Dreams and Daily Life
Expand your exploration of dreams in the waking state by applying your understanding to your life situation. What is the reality of the dream in your life? How much is daily life influenced by your dreams?
During this month, select dreams you would like to explore and take them through Swami Radha’s basic method (Realities of the Dreaming Mind, Swami Radha, p 29).
1) Dreams as a Source of Knowledge
Dreams can be a wonderful source of knowledge. Take them seriously. Get your guidance from your own inner Light.
(Time To Be Holy, Swami Radha, p 109)
Do the Divine Light Invocation placing your dream in the Light and ask for guidance.
- What does the dream want you to know about yourself?
- How can this insight guide you in your daily life?
2) Relaxation and Recalling Dreams
Recalling dreams requires an effortless intensity – tension doesn’t help. Being relaxed and sincerely wanting to know can help you recall the dream.
(Yoga: A Path to Awareness, Swami Radha, p 85)
When you do not remember dreams investigate why. Create a desire to remember. Start by writing down your first thought upon waking, how you are feeling, any key words…write down whatever comes up.
Take time to relax. Being relaxed and sincerely wanting to know can help you recall the dream. (Yoga: A Path to Awareness, Swami Radha, p 85)
Listen to Swami Radha’s The Complete Relaxation Exercise recording or guide yourself through a relaxation practice.
- What is your experience of relaxing while increasing awareness?
- What is the relationship between relaxation and awareness for you?
- How can you use a relaxation practice to help you remember your dreams?
3) Opening Symbols
Dream Yoga opens up a dialogue with the unconscious mind. It is a detailed method of interpreting the messages of your subconscious to create change in your waking life. (The Eight Limbs of Yasodhara Yoga, www.yasodhara.org)
- Practice the 4/4 breath.
As you relax, remain aware of your breath, letting your inhalation and exhalation become deep and even. You may want to breathe in to the count of four and breathe out to the count of four. (Inner Life of Asanas, Swami Lalitananda, p 135)
- Identify a symbol from your dream that you would like to work with.
- Initiate a dialogue with this symbol. (Writing your conversation can be very beneficial.) Ask the symbol for insights.
- What insights or messages does the symbol hold? Is it encouraging you to make a change in your life?
4) Staying with a Symbol
What I discovered was that in working with the main symbols in a dream using her method, I began to expand the meaning of words into phrases. As I stayed with a symbol, sometimes for a whole week, I began to understand what Swami Radha meant by taking the dream to other levels.
(Realities of the Dreaming Mind, Foreword by Swami Durgananda, p 11)
- Take one symbol from a dream and reflect in depth on it for a whole week. See how the symbol is reflected in your day, in your actions and interactions.
5) Listening to Your Intuition
When we dream, the part that competes with intuition is silenced; therefore, dreams can guide us in furthering our own course of evolution.
(Yoga: A Path to Awareness, Swami Radha, p 88)
- Practice Shavasana. Still the mind and surrender to what is.
- How does surrender help you to evolve in your daily life; to know yourself?
- What do you have to surrender in order to hear your intuition?
6) Dreams and Daily Life
From your exploration of daily life, you can then begin to investigate other levels of reality.
(Realities of the Dreaming Mind, Swami Radha, p 206)
- How is your life like a dream?
- Take an event from your daily life and explore it like you would a dream. Look at the many levels that may be reflected – the physical, psychological, spiritual levels.
- Does your dream have a higher meaning? Can you lift your mind to that level?