Our dreams, if we are able to regularly recall them, are evidently committed to providing us daily with information and guidance relevant to our current circumstances in one way or another.
In their unique, unexpected—often altogether crude and tactless—ways, dreams offer clues, insight, instruction, and, when asked, they wanderingly bring clarity to our questions or present completely new questions in order to redirect our focus in the service of our greater health and wholeness.
Yet, sometimes the kind of messages dreams present to us can seem too simple and trite, apparently off-base or unrelated, rather undecipherable, utterly uncomfortable, or absolutely horrifying. Sometimes, the dream images we awaken with appear to bring us more trouble, distress, and confusion than the original issue we were hoping to resolve when deciding to pay attention to or asking for help from our dreams.
We may thus unintentionally—or quite intentionally—reject or dismiss them, entirely discount or overlook them, vehemently defend against them, or become thoroughly unable to engage with them.
Assuming ourselves at a dead end on our quest for greater clarity and a constructive sense of direction, we may become frustrated and wish to give up. Perhaps we even come to wish to not remember these dreams turned nightmares or apparently pointless mundane routines.
And yet, there is immense value in persisting with our dreamwork practice—daily committed to requesting, recalling, recording, and re-entering our dreams—especially when it would seem we are getting nowhere with the hints we receive from our dreams. As we keep track and follow the details within the clues we receive, we are able to gradually decipher what our psyche is pointing at, begging for our attention so we may find the answers we are looking for.
If in our dreams we are tapping into the wisdom in the unconscious—that which we do not yet consciously know—it would follow that what comes from our dreams into waking is something we have no point of reference in our conscious awareness with which to easily grasp it.
What emerges from our dreams, especially when we are asking for guidance and clarification about something unknown and unfamiliar in our waking consciousness, is unconscious acumen not yet transcribable into conscious thoughts and words. The learning awarded and the insights proposed are as yet unconscious to us; this is enlightened wisdom not yet formulated or materialized enough to be consciously classified and clarified beyond a wordless sense of almost knowing.
With intention, attention, and dedication we build and strengthen the relationship and communication with our imaginal dream world. When we set and sustain the intention for what we hope to achieve with the help of our dreams, this furthers the integration of the many layers of meaning present in our experience and in our psyche, and our dreams continue to respond. Insight, a variety of options, new perspectives, and openings for healing and resolution are inherent in this process through the images, sensations, characters, events, and atmospheres that arise through the dream world into our conscious awareness.
As we progressively pay attention to what comes up in our dreams, we become willing participants and conscious contributors in the process of synthesis and integration that is constantly occurring in the unconscious. We get a vague sense of familiarity through dream elements, environments, and experiences that gets stronger with every dream in the sequence of our query.
When we do not give up and we continue asking for guidance and paying attention, these abstruse elements from our dream world shift, evolve, and are eventually replaced with more graspable ones that make sense to us as we follow their trace. Inevitably we finally arrive at the revelatory dream image that hits the nail on the head and grants us the sweet gratification of the aha moment of recognition.
Finally we remember what we already unconsciously knew. And so, we trust that the process is constantly working, and we honor it by putting what we learn into practice, by making a tangible gesture of acknowledgment, always with grateful appreciation.
LEARN TO ENGAGE DREAMMAKER, dialogue with your unconscious, and channel dream wisdom into your creative and everyday life.
CREATIVE DREAMWORK ONLINE TRAINING begins with the new moon on Friday, January 24th. SIGN UP NOW TO EXPERIENCE THE BENEFITS OF WORKING WITH DREAMS!
|
