Dream Visions

Tips on Remembering Your Dreams, Part 1

Cli.gs

To help remember their dreams, many people keep a notebook, a dream journal, next to the bed for capturing dreams with a pen or pencil. Keeping a dream journal helps so much that many experts consider it essential for accurately remembering dreams.

Many dreamers recommend using a lighted pen, so as not to disturb anyone else sleeping in the same room. Using a lighted pen keeps you from having to turn on the light, which allows you to stay closer to the drowsy dream state. That also helps in dream recall.

The moment you awaken, before getting out of bed, is the ideal time to write down your dream, even if you only have time to record the date, name the dream, and jot a few notes. Studies show that moving around tends to awaken you fully and usually hinders dream recall.

Not everyone remembers their dreams on first waking. And some have to dash off to work with no spare minutes to stop and write. But that’s OK. Just write down as much as you can remember about your dream as soon as you can.

Dream expert Robert Moss says people often remember dreams in bits and pieces, so by naming your dream and jotting a few notes, you start the process, and you can add details about the dream later, as you recall them.

Write down everything you remember, without interpreting it, even if it does not seem to make sense. Often, the odd details or parts that do not seem to fit in or make sense contain the most valuable information.

Even the tiniest detail in your dream may be important and should be considered when analyzing your dreams. Look closely at all the people, animals, objects, places, emotions, and even the colors and numbers in your dreams.

Ask yourself, “What does this remind me of?” Write down the first thing that comes to your mind. A real situation in your life may be symbolized in the dream. If you recognize a real-life situation in a dream, ask yourself, “How did situation make me feel?”

Often when there is more than one scene or story line in your dream, there are several issues your subconscious is trying to tell you about. But it can also mean that your inner self is trying several different ways to convey the same information with different symbolism.

Dreams often have multiple, layered meanings. The same dream can be telling you several things, or showing you similarities between seemingly unrelated situations in your life. Taking time to understand your dreams can be extremely enlightening.

For more tips, see Remembering Your Dreams, Part 2. (Watch for it on September 11.)

Why Do We Dream?

Cli.gs

Why Do We Dream? There are many theories.

Scientists say that the brain receives stimuli from many different sources all day long. There are far too many stimuli for it to process, so the mind prioritizes the stimuli and makes you aware of those that need immediate attention (the crying baby, the out-of-control car, your boss’s request), so that you can react appropriately. The stimuli that you are not consciously aware of are alos noted by the brain, but are stored in the brain at a subconscious level (the drip of a water faucet, the remark by a coworker at the coffee machine while you were on the telephone.)

Meanwhile, you feel emotions all day. Some you acknowledge and act on (as when you automatically say thank you and smile when you are complimented). Some you repress or do not allow yourself to act on. For example, you don’t punch your boss in the nose when he tells you the report you worked on for a week is no longer needed.)

Some traumatic experiences may be so emotionally painful that you refuse to experience them at the time. Instead you send them deep into your subconscious (repression.)

In addition to processing all these emotions and stimuli the brain every day, your brain also keeps your body functioning. It remembers names and faces. It enables you to talk and walk and chew gum (sometimes all at the same time). And it controls or enables many other activities that you take for granted. You must admit — that’s a lot to do. 

At night, when your body must rest, your mind continues working.  When it is no longer being used to type letters and do the grocery shopping, the brain processes all of those subconscious stimuli and emotions (while still maintaining body temperature and breathing, and so on). Scientists say that is why we dream. 

Only you are not awake to receive the signals at a conscious level. You cannot hear or see or touch (at a conscious level) while you are sleeping. The brain must resort to other means to get the signals through to your conscious mind. Supposedly that is why we dream the way we do.

The mind uses everything at its disposal (which is everything it has ever been exposed to) to get the message across. Dreaming is the minds way of processing all of the stimuli and emotions it has received during the day or repressed over time, so that you can act on them.

All in all, it’s a pretty neat system. But unless you are remembering and making sense of your dreams, you are missing countless opportunities to learn about yourself and experience life to its fullest.

Even though we’ve mentioned it before, it is important enough to repeat: Why should you try and remember your dreams? Because they contain important messages from your won subconscious mind to yourself. Dreams can tell you important things that your waking mind may have overlooked.

Respect your dreams as the tremendous resource for knowledge that they are. And pay attention. You may learn something incredibly valuable from your own dreams.

Country Doesn’t Stop My Education

Cli.gs

Guest post from Kim Heathwood

Using the internet to take classes is a really great idea if you have children as I do. I took a few classes using wild blue satellite internet as an undergrad and I really enjoyed the freedom. During my undergrad the classes I took were through my regular commuter university, but using wild blue Tennessee service to do my masters completely online. I am even taking my classes from a university that is about a thousand miles away from my home. Since the program is set up entirely online I never have to visit the brick and mortar campus at all. Continue reading Country Doesn’t Stop My Education…

What Are Your Car Dreams Trying to Tell You?

Cli.gs

Image by mliu92 via Flickr

Car dreams can be scary. And they can have a lot of meanings. For example, if you are obsessed with getting a new car, you may dream about them at night. That much is obvious.

But some automobile dreams are puzzling. What caused them is not clear, and you may start thinking that they are premonitions of disaster. But their meaning may not be so simple.

Some people dream of car crashes. Those could be warnings. But if there has been a rash of spectacular wrecks on TV news, we may write off the whole idea. Still it is good to be extra careful when driving anytime.

Dreaming of a malfunctioning car, though, may have very different meanings: metaphor for the body, business or relationships; automobile malfunctions not yet consciously noticed, or…? Continue reading What Are Your Car Dreams Trying to Tell You?…

Nightmares

Image via Wikipedia

Children are especially likely to have nightmares. In fact, nightmares are common in children. Nightmares typically start at around age 3 years old and continue till about age 7 or 8.

People with anxiety disorder might also experience what experts call night terrors. These are actually panic attacks that occur in sleep. It is especially difficult to remember these types of dreams since they conjure up terrifying images that we would just as soon forget.

In poetic myth, the Night Mare is a “small nettlesome mare, not more than thirteen hands high, of the breed familiar with the Elgin marbles: cream-colored, clean-limbed, with a long head, bluish eye, flowing mane and tail.”

Mares’ nests, “when one comes across them in dreams, lodged in rock-clefts or the branches of enormous hollow yews, are built of carefully chosen twigs lined with white horse-hair and the plumage of prophetic birds and littered with the jaw-bones and entrails of poets.” Thus, in a pagan world of myth and blood sacrifice, the Nightmare was a cruel, fearful creature.

Our modern word nightmare derives from the Middle English nihtmare (from niht, night, and mare, demon), an evil spirit believed to haunt and suffocate sleeping people. And so, in today’s world, when we speak of a nightmare we mean a frightening dream accompanied by a sensation of oppression and helplessness.

The blood-thirsty aspect of the mythic Nightmare, provides a clue about nightmares in general. In psychodynamic terms nightmares are graphic portrayals of raw, primitive emotions such as aggression and rage that have not been incorporated into the conscious psyche. Thus we tend to encounter these “ugly” aspects of our unconscious lives as terrifying dream images in whose presence we feel completely helpless. Continue reading Nightmares…

Edgar Cayce on Dreams

Image via Wikipedia

Edgar Cayce, a world-famous prophetic dreamer in the early 20th century, was able to obtain virtually an unlimited amount of knowledge on an unlimited number of subjects. One of these subjects was dreams and dream interpretation.

Cayce astounded people by interpreting their dreams and giving them insight into their psyche, lives and even past lives. From his own experience, and from the feedback he received from others, Cayce believed that dreams are actually journeys into the spirit world.

Edgar Cayce once said,“Dreams, visions, impressions, to the entity in the normal sleeping state are the presentations of the experiences necessary for the development, if the entity would apply them in the physical life. These may be taken as warnings, as advice, as conditions to be met, conditions to be viewed in a way and manner as lessons, as truths, as they are presented in the various ways and manners.”

Cayce believed that our dreams serve several functions. Somatic dreams—dreams referring to the body—are extremely important to pay attention to. Very often dreams will offer solutions to health problems.

For example, one man was plagued with food allergies for many years, but was unable to find the source of his discomfort. Then one night he went to bed and he dreamed of a can of coffee. He quit drinking coffee and his symptoms disappeared.

Like many of us, Cayce also believed that deceased friends and family members sometimes visit us in dreams. Such dreams may be communications from our loved ones. Or they may allow us to resolve our feelings about their deaths. Any person who appears in a dream may also represent some aspect of themselves or some part of us that is like them in some way.

Continue reading Edgar Cayce on Dreams…

Fascinated by Your Dreams?

“Last night I had the strangest dream.” How many conversations in your life have started that way?

People are fascinated with the movies that play in their head while they’re sleeping. Some believe that dreams can predict the future. Others say that dreams depict real life.

Still others believe that dreams are a manifestation of what we want to be. Interpreting dreams has evolved over the years to what some consider an art form.

We spend one-third of our lives sleeping. In the average lifetime, six years is spent dreaming. That’s more than 2,100 days spent in a different world!

Every night, we dream an average of one to two hours dreaming and usually have 4-7 dreams a night.

Flow-Dreaming with Friends | BYBS

Recently I reviewed a book and CD set on Flow-Dreaming. I had read the book but had not yet listened to the CD. 

Last night I got to share Flow-Dreaming with a group. We played the first four tracks of the CD and journeyed into the flow. It was a wonderful experience.

Some were old friends; some were new. All of them seemed to really like flow-dreaming. I will let you know if I get any reports of especially good results. I’m hoping at least some of the people will buy the Flow-Dreaming set and keep on using it.

The author of Flow-Dreaming, Summer McStravick, has a very good voice and professional manner. She does an excellent job of leading the guided meditations on the CD.

There is beautiful background music, too, that enhances the experience without calling attention to itself. 

Flow-dreaming with friends. What a blessing!

Dreaming Beyond Death | BYBS

Dreaming Beyond Death: A Guide to Pre-Death Dreams and Visions is a book about the dreams that some patients have spontaneously that comfort them throughout the process of dying, and how to counsel them. It was written by the Rev. Patricia Bulkley and Kelly Bulkeley, Ph.D.

Patricia Bulkley is a counsellor who works with people who are dying. Kelly Bulkeley is a dream researcher. They came together to write a down-to-earth, matter-of-fact book to help patients like Patricia’s and those who care for them.

Recently I reviewed another book on essentially the same topic, The Dreamer’s Book of the Dead, by Robert Moss, whose books I talk about a lot here. If you have read some of those reviews, you know that I love Moss’s books and his ideas.

You may also have decided that his books are probably a bit out there for materialists who have no particular belief or interest in dreams. Moss’s books are extremely readable, but they also tend to be long. While they are easy and fun to read, they are also somewhat mystical. 

Dreaming Beyond Death is a short, simple book, written for those who do not believe in dreams but do want to help others make a peaceful transition. This is a book you can give to a healthcare professional or a person with a conservative, orthodox belief system. The book does not assume that the reader believes in dreams or anything mystical. And for those who are not dream believers that is a very good thing.

This book also tells vivid stories of dreams that have brought peace and reassurance to dying people. It provides guidance for helping people understand and accept their dreams. And it does all that in a simple, readable way.

Dreaming Beyond Death is a great book to give as a gift, knowing that almost anyone can benefit from it. They do not have to believe in anything metaphysical at all. I wish I had had it to use in comforting a friend who was dying of cancer a few years ago. 

So keep it in mind. You might like to read it yourself.

And it could be a wonderful caring gift for someone who needs it. In fact, it would be a great blessing.

Robert Moss’s On-Line Radio Show on Dreams | BYBS

Robert Moss, the dream researcher, teacher and author that I keep talking about, has a radio show on dreams! You can listen over the Internet on the second Tuesday of each month, from 11 am to noon Central Time.

Here is the link: http://www.healthylife.net/RadioShow/archiveWD.htm

There is even an 800 number so that you can call in with questions during the show as he interviews other dreamworkers and dream researchers. 

What a blessing for all of us!