Heroes Not Zombies

In the A – Z of Becoming, the fourth verb, D, is for Dream.

I took this photo some years ago in the Ginza district of Tokyo. I think it captures two ideas about dreaming.

The first is that when we think of dreaming, partly what we think of is what we do when we are asleep. What did you dream last night? Can you remember? Nobody understands what night time dreaming is about, but for many years psychoanalysts and others have found that dreams can be a rich source of insights into the unconscious mind. If you want to explore what lies within your own dreams, you’re going to have to start improving your ability to remember them. The best way I know of doing that is to keep a notepad beside your bed with a pencil or pen beside it and when you wake up, immediately write down what you can remember from the dreams you’ve been having that night. I’m sure you’ll have had the experience of waking up in the midst of some vivid or powerful dream, only to find all trace of it disappears when you have your first thought about the day you’ve woken up into. I think there is also some mileage in setting your intention. Before you go to sleep, your last thought can be “let me dream tonight, and let me remember tonight’s dreams when I wake tomorrow”. Many people say setting such an intention, coupled with having the notebook ready for when you wake, gives you an increased chance of capturing those dreams. As with so many other thoughts and behaviours, the more you do it, the more easily you’ll do it, so even if the first few mornings you find you still can’t remember anything, persist. Once it becomes established, it becomes more useful.

The second is the kind of dreaming we do when awake, and I don’t particularly mean free-floating day dreaming, I mean consciously dreaming. The fact this construction company in Tokyo chose to print an image of a sleeping baby, cleverly hints at that other kind of dreaming….the kind which is part of the creative process. Dreams which become plans, blueprints, goals, projects…..dreams which become paintings, poems, stories and songs. Dreams of where we want to go, what we want to see and do.

Allow yourself this week to become aware of both these kinds of dreams. Maybe you can note some of them down in your notebook….in your dream journal? Maybe you’d like to have two dream journals, one for the dreams of sleep, and one for you conscious dreams, or maybe, and I prefer this option, the one journal for ALL your dreams……after all, you might find that the one kind of dream becomes entangled in the other kind, and something quite surprising might emerge.