Working With Dream Imagery

Dream images hold symbolic messages, and among them, the most striking are often the ones that evoke fear. Throughout our lives, we harbor many suppressed fears that can surface in both dreams and meditative states. It's crucial to recognize that you are not defined by your fears; they are merely negative thought forms with no inherent reality. By disempowering them, we can break their hold on our lives.

Although our life's purpose is to understand ourselves better, we frequently find ourselves running away from self-discovery. Fear, especially of the unknown, tends to drive this evasion. It's important to remember that each fear represents a barrier to our true inner beauty and spiritual growth. Rather than shying away from frightening dream images, we should welcome them, as they can unveil our limited beliefs and thought patterns that hinder our personal development.

Any dream images that you can identify but don't fully comprehend can be engaged with using a "do-it-yourself" guided imagery or meditation approach. This method is particularly helpful when dealing with frightening images. If you encounter a terrifying monster or person in a dream, it's often a fear blown out of proportion. Upon waking, bring the image to mind and imagine this "being" unzipping its monstrous costume, revealing a small, harmless figure that offers you a gift. Engage in a dialogue with this figure, asking it what it has to teach you and receiving its message with love.

You can establish a dialogue with any dream image, allowing it to communicate back to you, much like a scene from Disneyland. If the image is a tree, envision it with a face, arms, and legs, and pose questions. If it's a formidable fence or wall, personify it and let it share its thoughts with you. Imagine what it might say. To effectively use this technique, follow these steps:

1. Document a description of the dream image you find perplexing.
2. Relax and enter a meditative state; then, visualize the image in your mind. If it's an inanimate object, give it a face and engage in a conversation. If it's intimidating, envision it shedding its frightening exterior, revealing something ordinary. Initiate a dialogue, remembering that the initial fear is merely a tactic to grab your attention.
3. Ask, "What insight have you brought me?" or "What part of myself do you represent?" Allow the image to communicate with you, either through words or an intuitive understanding of its significance.
4. After the conversation, express gratitude to the image for appearing to you. If clarity remains elusive, request it to manifest in a different form in your subsequent dream for better comprehension.

As you gain control over the dream state and recognize when you are dreaming, you can confront dream images while still in the dream. If something is chasing you, you can turn around and engage in a conversation, seeking to understand why it's pursuing you and what aspect of yourself it symbolizes. Confronting an image in a dream provides immediate insight into its nature, and facing a fear leads to its conquest. Maintaining a sense of humor in these situations helps restore perspective.

Furthermore, when you become aware that you are dreaming at any point, you can halt the dream and say, "Now, I am ready to learn." You can pose questions, and answers will be provided. This is the ultimate goal—to gain complete control over the dream state, transforming it into a vehicle for profound self-discovery and personal growth.