Healing Nightmares and Anxious Dreams
(For a guided meditation for working with your dreams and healing anxious dreams and nightmares, scroll to the video at the bottom of the page. :) )
A few days ago I had a rather disturbing dream.
I have to admit, I hate having disturbing dreams. I always feel like something sinister is afoot in my unconscious and I feel wary of having to deal with it. Even after having done dream work for a number of years, and having seen the healing affect of working with dreams, I still find negative dreams extremely unpleasant to deal with. One major example is a series of dreams over the course of a year I had of a violent man pursuing me. Gradually the man became more peaceful, and the in final dream in this series I married him - resulting in my waking life as the integration of significant amount of my own power and assertiveness. I had disowned my power and seen it as violent, so it had pursued me. But when I was able to change my perception to it, I could re-own it and integrate it into my consciousness. Awesome yes - but not super exciting to deal with at the time.
In this dream I had a few days ago, I was at the school where I currently work teaching English to kindergartners. One of my students, a little girl who is about five years old, was there. Her mother is the cleaner at the school, so she was there as well. In my dream, the little girl only had one arm - the other arm had been chopped off. I asked her mother if she could write with the arm she still had, but her mother said, no, she would have to relearn. Initially, I thought the girl had some kind of infection or something, but it turned out her mother had chopped off her arm because she was being naughty. She wouldn't "let go" of something and go where her mother wanted. So her mother had chopped off the arm that was holding on.
When I woke up, I felt terribly anxious. There seemed to be some pretty clear symbols to interpret here - inner child, devouring mother, the "cleaner," "cut off," the arm itself, which is a profound symbol of reaching out, relationships, and power, the idea of "letting go" - even my own position as a powerless observer who had to deal with picking up the pieces, teaching the little girl how to write again, etc.
What the hell is going on in my subconscious? I asked myself. I felt worried and ambivalent about the whole thing. I didn't even want to interpret it because I couldn't figure out the message. Perhaps I needed to protect the child. Or perhaps the mother was right, if a bit brutal, and there was something I needed to let go of but was unwilling to. I started mentally preparing myself for working with this issue over the course of days - weeks -possibly months.
And then, not but a few hours later, and quite by accident, I came across the suggestion that one might re-enter dreams in waking life through meditation and going into a trance state.
So that's what I did.
I re-entered the dream, and as I re-entered it, I felt another energy there - perhaps simply the energy of my conscious waking self. And then I heard a voice, saying one, loud, booming word:
Starfish.
The girl is a starfish, the voice said. Your job is not to try to protect her, or judge the mother, or figure out what to let go of. You have misinterpreted your purpose in the dream. Your job is to help the girl regrow her arm.
It hadn't even occurred to me that this might be possible, but after all, everything is possible in dreams. Whenever I have the pleasure of lucid dreaming I always fly or jump into fires or some other impossible thing. So of course, having gained enough conscious control over the dream, through re-entering in in waking life, I was able to easily visualize the arm growing back.
And when I emerged from the mediation, I had gained a perspective on the dream which allowed me to feel calmer, more powerful, and even given me insight into how I could create more healing for myself and others.
I highly recommend trying this method of re-entering your dreams through mediation if you're experiencing nightmares or a recurring series of unresolved dreams - or even if you just want to explore a dream more. It will help you find resolutions for your dreams much more quickly, and your experiences in your waking life with follow suit!
And if you're not sure where to start - don't worry! I've created a guided meditation for you to re-enter your dreams. Just click on the video below. :)
