Issue 54, February 2003
Dream Alchemy Extract
©Jane Teresa Anderson, February 2003
My new book, Dream Alchemy, published by Lothian Books, Australia, was released this week. Here are two extracts as a taster.
Extract 1: (Dream Alchemy, pages 1-3)
'Let the magic begin'
Everybody dreams, and dreams - like fresh air - are free. Your days begin and end with the gift of dreams, even if you have forgotten how to remember them or how to unwrap them. The weirdness of a dream is only in its wrapping, its language. Once you have cracked the code, the meaning of your dream is revealed.
Your dreams are messages about you and your life, in code. Your dreams reveal how you picture the world and how you envisage your place in it. They show how your early experiences shaped your beliefs about the way the world works and about who you are. Every night your dreams update the data, consolidating, refining, questioning or changing your understanding of the world according to the events of the day.
Imagine standing at the bottom of a mountain, looking up at its peak. You see an overhanging rock and a snowy precipice. Your belief is that this mountain is hard to climb. Next to you stands a man, and next to him stands a woman and so on as you are one of thousands of people forming a circle around the base of the mountain. You are all looking up at its peak.
The man next to you sees a slightly different view. He too sees the overhanging rock and the snowy precipice but he has climbed many mountains tougher than this one. His view of the mountain and his belief is that it is relatively easy to climb. The woman standing next to him looks up at the peak in fear. In her younger days she lost a lover to a mountaineering accident. Her view of the mountain is one of fear and grief and it is her belief that the mountain is best left alone. Around the other side of the mountain, a child looks up at the peak. He sees a gentle slope leading all the way to the top, all green grass glistening in the sunshine. He holds his mother's hand as they step forward to take the cable car all the way to the top. His view is that the mountain is an easy, fun adventure and his belief is about to be confirmed and strengthened.
The mountain is life - or perhaps it is all the secrets of the universe. We each look at the mountain every day. What we each see depends on where we stand, on our past experiences and on our beliefs. Every night your dreaming mind adds your experiences of the day into your mountain picture. Your dream updates the information on your mountain - your view and beliefs about life- but it does this in code. Every rock and every stone that forms the mountain is captured in dream code. Every pebble, every grain of sand of your belief about life is there in your dreams. Just as a mountain of desert sand can be blown away, so too mountains can be moved and life - as you think you know it - can shift and change slowly or suddenly.
When you understand your dreams you understand why your life is the way it is. You understand the grains of sand that are your beliefs, the pebbles that are your experiences, the stones that are your insights, the rocks that are your foundations, the peaks that are your goals and the climbs that represent your feelings about how easy or difficult life is. When you understand your dreams you understand how your fears and beliefs shape the mountainous path ahead of you, and in understanding all of this you have the beginnings of magic. You have the ability to change what you see. The mountain, your life, your path, your self is yours to change. Are you ready to let the magic begin?
This book shows you how to unwrap your dreams, to crack the code, so that you can see with greater clarity the way your life is and why it might be so. With the gift unwrapped and your life revealed, the next choice is yours. If you wish to make changes, this book can help you with dream alchemy practices.
The dream alchemy practices are unique, inspirational and simple exercises to help you move mountains or, at least, to rearrange the pebbles to make your climb easier. They are very powerful life-changing practices.
Extract 2: (Dream Alchemy, pages 77-78)
'Late for the appointment'
(This is an excerpt from 'Late for the appointment' - the dream where you are running late for a meeting, appointment, train, boat or plane.)
Don't tell me, I know ... this never happens to you in waking life? You're aware of time, you allow time, you prepare well and it takes a major drama to make you late for an appointment. You never lose your ticket and you always catch your plane.
Perfect. This dream's a classic from the perfectionist's portfolio. It's also a classic for workaholics and people who are considerate of others to the extreme. Quite a diverse lot really. So what have they all got in common? A need to perform, to get things right; being driven by a fear of getting things wrong.
The dream shows you as wanting to catch the plane but throwing up obstacles along your way to delay facing the fear of success. Or is that the fear of failure? Remember, everything that goes wrong in a dream, every delay, reveals your unconscious mind busily sabotaging the outcome. When you examine the details of the dream obstacles you get a handle on the negative beliefs and thoughts programmed into your unconscious mind. These can help you to understand why you fear getting things wrong so much that you'll move mountains to make life difficult for yourself, but you'll always make that plane, or not hurt that person's feelings. You'll create an enormous number of appointments, ensure that you have to work extremely hard to prove you're good enough and throw in a bit of doormat attitude so as not to fail in your need to be perfect and loved by everyone.
So, you make life hard for yourself but you get there anyway, right? Wrong! If you're a workaholic you may be catching planes for work appointments but you're sure to be missing those otherwise destined for relationships, relaxation and personal development. If you're a perfectionist you may be creating perfect work in perfect time, but probably at an enormous cost to other areas of your life. Can you work smarter rather than harder? Can you delegate? Can you release yourself to catch life's other planes?
All the while you are missing planes in dreams you can be sure that your unconscious is crying out because something is missing in your life and you're not giving yourself permission to have it.
(End of extract ... in the book this piece is followed by questions to help you identify the specific situation in your waking life this dream is addressing and then three dream alchemy practices for you to do to create positive change in your life. It also lists what changes to expect both in your dreams and in your waking life as signs that the dream alchemy practices are working.)
Jane Teresa Anderson
WANT TO READ MORE?
Dream Alchemy is in all good Australian book shops. Or order it in from your local shop.
Not in Australia? You can order your paperback copy online direct from our Dream Network Shop.
Jane Teresa Anderson
|
