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| An Angel appears to Joseph in a dream |
Dreamwork; Techniques and Challenges
In
this final lesson on Dreamwork and Healing, dear Reader, we will explore
various techniques for discernment of dreams. A Talmudic saying is that
'A dream unexamined is like a letter unopened.' 1
Another way of interpreting this saying is that a dream is often incomplete without dreamwork.
Dreamwork is an intentional, conscious response to a dream.
Dreamwork often involves using techniques to find in the dream ways to
further the process of our call to wholeness and holiness, and to deepen
our relationship with God. 2
If the dream is like a letter - personal correspondence - from God,
then dreamwork is the opening of the letter, reading it, and responding
to it.
There are many dreamwork techniques, and they may be used with any
dreams. However, we dream so much that we need to choose which are the
most important, and document those.
Pray to God for discernment, and He will guide your choices.
Challenge facing God
As much as we find challenge in meeting the ongoing demands of life after Fall, so too, is God faced with immense challenge.
How to maintain and develop long-distance relationship [outside the divine milieu of heaven] - with His numerous human children?
Obviously, an organized system is required here. The system God chose
which has held fast against the test of time, is to approach us through
dreams and develop a personal relationship with each of us individually.
So; God uses a primary way of personally contacting each of us as His
beloved children through personalized dreams and visions.
God also uses his heavenly messengers, the angels, to carry communications back and forth in our dreams.
God also offers healing through visions.
Spiritual and Dreamwork Journal
Spiritual dreams are God's prerogative, so we must always be ready.
When the dreams arrive, we need to quickly record them and then begin to pray for the interpretation.
The dream that God sends you reminds us of the Will of God for us, and
also is a sign that we serve the God Who knows us closely and Who takes
the time to speak to each of us individually for our own safety and
care.
Dreamwork is a form of creative art. Dreamwork techniques help you to
creatively and spiritually understand what your dreams are saying to you, as well as what they are asking of you.
You will need to keep a dreamwork journal in which you write your dreams as they come to you, and record the dreamwork you do.
You may want to broaden your field further, and keep a spiritual and dreamwork journal.
In your journal [kept secure - it is a private conversation between you
and God] keep a record of the words God speaks to you in your life, and
the meaningful dreams you experience.
When we treat dreams and their Divine Source with reverence, dreamwork time becomes a time of worship and prayer.
Following our dreams and doing dreamwork calls us to spiritual growth,
and enables us to listen to the Voice of God in our personal lives.
God doesn't always give us an immediate interpretation of our dreams.
As we reread our dreams, He often unfurls understanding in us further down
the road we have travelled since we first experienced the dream.
Why? Perhaps events had to unfold in our lives before the dream could become relevant to us.
It could be a matter of maturity in our understanding. 3
The first step in dreamwork is to write down your dream, or whatever
you remember of it. Do this soon after waking; as the hours pass, so too
the memory of the dream may become more dim.
When you document your dream, you have a record which will help you with your dreamwork practice.
Dreamwork Technique A
Dream Journal
1. Use a hard covered lined book, notebook or loose-leaf binder to begin your dream journal.
Keep your dreams and dreamwork material in order and in one place.
2. Identify the journal as your private domain.
3. Put a date on the entries you make in your dream journal; or the year alone if you prefer.
4. Keep an orderly record of your dreams in the journal. Some
journallers prefer to write their dreams on one side of the page, saving
the facing page for later dreamwork.
5. Keep a record of your dreamwork tasks, the actions you need to carry
out to actualize your dreams and dreamwork in your daily activity and
choices.
6. Note the insights you have gained from carrying out the tasks set for you by God in your dreams.
7. At the end of each year review your journal work and summarise important events, decisions and points of growth for you.
Dream Document;
1. You need a light, a journal and a pen always available near your
sleeping quarters for recording your dreams soon after waking
2. Soon after your awakening from a dream you wish to document, write
down your dream and the thoughts in your head without censoring or
editing them.
Include all details. Don't care about your spelling or writing; it is
not a document to impress, it is a personal communication to you from
God.
3. After the dream, write down anything that comes to mind. They may be
strong emotions, tears, or thoughts. Just journal them, and then store
your journal.
Like yeast ferments in the unbaked dough, so God's Word to you will develop as you patiently wait.
Theme, Affect, Question
1. Theme; When you feel the time has come, sit in prayer time with your dream. Sit in God's presence and read through your dream notes.
Wait for God's inspiration; It will come.
Now write down the issues you see within the dream. Remember that a
dream may have more than one meaning, and these meaning develop over
time.
Just deal with what you understand the dream's meaning to you to be at the time.
In later years you can add further insights as they become clear.
2. Affect; When you have named the main issue or issues, write down the affect this has on you. You may have strong emotions, thoughts, inspiration or guidance.
You may experience emotions such as anxiety, fear, joy, shame or
compassion. They are neither right nor wrong; they simply are.
Also remember that sometimes God brings up past issues in which you are
confessing within to your honest inner self your need for confession
and forgiveness.
Document these with discretion; it is a confession between you and God, not for someone who may stumble across your journal.
Use symbols, eg 'Issue raised in dream re past exp. conf./Prom. rest'. [*Past experience confessed; Promised restitution].
This to you might mean that you confessed to God your sin rooted in the past, through a dream.
You awoke with tears of penitence and remorse [Issue raised in dream re past experience].
You have confessed your sin, and received pardon from God [Conf.]
You know there were consequences of your past sin that have negatively
impacted upon others, and you resolve as part of your reconciliation
confession with God, to make restitution to those who were wounded by
your actions [Prom rest.]
Feelings you may experience during dreams include states such as joy,
fear, enthusiasm, delight, insecurity, bashfulness, awkwardness,
frustration, pleasure, embarrassment, anxiety, anger, curiosity, wonder,
awe, relief, tearfulness, surprise, reverence and many others.
3. Question;
Now ponder and pray over the following, 'What question does this dream
seem to be asking of me?' Listen to your dream as if it were a friend
asking you a meaningful question.
A dream is better viewed as a question rather than an answer. Keep in
mind that as we continue dreamwork, we continually open ourselves to new
possibilities and meaning in our lives.
The deepest answers to our queries do not come from the dream, or from
our unconscious or conscious ego, but out of the active and living
relationship between ourselves and God, the Source of our dream.
Dreamwork technique B
Dialogue with a Dream Figure;
1. In some dreams, we have a dream Figure. Many people report having
powerfully realistic dreams with God, Jesus, Mother Mary, Angels and departed loved ones.
They clearly remember these dreams years later. In a study,
psychiatrist and researcher Ian Stevenson distinguished the difference
between true visitations and mere dreams.
Dr Stevenson found that true visitations were characterized by strong emotions, a more-than-real feeling, and intense colors.
Those who had true visitations also reported that the experience was
highly memorable, so much so that they could recall details years later.
4
2. Dialoging in dreamwork is simple. Write down the words the Figure spoke to you, and ponder them.
Often - if not always - there is a key message of call, of guidance or
of comfort for you in the words of the Person who visited you.
3. Angels are fond of visiting in dreams. They can appear in different
forms, but are always instantly recognizable. Write their message to
you.
Benefits of Dream Journal
After keeping a dream journal for a period of time, patterns and themes may begin to emerge.
Dreams
form the fabric of the relationship between God and ourselves. When
keeping the dream journal, some people record not only their dreams and
dreamwork but words of comfort and inspiration God speaks to them in
prayer and vision.
Life experiences, art, poetry, inspirational sayings and copies of
writings are often also included in the dream journal, which thus
expands to become a spiritual journal.
The dream journal starts out in its simplest form as a diary, in which we write down events - dream events.
We faithfully document the dream happenings. As we continue to keep the
dream journal and reflect on our dreamwork we begin writing things
beyond our known perspective.
This is God at work, enriching our knowledge through His Holy Spirit,
and blessing our trust and efforts with wisdom, insight and guidance.
The dream journal not only records our dreams, it records our journey in relationship with God.
The benefits to keeping a dream journal develop over time. As we review
our dreams and dreamwork, patterns begin to emerge and we discern a
pattern in our attitudes towards life as a journey.
The journal highlights major transition points in our lives and helps us view difficulties in the light of our larger destiny.
Our journal helps us to recognize issues important for us to deal with in making the transitions of our journey.
Our work with the dream journal helps us to gain a larger perspective on life than one single dream would give us.
We begin to comprehend our personal call from God. We also become aware
of the direction in which our journey is leading us, as God continues
to reveal His personal Plan for us.
We are also helped by means of our dreams to bring into balance and
harmony aspects of our life and personality that are being slowly
revealed.
Dreamwork Technique C
Insights and Personality Change;
In
later years add further insights you receive about the meaning of your
original dream. Date them. Further insights may often occur at your
annual review time of your dreamwork journal.
You will in all likelihood note personality changes as time wears on.
This has impact on your relationships and on the way you view life and
others.
Do not be afraid of the changes, embrace them. This merely means that
the former you - as yet unleavened with the yeast of God's work in you -
had a different outlook on life.
Through your dreamwork, the yeast of God's work has risen you to a new sense of awareness and form of identity.
Through the reality of God's work within your dreams and being, changes
have been made. Others often notice the change, and this confronts both
you and others with resultant differences in relationship.
Changes in pattern and relationships have an outward ripple effect; you
cannot change without causing changes in the status quo.
And
those who prefer the status quo may push back at the profound changes
in you, trying to reverse life to the way it was before.
But this is wishful thinking, and not grounded in reality. The true
picture is that change is ever-blossoming at the Hands of God, and
change is very evident in the lives of those who steadfastly continue
dreamwork and live lives of prophecy stemming therefrom.
The results of dreamwork not only confront and change us, they
challenge our families, communities and society to growth and change -
sometimes a challenge many face unwillingly. But the tide cannot be
turned.
God continues to call powerfully and without ceasing, as the great prophecy tells us;
"
'And it shall be in the last days,' God says, 'that I will pour forth
of My Spirit on everyone, and your sons and your daughters shall speak
what God has revealed, and your young men shall see visions, and your
Elders shall dream dreams.' " [Acts 2;17]
Dreamwork Technique D
Healing Request;
Bring an issue that troubles you and causes heartache before the Lord.
Prior to going to sleep, pray
'Dear God,
I am deeply troubled by [here name the issue]. Despite my efforts, I have not been able to come to peace.
I struggle with [here name your difficulty, such as heartache with an
issue/ tears/ flashback memories/ health issue/ past experience of
betrayal or hurt/ grief/ loss of loved one/ past disappointment/
experience of emotional or other abuse/ inability to forgive/ repressed
anger/ effects and consequences of past sin/ regret or remorse for
action towards another which had injurious consequence].
Please help me with this issue as it is damaging me. [You can explain
if you will, eg; I suffer from poor sleep/ recurrent nightmares/
frequent tears/ difficulties with emotions/ lack of trust/ inability to
show love/ health problems].
Grant me healing and guidance in this matter if it be Your Blessed Will. Amen.'
Give this message into the capable and paternal Hand of God, and go to sleep.
Be aware , though, that sometimes God may apparently keep us waiting.
Last year I received - almost out of the blue - an answer to prayer I had made many times over a period of 26 years.
I had also gone on pilgrimage to Lourdes to ask the intercession of the Blessed Mary re the issue.
After an interval of so many years, I had become wholly resigned to the fact that God had apparently said no to my request.
Then one day in September I experienced an event which clearly dealt
with all my prayers and dreamwork of the previous 26 years.
Thereafter in dreamwork I have been dealing with the question; Why now? And why so long a wait?
The
answer would seem to be that healing is coming in the fullness of time;
having brought the deeper issue of unlooked for inner understanding and
inner healing in its wake.
I have been granted healing. I have also experienced a deepening in my
trust and relationship with God because of the sheer amount of time I
spent over 26 years reaching out to Him for help.
If all had been perfect in my life, I cannot guarantee that I would
have felt an equal need to spend so much time in His Company in prayer.
God the Great Healer has His own seasons and times.
We need only to bring our trust to our conference table. It is always
an issue in dreamwork and healing to remember that God's Ways are not
our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts. His ways are higher than
our ways, His thoughts are above our thoughts. [Isaiah 55:8-9].
Dreams and Healing
Dear Reader,
we need healing when our bodies are diseased, our minds are in turmoil,
or our spirits are unable to function because they are bound by the
ties of guilt, fear, meaninglessness and inadequacies.
The need for healing is simply everywhere. We can receive healing through dreams.
Many
people report that grief upon losing a loved one can be healed.
Sometimes the griever has a dream or vision in which the loved one
appears and speaks to them. This dream or vision experience can bring
great comfort and resolution.
Closure of the loss is achieved. The dream or vision thus offers the
possibility of resolution and closure, and the way is opened for the
griever to move on with life.
The wound in the relationship with the loved one is healed, in the dream state the sadness is resolved and leaves.
The dream resolution is a way of letting the person go, to free them to
their new life without our tears holding them back from walking on into
the Light.
Sometimes, issues for personal healing surface in dreams. An example is
an individual who was wounded in early life by an experience of
profound rejection.
This leads to an inability to forgive or trust, and impacts on the individual's present relationships.
The response has been to trust no-one and to avoid conflict or confrontation at any cost.
A dream from God may come which after dreamwork symbolically shows that
God is in charge, and that love need not be feared or forgiveness
withheld. This helps the dreamer to let go of past hurt; resentment and
feelings of abandonment and to push forward to a new reality.
Often a grievously hurt person places personal feelings in storage and
refuses to emotionally fully engage in a new relationship. He or she
thus perpetuates the emotional deprivation of early years into new
relationship.
Personal woundedness can lead to the unintentional wounding of others.
This cycle can only be intercepted and healed the God Who loves.
Nightmares
The need for healing can be thrown up in confrontational dreams or nightmares.
A
characteristic of dreams is that they tend to contain conflicts and
unresolved situations. We are chased, we are attacked, we experience
misunderstanding, a confusing choice of paths lie before us.
Nightmares, among the most dramatic and anxiety inducing of dreams, point out vividly the need for resolution.
A nightmare is a dream which causes feelings of intense fear. Nightmares can recur.
Most
nightmares and recurring dreams do not resolve themselves. For healing
to occur, work needs to be done by our conscious selves. It is already a
sign of a step towards healing when we choose to work with our dreams
in the healing context. by dreamwork we can deal with traumatic
nightmares.
The nightmare can call you to discover courage within to confront the
task of dealing with uncomfortable issues. Painful dreams can help to
face and accept psychological wounds from situations such as rejection,
abuse, bullying or war experiences. They help us to face how our
psychological wounds affect our ability to function in waking life.
Resolution needs to take place on the spiritual level of our souls.
Sometimes through our dreamwork leading to self knowledge - or by
others' skilled and caring guidance - that the healing we need requires
professional help.
The Sacrament of Confession with a reputable and wise priest under the Seal of Confession [absolute confidentiality with no exception] enables you to reconcile once more with God, and again begin your walk on the journey of faith towards Heaven.
The Seal of the Confession [or Seal of the Confessional] is the absolute duty of priests not to disclose anything they learn from penitents during the course of Confession [also known as the Sacrament of Penance or Reconciliation]. 5
Counselling, Spiritual Direction, Psychology or Psychiatry services are professional services which aid toward mental health.
Mental or psychological health is as essential as physical and spiritual health.
Discernment is essential for us to make informed choices about the
assistance we need to balance our inner selves in harmony with our outer
being.
Healing Dreamwork
Confrontational dreams and difficult life events do not come to embarrass or cause us to feel inadequate.
They bring with them the potential for healing, for resolving conflicts, facing challenges and creating new life and values.
God is at work in every situation. We have the opportunity to cooperate in that work. 6
Every person faces the need for healing. Conflict, fear, betrayal, hurt and revenge leads to the building up and strengthening of barriers of protection against others.
Let us work towards inner healing. If our small internal universe is at peace, we can extend our peace to others.
If we have faced the trauma or wound we experienced in earlier times,
and allowed God to transform the wound into increased compassion for
others and depth of character, our transformation will bless and enable
others.
If we are able to forgive our parents, guardians and teachers the
mistakes they made during the time of our childhood, we will integrate a
renewed sense of future into our lives.
The benison of our forgiveness is sometimes the healant needed to
address the wounds of the wounded guardians to whom our early care was
entrusted.
The wounded heirs - through the wise offices of a Healer God - become,
by forgiveness and blessing, the channels of healing for their wounded
carers.
And, Finally ...
Don't worry about whether a dream is a true God-dream or not. Time will tell.
Just keep inviting God to speak to you through your dreams, interact with Him about what you dream, and await Him.
Reader, you can always trust in Him; your salvation is held in a Hand more steady and sure than the strongest rock on earth.
Questions for your Heart and Mind
1. What do you think is the link between dreams and healing?
2. What do you think is meant in Acts 2;17?
3. Give an example where you think healing is needed in our world of today.
4. Discuss the value of a Spiritual Dream-Journal.
Footnotes
1. Gabbard M.D., Glen O. 2009. 'Textbook of Psychotherapeutic Treatments' p 706. USA; American Psychiatric Publishing
2. Savery, Louis et al. 1984. 'Dreams and Spiritual Growth: A Judeo-Christian Way of Dreamwork'
p 5. USA; Paulist Press
3.
Rubsam, Lee Ann. 2009. 'Hearing from God through dreams [Part 3].
https:
//refinedinthefire.wordpress.com/2009/04/14/hearing-from-god-through-dreams-part-3/
4. Virtue, Doreen. 2012. 'Dreams of Mary'. http: //www.healyourlife.com/ dreams-of-mary
5. Seal of the Confessional [Catholic Church]. https:/ //en. wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Seal_of_the_Confessional_ (Catholic_Church)
6. Savery, Louis et al. 1984. 'Dreams and Spiritual Growth: A Judeo-Christian Way of Dreamwork'
p 164. USA; Paulist Press
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Disclaimer; The information on this post is meant for information only. The information is not meant to replace your Doctor of Health professional or Herbalist care.
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