In a previous post, I discussed how journaling my dreams changed my life. I also offered suggestions on how to incorporate tools to achieve similar changes in your own life. Dreams come to us at night, as our brains go through different levels of brain activity. Most people spend about two hours each night dreaming. As we go down into sleep and as we come up into being awake, we enter these different states of consciousness.
This is where we have dreams and visions, ideas and inspirations. Many inventors, musicians, artists, and authors have found fabulous ideas in these and the deeper dream states. One of the most famous examples of the dream state inspiring a work of art is Frankenstein, or A Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley. To facilitate their own sources of inspiration, Salvador Dali and Thomas Edison would purposefully nap in their studios. To act as a focus, they would hold something in their hand (ball bearings, a large metal key). When they fell asleep, this item would clang as their grip relaxed and wake them. Then they would grab a notepad and wrote or sketched out the ideas that came to them in the liminal state.
In my own life, I’ve had dreams that guided me through difficult situations. Sometimes, they were in a curious dream language of symbols specific to me. For example, I once had a passive aggressive and controlling lover. One night, I dreamt I was driving my car and he was a passenger and we were driving over a freeway overpass. He suddenly reached over and jerked the wheel and, in the dream, we were tumbling through the air, car flipping and about to crash onto the freeway below.
Message – don’t let him take the wheel and drive my life…
I now suggest these things for remembering your dreams:
• keep a journal or notebook by your bed with something to write with
• write down your dream in first 10 minutes after waking
• note the date and what’s happening during your waking life
• 3 bullet points of the dream
• what were your feelings
• write as much detail as you recall if you have time
If you are interested in learning more through my dream workshops, feel free to contact me for the next dates: d@coachingwithd.com
In the meantime, enjoy this video of my conversation with Henry Gaskins on dreams.
