Dream Journeys: Messages and Mirrors of Higher Consciousness

Part One: Developing a Dream Practice

Dreams are our magic mirrors, and when we look into the messages reflected in our dreams, we can discover the gifts of Consciousness.  All of us dream, yet many of us fail to appreciate the gifts that come in our dreams.  Dreams are like unexpected taps on the door late at night, and we often find the messages and symbols of our dreams frightening, disturbing, or fragmented.  It has been said that dreams are like letters from God. Just as you must open a letter you receive from a friend to know what is written, so too must we open our dreams to begin to understand their messages.  Dreams come in forms that are meant to jolt us in order to catch our attention. Often we find dreams disturbing not only because of the jarring symbols, but also because of the underlying message.  The hidden messages of dream symbols are calling our attention to something that needs to be examined, understood, or faced in our own experience.

The journey of our dreams is multifaceted, and as you begin to pay closer attention to your dreams, it helps to develop a regular practice to aid you in your journey.  There is an element of intention to a dream practice, as in other spiritual practices.

1. Establishing a bedtime ritual: There's an old expression used to describe computer data input, "garbage in, garbage out." With computers, this means the information that comes out is only as good as that information which is entered into it.  This same idea applies when it comes to our own consciousness.  Whatever our minds, emotions, physical bodies, and spirits are exposed to, becomes part of our whole being.  Everything we do affects who we are on all levels.  When we prepare to sleep at night, we are taking to be with us, the sum total of everything we have experienced.  To have a restful sleep, it helps to create rituals for bedtime that are conducive to restful sleep. 

Avoid stimulants and alcohol before sleeping.  Both interfere with your brain's ability to dream.  Develop a soothing, relaxing ritual to prepare for bed. Avoid watching television or listening to stimulating music before bedtime.  While some people exercise before bed, you might find that exercise is too stimulating before sleeping.  Be careful of the types of exercise you do before sleeping.  A warm cup of herbal tea might be relaxing before sleeping.  If you have a lot on your mind, you might find it useful to write a short list of things you want to remember to do the next day. That way, you have moved the tasks out of your mind onto a concrete list of things to do/remember, and you'll be less likely to be kept awake thinking about them. 

Spend some time putting some positive, beautiful thoughts in your mind (read some poetry, listen to music that relaxes you, read something inspirational).  There is a wonderful spiritual practice called the Examen of Consciousness.  The three-part ritual suggests that you  go over the day and consider what you have to be grateful for. Then examine the day and consider what you might have left undone, unsaid, or unforgiven.  Finally, for anything that you feel you need to address (forgiving someone, asking for forgiveness, letting something go that you found disturbing), silently or aloud, ask that all be brought back into balance that is out of harmony. 

2. Setting your intention:As you ready yourself to sleep, align yourself with the Divine Creator, and ask for protection, wisdom, and guidance through your dreams.  You may do this in the form of a prayer, or simply by setting the intention, and releasing your thinking. If there is a situation, challenge, problem, or idea that you are especially focused on, you might ask that you receive guidance and clarity on that subject during your sleep. I usually also pray that I recall my dreams, and that the messages I receive come in a way that I can understand and deal with. 

3. Recording your dreams: Once you have set your intention to remember your dreams, provide yourself with a simple way to record your dreams before you get out of bed. Keep a tablet and pen on your nightstand, or keep a small tape recorder (your phone may have one). If you wake up from a dream in the middle of the night, quickly jot down what you can easily recall before you go back to sleep.  In the morning, keep yourself from jumping out of bed right away. If you have a tight schedule in the morning, wake up about 15-20 minutes earlier than usual, so you can take your time to write down the dreams you recall. Often we don't remember the whole dream. That's okay.

4. Dream Journal: I recommend keeping a dream journal. Every morning, the first thing I do is write down my dreams in my journal.  Some mornings I may play with the symbols, and explore archetypes or aspects of the dreams in more depth, but primarily, I record the dreams. I avoid jumping to conclusions about what they mean, preferring to reflect on the dreams throughout the day.  Write down what you recall.  You may remember only a color, or a feeling. Describe whatever you recall.  Avoid judging or analyzing the dream at this point.  Simply jot down what you recall.  Use all your senses, and record the feel of the dream, any sounds or movement, images, words, symbols, people or animals.  Avoid trying to make sense of what came to you in your dreams. Our subconscious reflects archetypal symbols and dreams are representative of areas of our waking life. Dreams, for the most part, are not meant to be an exact reflection of our waking life. 

5. Opening Up a Dream: During the day, I reflect on my dreams.  When possible, I tell my dreams to one of my dream keepers. My dream keepers are those confidants in whom I confide my private thoughts.  These include my daughter and my closest friends.  I have found that sometimes in telling the dream, I hear something that I had overlooked when I was thinking about the dream or writing about it.  My dreams are often full of puns, and I usually don't "get" the pun until I hear myself telling the dream aloud.  My confidants often share an insight or interpretation that I hadn't thought about before.  I observe how my life might be reflecting a message from the dream, or consider what a dream story or symbol is calling me to pay attention to. I ask the question, "What in my life right now is like______________ in the dream?"  "How am I feeling like ___________ in the dream?" 

Some of us dream about other people, and there are different ways to interpret any part of a dream.  Most dreams are about ourselves, but what we cannot see or understand in ourselves, we somehow can learn about through our relationships with others.  This is true in our waking life as well.  Most of our relationships invite us to learn more about ourselves. What we dislike or love in another, is also part of us somehow...or is part of something we are learning to deal with.  In dreams, the people we meet are, in part, a representative part of ourselves.  I say "in part," because my experience with dreams tells me that the people in my dreams are often the people in my life (those I know, those I knew, and those I am to meet).  We are all relational people, so what I need to know or learn about for myself, necessarily comes through my interactions with others.

Sometimes too, I find myself in the middle of dreams about someone else's life experience.  This has happened often enough for me to recognize that sometimes, a dream is given to me in order to pass a message on, provide support, a warning, or suggestion, or be forewarned about a situation with another person.  My dream abilities include occasionally being able to "see" the source of an illness. Not being a medical doctor, I nevertheless have some intuitive gifts for understanding the source of certain illnesses.  For example, when my mother was very ill one time, I dreamed about a problem she had with her intestinal tract. I also dreamed about the source of the problem when I saw a bunch of heads of lettuce. She was diagnosed with Diverticulitis, and could not eat lettuce without it causing her great distress.  While my dream diagnosis wasn't needed by her doctors, it provided me with a great deal of relief, for I knew she was not seriously ill, and would recover.  The main point I am making is that after you make a practice of recording, observing, reflecting on, and studying your own dreams, you will begin to see patterns. The patterns will be both in the types of dreams you have and in the messages, symbols, archetypes, and elements that appear and reappear in your dream journey over time.  You will begin to learn to differentiate the BIG dreams that are generally of the archetypal, life transition type of dream, to the mundane sorting out of your daily activities, to the more psychological type dreams that pertain to your own development and journey to wholeness or individuation.  Some of you will recognize precognitive dreams; others may have dreams that seem to be of past lives.  Some of your dreams will be of a highly spiritual nature.  Before you try to figure out what kind of dreams you are having, you want to first get into the practice of working with the dreams and establishing a strong baseline to work from.

7. Monthly and Ongoing Study and Reflection.
If you don't recall a dream every morning, don't give up.  Keep practicing the ritual of intention and prayer before sleeping, and be open to whatever dreams come in the way they come to you. Sometimes when I nap in the afternoon, I get very potent symbols and messages.  Often when I am troubled about something, I will take a nap to see if I can release my conscious mind enough to let the subconscious knowledge come to the surface. It works well for me.  You'll notice after a while, that your dreams come in different types.  In another article I will go into more detail about the different types of dreams there are. What is most important for you, however, is to study your own dreams, and discover the patterns, types, and messages that seem to come to you. 

Your dream journey is unique to you, as are the symbols of the dream. I avoid using dream analysis books simply because I think it is important to come to understand what different symbols and archetypes mean to us.  Colors, for example, have very personal meanings to people.  Ask yourself what different dreams symbols mean to you. As you begin recording your dreams, watch to see what types of symbols, stories, actions, places, colors, sounds....what are the pieces of the puzzle that are popping up in your nighttime journeys?


I use a simple, 8 1/2" x 11" spiral notebook (the cheap kind you can buy in any market). I write at least 3 pages in the journal each morning (not all about dreams).  At the end of each month, I reread the journal, paying close attention to the dreams and how they may or may not have figured into what was going on in my waking life that month.  It's a great reflective tool. Then about every 4-6 months, I go over the dreams for an entire part of the year.  This really helps me see the patterns, developments, growth, and stages of my dream journey. 


There are some other ways to work with dreams, but what I've outlined here gives you a good place to start. You will discover you own way to develop your dream journal, and your own way to work with the dreams and symbols. 


In future articles I am going to write about different types of dreams, ways to open up a dream, and some common ideas about dream symbols, archetypes, and dreamwork. 


Sweet dreams, aha lam saeedi (Sweet Dreams in Arabic).  Enjoy exploring the gifts of your subconscious, and watch your dreams to see what mysteries and gifts they have to reveal to you.  Enjoy the process of becoming more aware of that mystical, magical part of yourself that is being called to live more fully by that Divine Creative Power infusing the Universe in reflection of the Omnipotent Omnipresent Source of all Being.