Dream Blog
Ramana is one of my most valued teachers, and in January of 2012, I travelled to live at the foot of the sacred mountain where meditated and shared teachings for over 50 years: Arunachala. It remains one of the most transformative experiences of my life.
BHAGAVAN* ON DREAM AND WAKING-REALITY
*(The name Bhagavan was used in reverence by Ramana’s devotees, meaning Supreme Being or Realized Being in Sanskrit.)
Another visitor told Bhagavan that some of his dream experiences stood very firmly rooted in his mind, while others were not remembered at all. Bhagavan remarked, “All that we see is a dream, whether we see it in the dream state or in the waking state. On account of some arbitrary standards about the duration of experience and so on, we call one experience dream experience and another waking experience. With reference to Reality, both the experiences are unreal. A man might have such an experience as getting anugraha (grace) in his dream and the effect and influence of it on his entire subsequent life may be so profound and so abiding that one cannot call it unreal, while calling real some trifling incident in the waking life, that just flits by, is casual, of no moment whatever and is soon forgotten. Once I had an experience, a vision or dream, whatever you may call it. I and some others including Chadwick had a walk on the hill. Returning, we were walking along a huge street with great buildings on either side. Showing the street and the buildings, I asked Chadwick and the others whether anybody could say that what we were seeing was a dream and they all replied, ‘Which fool will say so?’ and we walked along and entered the hall and the vision or dream ceased or I woke up. What are we to call this?” ~ Day by Day with Bhagavan, by Devaraja Mudaliar
A collection of teachings compiled by Ramana’s Devotees.
“We are such stuff as dreams are made of and our short life is rounded by a sleep.”
Shakespeare really did know what he was talking about, it was not just poetic effervescence. Maharshi used to say exactly the same. Though I questioned Bhagavan more often on this subject than any other, some doubts always remained for me.
He had always warned that as soon as one doubt is cleared another will spring up in its place – there is no end of doubts.
“But Bhagavan,” I would repeat, “dreams are disconnected, while the waking experience goes on from where it lets off and is admitted by all to be more or less continuous.”
“Do you say that in your dreams?” Bhagavan would ask.
“They seemed perfectly consistent and real to you then. It is only now, in your waking state that you question the reality of the experience. This is not logical.”
EVER wanted to erase a horrific nightmare from your mind? Australian doctors believe they’ve found a way to do it.
Dr Andrea Phelps, from the Australian Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health, said a technique called imagery rehearsal treatment was allowing people with post-traumatic stress disorder to literally rewrite the script of distressing nightmares to change their dreams or get rid of them.
Regular and repetitive nightmares are a defining feature of PTSD, especially for soldiers who have experienced extreme fear and trauma during combat.
In some cases, sufferers have had the same dream regularly for more than 30 years, causing a fear of sleep and insomnia which affects their ability to function during the day.
Advertisement The nightmares can be disturbing for partners, too, because unlike most people who dream during a stage of sleep that paralyses their body, people with PTSD often move during their dreams, scaring people around them.
”Some people will often have to sleep in separate beds because they’ve woken up trying to strangle their partner … It can be really distressing for their relationships,” Dr Phelps said.
However, imagery rehearsal treatment is starting to help. Dr Phelps said a pilot study of the technique in Vietnam veterans with PTSD found it led to significant improvement for 11 out of 12 patients with the nightmares disappearing altogether for seven of them. For some of them, the dream stopped suddenly while others experienced a gradual change. When they were followed up one year after treatment, all seven patients’ nightmares had still not returned.
The treatment involves patients writing the script of their nightmare in all its sensory detail. They are then asked to workshop different endings to the dream to replace the worst aspects of it. This new script is rehearsed and imagined before they go to bed.
Dr Phelps is now overseeing a study of about 100 American soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan to further test the technique. All of the soldiers are having nightmares at least once a week with most having them four to five times a week. In some cases, they are reliving real experiences in their dreams, but sometimes they involve imagined trauma.
She said one soldier’s nightmare involved him being chased by hundreds of angry dogs in the night while patrolling a familiar area where he served. To change the script, the patient started imagining the dogs were the 101 dalmatians as seen in the children’s film.
Another patient whose nightmare involved an explosion leading him to discover a body on the ground that was his own body changed his dream to replace the explosion with loud party poppers at a surprise party where everyone was happy.
Dr Phelps said she did not know why the technique was working, but said it could involve a change of attitude towards the dream that comes from talking about it and throwing ideas around about how to change it.
”Instead of going to bed feeling terrified of the prospect of having this same nightmare again, they’re going to bed rehearsing the new dream and feeling ready for it,” she said.
PTSD can develop in people who have experienced an event which threatened their life or safety, or that of others and led to feelings of intense fear, helplessness and horror.
Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/national/new-treatment-stops-nightmares-20121017-27rgl.html
Taken from an article on Brain Pickings: The Science of Lucid Dreaming
“… It is an irony that so many people think that dreams are irrational and nonsense and yet accept as logical and sensible many of the crazy rules and behaviours that maintain our ailing world. But increasingly people have lost faith in the monster we have created… the fast food, fast fix, dollar-hungry world so wonderfully symbolised by the hamburger in the dream.”
“Real food means a balanced diet. We know that extremes are unhealthy. A hamburger is okay so long as it is not all you eat. Sex is joy until control abuses it or fear perverts it. Science is saviour to all, until Hiroshima. Enterprise can bring variety and prosperity, but can also poison the planet. Spirituality heals when it is freely given, but is cruel when it becomes a weapon of judgement and repression. The Internet can bring the world together but can also become a separate world for one. Everything we create has the power to enliven or destroy, and it is just as dangerous to be swallowed by the inner world as the outer.”
~ From Women’s Big Dreams by Jennie Hatherley
(Contributed by Johnny Heng.)
And then I wake up. A few hours later, I share my dream in a workshop with Margaret Bowater at Australia’s first conference on dreams. Needless to say, the room falls silent. I’ve pulled the Hitler card.
“Well,” says Margaret carefully, after inviting me to draw my dream on a whiteboard, “how would you feel about… embodying Hitler?”
And isn’t that just the thing with dreamwork? One moment I’m eating cereal with colleagues, the next I’m embodying the most shameful and terrifying man in my ancestral history.
And strangely, he was very polite. “You don’t have to call me Sir”, he says. “I’m just a man.”
He’s come to warn me, he tells Margaret, who is interviewing him with her skilful blend of Psychodrama and Gestalt techniques, about the dangers of archetypal power, about the potential for corruption and exploitation, and of the temptation for that dreaded phenomena in dream circles everywhere: inflation.
Who knows of these temptations and their dark potential better than Hitler? Had my unconscious delivered me this message through a more respected persona, such as Joseph Campbell or Carl Jung, I may have become inflated myself to have such esteemed visitors.
Hitler, and moreover, an inner-Hitler, leaves my ego staring long and hard into the mirror.
With the exercise over, I noticed the profound, introspective stillness in the room. My dream was as poignant a warning for me as it was for everyone at the dream conference. Margaret and I had worked together for only half-an-hour, but the entire group felt somehow bonded after that.
~~
Margaret is New Zealand’s representative to IASD, and I immediately invited her to Melbourne to train practitioners in my community to work dynamically with dreams. She agreed, and several months later I was hosting Dream Lab’s first international guest speaker in my home.
“Dreams in Action with Margaret Bowater” was a sold-out weekend intensive for professionals and experienced dreamers. Educators, counsellors and dedicated dreamers came to learn from Margaret’s decades of experience, and try her techniques themselves. Trauma revealed through dreams was a powerful topic, as were paranormal experiences and unconscious ancestral inheritance.
I’m a psychotherapist in private practice, and the week after Margaret’s workshop a new client arrived wanting a private dream consultation. Little did she know that within an hour both her and I would be on our knees embodying a dream dog who had stuck its nuzzle into her ear. “My god,” she said, after I’d interviewed the dog and we’d returned to two legs. “That dog, it’s me. I had no idea I felt like that.”
What a familiar trajectory that is to me. Before my Hitler dream I also had no idea I felt like that about the archetypal symbols which fill my dream journals. My dream was an instant teaching in humility and conscious boundaries, and none too son.
Moreover, my dream was a reminder that if we let them, our dreams are keen on bringing us back into community. My dream bonded me not only with a group in Sydney, but created an ancient tie between Margaret and I, which has now spread its gifts through the Dream Lab community in Melbourne.
No matter who or what visits you in your dreams, if you can bare it, give it chance to speak. From one dream respectfully handled, many people can benefit.
This professional conference brought together a rare combination of scientists, environmentalists, academics, and counsellors, who stand united on the importance of dreaming to our health, our sense of community, and and our connection to the land.
The stunning keynote was given by David Tacey, Associate Professor of Humanities at LaTrobe University. He spoke of the need for a new spirituality for modern times, and that we are the first culture in history that has tried to live without a connection to something greater than ourselves.
The film shows Freud protecting his “authority” by not sharing a revealing dream, but omits the crucial importance of dreams in Freud & Jung’s discoveries.
This, and a few other historical ‘tweaks’, make room for a sexier storyline, creating the controversy that makes this film so compelling. Nevertheless, let’s take a few moments to separate history from Hollywood, and call a cigar a, well…
Jung & Spielrein: Sex Heals vs. Sex Sells
Jung did have an affair with his patient, Sabina Spielrein, and he did lie to Freud about it. It’s also true that Jung traced Spielrein’s symptoms to sexual fixation on being beaten by her father. There is, however, no evidence that Jung spanked Spielrein for sexual pleasure, or that he considered this part of her “cure.”
Freud & Jung: Death and Rebirth
The film focuses on Jung’s respect for, and disagreements with, Freud’s revolutionary contribution to psychoanalysis. But that’s just the beginning of Jung’s story. In reality, the friendship between Freud and Jung lasted only six years, during which time psychoanalysis underwent an intense transformation. Their fallout was tragic for both men, and precipitated Jung’s nervous breakdown. However, now free to think in his own way (to “individuate”), Jung emerged to create an enormously influential body of work that has outlived many of Freud’s ideas.
Spielrein’s Rise: A Shadowy Ascent
As the film depicts, Carl Jung’s therapy with Spielrein was highly successful, and she went on to become an acclaimed psychoanalyst herself. Her rise, however, was both helped and overshadowed by her highly influential mentors. Some of Spielrein’s powerful ideas are appropriated by both Frued and Jung in their own work, and her influence on them receives little acknowledgment until papers published well after her murder in 1942. More on Spielrein.
This well made film accurately depicts the dynamics between Freud and Jung during this critical era of their lives, as well as the emergence of the now popular “talking cure”. Perhaps it’s also an entertaining reminder that replacing history with Hollywood can be a dangerous method indeed.
Flying is one of the most exhilarating experiences we can have in our dreams, and perhaps this is why so many people ask me about it. While the majority of dreams depict difficult or negative emotions, dreams of flying seem to break through our concerns and lift us up to feelings of freedom,
empowerment and joy. In contrast, encountering difficulties while flying can be deeply unsettling, leaving us feeling powerless, detached or in
danger.
The key to understanding flying dreams is to pay attention to the way you are flying, and what emotion you’re experiencing in the dream. Then
ask yourself, “where in my life do I feel this way?”
Your flying dreams will begin to make sense when you can recognize their details as symbols for aspects of your life. Here are some examples of
how to use questions to understand your own personal dream language.
Write down your personal emotional associations with flying. For example: freedom, escape, gaining perspective, being limitless. Now have a closer look at the details of your dream:
Image: Flying close to the ground
Emotion: Fear
In the dream, do you need to work hard to stay above ground? Are there many obstacles in your way? Are you afraid you’re on a collision course
with something? Where in your life do you feel this way?
Image: Flying at high or low altitudes
Emotion: Exhilaration & Joy
In the dream, are you at a safe distance from events below? What are you flying towards or away from? Are you free to adjust your height, or
happy where you are? Are there other feelings, such as relief, personal power or determination? Is there an opportunity for you to feel like this
now in your life?
Image: Trying to take off but getting stuck
Emotion: Frustration
In the dream, what is stopping you from flying? Are you entangled in power lines (politics of power?), office buildings (work holding you back?)
or trees (need for inner work before you can fly?). Do you need help getting off the ground?
As you can see, questions are useful in connecting dream metaphors to life events. Write some of your own questions and see how dreams
communicate with you through their clever symbols.
Dream visionary, Carl Jung, felt flying dreams were expressions of our desire to break free of limitations and restrictions. Check in with yourself
next time you lift off… is this a feeling you’re craving? At this moment, do you have the potential to fly high if you make certain moves?
Your dreams are mirrors for how you truly feel, and who you really are. Why would you ignore the part of you who want to fly?
p.s. For those interested in lucid dreaming, flying can also be a marker that you have entered a lucid state. As we can’t fly while awake, finding
ourselves airborne can alert us to the fact that we’re dreaming.