Inside each of us we have, what I call the ‘Greek chorus’. This term comes from the theater tradition of ancient Greece. At that time actors wore masks to portray their characters and emotions and they basically mimed their role. Behind the actors were a group of people who sang or spoke for them, hence the term ‘Greek chorus’.
We all have the many voices of the ‘Greek chorus’ in our head. We have an adult, a parent, a grandparent, a child, a teacher and so forth. When we are dreaming there is an opportunity for these parts of ourselves to ‘reach’ us, to make us pay attention when we are a ‘passive’ audience if you will, to what needs to be considered or acted upon in our waking lives.
Dreaming is referred to as a ‘primary process’ because generally, your ‘executive functioning’ or logical part of the brain is not very active at this time. This is why dreams can have unusual elements like flying sheep or talking bears. You can, however, ‘train’ the more rational parts of your brain to work during dream states. This is a very useful skill because you can control the outcome of a dream, induce creativity, resolve conflicts or solve problems.
You’ve probably heard the phrase, “why don’t you sleep on it”. This is because the dream state can help you deal with issues in many areas of your life. Sleep is a state of deep relaxation for most of the body but even in sleep, the brain never stops working. During sleep your brainwaves, or the electrical activity in your brain, change such that your brain can rest and refresh itself before resuming its daytime functioning levels. However, it is in this state of ‘rest’ that many people have had major ‘Ah ha!’ moments, especially if they have learned to remember, interpret and pay attention to their dreams.
Many people think that they don’t dream, or don’t dream very much. Actually we all dream every night, we just don’t always remember it just as we don’t always remember every thought we had during our waking lives. We are most likely to recall two types of dreams, the really scary, intimidating or unpleasant ones or the amazingly fun and exciting ones. Again, just as in waking life, we are most apt to remember things if they have a big emotional ‘charge’.
To learn how to remember your dreams it is important to ‘set expectations’. To do this, each night before you go to sleep you need to say to yourself things like, “I will find a solution to my problem”, or, “I will remember what I dream”, or, “I will remember the dreams that are most relevant and useful to me at this time”. You need to be sure that you have something next to your bed to write with and on. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just a pen and paper will do.
If you wake up in the night for any reason immediately write down anything you remember dreaming, even if it’s only a fragment. And when you awaken at the end of your sleeping time be sure to again record any dream or part of a dream that you can recall. And don’t forget, like any other newly learned skill it will take time to perfect.
Dreams focus on what ever happens to be on your mind at the moment, but not necessarily your conscious mind. For example, you may dream about something that happened yesterday or something that has been plaguing you for many years, like an unresolved conflict with a parent. The real value of dreams is in their interpretation.
There have been many books written on the interpretation of dreams. Usually these sorts of books assign meanings to certain dream symbols. In truth, the meaning of a symbol is unique to the dreamer. For example, two people may dream about being naked. For one person the dream is about liberation, freedom and releasing the shackles that bind them. For another, it’s terrifying, shameful and intimidating. Each of these dreams is dealing with different issues and each dreamer has different associations about being naked. So, depending on your given associations your brain will choose the symbol needed to induce the appropriate mindset for problem solving in your dream.
People are often confused and intimidated by the dream interpretation process. One of the most productive ways to look at dreams is to remember the ‘Greek chorus’ idea we talked about earlier, when you look at your dreams understand that each of the characters in it are parts of yourself attempting to communicate with you. For example, you have a dream about finding yourself standing on a shore looking out over a horizon with beautiful, but impossible to scale looking mountains, in the distance. Suddenly, you realize that in front of you is flowing a river of molten lava. Somehow you know that you must get to the mountains, but how? And then a kayak appears, brought to you on a sled pulled by a team of Huskies. The dogs bark at you until you finally take the kayak off the sled and then the dogs are gone and you find yourself in the kayak paddling through the molten lava. But you realize you’re terrified of boats and falling into fluids of any kind, you’ve always been scared of drowning and yet here you are paddling away, fearlessly! And so you reach the other shore and find yourself at the foot of the mountain. You know with all your being that you must scale it, but you are horrified at the thought because you know you don’t know how to climb mountains and you’re afraid of heights! But there you are climbing along, inch-by-inch going higher and higher until you reach the pinnacle, and you feel such joy and elation that you begin to cry. In fact, you wake up crying, your pillow wet with the tears of your dream, and you’re thinking, “What was that?” So being the wise and wonderful person that you are you ask yourself, “What if I were all the things and creatures in that dream?” Considering the dream in this way, it would be a dream about you realizing that all the things you are afraid of are illusions and you have within you the power to conquer anything and achieve your loftiest goals. All you need to do is move forward with confidence and the answers you need to overcome your fears and achieve your goals will come to you just when, you need them and just as, you need them.
See how very clever you are? Save yourself the $14.99 you might have spent on the dream interpretation book and learn to pay attention to yourself and your own symbols.
Night, night, sweet dreams!
Dr. Margaret Cochran has been an educator and professional therapist for more than 28 years. With graduate degrees in Education, Social Work and Transpersonal Psychology she has worked with a wide variety of clients, both individual and organizational.
Dr. Cochran is the host of the internet radio show, ‘Wisdom, Love and Magic!’, which is number one on iTunes for mental health programming. She is also the author of ‘Sylvia and the Magic Power Sticks’ a fairy tale about how shame is often an integral part of everyday life. For more information please visit www.drcochran.com
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