Hello friends!
Today is a bit special day since I welcome for the first time on the blog a guest article! It is Léa, specialist in dreams on her site and also in consultations, who wrote this fascinating article! Usually, I write 100% of the articles on this blog myself, but Léa’s theme spoke to me a lot and I wanted to share it with you! I hope that pleases you. Good reading !
Dreams: ask them for advice
Have you ever made the connection between these curious dreams that punctuate your nights, and the famous saying: the night brings advice?
How does the night advise you? What is the participation of the dream in the work of sleep? So many questions to which I will propose answers in this article.
I will begin by returning to the dream process. Why does he take on such a curious appearance and what is his role. Then I will explain to you how to question your dreams in order to benefit from their tailor-made advice.
A dream is another form of thought
Do you dream often? It amuses you and it distracts you. No doubt, you have imagination to spare and a strong bond with your interiority. However, when you search for the meaning of a dream, you are not convinced of what you read. Still happy ! This means that you keep your critical mind!
Do you dream little? When that happens, it questions you. Your dreams are meaningless, it makes no sense. You tell yourself that the sleeping brain must be delirious a little… Really?
The genesis of the dream
At the origin of a dream, there is always life. Your life. You are on earth. You lead a unique existence unlike any other: your own. So your dreams belong to you, they tell you, and it is useless to look for their meanings in the many dictionaries of dreams…
Understanding the dream induces and accompanies a deeper understanding of what you are experiencing. The object of dream interpretation is therefore not to associate the elements which arise in the dream with given meanings. On the contrary, it is the art of extracting from a dreamlike narrative all that it says about the individual. It is to accompany him in the discovery of this lucid knowledge that he carries within him.
The dream: a bridge between the ego and the unconscious
A dream, what is it? It is an unconscious process that takes place when your Self is asleep. It is currently believed that there are two forms of consciousness:
_ Rational consciousness, the one we use the most in our active life (= Self consciousness).
_ And intuitive awareness, which we often use without realizing it (= inspiration).
However, most of our conscious choices, even the most rational ones, are ultimately acted upon by this little inner compass that guides us: make this choice / don’t make that one. In fact, when we tell a decision we made to a friend, we often say “I felt that was what I had to do”. The duty “I had to” and the search for intimate meaning “I felt” coexist for a harmonious evolution.
90 minutes of dream coaching
The craziest and most interesting dreams to analyze are dream dreams. Those who arrive during the phase of sleep called “REM sleep”.
NB: We will not talk here about dreams that occur during other phases of sleep. When falling asleep (hypnagogic dreams) and slow sleep.
Everybody dreams
The night brings advice because the dream works in the background. Sleep is made up of several cycles (slow-light, slow-deep, paradoxical) which recur several times. Between cycles, we get up, we go for a drink, the babies call for their darling parents… that kind of thing. In total, we dream 90 minutes per night. So yes, everyone dreams. But luckily no one remembers 90 minutes of dreams in the morning. Otherwise we would tell each other our adventures of the night until mid-morning! Which would liven up the metro in the morning, that said.
REM sleep is considered the time when the “individual program” makes its updates. It is necessary to consider that an individual is a unique being, which has a sensitivity, predispositions, affinities, facilities and limits of its own. During REM sleep, the unconscious would be called upon to do a kind of audit and select the actions to be carried out in order to maintain the integrity of the individual and his homeostasis.
The dream therefore allows an encounter between the “I must” and the “I feel” which allow progress. Our hesitations of yesterday lead to our choices today. Who sleeps well has more momentum.
Why do we remember certain dreams?
The dreams that mark us are the ones that somehow slipped through the cracks. The individual is a human being. It is therefore by definition full of uncertainties and it still has a lot to learn. His unconscious is not omniscient either! He comes up against difficult problems and does not always succeed.
When intuition (I feel) and action (I must) cannot find common ground, the dream gains in intensity and provokes awakening. We therefore remember it because we are awake during REM sleep. The dream questions us. And we are then free to extend in consciousness the work begun by the dream.
I am now going to give you my little analyst tips to help you take advantage of the full potential of your dreams.
Make dreams your best ally
Maintaining a relationship with your inner world is an exercise at the beginning that becomes natural after a while. By dint of giving them importance, it seems that we develop an ease in choosing to remember our dreams. Anyway, that’s how I see it. And I also observe it with my regular customers. They become almost able to select while they are living it the dream they are going to tell me!
Here are my tips for moving forward in this exciting adventure:
1) Step 1: Remember
To understand a dream, you must first remember it. It goes without saying you think, but in reality a lot of people contact me with questions like: “I dreamed of a tree, what does it mean? ” No. Let’s face it: it means nothing at all! If you only remember one thing from the dream, you won’t get very far.
To understand a dream, you must wake up having succeeded in capturing a snapshot of this story experienced by you at another level of consciousness. The dream has the particularity of being really lived. We are moved, we are afraid, we cry, we run, we laugh… A dream to be analyzed must be rich in all of this: details, an atmosphere, an initial situation and at least one incident, and above all emotions.
With experience, it would seem that we acquire the ability to immediately “capture” the dream upon waking and to register it in a dedicated corner of our memory.
Before getting there, the best thing to do is to have a dream book. This notebook must always be:
_ On your bedside table, if you have the luxury of being able to take time to wake up like a cat.
_ Next to the coffee machine for those who have an alarm clock that rings at 6am.
_ In the fridge if you prefer orange juice (it’s a joke, there’s always a moment when I write where I can’t stay serious anymore).
This dream book is absolutely essential. Write down everything you remember and everything that comes to you in terms of emotions and absurd details. The devil hides in the details as the saying goes, and dreams of it more than ever.
2) Step 2: analyze them
Analyzing a dream cannot be improvised. It’s as if I were telling you that anyone can be a pianist or a juggler. This is not the case. There are temperaments for whom football will be more suitable. And there are those who pick the flowers on the football pitch.
To be able to analyze your dreams, you need to have a sharp intuition. A rather literary or artistic sensitivity, a fairly advanced capacity for abstraction. And at the same time a fairly scientific sense of analysis. Which is not contradictory. The performer must be comfortable navigating through the different productions of the mind. He must himself be involved in a work of personal analysis over the long term.
Already, you can just try to advance in understanding by asking yourself two simple questions:
_ How does it resonate with me, with my life?
_ What is coming? (memories, impressions, hypotheses…)
In this way, you will gradually soften the boundary between the manifest content of the dream and its latent content.
When the dream is particularly disturbing or even disturbing, it is difficult to analyze it alone because one is too emotionally involved to be objective. When a dream comes back often, it’s because we haven’t understood its message, and it gives us a new chance each time to grasp it. If you find yourself in one of these situations, contact me and we will see how I can help you.
Step 3: ask them for a favor
Once we have found our way of “capturing” dreams with all their richness and we have advanced in their analysis, we can start talking to them. Yes, you read correctly. Dreams, as we saw above, are there to “put us back on the right track” in a way. That of our uniqueness. To accompany us at each stage of our personal development. Also taking an interest in your dreams is important for anyone engaged in a process of personal development.
Insofar as they are our most faithful guides, we can perfectly question them and send them our questions.
How to question your dreams?
Before falling asleep, put yourself in a state of relaxation close to meditation. Formulate your request well mentally. It can be a rather pragmatic request like “Tell me if I should accept this partnership” or more spiritual “Send me a sign because I feel a little lost. » . The unconscious does not discriminate between your preoccupations, which are all the same as long as they cause you discomfort.
How to recognize their answers?
It is not a god who will answer you, nor any guide of any kind. It is your unconscious that will guide you on the way to the answer. Either in the background, in the discreet work of paradoxical sleep. One day you will know when you wake up what is the best solution for you, and you will go for it. Or by sending you a metaphorical dream in response to your request which, after analysis, will turn out to correspond wonderfully to your (re)quest.
Do not hesitate to contact me if you have any additional questions 😉
Sweet dreams and write them down!
Léa Le Gall – 060195221 – [email protected]
