The following are some assumptions I have about dreams and
the dream process… I don’t know if they are true or not… but they seem to fit
my experience:
1. Dreams
are meaningful…
The meaning may not always be clear at first and depending on the type of
dream, clarity may come later… the main working belief here is that there is
purpose in life and a process of unfolding awareness… a synthesis toward
wholeness…
2. Dreams
can teach us something new…
The wisdom of the “unconscious mind” provides clues to help us open and grow…
The dreamscape is trying to teach us something new… perhaps some hidden ego
dynamics… or new abilities… or expanding awareness to multi-dimensions…
3. The
dreamer is the final authority of his or her dream meaning…
In groups, people share the meaning as if it were their own dream… These are
always projections and the dreamer must decide if other people’s projections
seem to fit ... if there is an “ah-ha” moment, then there is probably a match…
I always try to say or write: “If it were my dream”… before I comment to remind
myself and others that what I say or write are mere projections… I am not the
authority regarding your dreams…YOU ARE!
4. Everyone
dreams and may or may not remember their dreams…
Sleep and dream research have shown that we
have certain dream-states that occur within our sleep cycles… If you do not
remember your dreams it is most likely that you have no way to work with the
dreamscapes… One thing you can do is to ask your unconscious to give you a
dream that you will remember… Place a notebook by your bed and write anything
down that you recall, even if it is a brief fragment…
5. Nightmares
can be helpful…
Some of my most fearful dreams produced some incredible lessons… Our egoic
structure or personal ego is well established and will do what it can to
protect its domain… it was constructed in the process of surviving as best it
could… Fear in a nightmare can mean that the ego is trying to fight against
some important information from coming through to consciousness. I always try
my best to stay with a fearful situation in a dream to see what might be
transformed… sometimes it works, sometimes I wake to escape the dream situation…
6. Consciousness
is continuous and interconnected…
This simply means Life is One… and our dreams occur at various levels…
Sometimes they are showing us very personal dynamics we may be repressing for
daily life… at other times they may be connecting to transpersonal or spiritual
dimensions beyond individual ego boundaries… perhaps in a mass collective
consciousness… perhaps at the level of archetypal of universal patterns…
perhaps in astral projections where our ethereal or spirit body moves to other
locations or planes… The larger “Mind” that includes ‘All’ is really the stuff
of Divine Love… and includes all information that ever was or will be…
7. Time
is an illusion…
Dreams, like intuition can provide specific information that will come to pass
in a day or a month… these are premonitions of the NOW that has not yet entered
our conscious experience… This concept is hard for the logical mind to
understand since it is based more on time and linear thinking… this is not to
say that time does not exist, but rather there is much more and less to ‘time’
than meets our everyday ‘eye’….
8. Dreams
are selective…
By this I mean, our larger unconscious mind present what we need or are ready
for at the time… and the more we are conversant with this Higher Self part of
our unconscious, the more we are able to work in cooperation with our deeper purpose
and mission, often seeding dreams for answers, directions, astral travel, etc.
…And there is always more to come… and we are all-ways more
than we think we are!