The Power of Your Dreams – Part 2

This post continues with the history of dreams and dreaming. Part 1 is here.

The Dream Culture is Worldwide

There are many examples of communal dream-sharing across the world. In most native traditions, the power of dreams is understood and honored. It is common to share dreams over the morning meal.

In places where people live more closely aligned to the natural rhythms of the Earth (they don’t have electric lighting that disrupts their sleep cycle), there are usually two separate sleep cycles during the night.

When the sun goes down, people retire for their ‘first sleep’. If they awaken for a few hours in the middle of the night, they often quietly share their dreams with each other. When they feel drowsy, they retire for their ‘second sleep’ which ends with the coming of the sunrise.

On the other hand, people in the Western hemisphere do not have the same reverence for their dreams. Perhaps this is a result of religious and other societal influences. The dreamer who fails to explore their dreams is ignoring a powerful source of wisdom and insight.

How has dream exploration evolved?

The years just prior to the end of the 20th century saw a revived interest in remembering dreams and searching for their deeper psychological and spiritual meanings. This informal, yet structured dream work movement ignited a greater interest in the spiritual levels of the dream experience.

Work with dreams is taking place in settings as diverse as churches, schools, hospitals and prisons. It is happening in one-to-one counseling sessions and in small and large groups. Many people have made dream sharing and exploration a part of their personal spiritual practice.

What are the most important things for me to know about my dreams?

Dreams do not have an expiration date. No matter how long it has been, if you still remember dreams, even part of a dream, it is because it’s important.

There is no such thing as a ‘bad dream’, only dreams that take a dramatically negative form in order to grab our attention. This often happens when we ignore the messages from our dream source in our waking life.

There is no such thing as a dream with only one meaning. All dreams and dream images have multiple meanings and layers of significance. When you get flashes and tingles while working with another person’s dream, remember these are always signals of truth about one’s self, not necessarily about the other person’s dream.

There is always more

One can never come to the end of the multiple meanings and possible significance of any dream. A great way to continue to mine the depths of your dream is to work the same dream more than once. Here’s an example of what I mean:

The Bear Dream

The dream of a magnificent golden bear standing on her hind legs roaring from the entrance of her Cave didn’t mean much to the first group I shared it with the day after I had the dream.

That dream was profound. In the shamanic tradition, when an animal breaks the skin in a dream, it is giving you its power. This bear’s diagonal scratches on my back when she hugged me startled me back into my waking state. As I lay there in the dark, I still felt the energy of her claws.

There was not a lot of time to work this dream the next day, and the style of dream working this teacher used was like skimming a stone across the surface of a pond. I carefully detailed the dream in my journal because I knew there was more for me to understand.

Sometimes it is all in the timing

Over a year later, I had the opportunity to be the first person to share a dream at a large dream weekend Jeremy Taylor was facilitating in Colorado.

Thirty-three people put their names in a bowl. Spirit urged me to have a dream ready to go when my name was called. The Bear Hug dream was the one I was impressed to have ready, even though I doubted I would hear my name that weekend.

My name was the first one drawn. Thirty-two people worked with my dream for over two hours. By the end of that time, I could feel the energy of the dream filling the room, and I knew all those people were in that dream with me. I had some incredible insights that day.

There is power in dreaming. There is incredible power in dream sharing. The potential for healing and spiritual growth cannot be measured.

All dreams have certain things in common

When we have a dream, it is like watching a bunch of movies at the same time. Every dream has separate tracks that run simultaneously. One of the advantages of group dream work is that each member of the group tends to focus on a different aspect of the dreamer’s dream.

All dreams contain a health layer addressing the current condition of our physical bodies. This ‘report’ usually runs in the background. When something is physically wrong, however, your Dream Source places the health readout in the foreground, usually in a dramatic way.

No dream ever comes to tell you anything you already know. It may make reference to things the dreamer already knows in waking life. The goal is always to move you forward on your path of expanded awareness.

Dreams speak a universal language. It is the language of symbol, myth, and metaphor. This language is understood by all dreamers. For this reason, every dream is everyone else’s dream. As you work to help someone else understand their dream experience, you are working to help yourself.

Another movie running in that multi-plex shows the level of the dreamer’s ability to solve life’s problems in a creative manner.

All dreams reflect the condition of society as a whole, and the individual dreamer’s relationship relative to it.

Dreams also include a report of the dreamer’s psychological development and search for deeper connection with the collective unconscious.

The general message of every remembered dream is the same: Pay attention!

As you can see, dreams, like the dreamers, are multi-faceted and multidimensional in their levels of meaning. There is no such thing as a dream with only one meaning. Work with any dream is never complete.

Each time you work with a dream, you get more insights about the messages encoded in the material.

What do I do next?

Start writing down your dreams. The next installment in this series will detail how you can set up a dream journal. You will also learn about the way to write about your dreams.

The very next thing you do is to find a projective dream circle.

If you want to explore your dreams in a safe and supportive space, contact me at: Julia@juliamarie.us

(c)2002-2021, DLHT, Julia Marie. All rights reserved. Personal sharing with others or posting on websites and in publications is permitted as long as the information is not altered, excerpted or added to, and credit of authorship and my website address is included: https://www.juliamarie.us/