Spiritual Dreamwork
by Diane Linsley
As a life coach, I encourage people to practice dreamwork as a way
to access the wisdom of the unconscious mind.
I've met very few people who see any value in their dreams. Most
people seem to be either ashamed or fearful of their dreams. I've
always been interested in dreams. I learned early in life that dreams
are a window to the unconscious mind, which is a repository of all
our experiences of life and every piece of information we have ever
been exposed to, 95% of which we are not consciously aware.
Shouldn't we be interested in what's stored in there?
In Dreamwork Coaching, I cover how to remember dreams and
interpret them. In this article, I will give examples of how dreams
can be helpful for spiritual growth. These are minor examples. My
most profound dreams are too personal to discuss.
I once dreamed that I was back in the apartment where my ex-husband and I lived when we first got married. I had just finished stocking the pantry with 100 cans of Campbell's soup, which had been given to me at my wedding shower. I was looking at the neat rows of red-and-white labels, and I felt so nostalgic that I started crying. Then I thought, "Wait a minute. Canned food isn't good for me. I didn't know it back then, but I know it now." Then I woke up.
As I meditated on this dream, the phrase "canned beliefs" came into my mind. I realized that the beliefs I had when I was younger were canned beliefs. They were given to me by other people. They weren't fresh, homemade beliefs earned through personal experience. In contrast, the beliefs that I have now are living and growing - just like the fresh organic food that I eat. This dream came at a time when I was overhauling my map of reality.
A Precognitive Dream
A few weeks later, I dreamed that I was a photographer at a wedding. I was taking pictures of a five-year-old girl. She was standing next to the wedding cake. I set up the scene in the way I wanted. But just as I raised the camera, the girl pulled a ridiculous face. I stopped and said, "No, that's not the right way. Let's try again." I straightened her out, and I raised the camera again. But before I could push the button, she changed her pose and started performing silly antics.
Over and over, I tried to make her pose correctly. Over and over, she kept surprising me with crazy stunts. At one point, she was wearing a hoodie. As she pulled the hood over her head, she said, "I am the Jedi!" I noticed that the girl was missing two front teeth, which made her look even sillier.
I must have tried a dozen times to make her pose, but she simply wouldn't cooperate. I was very patient, but there were 100 people in line at the wedding, and they were all watching me. What a lousy photographer I was! I couldn't even take pictures of a little girl. I woke up, twitching with frustration.
Whenever I awaken from a dream that has an emotional charge, I take a moment to identify the feeling and do a quick Voice Dialogue session. Voice Dialogue can be used to speak to emotions, characters or objects in the dream. This time, I asked to speak to the voice of Frustration.
The interpretation I came up with was that I had been trying to make the greater Reality fit into my own limited map of reality, and that's why I was frustrated.
Why do we get frustrated when we have new and unexpected experiences? We should be jumping up and down for joy! Why do we resist new ideas and perspectives? We should be delighted at the prospect of broadening our maps of reality!
That sounds like a nice spiritual interpretation, right? Well, a few weeks later, my Inner Child emerged after many years of repression. Then I realized that the dream was more literal and precognitive than I would have guessed.
Interpreting Dreams
In The Wisdom of Your Dreams, Jeremy Taylor says, "Our dreams appear 'confused' and 'pointless', in part at least, because they address possibilities of evolutionary growth and development that we are not yet sufficiently conscious of and sophisticated enough to recognize and appreciate. ... We recognize in retrospect that our dreams were speaking about developments in our personal lives that we were not yet consciously aware of at the time."
Through dreamwork, I have learned to trust my unconscious mind, even if I don't get the message right the first time. The unconscious mind is an infinite source of creativity and inspiration. Bill Harris says, "If you can't trust your own unconscious mind, whose can you trust?"
Many great thinkers are also great dreamers. Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison shared their methods for gathering information from the unconscious mind. They developed techniques for getting into the state of "body asleep, mind awake." In the lucid dream state, you can ask questions of the unconscious mind and get answers.
In his lucid dreams, Thomas Edison liked to visit an imaginary museum, where he got ideas for some of his future inventions. I used this theme in my guided meditation for creativity.
Albert Einstein said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." He also said, "What makes the true worth of a human being is his capacity to have freed himself from his little sense of ego."
Dreamwork, especially when done with Voice Dialogue, helps us develop our imagination. It can also free us from the habitual perspective of our ego when we practice taking the different perspectives of the other dream characters.
Remembering Dreams
The main problem is remembering dreams - especially the ones that the ego doesn't want to accept.
One thing I've learned from my OBE adventures is how hard it is to download non-physical memories into the physical brain. You can have a really amazing OBE, but as soon as you return to your body, 90% of the details are lost in the downloading process. Coming back to the body is like going through a wall of mud. It essentially wipes out most of your memories. If you don't immediately write down whatever details are left, these may also be forgotten.
Experts recommend writing down dreams when you first wake up, even if they seem trivial or obscure. This gives your unconscious mind the message that you are open to receiving whatever it has to offer. Do this, and watch your dreaming life take off!
Any dream that has an emotional charge, such as a nightmare, is important. The emotion is there to shock you into remembering. The brain uses emotions as tags for memories. The more emotion there is, the more memorable the experience will be. Over time, as you practice recalling dreams, you may stop having nightmares because you no longer need strong emotional tags to remember your dreams.
Overcoming Blocks in Dreamwork
Limiting beliefs can interfere with dream recall and interpretation. Meditation leads to a richer dream life because it loosens the grip of the ego.
In a memorable OBE, I was trying to fly to another dimension, and I heard a voice in my head say, "You have to drop your baggage." I looked down and saw that I was holding a large carpet bag. It was full of limiting beliefs that were holding me back. I wasn't ready to let go of the beliefs, so I wasn't able to reach my destination. I sank back to earth, where a bunch of creepy zombies were waiting for me. They leered at me and grabbed my ankles, pulling me down.
Realizing that I'd failed the test, and not wanting to be attacked by the zombies, I said, "Take me back to my body!" This is a good trick to remember. Lucid dreaming is an opportunity to face unconscious fears and shadow material. After several months of OBE practice, I stopped using this phrase because I developed the ability to stay with the OBE until it naturally ended - no matter what happened.
I learned how to do shadow work and dream interpretation using the Voice Dialogue process. I also kept a dream journal. Interpreting dreams is much more complicated than just looking up things on Google or in books. That rarely helps. Most dream images are unique to the dreamer, and they can only be interpreted over time with lots of practice. It's best not to make hasty interpretations.
The most important thing I learned is to let go of fear. Before the days of meditation and dreamwork, I had chronic nightmares - sometimes as many as three every night. Obviously, I had a lot of shadow material. I rarely have nightmares anymore. That tells me that shadow work and dreamwork are valuable tools for emotional healing.
Dreamwork as a Spiritual Practice
The dreaming mind helps us integrate our waking experiences. This keeps us sane. You may have seen the Star Trek Next Generation episode in which an alien interferes with the crew's ability to dream. Soon, they start having scary waking hallucinations. This actually happened to me once when I missed a night's sleep. The mind needs to dream in order to function well.
We dream about what we focus on in our waking life. During the gardening season, I dream about gardening. If I have a relationship problem, I dream about relationships. If I'm reading a book, I dream about the material in the book.
Sometimes I spend the night listening to a dream lecturer. That's my unconscious mind integrating the new learnings into my map of reality. I might wake up with a whole new article in my mind.
I often go to sleep with a question for my dreaming mind to work on. When I wake up in the morning, I have the answer. Even if you don't remember your dreams, you can be sure that your dreaming mind is doing its job while you sleep.
Here's a guided meditation for creativity.
Be well,
Diane Linsley
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