I’m about to give you some magical formulae you can use to transform your life.
I’m about to give you some magical formulae you can use to transform your life. They’re simple, yet powerful. They’re serious, and they work, but for a bit of fun I’ve arranged them as magic spells from an imaginary book of alchemical secrets. Before we delve in, though, let’s look at the theory so you understand why these work and how to apply them.
Imagine you dreamed of a huge dark cloud. The cloud was suspended above you, throwing its darkness and gloom all around. The air was oppressive, heavy, and still. What is the meaning of this dream?
You might have this dream if you were feeling oppressed by dark, gloomy, negative feelings. You might think about your dream and see that this is indeed true. You might then think about where these dark, gloomy, negative feelings are coming from. You might decide they’re coming from you and your negative thoughts about life. You might suddenly see that you have been going about your life dragging this negative outlook with you wherever you go. Other people in similar circumstances might see the sunny side or be uplifted by the silver lining in life’s challenges. Rather than being motivated to create something wonderful from the silver lining, your dream shows you bogged down in the heavy stillness of your negative outlook on life. Okay, so far so good. You have interpreted and understood your dream.
You may even go further and say the dark cloud is the gloom cast by a relationship break-up, job loss, or major disappointment. You may think about this and decide the gloom is your anger about the disappointment (like a thunderous cloud before an angry storm) or you might decide the heavy cloud is your unexpressed grief (like a cloud that hasn’t rained itself free of its tears).
Okay, so far even better. You have interpreted and understood your dream even more deeply. Is this enough then? Is this the power of dream interpretation?
Does it end here? Does going forward in your life understanding your gloomy, negative outlook help you to dispel it and substitute an uplifting, positive outlook in its place?
Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes awareness is powerful enough to enable you to make a change. For example, each time you feel the presence of the gloomy, black cloud pervading a situation you might think, “Enough! Where’s the silver lining? How can I look at my situation positively?” Some people can make the switch effectively. Many need a little extra magic to make the change.
It’s better to cry away the black cloud, to feel the grief and let it go, or to feel the anger and let it go, so that looking at the world positively becomes natural rather than forced.
Sometimes you cannot effectively make the change until you get in touch with associated emotions and work through them. For example, if you have not cried away your grief, then when you switch from negative to positive outlook you push your grief further down into your being and this will certainly give you discomfort at a later stage in your life. It’s better to cry away the black cloud, to feel the grief and let it go, or to feel the anger and let it go, so that looking at the world positively becomes natural rather than forced. If there’s no grief or anger in your way, then naturally things look good. If there’s still grief or anger hanging around, it’s hard work to keep remembering to switch on a positive outlook, and, besides, your grief or anger will keep returning in your dreams until you hear it, feel it, learn from it, and let it go.
So how can you do the magical bit to move from simply understanding your dream to transforming your life in a long-lasting (deeply healing) way? The solution is dream alchemy (those alchemical spells).
Dream alchemy is the magic of transforming symbols from your dream. In this example, you might visualise transforming the gloomy, black cloud by letting it rain itself away over a dry field, causing beautiful sunny flowers to bloom. Dream alchemy practices always sound far too simple, silly even, but they work because they involve symbols that your unconscious dreaming mind understands. When you do dream alchemy, you are talking the language of your unconscious mind and it is listening, responding, and transforming. These alchemical spells, correctly done, change the beliefs you carry that are affecting the way you see the world and the way you act in the world. When these things change – when you see the world differently and act in the world differently – your experience of life changes accordingly. In other words, your life changes for the better.
You can get quite creative with your dream alchemy practices. In the example, I added the flowers blooming to ensure that something wonderful blossomed from the release of grief.
If you had the black cloud dream and you did the dream alchemy visualisation described above according to the correct method you may first feel the grief or the anger, but this will feel deeply cathartic and healing. You will naturally traverse through these feelings, and emerge feeling light and free. From there forward, you will move through the world in a different way.
You can get quite creative with your dream alchemy practices. In the example, I added the flowers blooming to ensure that something wonderful blossomed from the release of grief.
The key to designing the best dream alchemy practice is to understand your dream first. When you understand your dream you gain self-awareness, a precious gift, and when you understand your dream you are best-equipped to pick the right symbol to transform through dream alchemy.
As a general guide, be inspired by these secret formulae from my imaginary book ‘Alchemical secrets’.
Alchemical Secrets
Dream
dark cloud,
understood by dreamer as negative outlook due to grief
Alchemy
let the cloud rain its tears away over a desert, making flowers bloom
*
Dream
starving horse,
understood by dreamer as a passionate energy you are not feeding
Alchemy
feed the horse until you can feel its strength and passion in your body
*
Dream
old man close to death,
understood by dreamer as a belief you need to put to rest
Alchemy
embrace the man and thank him for all he has taught you
*
Dream
old man close to death,
understood by dreamer as old values you want to revive
Alchemy
give the man a job or role that restores his sense of value and vitality
*
Dream
going round in circles,
understood by dreamer as needing a new approach
Alchemy
half way round the circle take a straight route to an exciting place
*
Dream
unable to fly beyond power lines,
understood by dreamer as trapped by power games
Alchemy
fly around the power lines to the place you want to be
*
Dream
shaky ground,
understood by dreamer as losing your sense of confidence
Alchemy
make the ground firm and feel its solidity beneath your feet
*
Dream
shaky ground,
understood by dreamer as changes around you feeling exciting
Alchemy
shake that ground into where you would like to be
*
Get the picture? As you can see from the dreams of the old man close to death and the dreams of the shaky ground, the secret is to understand your dream before creating your dream alchemy practice and casting your alchemical spell. (Two people may each dream of shaky ground, but the different details in their dreams reveal the different meanings.)
Remember to check the detailed methods for doing your dream alchemy practices, and if you need a little help from me in understanding your dreams or creating dream alchemy practices you can consult me by Skype or phone.
[Copyright Jane Teresa Anderson, July 2007. First published as a Dream Sight article.]
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We are all conditioned in many ways, from childhood onward, and analysing dreams can help us to see some of the absurdities in our personal conditioning. What to do with this insight? New awareness and applying dream alchemy combine to break the spell of unconscious conditioning (beliefs) that hold us back in life. Listen as Carolyn experiences this in this episode.
