On Seeking Answers

‘Sweet dreams,’ we whisper, slipping into the night and joining the greatest magical mystery tour of them all. Many practised dreamers prefer to let go and trust that their dream state will take them to where they need to be, revealing what is important for them to know at that moment. While most of the life-changing steps taken by the dreamers in this book resulted from such ‘surprise’ dreams, several people did set out to secure an answer to a specific question: and got one.

River 24
Beth
Creatures of Habit 1994

~~~~~~dream~~~~~~

I was under a high-set house with my ever-present Dream Friend, and we were standing on a dirt floor. All over the floor were little mice and guinea pigs lying on their sides, dead. I was horrified. What had happened to them? Then my cat appeared with a fluffy white guinea-pig in her mouth. ‘Put that down,’ I ordered her. She laid it down gently on the dirt. I rushed over and examined it carefully. It was not injured at all but it was dying. I was about to give it mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and heart massage when my Dream Friend said (I love this friend!), ‘Let it die, let it go’.

I still had my hand on the guinea pig. Its coat was soft and silky. I stroked it gently then withdrew my hand, knowing that, I could in fact revive it, but I must let it go. I felt OK about making that decision.

~~~~~~

I was a cigarette addict for twenty years. I was always giving up, often managed to cut down, and even managed on one or two a day for a while until the stress hit and I would be off again. I spent a fortune on trying to give up smoking, from hypnosis, to subliminal tapes, to acupuncture. You name it, I tried it. In recent years I became a closet smoker. I hated it but couldn’t cut it out of my life completely. It didn’t make sense: I was a ballet teacher, a vegetarian, a very healthy diet/body-conscious person with a deep, dark secret that I was ashamed of. (OK, life is humorous, eh?) Also it gave me allergic rhinitis.

In 1994 a friend who had done a clinical hypnotherapy course offered to give me hypnotherapy for giving up smoking. Instead of doing it in four days, I suggested we did it over four weeks because it takes at least twenty-one days to change a habit (it also gave me longer to smoke!). We set a ‘Cease Smoking’ date. Right on course the big day arrived. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to do it. I could feel panic arising, along with the well-known sense of failure. I wanted to rush out and buy a packet of cigarettes and smoke like crazy - but a small voice said, ‘Wait, Beth, ask for help in your dreams tonight’.

So that night, before falling asleep, I beseeched my subconscious to help me be rid of the addiction forever. I knew my conscious mind had a good attitude, but the subconscious was always the saboteur of my best plans.

The result was powerful. My smoking habit completely died that night: no withdrawal, no weight gain, no mourning, no bad moods, and just from one dream. Giving up smoking was a really big life-changing thing for me. My family are absolutely astonished, and I am even more astonished. I know now that I will never smoke again. Is this the secret to curing all addictions - drugs, alcohol etc? Funny thing is, dreaming doesn’t cost a cent.

So, how did Beth’s dream lead to such a powerful change? She sat down in the morning with her dream, knowing it contained the perspective she needed. Beth took the main dream symbols and wrote a list of her own personal associations, feelings and insights alongside each symbol until the plot fell into place. Her dream detective work is exquisite, humorous, yet potently serious in its proven ability to change her smoking habits for good. Over to Beth:

This is truly beautiful: ‘Creatures of Habit’, of course!

Guinea pigs: happy to be held, need to be fed lots, smelly, die easily.

Mice: cute, courageous, smelly, definitely don’t like them in the house.

My cat: a killer, stealthy, will hunt the creatures of habit down.

Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation: the act of smoking.

Ah yes, the smelly habit that I don’t want in my house any more, which needs to die in the subconscious mind. Perhaps I used smoking to ‘pet’ myself, to stroke and soothe myself. Why I have failed to give up in the past is because I always revive the habit, ‘resuscitate’ it by allowing myself to have just one cigarette. I must let it die.

Understanding our dreams is one thing, taking action on them is another. Beth used a simple technique to reinforce the message of the dream, to help move it from the unconscious into the hard print of her conscious awareness:

I knew that I must symbolically bury all these little creatures of habit and accept the finality of their death in order to succeed in giving up smoking. I drew five little graves in my Dream Journal and wrote ‘Rest in Peace’ on the headstones, drew a smoking cigarette on each headstone, and then placed flowers on the graves. I then drew a picture of myself smiling with my cat standing beside me. In a speech bubble above the cat I wrote, ‘I will help her stalk this habit’.

On reflection Beth realised why the dream has such a positive effect and why it worked over and above other methods she had tried.

We can say affirmations until we are blue in the face but we must simply be brainwashing the conscious mind. My dream had impact because my subconscious informed me of the emotional adjustment needed to achieve my conscious objective. All the conscious mind had to so was say, ‘Yes, I’ll do it’. The act of drawing the picture was confirmation for the subconscious that I had got the message and wished to follow it through.

My result? Success! Naturally my health improved immediately. I was prone to headaches and haven’t had a headache since. All changes have been positive. When I think about it I am almost in a state of shock over how easy it was!

Jane’s Interpretation

 What more could I possibly say? Beth’s analysis of her dream is a perfect example of how to approach a dream full of personal symbolism. Her interpretation was made easier by the fact that she had fallen asleep with the intention of getting to the basics of her smoking addiction. She knew the subject matter and had a couple of good clues such as, ‘Let it die, let it go’ (the smoking habit) and the ‘mouth-to-mouth resuscitation’, reminiscent of the resuscitating, uplifting effect of a mouth-to-mouth relationship with a cigarette, presumably!