Dreams are the intimate conversations we are having with our subconscious and our soul. Dreams can guide us when we take the time to interpret our dreams.
I have been in dialogue with my dreams for many years and this unique relationship has deepened me over time. Often I don’t understand what my dreams are telling me but that doesn’t concern me. I know they are sharing something with me so I’m patient, not needing to have instant clarification. I know that all will be revealed in its own time.
A dream journal is essential for working with dreams
I have been keeping a dream journal for over 40 years.
The dream journal becomes a book of mysterious wisdom cloaked in veils of symbolism. At first, as we record our dreams, only tiny clues will reveal themselves, but the dream journal will build from one dream to another, and we will see patterns and repetitions and a larger story reveals itself. Sometimes it will be individual dreams that “speak” to us and sometimes groups of dreams whose patterns we interpret but one thing remains constant each dream is recorded in our dream journal as this shows them respect.
Patterns in dreams and reoccurring dreams
Sometimes when I read my dream journal and look back at two or three months of dreams I will see patterns I hadn’t noticed and suddenly understand what they have been trying to tell me. Jung discovered that dreams could often be understood in patterns rather than individual stories. Knowing this gives us another way of working with them. Whatever I dream I write it down in my dream journal.
What are dreams?
Dreams have fascinated and intrigued mankind for thousands of years. The Bible contains numerous references to individuals being guided by dreams the most famous being Joseph’s interpretation of the pharaoh’s dream predicting seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine which foretold the pestilence to come and so impressed the pharaoh that he rewarded Joseph with a high position in his court.
Edgar Cayce often referred to as “America’s greatest seer” said dreams accomplish two things. They solve the problems of the dreamers waking life and they work to quicken in the dreamer’s new potentials, which are his to claim.
Jung thought of dreams as “ always a little bit ahead of the dreamer’s consciousness.” They know more than our mind knows.
But somehow in the 21st Century dreams have been regulated to simple curiosity if they are noticed at all. This is unfortunate for when we ignore our dreams we are ignoring valuable communication with other parts of ourselves.
How to work with dreams?
When I have questions or a major decision to make I always go to my dreams for guidance. I practice a process called dream incubation that invokes dreams from my subconscious.
Just before going to sleep while lying in bed I will repeat to my subconscious what I require. I might say something like this: “Tonight I will dream and I will remember my dream and the dream will be about … (whatever I am looking for). I will repeat this affirmation to have a dream ten or twenty times and relax knowing this request is being acted on. I expect my subconscious to respond to my request and it usually does.
Your dreams can guide you
It surprises my friends that I go to my dreams this way and astounds them when I share my dreams with them and how accurately they guide me. But why should it be so surprising? This is what is supposed to happen. Our subconscious hears our every word and thought and responds to our requests. It communicates with the web and has access to information the mind cannot obtain on its own. Our subconscious is a part of us and dreams are one it its ways of communicating with us so of course I listen to them.
Dream Interpretation
The language of dreams is symbols and interpreting our dreams we never interpret literally but work out and intuit what the symbols might be saying to us. When we approach our dreams in this way they become loaded with potentials and possibilities. For example, a death in a dream might mean a change is required, a scene in a bathroom might mean something is calling to be eliminated, a house might mean our psyche, the basement might mean our subconscious, you get the idea. Depending upon our interpretation of a dream, they can point in many directions. One approaches each dream with humility and excitement. Excitement because we have been given an encrypted message. Humility because we have no idea what it means of whether we will interpret it correctly.
How to interpret our dreams
Let me share several dreams, which have guided me in the past. One was in response to an important decision I needed to make the following day. I needed an answer that night. I was fluctuating back and forth not sure what to do so I asked my subconscious to give me a dream. That night a dream revealed to me what I should do. Without repeating the entire dream which was very lengthy, the part that resonated most clearly and gave me my answer was the point in the dream where I saw myself getting a parking ticket because I had parked in an unauthorized place. I was running to my car saying, “What’s it going to cost me?” over and over disappointed that I had parked there. Upon awakening I immediately wrote down my dream and I gave it the title “What’s it going to cost me?”
Tip: Giving a title to our dreams is another way of helping us understand them.
Regarding my decision I asked myself “what’s it going to cost me?” if I proceed with my plan. In the dream I’m doing something I should not and being penalized for it so I surmised the dream was suggesting that there would be a price to pay if I went ahead so I decided against it, which later proved to be the correct decision. My dream had helped me make the right decision.
Another dream occurred a few nights before I was about to invest a sizeable amount of money in an investment that looked like a sure thing. In my dream the partners I was going to invest with were walking a skunk on a leash, as if it were a dog and everyone was acting as if this was normal. I woke from the dream and titled the dream “Something stinks.” And again declined. Several years later the project went bankrupt and I would have lost all my money. In still another circumstance I was hesitating involving myself in a project when I had a dream of a ferry leaving the dock and I wasn’t on the boat and felt great regret that I had missed the boat wondering if I should swim quickly to catch up not knowing what to do. I titled this dream “Don’t miss the boat” which helped me make the decision to participate which I did and this too turned out to be the right decision.
The first dream workshop that I presented was preceded by a dream, which guided me. I was unsure, at the time, whether I had sufficient knowledge and understanding to lead this workshop. I had only worked with my dreams for a few years and while I was anxious to lead this workshop I wasn’t sure if I should. I went to my dreams for guidance. In my dream I saw myself in a room where my hair was being measured by a group of elders all with long hair. They were discussing amongst themselves whether my hair was long enough to be accepted. They had a ruler and my hair was measured over and over again. Some of them thought it was long enough and some didn’t. There was disagreement between them but finally they decided that by the barest of margins my hair was long enough. I woke from my dream and after writing it down decided that this dream was telling me that by “the barest of margins” I was ready to teach this workshop. This gave me confidence to present the workshop but also kept me humble as I still wasn’t a “long hair” yet.
One time during a research project I was told in a dream to access a very specific book where I would find the information I was looking for. Sure enough in the morning searching through the book my dream had suggested I found the missing information I had been looking for. When this happens you take notice.
Are all dreams messages?
Not all dreams are messages or specific, often we are unsure exactly what our dreams are telling us. So the question becomes how do we know that the dream we had last night has anything to do with our request? Maybe it has nothing to do with what we are asking and this is possible but because our subconscious is always trying to reach us, we can at least surmise that there is a distinct possibility that the dream has meaning for us.
Understanding dreams and dream symbols
We take our time to try and understand what our dream might be saying to us. If we do not receive or remember a dream we continue the incubation process until we do. We record all our dreams, noticing any patterns or similarities between two or more dreams. We approach our dream like a puzzle we have to decipher and gradually with practice we become more proficient and learn to speak the language of symbols. Dreams work in symbols and their messages are always there if we take the time to understand them.
Be patient and don’t expect to be an expert at this language the first week or month. If we’ve never spoken Spanish or French it takes time to get a basic foundation where we can order food and get around? Give the same time and attention to dream language.
How to have a relationship with our dreams
Writing our dreams down in the morning is a good start as it is giving a very important symbol to our subconscious. We are using its language and showing it we are sincere in wanting to understand our dreams. Just as in a relationship with another person, when we honour our dreams it shows we respect these messages and they are worthy of being recorded.
Signs and Omens
Unexplained, incredible things can and do happen regularly, this we know. Occurrences that defy our logic but make perfect sense from a quantum perspective are the norm. Our life is always speaking to us only we have not been aligned and connected enough to hear what it is telling us. Signs and omens happen to us regularly, only our mind, not trained or aware of what to look for, usually dismisses them as coincidences or unimportant.
There comes a time in each of our lives when we realize life is much more mysterious and magical than we had originally suspected. Actually our life is much more like a dream than the rigid structure of reality we have imagined it to be and this gives us a new way of working with it.
Read more about the process of working with your dreams; https://www.learnmindpower.com/article/dreams-part-i/
