For many years, I wanted to forget my dreams as soon as I awoke. This began when I was a teenager and had a dream with Jesus in it. Because I didn’t know what to make of the dream (even though it was a pleasant dream, in no way horrifying), I set the intention on a conscious enough level, to forget it. I spent most of the next ten years with little recollection of my dreams. How I wish now that I had developed a relationship and an intimacy with my dreams when I was a teenager so that I may have had the guidance I so desperately wanted. Although the guidance was there when I sought it, to dream and to tend one’s dreams (I love this phrase, not my own) is such a precious act of devotion to oneself.
I turned to my dreams shortly before becoming pregnant in 2008. It had been more than ten years since I’d last paid any real attention to them. I had worked up the courage by this point and turned sufficiently enough back towards spirituality that I felt comfortable developing a relationship with my dreams once again. This signaled a transformation in my life, since this was my admission that I wanted help from a larger source than myself. I let go of the control I’d so desperately needed before by allowing the messages to come through. I let go of the need to forget in order to be what I thought I needed to be.
During the last year, it’s been a dance, between my dreams and me. I have reached the point where I can remember my dreams almost every night and I have filled several journals over the last half-year or so. But there are times, still, when I become lax in one way or another, or I don’t want a message to come through. These are times when my ego has kicked into gear and is doing its survival dance. I am learning to reassert the need for these messages, the need for this intimacy with my dreams. I love the idea of being intimate with dreams because it suggests the closeness, the love, the preciousness of dreaming and remembering. It suggests, too, the love one must have for oneself in order to allow this garden to flourish.
Since handing the reigns over, I have had beautiful and inspiring dreams that gave me clues as to where I needed to go on some path. I have also had disturbing and frightening dreams. At first, I didn’t like these disturbing and frightening dreams in the least. I’ll still feel uneasy for some time after having a dream like this. But I am learning to be curious about them, to wake up in the morning and think about the way in which the particular dream might help me to heal. These dreams often offer me the most clues as to the areas in my life that need healing. For this reason, I am grateful for them. Just as life ebbs and flows, so our dreams ebbs and flows, dear friends.
I write this because a friend recently told me she was scared of remembering her dreams, of the messages they might contain. I feel as though other friends have said they are afraid of remembering their dreams as well. I want to say this. For as long as we deny ourselves the remembrance of our dreams and the intimacy with messages from our souls, we are running away from ourselves (our souls). And as long as we run away from ourselves, we are denying ourselves our highest good, our fullest potential. You might even say that encouraging the forgetting of nighttime dreams is also encouraging the forgetting of your heart’s and your soul’s dreams.
I have to say, however, that even though I didn’t allow myself to remember my dreams for more than ten years, the messages would eventually come through, at the last moment. There were times when I was connected (without knowing it) where I would understand what needed to be done. I had to do some surface healing before I felt ready to do some deeper healing. I had to survive for a time before I felt ready to relax enough to receive. So do not despair if you are not ready to remember your dreams, dear friend, for the messages will find one way or another to reach you! I admit that the resistance, the wall that you have set up, will make it difficult for the messages to reach through. But they will reach through eventually, especially if you are aware, on some level, that they are important and that you really do want to remember them. The truth is often concealed by our ego’s attempt to keep us safe.
My spiritual awakening became more powerful and quickened its pace once I began to remember my dreams and work with them in a very sincere way. In the last year, since I’ve begun working with them, I have experienced much growth and healing. I am grateful beyond measure for the yin of the night, for the opportunity it gives us to descend and to receive messages from the divine, only to ascend with the gold, the truth.
Please share with us here your own struggles with dreams and where you’re at with them.
Love,
Juliana
