Introduction to Dream Healing

Night time dreams can be incubated. That means that having an intention, asking a question or just thinking about a particular subject can produce dreams that are a response to the dreamer’s interest or query. 

Dream workers who have studied this process in more depth have discovered that dreams can transmit meaningful information to the dreamer, and can also generate experiences which have a beneficial influence on the consciousness of the dreamer.

Dream Healing is a way to utilize the two aforementioned processes while wide awake. First the individual sets an intention, or prepares a question, then goes into an altered state of consciousness similar to the hypnagogic state between waking and sleeping. A dream is then invoked. At that point the role of the dreamer is simply to be attentive and keep the dream going until it appears to have come to a natural conclusion.

By fully inculcating the dream the dreamer experiences a shift in consciousness that is in some way a reflection of the dreamer’s intention. To produce that shift, sometimes the dream must be examined more deeply, sometimes it simply needs to be fully experienced, received, or taken to heart the way you might receive and respond to a message from a trusted, respected and well-loved friend. 

The dreamer’s everyday mind does not produce the contents of a dream, though it may initiate the dreaming process. The dreams comes from a dimension of consciousness which has access to greater amounts of information than the everyday mind and can organize that information in ways that directly respond to the dreamers need to evolve their consciousness, heal or understand themselves,  change something, be guided or be inspired.

A dream is a complex unit of information. It can also be seen as a quantum of energy. Because of entanglement, which is a word referring to the simple fact that particles of energy can become correlated to predictably interact with each other, we realize that it is also possible to transfer a dream from one person to another. 

Under some circumstances that is valuable because once entangled with the subjects own field of consciousness the objective second person may have access to information and energy which the subject needs but resists receiving, or has trouble accessing. The second person, or healer, can therefore sometimes deliver a dream that is more complete or to the point than the subject is capable of invoking and receiving all by himself.

Dream Healing uses these processes – intention, invocation, transfer – in a variety of ways that wed the skill to contemporary knowledge of how healing happens,  how consciousness shifts and evolves, and how our little self learns to communicate with our bigger Self.   

1001 Doors - The Synchronicity Window

Synchronicity is usually defined as the “simultaneous occurrence of events that appear significantly related, and are therefore meaningful, but have no discernible causal connection.”

This phenomenon is not the same as what is typically called “déjà vu” or “pre-cognition,” as some Jungians have asserted. In these two experiences the individuals perceives a similarity between something they have dreamed or envisioned and something that occurs in the world.

These experiences are also not to be confused with simple similarity where one thing reminds you of another thing. The factor that accompanies the experience and which helps us distinguish between the type of memory I call “simple similarity” and the memory of pre-cognition is called, numinosity. 

Numinosity is a quality of awareness. In reference to it Jung said, “  … the experience of the self is always a defeat for the ego.” In other words, numinous moments are a nod to the divine, in respect to how they feel, and in respect to how they reveal that the Self is really a unified field. As soon as events burst out of the starting gate, long before they cross the finishing line and appear to enter our world, they are part of the field and its information matrix.

The aforementioned quote by Jung also reveals why so many people deny pre-cognition, non-locality and synchronicity. It is a threat to the ego’s position. A strong ego likes to have a competitive advantage and anything that reminds it of an arena where defeat is inevitable is resisted.

On the other side of the fence, some people become a little delusional, especially if they are filled with too many “new age” ideas which they have accepted blindly. In these cases numinous feelings can be emotional productions and pre-cognitive or synchronise connections only imagined.

Somewhere between these two forms of egotism is found an experience of truth. We can learn to recognize numinosity, and recognize when the field of the Self has inserted itself into our awareness. Synchronicty is one of the ways we can do that.

Synchronicity is essentially a recognition of the mirror like nature of the field. One level of the field – in this case, the inner - is a reflection of another level of the field – the outer. In other words, synchronous events blur the lines between what is subjective and what is objective. For people on a spiritual path that is important because it reveals something of the non-dual nature of reality. Subject, object and the act of observing are really one thing, despite what our everyday mind, brain and senses have to say about it. 

Remember, just because a certain kind of cognitive organization makes it possible to function in the world and play the game of life, that organization is still something painted onto the canvas of our existence and not ultimately true. It is true in a small way, but not true in a big way.

Besides what they give us in respect to an awareness of the field of the Self and our numinous connection to it, synchronous events are also a gauge by which we can track and measure changes in the field and our relationship to it. In other words, when we have a particular experience inside our own consciousness, such as a therapeutic change or an “awakening” of some kind, a corresponding event in the larger field of our awareness verifies that change. And when I say, “verifies that change,” I mean that the experience inside of our consciousness has served to enhance our relationship to the field of the Self. We have done something to catalyse that relationship, and make it more compelling, more real.

Making the Self real and demoting the power of the ego over us is what a spiritual life is all about. Sometimes it is what healing is all about. Tracking the process and decoding the mysteries of the field and our relationship to it is what the exploration of consciousness is all about. Science is becoming increasingly interested in this also. Why? One answer is this: numinosity is compelling; wonder and awe always trump more petty considerations.

 As well, the field will eventually yield secrets that are currently unimaginable, but hinted at every time that greater Self touches the field of our awareness. As one popular author put it, “the seduction of spirit” is well under way in all of us.   

1001 Doors - Window One

Alchemy is about combining elements to change something that is less valuable into something that is more valuable. It is descriptive of nature’s creative process, imitated by chemists, and utilized by a number of different schools of thought to actively refine and improve the human being. 

The goal is to turn lead into gold. 

From a spiritual perspective, lead refers to our acquired self and the consciousness limited by that. That self is largely a product of childhood, culture and the time in which you are born. Like lead, it has limited use and can sometimes be toxic.

Gold, on the other hand, is considered a noble metal. It can even be eaten. It is valuable because it can easily be crafted in many beautiful ways and has come to symbolize worth. Gold is like spirit, and every gold object is a unique expression of that one substance. That is what we are, in our heart of hearts. 

That reference also reveals something about the nature of alchemy. When a substance is divided up into its component parts there is a risk that its original nature will be lost and forgotten. That’s what happens to human beings. On birth everything is divided up into self and other, male and female, thoughts and feelings, earth and heaven, and so forth. Eventually, if unchecked, this division destabilizes consciousness and begins to manifest what is not its essential nature, what is not golden, but which is leaden.

Luckily gold is denser and therefore heavier than lead, although it doesn’t appear that way because most gold we encounter is somewhat ornamental in nature. The weighty, noble nature of gold symbolizes the human being’s essential nature, which will always prevail, no matter how leaden consciousness may appear.

In alchemy, the process reverses division, and so is always moving consciousness in the direction of gold, the original substance. When you perform an alchemical operation on consciousness you can witness that. At first you might experience stasis, as if two opposites have neutralized each other. But then a high order of consciousness begins to reveal itself. The two opposites have been reconciled, synthesized and evolved. The whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts. And the divisions are less polarized.

This principle was discovered in modern cognitive psychology, for instance, when NLP researchers came up with something called “collapsing anchors.” They discovered that when a person holds an unresourceful state and a resourceful state in consciousness at the same time transformation happens. Using confidence as the example,  the person doesn’t simply become more confident or less non-confident however. Confidence simply becomes less of an issue in favour of a more natural state of equipoise and dynamic self-expression.

Performing alchemy on emotional states is very revealing. If you take anger and kindness and intend to synthesize and evolve them, or include and transcend them, the consciousness that is created seems to borrow from both and invoke a state of consciousness more valuable than either. The energy of anger enlivens the normally soft energy of kindness. And the energy of kindness softens the normally harsh energy of anger. The result is a higher order emotional state in general. 

The same sort of result happens when we perform alchemy on the polarity of self and other. We feel less possessed by the self, and have more empathy for others. Or, if the polarization has been in the opposite direction as is the case in some cultures, we have a stronger sense of self and feel less possessed by others. If you look you will some variation of that kind of alchemy happening everywhere in the world, as a kind of trend, because alchemy really is the process of evolutionary change, as opposed to the opposite, which is devolutionary change.

Chinese alchemists have known about gold for thousands of years. The integration of opposites is considered the primary process for giving birth to a consciousness of the undivided or non-dual whole within the cauldron of the human form. For these alchemists, the energy of the human body, of nature and of the cosmos itself provides a graded series of polarizations which can be strategically reconciled to produce the realized or enlightened unit of consciousness that is ultimately the direction all of us want to go, whether we know it or not. 

So, whatever your interest, may it be science, history, sociology, psychology or mysticism, alchemy is an interesting and useful window to look through.      

Addendum - Emotional Health

As an addendum to my previous posting, readers might be interested in a few ways to use the physical body to aid emotional health and well-being. For instance, you might have seen animals shake their body from top to bottom after any circumstance where their fight or flight mechanism has been aroused. The purpose is to shake off the energy produced by that reaction and return the animal to their normal state of calm. Unfortunately, humans have largely lost that instinct. But we can learn to regain it through regular practice of a simple medical chi gong practice, specifically the chi scattering exercise called, trembling horse.

Another phenomenon which is important to note is called, impregnation. That is where emotions that have not been discharged impregnate themselves into the tissues of the body. Many people, by the time they are adults, are carrying a lot of these emotions around with them as physical pain and various kinds of functional disturbance.

Emotions have a chemical signature and these chemicals can remain in the body the same way chemical toxins from environmental pollution and pharmaceutical products can stay in the body. Processing out these chemicals before they become extremely hazardous, or impair our well-being generally, is also a focus of attention for a variety of medical chi gong exercises. The purpose of such exercises is to circulate vital energy through the body, stir up the frozen emotional energy and other bio-toxins, discharge it and return the person to equilibrium. With concentrated effort, and an understanding of that process, these exercises can be very effective.

However, and this is essential to understand nowadays. Many people are carrying around emotions that are a function of a deep spiritual disturbance, such as what is sometimes called, separation trauma. Another source is the unresolved ancestral emotions that exist in the parents and are passed from generation to generation during childhood, starting with conception. These emotions are raw feelings that can impregnate as the tissue is developing, during intrauterine development and during early childhood development.

Those emotions can be found in a container, or deeper part of the organism, that is sometimes missed by simple chi gong practice. However, the more advanced practices do address that container, which is sometimes called the thrusting channels in Traditional Chinese Medicine. It is therefore useful to learn one of those practices early on so that a valve can be opened wide enough and those deeper emotions can also be drained as part of your regular practice. 

It is also useful to recognize that in respect to emotional health, energy practices can be understood from a biological perspective. If you learn about how the body becomes sick and also becomes well, from a broader perspective than that offered by the emergency medicine model with which we are all familiar, it all makes perfect sense.  The rewards make the effort worthwhile, and after a while become part of the effort itself.