military hiding in a deep cave knowing that I would have to hurt myself in order to get out of the cave and deploy for battle. Well, duh, similar message, no? My dreams were there for me. They made many attempts to make things clear from a myriad of angles, but I was too busy and not tuned in to my own body or my dreams. Lesson learned, I hope.
I created a three-dimensional work of art based on the Taking Up the Sword dream. I felt compelled to do it, not realizing at the time that it had anything to do with my gallbladder. Now, every time I walk past it hanging on my wall I make a silent promise to follow the advice of Dr. Childs and listen to my body.

Contact Info:

• Website: Drawnintothedream.com
• Facebook: Drawn into the Dream
• Youtube: @walterberry9039