You Never Know

You never know when someone
might catch a dream from you.
Or something you say may
open up the windows
of a mind that seeks light;
The way you live may not matter at all,
But you never know, it might.
And just in case it could be
that another’s life, through you,
might possibly change for the better
with a better and brighter view,
it seems it might be worth a try
at pointing the way to the right;
Of course, it may not matter at all,
but then again, it might.

By Helen L. Marshall

Promises To Keep

Have you ever wondered why a resolution you made never got fulfilled or why something you longed for never happened?

Sometimes it’s because your heart wasn’t really in the dream. It may have been someone else’s (often a parent’s) idea of what would be best for you, but, because you either wanted to please that person or because the idea had been around for so long that you forgot it wasn’t yours, you adopted it. It may also have been a dream which had once been yours but which died a quiet death while you weren’t looking.

How are you going to accomplish this? A dream without a plan for fulfilling it will generally remain a dream forever.

A dream needs to be yours; it needs to be clear; and it needs to have a plan for fulfillment. Once you have these three elements you have the equivalent of a vehicle to carry you towards your goal. Then two more ingredients are needed: you, the driver, and motion.

People (myself included) often hope that they won’t be required to do anything strenuous or unsettling in order to have that they want. They would prefer to simply visualize their dreams, say affirmations frequently, and hope for the best. This might work, but I wouldn’t count on it.

The Joy of Inertia

The importance of honoring one’s commitment and taking action was reinforced for me a while back. I have a particular dream: to write and have published both non-fictional and fictional books. Several months ago I was in the early stages of making plans; in fact, my only plan at that point was to make a plan, and I didn’t quite know where to begin.

A friend emailed me a notice about an upcoming meeting of a recently-formed local publishing group for authors, agents, illustrators, and others connected to or interesting in publishing. An author who wrote, co-wrote, and ghostwrote books on spiritual subjects was to speak. I thought that this would be a good place to meet and network with like-minded people, and decided to attend.

My intention to go was firm until about an hour before the event; then it began to wobble. I was really tired, and I didn’t feel like going out. I felt like staying home, reading, and eating ice cream. I didn’t like to drive at night.

I kept on telling myself these and other reasons for not going until I had myself hypnotized. By 6:15 p.m. (the meeting started at 7 p.m.) I had decided not to go.

I was at the point at which many people abandon their dreams. They don’t call it abandonment; they have simply come up with a variety of compelling reasons for not going forward. Sometime in the future when circumstances are more favorable they’ll act.

Beyond Inertia

At 6:20 p.m. I realized that I wasn’t happy with my decision not to go, and also realized that some kind of fear was fueling my reasons (which I now labeled as excuses) against motion. I imagined myself at the meeting, and the first thing I saw was my not knowing anyone there and feeling like a social misfit. That was a very unpleasant feeling.

I then looked to see if any other forms of fear were lurking, and saw that as much as I welcomed the possibilities of belonging to such a group I also feared those possibilities. If I went to the meeting I would be making a commitment to myself as a writer; moreover, I would be to some (as yet unknown) extent be making that commitment public.

At 6:25 p.m. I asked myself, “What are the worst things which could happen tonight?” They were that I would feel out of place and socially inept, and that people would know I had ambitions as a writer.

Then I changed my approach to ask myself what the best things that could happen would be. I imagined seeing people whom I knew and meeting people who would be interesting, that I might have a good time and learn something, as well as become part of a supportive network.

I thought about the commitment I’d made to myself, and decided that I’d rather face my fears than live with regret. At 6:30 p.m. I got into the car and went to the meeting.

I did see some people I knew, and met some new people who were interesting. I learned a lot about the book publishing business, and connected with some people who were committed to exchanging information about self-publishing. There were also some excellent home-baked desserts.

Oh, and I did have to stand up and describe my intentions as a writer. Anticipating this was dreadful, but it wasn’t so difficult, and left no lasting scars on my psyche.

Don’t Give Yourself a Break; Give Yourself an Opportunity

This experience reminded me that when I make a commitment all of the reasons why I don’t want to keep it will come to the surface, speaking in the voice of a part of myself I call the Inner Comforter. The Inner Comforter wants to keep me right where I am (reading a book and eating ice cream). It doesn’t want me to take risks, to feel afraid, to court rejection or failure. It poses as my friend. It is in fact a friend only of my fears, and my fears are no friends to my desire to fulfill my dreams.

Its voice isn’t always as clear cut as it was for me (I’ve learned to listen for it.) You can be suspicious that it’s guiding you into inertia when:

You look at last New Year’s list of resolutions and feel a deep sense of failure. Someone asks you about your plans to: get a new job, move, terminate your dead-end relationship, or whatever you’ve announced as a goal and you a) change the subject, b) come up with a dazzling array of reasons for changing your mind.

A great opportunity arises, and you don’t want to take advantage of it.

Despite all your good intentions your life isn’t happening the way you want it to.

Should any of the above occur you may want to consider using my simple plan for action. Notice that you are a) uncertain about what to do, b) don’t want to do anything out of the ordinary.

Listen to the excuses you’re making to yourself.
Ask yourself what you’re really afraid of.
Ask yourself the worst things that could happen.
Ask yourself the best things that could happen. You will probably not have much trouble thinking of the worst things, but may have to get creative when it comes to imagining the best things.
Get really excited about the best possibilities; imagine them in detail.
Take action.

The Healing Power Of Dreams

“We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.” – C.G. Jung

Dreams are doorways to the subconscious, pathways to the spirit realm and keys to the future. Dreams serve as a communication line between the invisible and visible worlds. Or, if you prefer, between heaven and earth. A dream is a real-life experience an individual has on another plane. We, in our true nature as Soul, are able to have experiences in a far-reaching panorama of life. Dreams are constantly rehearsing us for challenges and opportunities that lie around the corner in waking life. This is why Dream Work is also important.

There is a healing instinct within you that can manifest in dreams. You’d be surprised at the straightforward health advice they give, either spontaneously or on request. Tips on food, preventive therapies, treatment options constantly come through-but we miss them. Once remembered the essence of many of our dreams is lost because we, or our therapists, misinterpret them.

A patient told me about a recurring broccoli dream. “You can’t be serious,” he said, chuckling. “It’s actually trying to tell me what to eat? A vegetable?” Yes-it was. We often dismiss such practical suggestions as meaningless. But sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Keep it simple. Try something new. If you dream of eating a luscious mango, run out, devour one. Or when, in a dream, you’re soaking in natural hot springs, make a date to go. How do you know if the advice you receive is right? Count on common sense to direct you. Though some intuitive flashes may seem impractical or unexpected, the authentic ones will never suggest anything to jeopardize you or anyone else’s physical welfare.

So, for instance, if you have heart disease and a dream tells you, “It’s okay to smoke cigarettes,” don’t do it. Question all messages that risk your health. Along with this guideline, begin to familiarize yourself with traditional dream interpretation. I suggest Carl Jung’s classic text Man and His Symbols, or take a look at Creative Dreaming by Dr. Patricia Garfield.

In addition, there’s an intuitive level to understanding dreams of which I’d like you to be aware. Reliable intuitive information stands out in very specific ways. Watch for these clues:

Statements that simply convey information

Neutral segments that evoke or convey no emotion

A detached feeling, like you’re a witness watching a scene

A voice or person counseling you-as if you’re taking dictation from an outside source

Conversations with people you never met before who give instructions about your health

I’ve found that my most dead-on intuitions either come across as compassionate or have no emotion at all. Develop a careful eye as you practice separating the content of your dreams from your reactions to it. Soon you’ll be able to tell what is reliable health guidance and what is not.

Be aware that your dreams go by different rules than your waking life. Get ready for a mind shift. Physical laws no longer apply. Gravity changes. In dreams you can fly!

Remember as a child (or adult) when you took off wingless, soared over mountains and valleys below. Health wise, this is a reminder of the vitality and freedom that is in you. Silence is pregnant. A dream’s tone can be as restorative as its content; a revelation about staying well can come through someone’s eyes rather than words.

You are in partnership with your dreams. Initiate an ongoing dialogue with them. It’s like consulting the wisest old-time family doctor you can imagine who knows you inside out. You can ask your dreams anything-even what seems most impossible.

How can I keep my blood pressure down? What about my hip pain or allergies? Are there ways to stop catching so many colds? No question is trivial if it is meaningful to you. Expect answers. Some will be direct. Others may require interpretation.

Dreams can keep you well. Dreams provide answers. But first you must retrieve them. How many nights have you awakened with the most amazing dream you were certain you’d recall? The next morning it was gone.

Our memories deceive. During sleep we experience a kind of amnesia. Dreams are not of the rational mind. Your intuitive memory is what is needed. Here is a method I recommend to remember your dreams. It’s helpful to practice it each day. Soon it will become second nature to you.

Four Strategies To Remember Your Dreams

Keep a journal and pen by your bed.

Write a question on a piece of paper before you go to sleep. Formalize your request. Place it on a table beside your bed or under your pillow.

In the morning do not wake up too fast. Stay under the covers for at least a few minutes remembering your dream. Luxuriate in a peaceful feeling between sleep and waking, what scientists call the hypnagogic state. Those initial moments provide a doorway.

Open your eyes. Write down your dream immediately; otherwise it will evaporate. You may recall a face, object, color, or scenario, feel an emotion. It doesn’t matter if it makes perfect sense-or if you retrieve a single image or many. Record everything you remember.

When you’re finished refocus on the health question you asked the previous night. See how your dream applies. One, two, or more impressions about the who/what/where of your solution may have surfaced.

Get in the habit of recording your dreams regularly. Be assured I’ve never met anyone who can’t be taught how to remember. Keep at it. If your answer doesn’t come the first night, try again. More details will emerge, rounding out the picture.

Then look to your daily life for evidence of what your dream tells you. The woman’s face you glimpsed for that split second could just be that of the healer you’ve been searching for.

I am guided every day by the five intuitive steps I’ve just presented. They have become my eyes. They can be yours too. The intuitions about your health I speak of and live by are ordinarily without boundary and are unseen.

As you go through these steps they highlight, truths about your body, providing a framework in which to recognize them. Ordering allows for a simple, focused understanding. I have a great respect for structure as long as it facilitates our freedom.

Go through the steps with this in mind. With each health question you ask, be prepared to expand or contract in response to whatever fluid motion is called for. Surrender all preconceptions about your healing. This realm I’m attempting to outline ultimately escapes definition. The mastermind of all things intuitive, the brains behind the scene, is of an infinite source.

What if, just once, you let yourself go, accept the gift unconditionally? I dare you. What do you have to lose? And to gain? Breathe fire into what is dormant in you: your intuitions about a healthy body, your sense of spiritual power from which all your intuitions come.

Make these connections count. They will last a lifetime. Open yourself to knowledge of how to heal. Let the mystery touch you. It is everything, everything.

SHARING OUR DREAMS

Everyone wakes up on some mornings and wonders about the dream, or nightmare, they just had. If the dream bothers you, or comes back to you in the daytime and you want to know its meaning, you should be aware of some ways of analyzing or interpreting your dreams.

Analysis, interpretation and looking at the symbols in your dreams give you a good sense of your dreams. You can usually feel better about the bad ones, and feel terrific about the insight you gain from the good ones (there are no “bad” dreams — they can all be used to help you).

5 Reasons To Look At Your Dreams:

Because they give you a startlingly original point of view about your life.

Because some dreams are so fabulous all you should do is learn to recall the feeling.

Because some dreams are awful and you’d just like them to STOP.

Because the dream is telling you something you need to know.

Because the dream always gives you a way of solving the problem that it raises – even for nightmares and recurring dreams.

Benefits from sharing our dreams. When we talk about our dreams with other people, we learn about dreams, ourselves, and the people with whom we are sharing. We learn about dreams. When people tell us their dreams, we gain insight into their personal dreamscape, their symbolism (and their ways of interpreting or dreamwork that symbolism), and their ways of managing dreamland problems and possibilities.

We can use much of this information in our own dream studies. And when we talk about dreams, this attention helps us to recall more of them; this further advances our education.

We learn about ourselves. When we describe our dreams to other people, their feedback gives us different perspectives — perhaps ones which are more honest than our own, because those people don’t have the repressions and biases that distort our interpretations of our own dreams.

They help us to see meanings which we don’t discern because of our limited perspective and possibly because our reluctance to probe into unpleasant parts of our psyche. Also, because dreams have more than one meaning, other people’s interpretations can help us to discover those additional meanings; otherwise, we might have been satisfied with the first interpretation which occurred to us.

We learn about other people. We strengthen relationships when we talk about dreams with people whom we trust and love; the “trust” implies that the information will not be ridiculed or gossiped or used against us later, and the “love” means that we accept the person’s weaknesses and shadowy unpleasantries which might be expressed in the dream. Within the context of dream-sharing, we can talk about our intimate feelings, our fears, our passions, and the ways in which we view our lives and the world.

When we discuss a dream, we have a means of addressing an issue in our relationship without a direct confrontation; the dream itself brought up the issue, and it did so in a manner in which we can comfortably disclaim responsibility (however incorrectly) for the emotions which were expressed, because it was a dream character (and not us) who said something pertaining to the subject.

Remember that a dream in which the other person appears is not necessarily a dream about that person; the character might be representing something else. But sometimes the character does symbolize that person; if so, he or she is likely to have dreamed about us in return.

Everyone dreams!
That’s a remarkable fact.
There are no exceptions.
It’s a rule of life…

Each night we are taken on an experience. We have almost no say in where or with whom. We don’t even have all our wits about us. It is sometimes fun but quite often the experience is very intense or disturbing. Whether we remember our dreams or not, we are always dreaming. And most of us are considering the meaning of the dream.

But how many people talk about their dreams, whether good ones or bad ones? Most people brush them aside as they get out of bed and leave them behind. They miss out on it all. You don’t have to interpret or analyze every dream and — especially at the beginning– you may not feel satisfied with your own interpretations.

You can work with your dreams and you can play with your dreams. You can create your own dream dictionary — the dream symbols that are most meaningful to you.. It makes a big difference to what you know about who you are. I strongly believe that even the simple act of telling someone else your dream can have a great effect on your life.

There are ways of looking at your dreams that are easy to learn, respectful and illuminating. They tend to make nightmares and unpleasant dreams go away and they allow you to look at the mystery and wonder that is always present in a dream.