One of the effects of the covid 19 pandemic has been an
explosion of public interest in dreams. People who never gave much thought to
dreams and were rarely known to talk about them are now dreaming up a storm,
and wanting to share their dreams with anyone who will listen.
The dreams reported cover a wide spectrum. While some seem to dramatize
fear and anxiety, others offer entertainment, sanctuary and destination
travel. While many reported “bad dreams” and nightmares, others were
grateful for dreams of reassurance in which they found themselves in the
presence of departed loved ones and mentors, angels and goddesses, talking
animals and benign space aliens.
Many people are cheered to rediscover that, dreaming, we can travel without leaving home and we can be as social as we like.
"Why am I having this weird dream?" "What am I supposed to do with my dream that my dead grandma came to visit last night?" "What does it mean that I'm trying to get gas in my tank but it's squirting in the wrong places?"
Lots of people are seeking guidance on how to understand their dreams and what to do with them. In my Active Dreaming approach we never presume to tell others what their dreams (or their lives) mean. However, we can offer feedback by offering what the dream might mean to us if it were our dream. You can learn about the fast, fun, four-step process for sharing dreams and life stories that I call the Lightning Dreamwork Game here. This goes far beyond analysis. It lead to action to embody the creative and healing energy of dreams in our everyday lives.
To understand and harvest the gifts of your dreams at home, you want to keep a journal. This is your indispensable tool. You will date and title each entry.You will write a short simple narrative of each dream you record. You will add some of what you learn when you start using the Nine Keys to Your Dreams I first explained in my book Conscious Dreaming. Here they are, in summary:
Many people are cheered to rediscover that, dreaming, we can travel without leaving home and we can be as social as we like.
"Why am I having this weird dream?" "What am I supposed to do with my dream that my dead grandma came to visit last night?" "What does it mean that I'm trying to get gas in my tank but it's squirting in the wrong places?"
Lots of people are seeking guidance on how to understand their dreams and what to do with them. In my Active Dreaming approach we never presume to tell others what their dreams (or their lives) mean. However, we can offer feedback by offering what the dream might mean to us if it were our dream. You can learn about the fast, fun, four-step process for sharing dreams and life stories that I call the Lightning Dreamwork Game here. This goes far beyond analysis. It lead to action to embody the creative and healing energy of dreams in our everyday lives.
To understand and harvest the gifts of your dreams at home, you want to keep a journal. This is your indispensable tool. You will date and title each entry.You will write a short simple narrative of each dream you record. You will add some of what you learn when you start using the Nine Keys to Your Dreams I first explained in my book Conscious Dreaming. Here they are, in summary:
1. Trust Your Feelings
Always pay attention to how you feel when you wake from a dream.
Your feelings and bodily sensations may be your best guide to the relative
urgency and importance of a dream, and its positive or negative implications.
2. First Associations
In keeping a dream journal, you will want to get into the habit of
jotting down your first associations with the dreams you record. What floats to
the surface of your consciousness in the first minutes after waking may come
from layers of the dream that have eluded, or from deeper levels of
dreaming
3. Reality Check
Compare what is going on in the dream to the rest of your life,
including the life of your imagination. Always ask whether it is possible that
any part of the dream will manifest, literally or symbolically, in physical
reality. Though dreams are inner experiences, they often contain accurate
information about external reality. In both subtle and unsubtle ways, dreams
incorporate signals from the outside environments.
4. Dream Reentry
Dreams are real experiences, and a fully remembered dream is its
own interpretation. The meaning of a dream is inside the dream itself. By
learning how to re-enter dreams, you will develop the ability to clarify
messages about future events, resume contact with inner teachers, and resolve
unfinished business.
5. Dialogue with Dream Characters
One of the best ways to work out what your dream characters are
telling you is to ask them. You can do this through dream reentry or simply by
sitting down with a pad and pen, imagining that the dream figure is in front of
you, and opening a conversation.
6. Tracking Your Dream Self
Who are you in your dreams? Are you the protagonist or simply an
observer? Are you younger or older? Male or female? How does the situation and
behavior of our dream self compare with that of your waking self? The character
who appears in all of your dreams, even if only as a witness, is you.
7. Symbol Exploration
Although the dream source tries to communicate with us as clearly
as possible, it must often speak in symbols in order to carry us beyond the
limitations of the everyday mind. Symbols take us from what we know to
what we do not yet know. You'll be inspired to track your symbols far and wide,
and may discover that your personal dreams embody timeless myths from many
traditions. Always remember that the best encyclopedia of dream symbols is your
own journal, kept over time.
8. "What Part of Me?"
Dreams make us whole. They show us the many aspects of ourselves
and help us to bring them under one roof. This is why it is often useful to ask
"what part of me" different characters and elements in a dream might
represent. However,this approach is rarely sufficient since dreams are
transpersonal as well as personal. If you meet a tribal shaman in a dream, that
may be an aspect of yourself and an actual shaman. If you meet
your departed grandmother, that is more likely to be Granma trying to
communicate than merely a part of you that is like her.
9. Dream Enactment
Dreams require action! You may take creative action, turning a
dream into a story, a picture a collage.You may do some shamanic shopping, to
get shoes or earrings your dream self was wearing or a sculpture of a deity you
saw in a dream. You may use the dream as GPS on your life roads. You may accept
dream assignments, seeking to translate that strange word or find that obscure
place on a map of this world or another world. At the least, you can harvest a
bumper sticker or action phrase from the dream that will help to move its
energy into life.
Text of the Nine Keys partially adapted from Conscious Dreaming by Robert Moss. Published by Three Rivers Press.
Art: Frantisek Kupka, "The Dream"
Art: Frantisek Kupka, "The Dream"
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