Contrasting Experiences in Dreams
How Dreams Guide Us in Waking Life
Welcome to Dream Travels. Adventures on dream sharing, being the expert of your dreams, and synchronicities with waking life.
“Hypnagogia—the images that come and the connections that are made—between sleep and waking.” (Robert Moss, Active Dreaming: Journeying Beyond Self-Limitation to a Life of Wild Freedom, pg. 21)
Hypnogogic: images and connections between waking and sleeping
Hypnopompic: Images and connections between sleeping and waking
Dream Sunday, September 22, 2024
Title: In the Wrong Space
Luke and I are at a book event. I try to sit in a certain spot and someone tells me to sit further down toward the front. The food served during the event is fried fish. There isn't any food that I can eat. The handouts are disorganized.
Feelings: frustrated and confused. I don’t feel comfortable in this space.
Reality Check: Lucas is my husband. He may come to a book event if he's helping me sell my books. But it feels like we are at a conference where I am a spectator rather than a participant.
Be Curious: Why am I here? Is this dream a contrast or a message of something that needs clarification in my waking life?
Insights/Receive Support: I'm clear here. In my work. In my sense of play and what I'm doing. All feels right. I'm clear on the food that I am eating. I do have food allergies and don’t eat gluten. I would have eaten the fish if it wasn't fried. At the moment of recording this dream I have exuberant energy.
More Curiosity: What is this dream telling me? How do I balance the dream with my waking life so that both are aligned with my highest and best good?
There are many categories of dreams that give clues to their meanings.
Hypnopompic: the type of dream I had. Usually an indication of something that I need to pay extra special attention to.
Contrast: this dream feels in direct contrast to how I'm currently feeling in my waking life. So either I need to find ease in my dream world or perhaps it's a warning or a message to guide me.
Guidance: I'm writing this a couple days later. It turns out this dream is a guiding message. Even though I do have clarity and abundance flowing into my life, I still need to make space and remove what no longer fits on my path.
Connections: I recently took on a two-month teaching job at a location I have taught before but with a different topic on writing. I enjoy teaching the material.
But between my writing, dream guidance workshops, and Reiki Journaling™ sessions, my schedule is pleasantly full. Adding in this workshop that I was hesitant to teach in the first place overfilled my schedule. After journaling, I came to the conclusion that if I desire to grow and move in the direction of my current path then something has to give. This sense of imbalance in my dreamworld was telling me that I need to take action in my waking life.
Action: Over the last couple of years I have been teaching journaling and writing in five or six different places. I was like a hamster in a tunnel scurrying to all these places and never feeling settled. This past June, I have since rented a beautiful, energetic space that holds all that I'm bringing into the world. To stay true to Pathways of Connection™, teaching in all these other spaces isn’t going to work.
Finish this course I'm teaching with a full heart and appreciation for this opportunity.
See what flows into the space I’m creating.
Look at my current schedule and note if anything else feels cluttered or not aligned.
Perhaps see if there is anything that is pushing me to another seat instead of the one I truly desire.
Mark on my calendar to go back to this dream in January to follow up and see what has grown in the space that I left open for curiosity and creativity.
Bumper sticker: One path to connect and may those who need it find their way.
You might say how did she get all of this from that little snippet of a dream?
Luke often represents the logical and practical side of me. The fact that I was uncomfortable and frustrated. Feelings are the most important aspect of what a dream means. It did take a couple days for the full impact of this dream to come into my mind. Ironically or synchronistically, it was after I started teaching this class that I felt the crunch of too much on my plate. Even though this location and workshop served me very well in the past, I'm shifting to other ways of bringing my creations and teachings to the world.
Active dreaming is a practice.
Just like starting a new relationship, you slowly understand the nuances of another person and what a facial expression or tone means. You are growing a relationship with your dream self—getting to know this other version(s) of you.
To follow The Lightning Dream Process and analyze your own dream, go to You Are The Expert of Your Dreams!
Let’s Connect: Always happy to hear from you. Feel free to share dreams or how this resonates. All thoughts are welcome!
I so appreciate how you provide such a wonderfully concrete example of this Lightening Work dream process. I'm very interested in dovetailing this with my sketchbook work!