Working With Our Dreams

Dreams have held an importance in spiritual life probably ever since humankind has been in existence. Various instances of dream interpretation are given in the Bible. Some scientists have received answers to their problems via dreams (the shape of the Benzene ring, for example). One "primitive" society even has people in the village discuss their dreams on a daily basis.

A lot of significance has been given to events in dreams. Some dreams foretell the future, and influence the behavior of people. Other dreams seem to bring a special spiritual message just for us. For example, one time I dreamed of an armadillo, which I interpreted (using the Medicine Cards) as a message to me that I shouldn't close myself off from people as much as I was at the time.

Now, not every dream is going to carry some form of significant message for us. Rather, I think that some dreams are meaningful; it's basically up to us to figure out which ones, and what they mean.

There is also a fine line between dreaming, and having a vision. Both involve temporary lack of conscious activity. So what we will say for dreams can be applied equally to visions, although visions, as such, are not regular, whereas we dream each night (although we generally forget what we dream upon awakening).

It is also possible that some of our "dreams" are really astral travel during physical sleep. For example you may go somewhere in your dream that you have never been in "waking" life. Once there you may explore the area, meet and interact with other people, and even learn things useful for your spiritual path.

Let me use a couple of examples from my own dream world activities. In one dream a situation arose where I felt it was necessary to go to California and talk to a friend. In my dream I flew (flying like Superman did) out to California and consulted him. In my "waking" life I talked to him about the dream, and described where I had seen him, which matched the physical description of an area about a mile from where he lives. Now I have never been further west than Illinois, so I had no way of knowing what anything looks like near him.

In another dream I was discussing economics and other matters with several individuals, including one alien, when my chest was suddenly physically pushed very hard, actually forcing me awake. This, in effect, was my "astral self" being pushed back into the physical body by guardian spirits to prevent me from being hurt, for the dream also concerned some extremely negative, and dangerous, individuals.

One problem most people have is that they do not remember their dreams once awake. The following is offered as a way to help you remember your dreams:

SUGGESTIONS FOR DREAMING

1. Before you go to sleep, envision a strong white light surrounding your body. This is for the purpose of protection. Ask that only good things and good spirits be allowed near you during your dreamtime. Ask for illumination and guidance, and that you be given a spiritual message in your dream.

Another possibility is to devise a special medicine bag for help during dreaming. Using obsidian crystals to help "ground" your astral self is one possibility. Sleep with the medicine bag under your pillows.

2. Whenever you awake, immediately write down (briefly) what you have dreamed. You can also use a tape recorder. Then, the next day, you can write up your dreamtime experiences, using these notes as the basis for your writing. The notes should bring back the images to your conscious mind.

3. Within the dream, try to learn how to actively control what you are doing. For example, I have a fairly substantial fear of heights. I also have a tendency to do a lot of flying in my dreams-hence, a bit of a problem. In my dreams I trained myself to start flying up only a little bit, at first, so I wouldn't be too scared. Gradually the height was increased until I was able to fly above the level of the telephone lines. From then on there was virtually no limit to my flying. In various dreams I have done some fairly fancy maneuvers, gone all the way to the moon, and managed once to crash into a tree.

This is called lucid dreaming, and you might want to get a book on the subject and do some extensive reading.

Why should you do this? The reason is that, if something happens in the dream that seems to be significant to you, you will want to be able to pay close attention to the event, prolong the event if possible, and take an active interaction with the event. There might be some form of guardian being that appears, for example, and you would wish to talk with the being for a while rather than rushing off as in so many other dreams to some other series of events.

4. Keep a dream journal of your dreams. Look for repeating patterns of symbols, ideas, people, music, colors, words, and the like. You may find that many of your dreams revolve around certain themes.

In your conscious time you may wish to "image" the dream (and change the ending if it was not what you wanted). You can also consult the Medicine Cards, the Sacred Path Cards, the Native American Tarot Deck, or the Medicine Woman Tarot Deck for insight along those lines.

And if you really have a lot of excess energy, you can cross-reference your dream events to your biorhythm chart and even your astrological chart. It is better to have too much information to work with at first, and then to distill that information into usable bits, rather than to make conclusions based on inadequate information.