Dreams - how much they can tell us? The unused part of the brain?, page 1

reply to post by Lucifer84

You must prepare before you go to sleep...
...tell yourself you will wake while still dreaming...
...allow consciousness to recall as much of the dream as you can...
...and then wake and write down everything you can remember immediately...
...you will get better at it with practice.

Write the dream into the left side of a lined book...
...leaving the right side blank...
...write down all you can remember in phrases...
...one idea/symbol per line.

Don't worry if some of the symbols seem disturbing...
...the dreaming brain has a sense of humor that will often surprise you...
...or a combination of symbols that when spoken phonetically sound like something else.

Once you have written down all you can recall leave it until you have quiet time.

Go through each phrase you have written one line at a time...
...free associate with the symbol and write alternative words on the opposite page...
...a thesaurus can be helpful (dream dictionaries can be misleading)...
...it is more important to describe what the symbol means to you...
...rather than take an idea from another interpretive source.

When you have completed this for each line...
...go back and underline or highlight the most likely alternate word...
...then go through and read all the highlighted words as a sentance.

At first much of what you read may have profound emotional impact...
...often connecting you to past traumatic experiences, attitudes, humiliations...
...but eventually you will have dreams that catelogue entire attitudes to life events...
...I once had one that symolically layed out my evolving views about death...
...from my earliest conscious reflection until the present...
...and none of it was obvious until processed.

Eventually you can become so adept at the process...
...that you can have dreams and compose the sentences on the fly...
...although I still have dreams so cryptic that it takes time to unravel them...
...often with amazing insights in the end into people, circumstances and relationships...
...that I have missed in normal conscious life.

Don't get caught up in the esoteric mumbo-jumbo...
...understanding your dreams should be about grounding insight, releasing emotion baggage...
...reviewing crippling or limiting attitudes and such...
...not some mysterious new age stuff...enjoy.