For several years I kept an aquarium in my living room. One night as I lay in my bedroom sleeping, I dreamed the fish named Goldie fell with a thud against the aquarium floor. Startled, I awakened and went to the living room to see if she was all right. Goldie was swimming around looking just fine.
The next day Goldie got hung up in the plastic leaf decorations. I set her free and she plunked to the bottom just like in my dream although without making a thudding sound. The fish died later that day.
This is a typical example of a precognitive dream. It was literal in the sense that I saw in the dream substantially the same image I saw in waking life. Although some precognitive dreams take longer to come true, most do within twenty-four hours. Research indicates the same experience I've had personally.
The subject matter was mundane. Well for me, not for Goldie. The subjects of most precognitive dreams generally pertain to the ordinary events of our lives.
These clear dreams predict by showing what looks like reality and give us tips about our waking life. For example, they give warnings, important or trivial, and rehearse alternate futures from which we can choose the same way we consider alternatives while we are making decisions while awake.
Precognitive dreams can be literal like the Goldie dream or symbolic like one I had about a plane crash on January 2, 2009.
I was jumping to safety from a plane crash. Those who had survived jumped into the sea and hoped for rescue aboard ship. I watched myself and others cannonball into the water, which was frigid. I awoke momentarily, realized I was in a dangerous situation, and felt afraid. My heart was thumping. I went back to sleep and dreamed the same scenario again two or three more times.
Over the next few days I dreamed of travel danger.
One day as I drove past Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport, my hands shook so much I considered getting off the freeway and stopping the car. Although I drove on home, my distress was so great that I cancelled my plans to go to New York City to visit a friend in March.
I interpret I was getting precognitive flashes of the U S Airways plane, which went down in the Hudson River on Jan. 17. U S Airways is headquartered in Phoenix, so that very plane could well have been sitting in the airport as I passed by and felt so much trepidation. My emotions, although important, served as secondary confirmation to my disaster dreams, specifically the terror of having to jump into the frigid water.
Normally I'm not afraid to fly, so this was an unusual circumstance for me. I honored the dreams and did not take the chance but have gone on other flights since, even U S Airways flights.
Besides literal dreams and symbolic dreams, other aspects of dreaming psi can occur. Psi is a general term to indicate any anomalous experience like precognition, telepathy, clairvoyance, or psychokinesis. It's not always obvious which faculty dreaming psi involves. One of my dreams might have been an example of precognition and telepathy.
I dreamed I ordered a floral arrangement, which consisted of a spray of flowers with a teddy bear. I don’t know who I was ordering for, but definitely a family member.
Four months later my sister had surgery. I asked my granddaughter, Emily, to go on a flower delivery website and pick out something she thought my sister would like so we could send a gift to the hospital.
On her own, Emily picked a floral spray with a teddy bear and balloon. So perhaps I dreamed the future, but telepathy might also explain what happened. Perhaps Emily tapped into my conscious thought or my dream memory. She has on several occasions said what I was thinking. Maybe I subconsciously sent her the message.
Such events happen frequently within families or with people who are close to each other.
Dr. Stanley Krippner, a medical doctor, did phenomenal research on telepathy in dreams at Maimonides Hospital in New York in the 1960s and 1970s. The experimenters assembled a collection of photographs of art prints. On the night of the experiment, the experimenter chose one art print and focused on sending the image telepathically to the dreamers.
The dreamers in the other room went to sleep with the directive to dream about the target art print chosen for the night. They wrote summaries of their dreams. Afterward independent judges were given all of the art print and dream summaries. Their task was to match the art prints with the dream summaries. The high number of hits, far beyond what would have been calculated by chance, showed dreamers dreamed about the target pictures.
The Ganzfeld protocol, developed in the 1930s, is still in use in psi laboratories. It attempts to measure waking telepathy where a sender sent a mental image of a photo or picture to a receiver who was blindfolded and listening to white noise. Over the years these results have consistently come in at one-third where chance would be one-fourth. The hits increase when the sender and receiver are close like husband and wife.
Research on psi began in the 1800s and continued through the 1900s with notables like J. B. Rhine and his wife, Dr. Louise Rhine, at Duke University. They studied precognition among other things. It's even going on today.
You can be a part of it online by going to these websites: noetic.org, gotpsi.org, aspr.com.
In history Calpurnia, the wife of Julius Caesar, had two dreams that prophesied his death by assassination. Plutarch recorded her dreams for posterity. Interestingly, one was a symbolic dream, that the pediment of their house collapsed. We could interpret Caesar himself being the pediment or pillar of their household. Calpurnia's other dream was literal, that Caesar was stabbed, and she wept over him as she held him, murdered, in her arms. If only Caesar had trusted his wife's dreams, he might have lived much longer.
In the Old Testament of the Bible there are several examples of psychic material in dreams and visions. Joseph had dreams that came true and could interpret the dreams of others. Samuel heard the voice of God in dreams. It would seem that interest in psi ability is ages old.
Perhaps we as the human race are developing our abilities in telepathy. Jeremy Taylor, author of Where People Fly and Water Runs Uphill and several other books on dreaming, believes that the human race is developing greater telepathic abilities.
Taylor suggests that in our evolutionary past humans dreamed together to develop language. If that's possible, then perhaps we are developing our telepathic abilities now for the next stage of our evolution.
Often when we recall dreams we have the experience of seeing an image of a person in our dream. That person communicates with us despite the fact that his mouth does not move. We just seem to know what he means without his using language. We seem to operate telepathically in our dreams, perhaps helping ourselves to become more telepathic in the waking state.
Regardless, one thing we know for sure is that we can provoke our own precognitive and telepathic dreams. If you intend to have a precognitive dream and ask your dreaming self to assist, chances are you'll be successful. The better record you keep of your dreams, the greater the chance you'll find successful demonstrations.
Here's a Tip
• Ask a partner to select some dynamic looking photos from a magazine. Have him focus on one each night while you attempt to dream about the subject. Then compare your dream notes to the pictures used. You can make it more complex by inviting a third person to judge the dream stories and match them to the photos.
• Set a time for one person to send a telepathic message in words or an image from a picture to another person. Generally images that evoke emotions work better. Make sure you are in separate locations. Then compare your pictures or stories to the target image.
• Ask your dreaming self for a precognitive dream of something that will happen the next day. Write the dream down as soon as you awake so you'll have evidence for a demonstration.
• Set up a precognition dream study with interested friends. For example, "At 6 am (PDT)Pacific daylight time on the morning of Nov. 3 I will shuffle a deck of regular playing cards. Then I will turn up the top card." Your task is to see in your dream or intuition which card I will turn up. Feel free to submit entries anytime up until the drawing.
• Try your hand at games on psiarcade.com, noetic.org, gotpsi.org, and aspr.com.
Showing posts with label dreaming. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dreaming. Show all posts
Monday, April 2, 2012
Saturday, December 10, 2011
Healing in Dreams
People have asked for healing dreams as far back as written records. Results came in dreams to the ancient Egyptians. Aristotle spoke of them in early Greece. From those days until now, sick people have wanted to experience a healing dream and believed it could happen.
Our minds affect our bodies, as demonstrated in modern times by hypnosis and biofeedback where patients modify their blood pressure, dissolve warts, stop the growth of cancerous cells, among other changes.
Scientific experiments have proven the placebo effect works, that is, one third of the time patients get well when they only take sugar pills rather than medication. Unfortunately the reverse happens too, and a person can sicken from the belief that he has been poisoned when he has not been. This is why curses sometimes work or why a patient dies from a misdiagnosis or from the doctor's statement that no one can recover from such an ailment.
There are three types of healing dreams:
First, dreams that show a problem developing in the dreamer's physical body. For example, a woman dreams she buys a pair of shoes that are mismatched; one has a flat heel the other a three-inch spike. Later she learns her shoes have caused her hip pain.
Second, dreams that prescribe a medicine, foods, or other regimen. For example, a man with painful dry eye dreams a cop stops his car and gives him a ticket for wearing sunglasses in a dark tunnel, citing him for not following the rules. The same scenario happens over and over. The dreamer can't understand why the cop is angry. Once he awakens the man remembers eye drops prescribed as a cautionary by his doctor in case of a problem. He starts using the eye drops, and the pain goes away.
Last, dreams that cure the condition directly. Some of these categories can overlap in the same dreams.
Barbara Menezes-Ferreira of Portugal relates a dream that cures. The dream story is complex and includes a mutual dream, a near-death experience, and a cure. Here is the dream in her own words:
Over twelve years ago, back when I was still married, my husband was dying in hospital in a coma.
The doctors had said he had no hope at all. His blood count was way too low and he was hemorrhaging. My reaction was and I quote what I told the doctors, "You don't know him. He's the kind of person that will do exactly the opposite of what you are thinking." They looked at me with a certain pity. I left him there because you cannot stay with the patient overnight in a public hospital. I picked up my daughters at school and took them home. I remember my mother-in-law calling me asking what the doctors had said and I replied, "He's going to be fine," without even thinking.
That night I dreamed I awoke with someone screaming my name over and over again. I sat up in bed and saw my husband standing at the foot of the bed.
I asked him, "What do you want?"
He replied that he didn't know if he should stay or if he should go.
I calmly explained that was his choice. If he wanted to leave, I would take care of our daughters and they would be fine, but if he chose to stay, he would suffer. He would have to change his life, and he would have to stop drinking. I could understand that this would be a big sacrifice, so I told him, "It's really up to you".
He disappeared then and I went back to sleep.
The following morning my brother-in-law came to pick me up to drive me into town for visiting hours. He was very concerned that his brother would not make it. I said I thought he would pull through because I had had a strange dream that had in some way told me he would be ok. My brother-in-law had no reaction whatsoever.
I arrived at the hospital and only three people could see my husband for just a few minutes. I told my mother-in-law to go in first. She came out very distressed and told us she thought he was going. I then told his brother to go in. He came out crying and shaking his head. Then I went in and saw my husband lying in bed asleep.
I kissed his forehead and he woke up and said, "Please tell me the truth. Am I dying?"
I smiled and said "No. You were but you aren't anymore."
The doctor called in the other doctors and they started to ask him questions: "What day is it? Do you know where you are?."
Two weeks later he was out of hospital.
Almost six months after, we were going for a walk, and he told me that he had seen a tunnel and a light and that he had gone towards the light, and as he was walking he had a long conversation with someone he thought was God where he was given a choice to stay or to go. He decided to stay because of the children.
The conversation he described was exactly the one I had had in my room. At the time I started to laugh and he thought I didn't believe him. I just told him that I had had a dream exactly like the one he was describing.
Any analysis of Barbara's dream and her husband's dream will likely mention they experienced a shared dream, in other words, they dreamed the same scenario. The husband's dream includes the popular dynamic of the near-death experience: the light, the tunnel, and the decision to live. His is a particularly revealing segment.
The husband's dream resulted in a cure of his condition.
Think a minute about a time you've healed, whether from a mosquito bite, a burn, or the flu. Perhaps you applied salve and bandaged yourself. Perhaps you visited a doctor. Perhaps not.
In all cases, who was the healer? The inner you. You probably had dreams that helped you heal even if you didn't recall them.
Although we all have this skill, some people need help developing it consciously. Some psychologists, including Ed Kellogg, offer workshops to teach health professionals and regular dreamers how to heal through dream work.
Here's a Tip
• The next time you have any ailment, from a cold to something serious, consult a medical practitioner if you normally would, but augment that visit with requests to your dreaming self to bring you healing dreams.
• Your dreaming self will definitely oblige.
• Oh, and ask to remember the dreams too. They are most empowering and among the most compelling evidence for the value of dreaming.
Our minds affect our bodies, as demonstrated in modern times by hypnosis and biofeedback where patients modify their blood pressure, dissolve warts, stop the growth of cancerous cells, among other changes.
Scientific experiments have proven the placebo effect works, that is, one third of the time patients get well when they only take sugar pills rather than medication. Unfortunately the reverse happens too, and a person can sicken from the belief that he has been poisoned when he has not been. This is why curses sometimes work or why a patient dies from a misdiagnosis or from the doctor's statement that no one can recover from such an ailment.
There are three types of healing dreams:
First, dreams that show a problem developing in the dreamer's physical body. For example, a woman dreams she buys a pair of shoes that are mismatched; one has a flat heel the other a three-inch spike. Later she learns her shoes have caused her hip pain.
Second, dreams that prescribe a medicine, foods, or other regimen. For example, a man with painful dry eye dreams a cop stops his car and gives him a ticket for wearing sunglasses in a dark tunnel, citing him for not following the rules. The same scenario happens over and over. The dreamer can't understand why the cop is angry. Once he awakens the man remembers eye drops prescribed as a cautionary by his doctor in case of a problem. He starts using the eye drops, and the pain goes away.
Last, dreams that cure the condition directly. Some of these categories can overlap in the same dreams.
Barbara Menezes-Ferreira of Portugal relates a dream that cures. The dream story is complex and includes a mutual dream, a near-death experience, and a cure. Here is the dream in her own words:
Over twelve years ago, back when I was still married, my husband was dying in hospital in a coma.
The doctors had said he had no hope at all. His blood count was way too low and he was hemorrhaging. My reaction was and I quote what I told the doctors, "You don't know him. He's the kind of person that will do exactly the opposite of what you are thinking." They looked at me with a certain pity. I left him there because you cannot stay with the patient overnight in a public hospital. I picked up my daughters at school and took them home. I remember my mother-in-law calling me asking what the doctors had said and I replied, "He's going to be fine," without even thinking.
That night I dreamed I awoke with someone screaming my name over and over again. I sat up in bed and saw my husband standing at the foot of the bed.
I asked him, "What do you want?"
He replied that he didn't know if he should stay or if he should go.
I calmly explained that was his choice. If he wanted to leave, I would take care of our daughters and they would be fine, but if he chose to stay, he would suffer. He would have to change his life, and he would have to stop drinking. I could understand that this would be a big sacrifice, so I told him, "It's really up to you".
He disappeared then and I went back to sleep.
The following morning my brother-in-law came to pick me up to drive me into town for visiting hours. He was very concerned that his brother would not make it. I said I thought he would pull through because I had had a strange dream that had in some way told me he would be ok. My brother-in-law had no reaction whatsoever.
I arrived at the hospital and only three people could see my husband for just a few minutes. I told my mother-in-law to go in first. She came out very distressed and told us she thought he was going. I then told his brother to go in. He came out crying and shaking his head. Then I went in and saw my husband lying in bed asleep.
I kissed his forehead and he woke up and said, "Please tell me the truth. Am I dying?"
I smiled and said "No. You were but you aren't anymore."
The doctor called in the other doctors and they started to ask him questions: "What day is it? Do you know where you are?."
Two weeks later he was out of hospital.
Almost six months after, we were going for a walk, and he told me that he had seen a tunnel and a light and that he had gone towards the light, and as he was walking he had a long conversation with someone he thought was God where he was given a choice to stay or to go. He decided to stay because of the children.
The conversation he described was exactly the one I had had in my room. At the time I started to laugh and he thought I didn't believe him. I just told him that I had had a dream exactly like the one he was describing.
Any analysis of Barbara's dream and her husband's dream will likely mention they experienced a shared dream, in other words, they dreamed the same scenario. The husband's dream includes the popular dynamic of the near-death experience: the light, the tunnel, and the decision to live. His is a particularly revealing segment.
The husband's dream resulted in a cure of his condition.
Think a minute about a time you've healed, whether from a mosquito bite, a burn, or the flu. Perhaps you applied salve and bandaged yourself. Perhaps you visited a doctor. Perhaps not.
In all cases, who was the healer? The inner you. You probably had dreams that helped you heal even if you didn't recall them.
Although we all have this skill, some people need help developing it consciously. Some psychologists, including Ed Kellogg, offer workshops to teach health professionals and regular dreamers how to heal through dream work.
Here's a Tip
• The next time you have any ailment, from a cold to something serious, consult a medical practitioner if you normally would, but augment that visit with requests to your dreaming self to bring you healing dreams.
• Your dreaming self will definitely oblige.
• Oh, and ask to remember the dreams too. They are most empowering and among the most compelling evidence for the value of dreaming.
Wednesday, July 20, 2011
Problem Solving and Creativity in Dreams
A cool thing about dreams is they support you in your waking life. That is, they can help you solve problems or give a different perspective on them whether you remember the dreams or not. You may even consciously intend to dream about a problem and ask for help from your dreaming self.
I think of my dreaming self as a somewhat different persona from my waking self. I can ask her to dream about a problem and help me out. She has a different perspective on my problem because she doesn't have to consciously deal with any consequences from the solutions. She has a greater depth of memory of everything that has ever happened to me. She can access all of my long-term memories, as well as any human race memories, plus she lives in the dream world that I can only remember while awake. I guess you could say she and I have a different experience of living the same life.
During rehearsals for a production of the musical Pippin in 1980, I remember experiencing difficulty directing a particular scene in the show. It was a short love scene between the two leads, then the chorus came in and the action changed. Every time I watched the scene in rehearsal I didn't like it. When I told the actors it wasn't working, they agreed and one said, "Tell us what you want us to do and we'll try to do it."
The problem was I didn't know what to tell them. I drove home from school worrying about the scene and carried that worry through the evening and into bed. At that time I was recording my dreams and interested in them, but I hadn't realized yet that I could intend dreams, that is, decide in advance the subject of the dream. So I considered what happened with the Pippin scene just good luck.
During my dream I watched the troublesome scene as if I were in a theatre myself watching the show. The actor and actress moved around the stage in a different manner, a more interesting way, and the scene played perfectly when the chorus came in. I awoke excited to get to school because I knew exactly how to change the scene to solve the problem. At rehearsal I explained how I wanted to redo the scene, the actors did it, and it worked perfectly just as it happened in my dream. The actors liked it better too.
I felt extreme gratitude to my dreaming self for solving the problem.
Another time the influence of a problem-solving dream was not so obvious. One of my English students had begun to behave aggressively in class. With minimal provocation he snarled at other students and called me bitch under his breath. Because I'd had his older sister in class the year before I knew their home could get unpleasant with the father's threatening presence. I went to bed worrying about the boy's aggressive behavior and what I ought to do about it. My choices were to talk with him personally, to call the mother in the hope of her intervention, or to write a referral so the principal would deal with the situation. I feared none would solve a worsening situation. I also feared aggravating their home life problems myself.
Despite my worry I slept well. I did not recall a dream in the morning but felt confident my dreaming self had been working on the problem. I intended to trust the first impulse that came into my mind. When I started thinking about what I would do about the boy at school, I knew immediately the best action to take. I kept the boy after class and told him the truth, that I was worried he would follow his father's ways and spoil his chances to have a girlfriend. I told him girls would like him very much because he was handsome and loving and fun to be around, but I emphasized his aggressive behavior would spoil those chances with girls. The boy responded in an open and warmhearted manner. He didn't want to end up like his father, and he felt flattered that I thought he was handsome. I don't know what happened at home but in class the boy turned an amazing corner. He started talking to the girls so much I had to tell him to be quiet. He grinned like we had a secret. His grade went from a C to a B by the end of the semester.
Thank you, dreaming self.
There are well documented cases historically where dreams helped people solve big problems, including the invention of the sewing machine, the discovery of the benzene molecule, and artistic creations by such authors and composers as Robert Louis Stevenson, Voltaire, and Tartini.
Recent scientific studies have shown students do better on tests after they have slept because of the dream activity of shunting material from short-term to long-term memory. Other studies demonstrate the benefits of waking imagery, hypnotically-induced dreams, and regular dreams in solving problems and unlocking creativity. Psychotherapy uses dream analysis commonly because of the belief that dreams can help the client solve problems.
Here's a tip.
The next time you have a problem that seems to consume time and energy, try sleeping on it. It could be anything that bothers you, from a problem at work to your love life. Mull it over during the evening. After you get into bed, say, "Dreaming self, help me solve this problem." Don't imagine scenarios of how to solve it. Just trust it will be solved. Then go to sleep.
After you awaken the next morning, write down any dream or fragments or thoughts. If you have none, don't worry. When your thoughts turn to the problem, go with the first answer that comes into your mind. See what happens.
If it works for you, a little more trust will build between you and your dreaming self.
I think of my dreaming self as a somewhat different persona from my waking self. I can ask her to dream about a problem and help me out. She has a different perspective on my problem because she doesn't have to consciously deal with any consequences from the solutions. She has a greater depth of memory of everything that has ever happened to me. She can access all of my long-term memories, as well as any human race memories, plus she lives in the dream world that I can only remember while awake. I guess you could say she and I have a different experience of living the same life.
During rehearsals for a production of the musical Pippin in 1980, I remember experiencing difficulty directing a particular scene in the show. It was a short love scene between the two leads, then the chorus came in and the action changed. Every time I watched the scene in rehearsal I didn't like it. When I told the actors it wasn't working, they agreed and one said, "Tell us what you want us to do and we'll try to do it."
The problem was I didn't know what to tell them. I drove home from school worrying about the scene and carried that worry through the evening and into bed. At that time I was recording my dreams and interested in them, but I hadn't realized yet that I could intend dreams, that is, decide in advance the subject of the dream. So I considered what happened with the Pippin scene just good luck.
During my dream I watched the troublesome scene as if I were in a theatre myself watching the show. The actor and actress moved around the stage in a different manner, a more interesting way, and the scene played perfectly when the chorus came in. I awoke excited to get to school because I knew exactly how to change the scene to solve the problem. At rehearsal I explained how I wanted to redo the scene, the actors did it, and it worked perfectly just as it happened in my dream. The actors liked it better too.
I felt extreme gratitude to my dreaming self for solving the problem.
Another time the influence of a problem-solving dream was not so obvious. One of my English students had begun to behave aggressively in class. With minimal provocation he snarled at other students and called me bitch under his breath. Because I'd had his older sister in class the year before I knew their home could get unpleasant with the father's threatening presence. I went to bed worrying about the boy's aggressive behavior and what I ought to do about it. My choices were to talk with him personally, to call the mother in the hope of her intervention, or to write a referral so the principal would deal with the situation. I feared none would solve a worsening situation. I also feared aggravating their home life problems myself.
Despite my worry I slept well. I did not recall a dream in the morning but felt confident my dreaming self had been working on the problem. I intended to trust the first impulse that came into my mind. When I started thinking about what I would do about the boy at school, I knew immediately the best action to take. I kept the boy after class and told him the truth, that I was worried he would follow his father's ways and spoil his chances to have a girlfriend. I told him girls would like him very much because he was handsome and loving and fun to be around, but I emphasized his aggressive behavior would spoil those chances with girls. The boy responded in an open and warmhearted manner. He didn't want to end up like his father, and he felt flattered that I thought he was handsome. I don't know what happened at home but in class the boy turned an amazing corner. He started talking to the girls so much I had to tell him to be quiet. He grinned like we had a secret. His grade went from a C to a B by the end of the semester.
Thank you, dreaming self.
There are well documented cases historically where dreams helped people solve big problems, including the invention of the sewing machine, the discovery of the benzene molecule, and artistic creations by such authors and composers as Robert Louis Stevenson, Voltaire, and Tartini.
Recent scientific studies have shown students do better on tests after they have slept because of the dream activity of shunting material from short-term to long-term memory. Other studies demonstrate the benefits of waking imagery, hypnotically-induced dreams, and regular dreams in solving problems and unlocking creativity. Psychotherapy uses dream analysis commonly because of the belief that dreams can help the client solve problems.
Here's a tip.
The next time you have a problem that seems to consume time and energy, try sleeping on it. It could be anything that bothers you, from a problem at work to your love life. Mull it over during the evening. After you get into bed, say, "Dreaming self, help me solve this problem." Don't imagine scenarios of how to solve it. Just trust it will be solved. Then go to sleep.
After you awaken the next morning, write down any dream or fragments or thoughts. If you have none, don't worry. When your thoughts turn to the problem, go with the first answer that comes into your mind. See what happens.
If it works for you, a little more trust will build between you and your dreaming self.
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