I had a scary, vivid dream the other night and I’m really excited about it. Huh? I know, that sounds weird. But the more I learn about dreams, the more I’m intrigued by their transformative and healing nature. Also, any dreams sparked by my Dance of Shiva practice are unequivocally welcome.
I first learned about this inherent dreamtime power from my teacher, Martha Beck, who says:
The more respect you give your night dreams, the sooner they will become day dreams: ideas for new adventures, enterprises, and life strategies you may never have thought up while physically awake.
Your psyche is offering up clues about big stuff, and possibly even some hints about what you really want and what might be keeping you stuck. And the most comforting thing I’ve learned in my dream analysis training is that the scariest parts are really meant to help you.
Nothing in your dream, nothing you do or say or feel or think, says anything bad about you. Which makes looking at them much easier, yes?
Even better.
Dreams are meant to help you re-integrate good bits of your personality that you’ve inadvertently rejected. Meaning you get to start liking elements of yourself that you’ve been unconsciously ignoring. I don’t have time to prove all of this today so you’ll just have to take my word for it.
(Wouldn’t it be cool if I could say stuff like that and get away with it? I think so. No, but really, if you want more background I’d start with the Soul Sleuthing dream investigation series. And then if you want to go deeper, there’s always the collected works of C.G. Jung. *Swoon*. Brain crush.)
The dream.
There was a little girl dangling from a cliff. And the only thing keeping her from falling was my foot. At first I wanted to help her, but no one would help me help her. And so eventually I just wanted to let her fall so that I could finish my marathon. (Apparently in the dreamtime I am quite the athlete.)
Sometimes you get a hunch that a dream is important. This is one of those times. There is a message in this dream, and the message is not: God, you are selfish. Save the little girl you heartless witch!
The connection.
But I didn’t even come close to understanding the significance of the message until I wrote an intention for my Dance of Shiva practice that morning. See, I’ve been noticing that I have this annoying fear of getting into trouble. And without seeing any connection at all, I wrote:
Shiva Nata intention: Letting go of this little-girl-in-trouble gig.
Hmmm.
An epiphany is percolating. More on that next time. Thoughts on dream analysis in general? Are you into this kind of thing? Do you have vivid dreams? If you’re a Shivanaut, does it affect your dreams?
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Hehe, I love your attitude towards dreams!
I’ve always found my vivid dreams fascinating and used them for art ideas, but it wasn’t until recently that I started looking at them as messages from my inner world, trying to help me out.
I’m a big fan of Martha Beck’s and Eileen’s approach to dream investigation. Have you read any Robert Moss? I did a dream theme last winter for one of the Creative Every Day themes and interviewed him for the blog. He’s got a lot of interesting stuff to say about the dream world too.
Briana this no lil piph! How incredible. I had a two week period in the course of doing shiva nata that truly intesified my dreams which I wrote about. I think I have not been challenging myself enough and the dreams have toned down in vividness. What is interesting though is that in my waking musings- cliffs and crags have been featuring quite dominantly-just concidentally. Do you think that even during this period when my dreams have been a little less vivid the waking images are emerging from my dreams?
In the morning, I normally cannot recall any bit of my dreams. Surely, I must dream like any human being does, but I don’t remember.
However, when I do Shiva Nata regularly, I sometimes remember bits in the morning. It is hard to hold on to, but with some practice it must be possible to recollect it, at least remember long enough to get my journal out.
Martha’s dream analysis method was a revelation to me. It’s like communicating with my Higher Self in secret code. Like doing a crossword puzzle. I love it. I just finished a kids’ novel in which dreams play a big part.
My dreams haven’t been so vivid for the last year or so. I’ve been getting up early to write and I wonder if I’m missing out on the best REM time. Maybe if I was paying more attention I would get better dreams again.
@Leah ~ oooh, I think someone else mentioned Robert Moss to me, I’ll have to check him out. Or maybe I’ll just go search your site – that must have been a cool interview!
@Pearl ~ “Cliffs & crags” sounds like Wuthering Heights dreaming : ) I think the Shiva Nata impact on dreams might depend on the time of day you do your practice? Also, my understanding is that dreams are more intense during different phases of change and transition. But the crossover imagery is so fascinating!
@Inge ~ Yeah, I go through phases with remembering. I try so hard to be diligent about scribbling down notes in the middle of the night… Usually I go back to sleep thinking “I’ll *never* forget this” and of course I have no clue what happened by morning.
@Alison ~ Hmmm, I think it definitely makes a difference when I’m not getting enough sleep. But I also think sometimes our unconscious is just more active in wanting to communicate with us. I also think it can be an intention thing… i.e. I want to remember my dreams, or whatever. At least worth a shot.
@Alison! And the bunnies, omg, those were amazing – thank you! What a sweet, playful, hoppityness, loved them.
Ha. I’d scribble down notes – words and phrases that I was sure would spark my memory – and then look at them in the morning and think “huh?! what on earth does this mean?”