Guided Meditation   Dream Ritual   The Oracle

Empowering Your Life With Dreams by Sirona Knight

Music producer Quincy Jones has said that when inspiration comes to you when you're dreaming, if you don't get up and do something about it then it just moves on to the next person's house. One person who did something about it was Paul McCartney. On several occasions he has told the story of how the melody for his song "Yesterday" came in a dream, and initially, until he worked out the lyrics, he used the phrase "scrambled eggs" as the temporary title. In a recent survey this song that came about as a result of a dream was voted the number one song of all time.

Through the ages many people have used their dreams to tap into the source of creativity and divine guidance. Author Robert Louis Stevenson, Musician Billy Joel, Inventors Albert Einstein and Thomas Edison, along with a multitude of others have utilized their dreams to further their art and science. In particular, Robert Louis Stevenson often consulted his dream guides when writing his masterpiece "Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde."

Empowering Your Life with Dreams gives techniques for working with your dream guides, remembering your dreams, dream incubating, and lucid dreaming. When you learn to lucid dream, nightmares become things of the past, and you find yourself in a world that brings out your full potential. The intent is to integrate your dreams with your day-to-day life in a way where they both work together as One--helping you set your goals, solve your problems, and move you to the next level in your path towards personal empowerment.

Remembering Your Dreams
In the summer of 1797, poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was feeling low. One night while reading Purchas's pilgrimage with Kubla Khan, he dozed off into three hours of intense dreaming that seemed to show the whole of a series of images. When he awoke, he envisioned the whole idea from the dream, and began writing a most exquisite poem entitled, "Kubla Khan." While writing down the images from the dream, Coleridge is called away on business by a person from Porlock for about an hour, but when he returns, he finds that the images have vanished from his mind, leaving only a vague memory of what was. What he remembered and saved from his dream created a classic poem, but who knows what it would have been like had he been able to write down the whole poem as he first envisioned it in his dream.

What this story points out in a big way is that for most people there is an initial period of time when they first wake up from sleeping that they remember their dreams. After this initial period of time is over, the dream seems to vanish in a haze, leaving only a scattered recollection of the dream's particulars. Without the particulars, the dream remains elusive and its meaning and insights are difficult to ascertain in a conscious or waking sense.

What all this points toward is the need to record your dreams immediately upon waking from a dream sequence. Don't beguile yourself into thinking you will remember it later because often times you won't remember. Sometimes this might mean getting up at odd times in your sleep cycle, and writing down or recording a dream you just had, but the benefit in the long term as you connect with your dream self, is enormous. When you are better able to remember your dreams, then you open up a whole other world to yourself, and the beauty of it is that this other world is there to help you to determine and achieve your empowerment goals.

As with most talents and skills, remembering your dreams becomes easier when you learn a few basic techniques and develop better skills for dream recall.

8 Ways to Enhance Your Dream Recall

1. Give yourself the suggestion to take an active part in your dreaming experience, and right before you go to sleep and just as you awaken, repeat over and over the suggestion to remember your dreams when you wake up.

2. Upon waking, either talk into a tape recorder (microcassettes work well), or jot down images and events from your dream immediately on paper--whatever first comes to mind. Don't even get up from bed. Always speak or write in the active, as if the dream is happening right now. For example, "I am walking towards a tall blond-haired man who smiles at me." Also try resuming your last sleeping position as this well trigger your dream recall and give your more information. Body positioning is a basic method for merging with the dreamscape and practicing conscious and lucid dreaming.

3. Check for body signals, scents, feelings, emotion, and recall whether your dream was in the daytime or at night, in color or black and white. Did anything seem strange or particularly intriguing? Check for all possible precognitive content in the dream. How are things different and how are they the same in the dream? Note these details.

4. Dialogue with your dream and talk with the other characters within the dream, with your dreambody self, and with the events and situations that arise. Ask what parts of your dream mean. Ask people within your dream what they are trying to communicate to your. Use dream incubation to find the answers to questions in dream. Remember it is dream, so logical and rational parameters do not necessarily apply. Rather than think about it too much, get a feel for the dream, and make an effort to merge and be there in the dreaming experience.

5. Decide on a simple metaphorical statement about your dream that pretty much says it all. For instance, if you dreamed about finding your soulmate while swimming, you might call the dream, "diving in headfirst." Metaphor is a way to move deeper into the dreaming experience.

6. Check to see if anything in your dream coincides directly with your waking experience. Pay close attention to the synchronistic events that carry over into waking reality and visa versa. What is the pattern of your dream? What in your dreaming experience connects with your external world?

7. Use personal symbol in dream, put the symbol on the wall by your bed or where you will look at it all the time. Use the symbol to focus and project yourself into dream. Then also check for any obvious symbolic content in the dream.

8, Make something from your dream. Creative enactment of dream includes drawing or painting a picture, writing a poem, growing a garden, dancing, singing a song, making a flower sachet or essence, writing a letter, a story, making a dream wand or amulet--all of these serve as representations of your dream. This is a powerful way of connecting with the divine lover and soulmate of your dreams.

Interpreting Your Dreams
Gustavus Hindman Miller in his book, "10,000 Dreams Interpreted," relates the case of a man who sometimes has dreams of walking through green fields of corn, grass, or wheat. When the man has one of these dreams, he has come to find that for the few days following the dream, he experiences prosperous conditions. From this basic dream, he finds that if he encounters rocks or other adverse conditions in his dream, that usually means there will some hardships involved in the prosperity, if he climbs a mountain and the top is barren, it means that he will attain his goals, but the venture on the whole will be unprofitable. But instead, if he climbs the mountain and the top is green and spring-like, it means that the venture will yield good results. In addition he has found that if he sees muddy water in the dream, it signifies that sickness, business depression, or jealousy may manifest in his life, and as such gives him a warning to be cautious.

Understanding what your dreams are trying to tell you is what gives dream interpretation value. Often times it's a matter of sitting down with your dreams and evaluating their effects on your life. What happens afterwards in your waking world when you have certain dreams, particularly ones that reoccur at regular intervals? This is why it is important to keep an accurate and detailed dream journal. By recording your dreams, you begin setting up a database where you can see comparisons, contrasts, and progressions within terms of your dreams. The more information you have, the better chance you have of interpreting your dreams accurately.