Do you have trouble remembering your dreams or do you think that you “never” dream? Well, you are not alone. Dream drought is an epidemic in our modern society. The traditional Iroquois say that if we have lost our dreams, it is because we have lost a vital part of our soul. Soul loss can occur early in life when part of our child-self goes away to escape from a cruel environment. By recovering our dreams, we can recover the lost parts of our soul.
Another reason for the dream drought in our society is that people don’t really have a quick, safe and fun way to share their dreams. They are awoken by an alarm clock, dashing into their day, and any dream they may have had disappears in an instant. Perhaps if they felt there was a reward to be had in sharing their dream, they would take a moment to recall it and write it down. The Lightning Dreamwork Process that I teach offers both a quick, safe and fun way to share dreams and is rewarding in that it brings through guidance and energy for our waking life.
Becoming enthusiastic about sharing our dreams is contagious. When you have a dream to bring to the breakfast table, you start your day in a fun and rewarding way.
Here are some ideas to help you bring back your dreams. I recommend you try them out at the weekend or on a day when you can wake up in a more leisurely way.
1) Set an intention for the night
Before you go to sleep, think about something you’d like guidance on, for example, “I want to know if this is the right time for me to change job/relationship/home.”
You can set a more general intention, such as “I ask for healing” or “I open myself to my creative Source.”
Or one with some juice in it, like “I want to have fun in my dreams and remember them.”
If you are feeling brave, you can simply ask “Show me what I need to see for my life right now” and stay open to whatever comes through.
Write your intention on a piece of paper and place it on your bedside table or under your pillow.
2) Be prepared to receive
You’ve set your intention and written it down, so now you want to make sure you keep a pen close to your bed. When you wake up, either during the night or in the morning, write down whatever is in your mind. I recommend you buy yourself a nice notebook or journal to record your dreams in. You can also draw an image of what you remember of your dream. If you remember nothing, don’t despair and simply repeat the process the following night. Just keep doing this until something comes through.
3) Keep the pieces
If you think of your dream as a jigsaw puzzle and, when you wake up, you only remember one or two pieces of it, don’t discard them. Keep them and write them down. It might just be a word or two, or maybe it’s a song playing in your head. Perhaps you have a strong sense of a favourite smell, like apple pie. Or an image of a place you love to visit. With whatever comes through, you can do some detective work to find the rest of the dream. You can take the pieces and walk with them as you go about your daily life. Pay attention to anything unusual that pops up during the course of your day. In the evening, write down the things you noticed. It is important that we honour our dreams or dream pieces by taking action. Dreams require action!
These are just a few ideas to help you break a dream drought. There are other games you can play in waking life, games involving signs, symbols and synchronicities, which I will write about in a subsequent post.