Dreaming And Healing, Dreaming And “Waking”…
When we’re on a healing journey of any sort, the tendency can be to look outside ourselves for the answers. We run around from doctor to doctor; we sit and trawl the Internet for hours a day and worst of all, we panic and worry. What would serve us far better is to develop our own intuition so we can tune in to what the next step should be directly from the source… from ourselves.
However, when we are worried about some ailment, particularly if it’s a recent diagnosis, I can understand that it can be difficult to be settled enough to tap into that source. It is here that dreaming can come to our rescue…
In the early days of my healing journey, even though I always thought of myself as a “spiritual” person, when faced with agonising joints and therefore high stakes (in the sense that if I didn’t recover there could be dire consequences to my mobility), I started to doubt that such magic was possible. Among the lorry load of books I read were some books on dreaming and the use of dreams in healing. I didn’t hold out much hope, but began a dream diary, which I will discuss in far more detail in my upcoming book, “Arthritis, The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Me”.
At first it was difficult to remember the dreams, but with practice, one learns how to “grab” the dream before it disappears by making it the first thing one focuses on upon waking. Also, making a point to ask for guidance before going to sleep seemed to make a big difference to how useful, or clear, the dreaming message was.
This might seem like a load of mumbo jumbo to some people, but look at it like this: in dreaming, we are still ourselves, but when disconnected from the stresses and tribulations of a sick body, deeper intuition can be accessed, which, upon waking, can be applied to everyday life.
In my own experience, after writing down a few of these dreams, a pattern started to form. The dreams didn’t always give a clue as to exactly what to do next, although I certainly got some ideas; more often they gave encouragement and confidence that I was on the right “path” and that success would eventually be mine, even though I was going against conventional ideas and the advice of doctors.
After a while, once confidence is gained in the messages one gets while in the dreaming state, it’s possible to tap into that very intuition while wide awake. Then, the deeper the connection with that intuition grows, the faster we can find answers and notice the wonderful clues that nature gives us along the way, which otherwise might be covered up with panic and fear. This is just one of the amazing ways that illness can be such a blessing.
To take this idea to its ultimate conclusion, dreaming might just be one of the clearest pointers to the ultimate truth of our nature, and one of the few ways that the mind can come close to grasping the absolute, or, at least the possibility of the absolute existing.
It is said in the original teachings of most spiritual traditions and religions that creation is all one; “God” is everywhere and consciousness is all there is. Relative existence or duality is just an illusion – the illusion of Maya. Well, this is all well and good, but while we are in the middle of it, it’s almost impossible, nay, completely impossible to grasp such a concept. The mind fights and fights to regain its individuality: “No, I know I’m here and you are there – we can’t all be one! It doesn’t make sense!”
Well, look at it this way: In a dream, you often dream about other people and other objects, but you are still yourself, albeit not the physical version, but still a point of reference looking at these other people and objects. However, when you wake up, you know that you were in a dream. But how many people ever consider that the other people in the dream and the other objects were also themselves? Who else could they be? Nobody else can get into your dream, can they? The monster chasing you was… you!
Ok, we’ll take it a step further… Imagine if that’s actually what’s happening when we’re awake. Is it possible that we create our own universe? It’s almost impossible to grasp isn’t it? You can sort of get it, but then it slips away. Looking for the truth in that is about as useful as running around in your dream looking for the body in the bed that’s dreaming the dream. It can’t be done, but it doesn’t make it any less real that there is a body in a bed dreaming the dream.
But who is dreaming us while we’re awake? That is the question, and when you grasp it, you have the pure source of all healing, for we can create health… or indeed ill health… in an instant.
So, pay attention to your dreaming. It might just be the key to perfect health, and so much beyond!
Originally posted 2014-03-11 16:21:19.