The Week of March 27th, 2022

>>>>>> Joseph The Dreamer <<<<<<

Sermon Noodles: Dream Tending Primer

In the Bible God speaks to people all the time through dreams. If God speaks to people all the time in dreams, why isn’t tending to our dreams a major practice of the church? Why would we want to tend and take more seriously that which comes to us in dreams?

 The research says that the neurologically normal person has five to seven dreams a night, some up to one hour long. Make it a goal to track your dreams for at least thirty days. Create or buy a journal with the solely reserved for the purpose of tracking your dreams. The following tips will help you:

How to Go into Dreamtime 

1.     Place an open journal by your bed and note tomorrow’s date. This intention says to the Dream Maker, “I am serious about remembering my dreams.” You can also use the voice memo app on a cellphone for recording your dream. You may want to offer a prayer or set an intention on your willingness to have the Dream Maker speak to you. 

2.     If you wake up and realize you were dreaming, don’t move. Go back in your imagination and recount the entire dream, then immediately right it down in first person in your journal. Put down on paper the dream or images or fragments of the dream you remember. 

3.     If we believe Soul and Spirit are speaking to us through dreams, then there is no such thing as a bad dream, especially what we call “nightmares.” It could be God is trying to get us to process a trauma not re-traumatize us. 

4.     Offer gratitude each morning for a dream you received. 

Dimensions of a Dream Tending

·       Feelings and emotions. At what point in the dream do you feel the most energy? Dreams often come to help us assimilate unassimilated emotions. In your dream journal, circle emotionally laden words. Do you see a pattern? 

·       What is happening in the Dreamer’s body—gestures, posture, facial expressions? 

·       Atmosphere/mood (the “soundtrack” of the dream) 

·       Be attentive to characters, animals, geographical places like rivers, swamps, and mountains 

·       The Ego’s desires and reactions. Is the Ego upset? Puzzled? Trapped? Chased? 

·       What is the overall plot of the dream? What does the dream Ego want to see happen? 

·       Strong acts/will or epic failures.

·       Are you passive in the dream?  Active?

·       What is the dream asking of you? 

Allow the Dream to Suggest 

·       What is confusing in the dream? Frightening? Where are your resistant? Tense? Yearning? Angry? Where is the irritation, conflict, or judgment?

 A Word on Interpreting Dreams
An important principle in soulcentric dreamwork is not to rush too quickly to interpretation. The dream is there to do its work on you, not necessarily give you answers. Hang out with the symbols, images, and emotions. Let the dream work on the Ego like water on a rock. The strategic rational mind will try and bring comfort in the effort to figure it out, and maybe the Holy Spirit is trying to make you uncomfortable.