You are the final authority on your dreams, and you should never give the power of your dreams away by handing them over to other people to interpret. Yes, our dreams can be confusing and opaque, and we gain greatly from other people's insights, especially when those other people are "frequent fliers" who work closely with their own dreams and have developed a fine intuition about what may be going on in dreaming. So it's okay to ask for help. More than that, we often need help because we are too close to our own issues, or too inhibited by self-limiting to see what may be obvious to a complete outsider.
But we need to learn
some simple rules about how to share and comment on dreams. I suggest the following
guidelines for starters:
1. Tell the dream as
clearly and exactly as possible. Dreams are real experiences, and the meaning
of the dream is often inside the dream experience itself.
2. Consider your
feelings, inside the dream and on waking. These are a quick and usually
reliable guide to the importance, urgency and quality (e.g. positive/negative)
of the dream.
3. Always run a reality
check by asking: Is it remotely possible the events in this dream could be
played out in waking life? I have never seen more time wasted in dream analysis
-- and more life-supporting messages lost -- than when we fail to recognize
that our dreams are constantly rehearsing us for challenges that lie around the
corner. In our dreams, we are all psychic.
4. If you are going to
comment on someone else's dream, always begin by saying (in these words or
similar words), "If this were my dream, I would think about..." This
way, you are not leaning on other people and presuming to tell them the meaning
of their dreams or their lives. If we can only encourage more people to follow
this vitally important etiquette for dream-sharing, we'll create a safe space
for many people to share dreams and work with them in everyday contexts -- at
work, in the family, in schools -- and we'll be on our way to becoming a
dreaming culture again.
5. Try to go back inside
the dream and recover more information. A dream fully remembered is often its
own interpretation.
6. Try to come up with a
one-liner to summarize what happens in the dream (or encourage the dreamer to do
that). This will often turn out to be a personal dream motto that will orient
you towards appropriate action -- to act on the dream guidance and honor the
dream.
7. Always do something
with the dream! We need to do far more than interpret dreams;we need to bring
their energy and insight into manifestation in waking life.
The simple guidelines
above are central to my Active Dreaming approach. I have condensed them into a fast and fun "Lightning Dreamwork" process for everyday dream sharing you'll find explained in my books the The Three "Only" Things and Active Dreaming.
Image: Dream art journal of French artist and dream teacher Véronique Barek-Deligny
I would like to thank you for your blog. I read it whenever I see a post. I have learned much from you and have gotten all your books because there is so much that resonates truth to me. There is also much synchronization going on as well, and that's always a good sign. So thank you and keep up the good work. :)
ReplyDeleteYour Book, Sidewalk Oracles, has been in my scope for the last couple of days popping up in conversations and blogs. During my morning meditation the spirit guides showed me a book. When I opened my eyes the first thing I saw was a sticky note with the title of that book so I just downloaded it on my Kobo. Thank you in advance. I intuit that I will be reading more of your work in the immediate future and look forward to it.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate this blog. I also think that our own interpretations of our dreams are most important. I often think word associations help to figure out what certain aspects of our dreams mean to us! Thanks so much for this.
ReplyDeleteThese are some great tools that i definitely use for SEO work. This is a great list to use in the future.. John Ryan
ReplyDelete