Life Changing Dreams

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fs3fNPmbdq4&feature=email

Though we appear to be sleeping, there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream…that will eventually startle us back to the truth of who we are.
~Rumi

Don’t toss out your dreams (aka winning lottery tickets) as if they were just a random recapitulation of the day’s events. Remind yourself that your dreams—those wild, fantastic, uncensored jumble of images that bombard your sleep—come bearing gifts. These mysterious and valuable gifts will help you gain guidance, solve problems, and activate your treasure map to quicken the life you most deeply desire.

It never ceases to amaze me when I do a dream session with someone, the insight and empowerment that comes when someone has taken the time to open their eyes to their nighttime dreams. I’ve personally witnessed dream work that recover couples from the edge of divorce, people from the edge of cliffs, and CEOs from the edge of bankruptcy. When a person decides they are going to take the few minutes in the morning to retrieve their dreams, their lives change.

Speaking of lives that change, here is an actual e-mail exchange between a dream client and myself:

Dear Kelly,

I recently had this recurring dream and I have no idea what it is telling me. Thank you, in advance, for shedding some light:

I am suspended in white light and though I am alone, I have a sense that someone (or something) is with me. I suddenly feel an amazing power that begins to takes me higher. I look around to make sense of who or what is lifting me and all I see is white light with comforting billows of space. I hear in the distance encouraging words and as I listen to what sounds like words being spoken that explode into a resonance that gets louder and louder…it completely takes me over. I feel peace all around me as the words become clearer and defined. I hear over and over “Smile…Smile BIG…SMILE as BIG as you can!” These words continue for what seems like hours and I am just suspended in this billowing white light. It’s like I’m being encircled in these two words, “Smile…Smile BIG”.

Dear Diane,

My hunch about your dream is that it is a prescription being written to you by your higher power. Usually our angels or guides wait for us to come to them…but in this case, I believe they are reaching out to you. They are showing you that you have many reasons to smile—perhaps because you are connected directly to your higher power, or could it be because the universe is conspiring on behalf of your greatest good? All I know is a higher source is telling you to smile, which must mean you have good reason to smile. I suggest you take the prescription your dream is giving you. Your medication is meditation on that “billowing sensation”, and smiling as BIG as you can—as often as you can until that feeling becomes “ordinary”. Think of this feeling as a touchstone to anchor you in a place of awakening to the truth of your magnificence.

Eight months later I received this message from Diane:

Thank you for your interpretation of my dream. I recently received news that gives me reason to smile BIG. At the time I sent you my dream I had a brain tumor that was about to destroy me. However, it seems my dream came to my rescue. After I shared it with you I took your advice and have continued not only to keep my dream zone uncluttered, but most importantly I’ve been meditating on the billowing sensation and the incredible peaceful way my dream made me feel. I just got back from the doctor and he said it is a “miracle”…my tumor seems to have disappeared! No one can believe it. All I know is that I have a second chance at life. I know the dream by itself was powerful, but it was the work I did with the dream that I know was the healing medicine. That billowing sensation (and smiling more often) has in deed become ordinary for me. I feel like a new woman.

Kelly, thank you for encouraging me to work with my dream. It truly is the best medicine there is.

Smiling Big,
Diane

Signs, like in life, are trying to capture our attention. The vividness of a dream, an extreme emotional feeling, or a dream that recurs are some one of the biggest telltale signs that the dream has life-changing potential.

The emotion can be extreme sadness, relief, anger, lust, love, ect…

We may see an aspect of our nighttime played out in the daytime. This synchronicity catches our attention, and we can ask:
• How does this make me feel?
• What does this remind me of?

If I knew what this “sign” was telling me, what would it be? (go with your first thought, hunch, or impulse)

Questions for contemplation, journaling, or a dream group discussion:

1. Can you recall one of your own life-changing dreams? If so describe it:

2. Do you recall someone else’s life-changing dream?

3. If you listen deeply enough you can experience a transformation simply by listening to someone else tell the tale of their dream. Can you describe a dream that someone else has shared that has affected you in a profound way?

4. If you were able to distill these dreams down to their crystalline essence, how would you describe it?

a. Where do you feel its resonance in your body?

5. If your dream is a specific key that unlocks a particular lock, see if you can describe what that is?

For once you have tasted flight you will walk the earth with your eyes turned skywards, for there you have been and there you will long to return.
–Leonard da Vinci