Dreams have the potential of expanding our mind and consciousness, and they also have the potential of healing and illuminating us with knowledge we weren’t able to tap into before the dream.
In Ancient Greece there were temples dedicated to different goddesses and gods, and in some of them people would come and stay for a few days, wishing to receive a dream that would answer a particular question or heal a particular illness.
To wish for such a dream is called “dream incubation”, and can be done without the temples and the gods and goddesses.
The concept is very simple; we ask our dreaming self to send us a dream that would help with the issue we want to illuminate, and then we wait for the dream, writing every dream carefully until we receive the answer.
The dreaming mind is not rational; the dreaming mind talks to us in symbols and metaphors, so it is in this very language that we can communicate with the dreaming self. What I mean is that we can communicate to our dreaming self through metaphors and symbols that speak to us personally.
I have a little wooden box, which I call my “dream incubator”, and when I ask for a particular dream I use my dream incubator as a method of communicating to my dreaming self. I write the question or the issue in a piece of paper, and I place the question in the box along with little objects or drawings that remind me of the issue. These can be little rocks or crystals, a penny, a photograph… whatever I think is vaguely related with my issue. Then I dream, and write my dreams until I receive a dream that helps me with the question.
More about Dream Incubation here.
Dream interpretation is a very interesting subject, since each one of us must become familiar with our own symbol dictionary in order to understand the meanings of our dreams. More about this in the next blog post.