Thought for the Week
One of the great spiritual tools we have available to us, and which is usually completely overlooked, is our dreams. Through our dreams we get warnings, insights into situations, learn skills, gain knowledge, see past lives, go on fantastic journeys, etc., etc. They are a gift which has been lost from our Western culture, as they don't conform to a logical, scientific explanation or examination. They rarely make sense to another person but to us they can be a source of great wisdom.
To make dreams useful we have to understand them. To understand them takes time, patience and discipline.
Our own dream language
Understanding our dreams is like learning a new language. What we are learning is our own dream language. Each of us has our own set of symbols which mean certain things to us. Your interpretation of an image of a river is going to be different to someone else. For you a river may symbolise a place of peace and rest. For someone else a river could be a place of terror due to their fear of water.
How do we translate our symbols into something we can understand? The best way is to keep a record of our dreams in a journal. After a while we will begin to see patterns emerge. Some dreams occur around particular events in our lives, some happen when are under stress, or away from home. After a few months, when we review our journal we may see patterns or the repetitions of situations, symbols or events on our dreams. What was a confused dream a few months ago may now be clearer.
Keeping a journal requires discipline. The discipline to wake ourselves up in the middle of the night and write a few notes about the dream we’ve just had. The discipline to convert the notes into a clear story, so that we will remember the dream in a few weeks or months time.
How to remember dreams
One of the best ways I found of remembering dreams is to go back to sleep just after I wake up in the morning. Then I can return to the dream and because my physical mind is somewhat awake, it can remember the details of the dream. Then as I get out of bed or even just sit up in bed. I’ll start writing down what happened in the dream. If I have taken notes during the night of a dream, I’ll write that out at this time too. I find that as soon as I’ve taken a few steps out of bed and have begun to interact with the physical world, my memory of the dream worlds evaporate. That’s why I stay in bed a write about the dreams. When I’ve finished writing down the dream, I’ll also write down any ideas as to the meaning or what the dream relates to in my outer life.
As we write down our dreams we begin to get an understanding of what is going on. Some dreams are easy to write about, as there is a sequence of events and a story to follow. Others can be difficult where we are going through a scene that requires endurance or effort. Some dreams are frightening or unsettling.
Next week
Next week in Spiritual Tools – Dreams (part 2) we’ll look at the different types of dream and how we can use them in our outer life. In the mean time, Sweet Dreams.
*Ed P
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