March 2017 – The Dark Knight of the Soul

Posted on March 20, 2017March 21, 2017 by The Book of Dreams blog

Practical real-world magic

Just watched an old episode of Charmed, you know, the late 90’s to early 2000 witches in San Francisco TV drama! The visual effects were really cool even though technology was still in the flip-phone stage.

Afterwards I went outside to finish cleaning up the plant trimming mess my wife had made earlier and left for me straighten up. It was hot and the constant bending down started to take its toll on my back and I found myself wishing for a little magic such as the ability to move all that mess with just a flick of the wrist, “Depulso!”. No such luck!

But as I bent down and grunted a muffled “damn” when I gored my hand with one of the thorns of the palm tree leaf I had a thought, “I do have magic, this body is magic! I have a thought and then direct this amazing tool to stoop down and do its thing! And its all done by thought alone regardless of whether that thought originated from the millions of chemical interactions between millions of neurons or as some have suggested from some kind of mysterious force outside myself that then commands the body-tool to stoop. How magical is that?

And before I knew it something else magical happened, I was done! I’d been dreading the chore, but it was really nothing at all, “no problem” as the younger set so often say. And there it was again, the transformation of an experience through the magic of restructuring my attitude toward it. The job hadn’t changed any but how I held it did. Simple cognitive restructuring of thought distortions. Psychotherapists do it all the time with their clients e.g. help to change the thoughts, change the emotions.

No, we don’t just have emotions, we actually create the context for them and with some practice (a lot of practice actually) we can learn to transform them pretty easily.

Cognitive restructuring is a technique used to treat everything from social anxiety disorders to stress reduction. It’s called Cognitive Behavior therapy and is very effective in transforming negative thought patterns into patterns of thinking that are much more supportive and enlivening i.e. creating a new reality through thought alone– a thought incantation of sorts.

In my personal case in the example above I used a competing thought pattern that then weakened the automatic negative pattern I had been operating out of. Magic, huh? What I wanted when I wished to be magic was that the job to become significantly easier and through a little cognitive manipulation, voila! Easy peezy!

But this takes a lot of practice– not everyone can make a feather float on the first try like Hermione did– LeviosA! Nope, no luck yet!

Posted on March 15, 2017March 16, 2017 by The Book of Dreams blog · 1 Comment

Nightmares

I had a nightmare the other night, you know one of those where the narrative takes you right up to the most awful part of the horror and then…you wake up. Whew, thank goodness!

Well, not always. Usually I try to get back to sleep so as to resolve the outcome, to finish the story so to speak. In that way I have some control over the outcome, or get more information on the meaning of the dream.

If you were to consider the point where you wake up as the climax of a story then perhaps asking yourself “what happens next?” Or “How might the story end?” might be a good technique for exploring the nightmare further.

Now I don’t mean for someone who is dreaming a reenactment of a literal horror that has happened in their waking life (such as for those who are suffering from PTSD), stay away from those nightmares, they may need more professional guidance*. I’m talking about those that are symbolic of something going on inside you, or that you are reacting to in your daily life, something psychically broader. You might ask yourself, “Does this dream remind me of something in my waking life?”

Nightmares can be a normal dream occurrence after a trauma, but most of the time they present material that you’ve kept hidden (e.g. threats to your self-esteem, loss of something, or someone important, or trouble coping with certain stresses, unconscious memories stimulated by some recent event, or scary emotions that you have avoided) and the unconscious mind, in the service of your health and well-being, is trying to bring them to consciousness so that you can deal with them appropriately. They literally demand attention.

I think that many of us with the standard unfinished nightmare event want to be able to master them, it’s probably why we like such authors as Stephen King, remember Carrie? Finishing the nightmare in a psychically satisfying manner is much better than ignoring it, because if you do …it’ll be baaack!

I’m also not talking “night terrors” here, in those there’s no plot just a lot of scary chaos**. On the other hand, nightmares have a plot, and often a fairly complicated one. You go from balance, or equilibrium, to extreme out of balance then wake up. When you awaken, the climax then dominates the story and this can truncate the meaning and leave you stuck. If you were to treat the nightmare as a narrative, you would then want the story to return to equilibrium i.e. resolution. I’m talking about the process of transformation, the psychic alchemical process of turning something base into something of value.

The kind of intervention to which I’m referring has the advantage of giving you some feedback i.e. if the nightmare has recurred and then after intervention disappears you’ve been successful, if not, try something else.

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*Those suffering from PTSD might use these nightmares as part of a treatment intervention. These nightmares may also be the mind’s way of treating the psychic injury, however, one can get stuck in a constantly recurring nightmare that reintroduces the horror of the event over and over again. This kind of nightmare needs treatment with a professional trained to work with them.

** As an adult and if you get a lot of these night terrors where you are thrashing about in bed you may want to share this with your physician.

Posted on March 9, 2017March 9, 2017 by The Book of Dreams blog

“I see dead people”

This was a quote from the 1999 movie, The Sixth Sense. In it a little boy confesses to his therapist that he sees and interacts with dead people. The journey that he and the therapist go on becomes a frightening and transformational trip through the spirit world that parallels the world of the living.

An interesting fantasy, but other than those who have claimed to see ghosts, or in stories or movies, or over-dramatized TV ghost hunter shows when, if ever, has this been a reality?

There is an archetypal specter that shadows us throughout our lives and that most of us try to ignore, but one that informs the way we live, behave, and move within our personal universes–DEATH.

Dead people in our dreams have visited many of us e.g. dead relatives and loved ones, dead celebrities, or even ourselves. Ghosts, spirits, and specters fly in and out of our dream spaces, threatening, or offering cryptic advice. Some of us have teetered on the brink of death while others have fallen in. We’ve been shot, stabbed, clubbed, eaten, and died by accident, or disease, or the bite of a snake sometimes over and over again across many nights. We have witnessed mass killings on a field of battle, or in our own homes. What is all this mayhem about?

In part it’s as simple as working through the concept of death itself–an attempt to develop a working relationship with it. These dreams help us to work through our deepest fears for ourselves and for the loss of others.

Sometimes dreaming of those who have died, or fears for our own death can be messages that we have become stuck in our grief, or our fears. At a conscious level we often convince ourselves that we have handled death, or we actively suppress our fears so as to function more efficiently. However, denial, or suppression only works, if it does at all, on a superficial and temporary basis. Healing has not happened because the wound remains hidden and not exposed to the air and a weeping scab is formed under which the wound festers. Learning to face these wounds and fears can be part of a healing process that allows us to move on in our lives.

Dead people in dreams, especially those we know, can be an attempt of the mind to deal with sad feelings, memories, guilt, loss, frustrated love, or anger connected with the person who has died, or to just complete our relationship with them from when they were living.

“To die, to sleep  no more; and by a sleep, to say we end  the heart-ache, and the thousand Natural shocks  that flesh is heir to? ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die to sleep,  to sleep, perchance to dream; Ay, there’s the rub,  for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,  when we have shuffled off this mortal coil,  must give us pause.”–Shakespeare, Hamlet after the ghost of his father has come to him to tell the circumstances of his death.

When these dreams are faced and accepted (vs. denied, or rejected) this eventually allows the dreamer to resolve the loss and move on. There are also people whose images visit us when we are in times of stress and are looking for guidance or consolation. My Dad often shows up when an old feeling, or special memory associated with him is longed for, especially one that can lead to my own health and well being. Some people have shared with me that when facing an intractable problem and wishing the wisdom of a deceased parent were available, that that parent in their dreams will often visit them.

If you as the dreamer were to kill someone in the dream, it’s most often a symbol for the desire to “kill off” what they represent, e.g. a feeling, a relationship, their effect upon you or others, or even a circumstance or situation which their character may represent.

The death of feelings (such as when there is a loss of love for something or someone), or motivation, or the end of a plan, relationship, a belief, a chapter of ones life, or a transition about to happen e.g. mothers sometime see the death of a boy child in their dreams as the son transitions in waking life from one state of being to another– into preschool, or kindergarten, his first overnight, high school graduation, and off to college. In fact, whenever one is in transition from one state of being, or one event to another, dead people and death can show up in a dream. And when it does, ask yourself, “what is dying in my life–what is coming to an end, or what has the potential for ending soon?” This will give you clues as to the meaning of the dream.