Tag: belief | In your dreams …

Camouflage and the facts of life

Posted on January 21, 2013 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 4 Comments

I was looking through the window, settling into blog-writing mode while watching the play of sunlight and shade move across a particularly beautiful rock, when I realised that part of the rock wasn’t rock at all. It was a large, sunbathing, frilled lizard.

I tried shifting my gaze in an effort to blend him back into rock, but I couldn’t do it. Camouflaged one instant, revealed forever the next. My world shifted. The rock solid fact of the rock was shattered in an instant. What I had known to be true was no longer true, and there was no going back to the old way of seeing and believing it.

Yes, it’s only a rock. Yes, it’s only a frilled lizard. But it’s a true story, or, at least, it is until the next unexpected revelation.

“Look, there!” I imagine saying to someone else, “There, on that rock. It’s a frilled lizard!” And some will see it, and some won’t. Camouflage is a good trick, finely honed by nature to protect through deception.

The lizard has scuttled away now, and the rock itself will never be the same again in my personal little world because I’ll always see it now as the lizard rock, and the rock that found its way into this blog. And so things change.

I was at a party last weekend where a group of us were enjoying a free ranging conversation when someone piped up, “But what are the facts? I’m only interested in the facts!”

“But what are the facts?” This kind of thinking always reminds me of butter and margarine.

This kind of thinking always reminds me of butter and margarine. When I was a child, butter was suddenly declared unhealthy due to its saturated fats. We switched to margarine, a healthy choice based on science, we believed. A few years later, margarine was declared unhealthy due to many factors, and we switched back to butter. You know the story. It happens all the time now, and not only in matters of health and nutrition. If I were to dream of butter or margarine, I’d probably be processing dilemmas around perception, what – and who – to believe. Or saturated facts.

In fact, the fact is, many facts change, and facts can get us into as much trouble as they can also help us out.

One of the most enlightening fact-finding missions you can embark upon is to explore your dreams.

One of the most enlightening fact-finding missions you can embark upon is to explore your dreams. Your dreams don’t yield universal facts. They yield personal facts – your personal beliefs about the world based on your experience of it. Best of all, your dreams yield your unconscious personal beliefs, the ‘facts of life’ that unconsciously drive the way you see your life and the way you live it.

Discovering your personal unconscious facts of life helps you to understand why you see life in the way that you do, why you respond to life in the way that you do, why you experience life in the way that you do. Once you become aware of your unconscious facts of life, the camouflage drops away, and you see yourself and your life in a new way. You may feel, looking back, that you have been deceived by those unconscious beliefs. Yes, yes, and yes, but be kind to yourself because you put them in place to protect yourself from dangers that once felt real.

As I said earlier, camouflage is a good trick, finely honed by nature to protect through deception.

Facts change. A sign at Manly Library, viral on Twitter, Photo: @Dane_Murray

(I took a five minute break there to stretch and make a cup of tea before reviewing what I had written. I flicked to the news screen at the same time, and this title jumped out at me: “When fact becomes fiction”. It’s the story about an Australian library that tongue-in-cheek proposed to move Lance Armstrong’s non-fiction books to the fiction section following “the disgraced cyclist’s own confession that his inspirational story is a lie”. I’ll leave you to ponder the context.)

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Rainbow shades of grey

Posted on October 11, 2012 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

“Why do we dream in black and white?” It’s a question I’m often asked, and it always makes me smile. “We don’t,” I reply. “You don’t remember noticing colours in your dreams, so you assume you dream in black and white. And shades of grey. But now you know you can dream in colour, you will.”

Within days – or nights – such dreamers excitedly report colours. A flash of red, perhaps, or a golden sunset, then a sudden rush of colourful details until the dream is as colourful as waking life or perhaps even vibrantly supersaturated, super surreal.

Yet in another sense, we do tend to dream in black and white, the black and white of opposites. Risk and safety for example.

Yet in another sense, we do tend to dream in black and white, the black and white of opposites.

Look closely at most dreams and you will see at least one pair of opposites. A dream might feature good and evil, risk and safety, crowded and alone, deep and shallow, new and old, faith and doubt, the black and white – the either or – of issues that conflict us.

Are you a black and white thinker? Do you see the world in black and white, right and wrong, good and evil? Do I hear a resounding ‘no’? But look deeper, and especially look at those pairs of opposites offered on a platter in your dreams. A dream theme peppered with risk and safety suggests you may – at least unconsciously – look at risk and safety as mutually exclusive alternatives, black and white, no shades of grey. Perhaps you see life as frighteningly risky so you run for certain safety, or you see life as suffocatingly safe so you choose the high adventure of risk. No shades of grey.

When you find your black and white blind spot, ask yourself who, in your early life, influenced your perspective. Continuing the example, you’ll probably find at least one parent or guardian valued risk to the exclusion of safety, or safety to the exclusion of risk, and you either followed suit and took on the same values, or you retaliated in fear to occupy the opposite position. Your current values reflect your beliefs – about risk and safety in this example – and those beliefs are often based on your emotional experiences.

When you are awake to your dreams, you can choose to begin the healing work of finding a balance point between opposites – the Tao, the ‘middle path’.

This deep work involves recognising your shadow (what you see as bad, the black to your white).

This deep work begins not with a decision to simply walk the middle path between black and white, but to explore and heal the origin of your beliefs and the emotions that cemented them in black and white. It involves recognising your shadow (what you see as bad, the black to your white), the shadowy urge to take risks which must be repressed in the name of supreme safety, or the shadowy urge to stay safe which must be repressed in the name of adventurous risk. It involves understanding and embracing your shadow, loving that part of yourself, integrating it into your being instead of banishing it from your kingdom, and when you do this, the black and white of your staunchly upheld perspective gives way to an infinity of possibilities etched in far more than fifty shades of grey. Or colour. Why live in grey when you can live in colour?

When you know that you can dream in colour, you do. When you know that you can live in colour, you do.

I prefer to take poetic licence and see a rainbow spectrum of brilliant colours between black and white.

I’m not really one for shades of grey. I prefer to take poetic licence and see a rainbow spectrum of brilliant colours between black and white. It feels more intuitively correct.

Think of the font colour menu in Microsoft Word: black at the top left leading through a range of colours to white at the bottom right.

Scientifically speaking, white light contains all the rainbow colours mixed together (you only see the rainbow when you shine white light through a glass prism, or when sunlight gets refracted by raindrops), and black is the absence of all colour. But look again. Scientifically speaking, black pigment is made up from different coloured dyes, and white pigment is generally the absence of coloured pigment.

Step through and beyond the rainbow into a world rich in colour.

Let’s leave the physics and semantics of black and white, and, while we’re at it, the spelling of grey or gray, colour or color, licence or license, and delve into the poetic heart of the matter.

Let your dreams help you to drop your veils of black and white, and to step through and beyond the rainbow into a world rich in colour.

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Bring it on!

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

When a dream shows you a wonderful, uplifting, positive symbol, you can use it to spin a little dream alchemy to accelerate the manifestation of excellent outcomes into your life.

There are many tips throughout this blog describing how to transform a negative aspect of a dream into a positive one by visualising the change over and over again. For example, if you dreamed of a little bird, trapped and unable to fly high, and related your dream to feeling trapped in your career, you can visualise the little bird freed from its trap, flying free and high. What this visualisation does is communicate with your unconscious mind, using its own symbolic language, to change those unconscious beliefs that have been stopping you from flying high in your career.

Now, imagine something happens at work to give you a glimpse of what it would be like to fly high in your career, to feel free instead of trapped.

But remember, what dreams do is process your experiences of the last 24-48 hours to update your view of the world and your place in it. In this way, they are the blueprint of your future, as the future is most likely to turn out according to your beliefs and experiences.

Now, imagine something happens at work to give you a glimpse of what it would be like to fly high in your career, to feel free instead of trapped. Your dream might process this experience resulting in a dream of a resplendent bird flying high, up and far away from where it had been trapped. Such a dream would suggest your beliefs are changing, that you are beginning to see that there is nothing holding you back from flying high.

Your dream might show a bird flying high to reflect this feeling.

That being so, how long are you going to wait for this belief to fully form? This is where the dream alchemy practice comes in. By simply visualising this positive part of the dream – the resplendent bird flying high, up and far away from where it had been trapped – and making sure you add uplifting feelings of joy, freedom, and ease to the visualisation, you can consolidate your new belief and accelerate its manifestation in your life.

What will you manifest in this example? A sudden insight that the trap was all of your own making, an opportunity to fly high and, possibly, some synchronicities in the shape of resplendent birds and high flying symbols peppering your days awesomely.

[Extract from 101 Dream Interpretation Tips, Jane Teresa Anderson]

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How to use recurring dreams to resolve practical life issues

Posted on July 6, 2012 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 3 Comments

What kind of practical results can you expect to see in your life when you understand a dream and apply dream alchemy?

Ian’s recurring dream is being being stuck in a corner with large balls coming at him.

Last month I was a guest on Ruby and Dave’s breakfast show on Radio 94.9, chatting about dreams and taking calls from listeners. One of the callers, Ian, asked about a recurring dream he’s been experiencing for many years. Being radio, where we need to keep things short and sweet, he summarised his dream as being stuck in a corner with large balls coming at him. In just those few words, he painted a vivid picture, and I’m sure you can imagine how he feels in this dream, and how that feeling spills over into his day as his dream lingers on his mind.

Actually it starts the other way around, because dreams reflect our conscious and unconscious experiences of the last 24-48 hours. So whenever Ian feels stuck and cornered by what life seems to be throwing at him, he has this dream, and because the dream doesn’t offer a solution to his predicament, he wakes with a residue of the same feeling colouring his day.

Because the dream is unresolved, his situation is unresolved. He hasn’t managed to find a way out of that cornered feeling.

Ian’s dream is unresolved. It reflects a situation in his life that is unresolved. I didn’t get to hear the whole dream, so I didn’t have the opportunity to pinpoint the unconscious beliefs and conditioning that cause Ian to experience this stuck and cornered feeling from time to time in his life. What we do know is that because the dream is unresolved, his situation is unresolved. He hasn’t managed to find a way out of that stuck in a corner feeling.

Dreams help to identify unconscious beliefs or attitudes that are blocking you from seeing fulfilling solutions.

While our dreams reflect our waking life experiences of the previous two days, they also work on finding solutions – on problem solving. (That’s why sleeping on a problem is a good idea, as you’ll often wake with a solution, regardless of whether you remember the dream.) If you look closely at complex dreams, you’ll see they frequently involve trying to solve a dilemma or problem, such as how to find your way somewhere, how to escape a tsunami, how to feed too many dinner guests. The dilemma or problem is usually framed at the start of the dream, and the rest of the dream is devoted to trying a variety of solutions. If a solution is found, you may wake with an insight into a current problem, though your dream solution may also reflect a stuck-in-a-rut solution you habitually apply that feels promising but only keeps you stuck. If your dream does not find a solution – if it is an unresolved dream – it reflects a waking life situation that is unresolved, and the likely cause is an unconscious belief or attitude that is blinding you to seeing a fulfilling solution.

If you were to meet Ian, what would you discover? What might his situation be?

If you were to meet Ian, you might find that he seems cornered and stuck. Or you might find that he seems to be very driven, active, and apparently coping with all that life throws at him. If this second scenario is the case, Ian’s recurring dream reveals that he is driven by a belief that life throws overwhelming difficulties at him that must be fought and overcome or else he’ll be stuck and cornered. This belief would most likely have been conditioned by Ian’s early life experiences, the emotional shadows of which haunt him in his recurring dream. Ian may attribute much of his success to his drive, and be blind to the fact that he could achieve all his success and more in a less stressful way and by feeling encouraged and inspired by passion rather than driven by fear of being cornered.

Again, because I didn’t get to hear the whole dream or talk with Ian for longer, I don’t know where he’s feeling the pressure in his life, so let’s imagine some possible situations:

WORK

He might feel stuck and cornered at work, overwhelmed with demands.

He might be a high achiever at work, daily battling overwhelming demands.

RELATIONSHIP

He might feel stuck and cornered in a relationship, feeling overwhelmed by his partner’s demands.

He might exert his independence and freedom in a relationship, feeling overwhelmed by his partner’s demands.

FINANCES

He might feel stuck and cornered in his finances, overwhelmed by debts.

He might be focussed on amassing wealth and security, feeling overwhelmed by the cost of living.

COMMUNICATION

He might feel stuck and cornered when it comes to expressing himself, feeling overwhelmed by criticism and judgement of others.

He might be persuasively expressive, or even opinionated and defensive, feeling overwhelmed by a belief that others will criticise and judge him.

There are many more potential situations, but these serve to illustrate the point.

In dream therapy we would identify the situation and explore the psychology behind it before doing an appropriate dream alchemy practice to reprogram the belief that has been blinding Ian, into a new supportive belief.

What kind of practical results can you expect to see in your life when you understand a dream and apply dream alchemy?

Let’s cut to the chase and answer the question I posed at the beginning of this blog: What kind of practical results can you expect to see in your life when you understand a dream and apply dream alchemy?

If Ian understood his dream and applied dream alchemy, what kind of practical results might he expect to see in the suggested scenarios?

IAN’S WORK

In his work, he might expect the usual workload to suddenly feel less demanding, perhaps more inspiring. He might notice that demanding people become less so, or that they take their demands to others, sensing the shift in Ian’s psyche. He might notice that work suddenly seems less a battlefield and more a joy, and that success comes with more ease and less stress. Rather than coping with overwhelming demands, he might feel more creative about setting a productive, healthy pace.

IAN’S RELATIONSHIP

What kind of changes might Ian expect to see in his relationship?

In his relationship, he might notice his partner feels less demanding, or he might gain insight into her real needs and expectations and realise that some of these can be easily negotiated or fulfilled. Or he might notice that his partner seeks help for her demands elsewhere – perhaps talking things through with friends or a counsellor – or that she suddenly seems to resolve issues herself. He might feel less driven to express or protect his independence and freedom, and realise that he can enjoy these while also enjoying spending more time with his partner, pursuing common goals, and being more intimate. Or the relationship may end, prompted by Ian’s shift no longer fuelling the old dynamics.

IAN’S FINANCES

What kind of changes might Ian expect to see in his finances?

In his finances, he might expect his debt situation to ease. This might be through an increase in income or funding, an insight into a better way to negotiate or handle his debts, sudden clarity on how to reduce excess living costs, or unexpected workable offers from his debtors. Or he might notice a shift away from focussing on amassing wealth and security, and toward appreciating other areas of his life. He might notice that the money he spends on living suddenly seems less of a cost and more of a reward.

IAN’S COMMUNICATION

In his communications, he might notice that people seem less critical or judgemental. He might suddenly notice people being supportive, or offering helpful insight. He might notice a shift in his thoughts about himself and others, becoming less critical and judgemental. He might feel less defensive in communication and more interested in understanding other people’s views. He might find people interested in what he has to say, and feel less inclined to add drama and persuasion in an effort to underline his validity. He will find communication eases.

That different response changes how the other players in the situation respond, which feeds back to the dreamer, and so on.

As you can see from the examples, accurate interpretation and appropriate dream alchemy results in the dreamer experiencing positive, practical change in a situation which had previously been problematical.

In most cases, the situation remains the same, but the dreamer’s perception of it shifts, so he responds differently. That different response changes how the other players in the situation respond, which feeds back to the dreamer, and so on.

Look at your life.

What do you see?

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The open door

Posted on February 3, 2012 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 1 Comment

Twenty-one years ago, I dreamed I was trying to get into a building by pushing through one of its solid brick walls. It was hard work that got me nowhere at all. All it did was exhaust me. I stood back, walked around the house, and discovered an open door. I realised that the door had been open all this time.

This short, simple dream helped me to see that there was a much easier way for me to get to where I wanted to be. I realised that I believed the way was tough, that I needed to push to achieve my goal. What an exhausting belief!

I believed the way was tough, that I needed to push to achieve my goal. What an exhausting belief!

I had this dream a year before I began my research into dreams, and my interpretation, while insightful and life-changing for me, was basic. If you brought this same dream to me for a dream therapy session, we would spend a full hour exploring the many concurrent levels of meaningful insight such a dream offers, and I would lead you through a dream alchemy practice to transform limiting beliefs that block your progress into more rewarding ones that open your way.

When I had this dream, I hadn’t done the research, hadn’t developed and tested the concept of dream alchemy, hadn’t seen or experienced the power of working with dreams at such a deep level. It was enough for me, back then, to stand back and look at where I pushed hard in life – and why – and then to look for the open door, the opportunity I was not seeing. And this approach worked quite magically for me.

Now, looking back with twenty years professional experience in working with dreams, I also see the building as me, the brick walls as my solid beliefs, my pushing on the walls as a readiness to breakthrough my beliefs (my illusions of reality), and the open door as the result of surrender to change.

Surrender to change

Each interpretation is correct. The same dream – any dream- can be interpreted on a physical level (pushing hard is exhausting you, there’s an easier way), a mental level (you have a belief that you need to push to achieve your goal), an emotional level (you have this belief because of the emotional rewards it gives you, and because you fear what will happen if you release this belief), and a spiritual level (surrender). And this is only a beginning. There are many other interpretation levels, each adding dimensions to the one emerging picture of why your life is the way it is at this particular point in time, and what you can do to change this, if you wish.

The journey – as the old cliché reminds us – is more important than the destination. A goal gives you purpose, inspiration, motivation, and a sense of achievement when you attain it, but it’s the insights you receive along the way that build physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual mastery.

No matter which goal you choose, the lessons inherent in the journey will be the same.

Choose goals that feel important and meaningful to you, or goals that feel fun and enjoyable, or goals that make you face your fears. Pick goals that are big, or small, long-term, or short-term, because no matter which goal you choose, the lessons inherent in the journey will be the same.

Twenty-one years ago, I walked through an open door. I no longer remember the goal I had in mind at the time of the dream, but the lesson was life-changing.

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2012 Wake up call

Posted on December 29, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (96.3MB) | Embed

What’s your recurring dream? If you’ve been following my blog, listening to my podcasts, and reading my books, and you’re still experiencing a recurring dream, today’s post is your wake up call. It’s time to put what you’ve been learning into action if you want to enjoy life changing results in 2012!

Let’s review the basics:

1. A dream is the experience you have, during sleep, while your brain processes your conscious and unconscious experiences of the last 24-48 hours.

2. Think of this processing as like updating your hard drive. Your brain and mind compare your latest experiences to all your past experiences, drawing conclusions – beliefs – about how life works. Mostly you consolidate your oldest beliefs. Sometimes you modify your beliefs. Sometimes you completely overwrite an old belief and wake up with a transformed personal view of how the world works.

Imagine a painter trying to capture your mind’s fast processing of experiences, emotions, and beliefs, as an abstract picture.

3. During dreaming, you are more in touch with your unconscious mind, which is why dreams seem surreal. Imagine a painter trying to capture your mind’s fast processing of experiences, emotions, and beliefs, as an abstract picture. She might use metaphor, analogy, colours to represent emotions, shapes to represent belief structures, any number of creative techniques to help you ‘get the picture’ – or, at least, to store it in your archives under ‘update on how life works’.

4. The magic begins when you know how to ‘get the picture’ – how to interpret a dream – because this helps you to understand your unique mindset. You get to understand your unconscious beliefs, both the ones that work for you and the ones that work against you in your everyday life.

5. You can then see which beliefs need to be changed to get the kind of waking life results you desire. If you stop there, you probably won’t see those results. You need to apply a deeper magic – dream alchemy.

Dream alchemy is a way of working with your unique dream symbols to reprogram your unconscious beliefs.

6. Dream alchemy is a process you can use to transform an unconscious belief. It’s a way of working with your unique dream symbols to reprogram your unconscious. It works because your unconscious mind relates to your personal dream symbols – after all, it created them!

7. Now, back to your recurring dream: Since dreams reflect the last 24-48 hours, your recurring dream reflects a recurring waking life issue. Have you noticed that most recurring dreams are unhappy, frustrating, or unresolved? That’s because they reflect an unhappy, frustrating, or unresolved issue in your life.

8. To resolve that issue, apply the formula: Dream interpretation + Dream alchemy = Success + an end to your recurring dream.

Ok, that’s your wake up call. Do your dream alchemy to make 2012 your best year ever!

Listen as DK asks me about his recurring dream of driving a car that goes way out of control … and more.

On a more light-hearted level, here’s an hour’s entertainment about recurring dreams. DK, host of At the Watercooler on Z Talk Radio, invited me onto his show. In this podcast, he asks me about his recurring dream of driving a car that goes way out of control, and, excited by the discovery, moves on to ask me about another recurring dream featuring buildings.

Listeners ask about their dreams and we cover lucid dreaming, falling and floating dreams, a variety of toilet dreams, dreams of snakes, dream sharing, and the question of astral travelling. Oh, and we also talk about dream alchemy and much more.

Listen here. Note: the interview starts halfway through the podcast, so move the slider halfway, or enjoy DK’s interview with the guest before me, Jane Congdon, author of It Started With Dracula.

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Spot the belief

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 2 Comments

Had a tough day? Ready for a spot of light relief, a bit of fun, a dream interpretation game that’s easy to do yet powerfully insightful? You may never look at your dreams in the same way ever again. It’s called Spot the Belief. This is what to do:

For each of the following dreams, see if you can spot the belief affecting the outcome. Let’s start with a simple example.

Jim’s dream

“I was waiting in line to buy a theatre ticket, but people kept pushing in front of me. Finally I got to the front, but then the ticket office closed and I was directed to join a long queue at another counter.”

Jim’s dream: “Finally I got to the front, but then the ticket office closed.”

Can you spot Jim’s belief?

It’s probably ‘My needs are less important than other people’s’.

Did you guess differently?

You might have got ‘I always seem to be kept waiting,’ or ‘Just when I think I’ve made it, I’m right back to where I started, or worse’. Or you might have got, ‘Patience doesn’t pay,’ or ‘You’ve got to be pushy to get what you want in life’.

These are all good answers. They’re also very similar. We’ll come back to look at these similarities later, but, for now, you know how to play the game. Don’t worry about getting the right answer, as there may be several similar right answers. Just write down the belief that you see in each of the following dreams. So, are you ready? Go, spot the belief!

Greta’s dream

“I was climbing a hill and decided I wanted to go back down again, but there were too many rocks and precipices below where I was standing. I thought that if I walked along one of the precipices I would eventually find an easy way down. The trouble was, even the precipice path led upwards, so in my endeavour to find an easy way back down I just kept climbing higher and higher. I ended up feeling stranded with no way back down.”

Greta’s dream: “I ended up feeling stranded with no way back down.”

Can you spot Greta’s belief? Write it down. (I’ll give you my answer later.)

Nelson’s dream

“I am standing waist deep in water when I notice a shark coming towards me. I am so terrified, I freeze. I close my eyes and hope it will go away. All is quiet for a while and I think the shark has gone, but when I open my eyes I see several more sharks lurking in the water.”

Can you spot Nelson’s belief? Write it down.

Bronwyn’s dream

“I am standing waist deep in water when I notice a shark coming towards me. I am terrified but I try to make friends with the shark to stop it from biting me. I look it in the eye and begin to talk and, amazingly, as I do this it changes from a shark into a huge playful fish. We end up playing swimming games. I am aware it is strong and powerful, but it doesn’t frighten me any more.”

Bronwyn’s dream: “Amazingly, as I do this it changes from a shark into a huge playful fish.”

Can you spot Bronwyn’s belief? Write it down.

Karen’s dream

“I keep having dreams involving babies aged about one year old. The dreams are different, but it always turns out that the babies fail to thrive after their first birthday. They become weak, or sick, or I lose sight of them.”

Can you spot Karen’s belief? Write it down.

Your dream

Yes, that’s you! Choose a recurring dream or a short one that’s easy to summarise. First write your dream out in a few sentences to match the length and style of the ones in this article. Then, to get some objective distance, pretend it’s not your dream.

Can you spot the belief? Write it down.

Now, keep an open mind, please, as you read on!

Dreams reveal your unconscious beliefs. They’re not so much about the beliefs you know about, they’re about the beliefs you have carried with you, deep in your unconscious mind, for a long time. How long? Usually from childhood or from traumatic events in your life. They’re the beliefs you take on because they seem to make sense at the time.

If you believe there’s a pile of gold buried under the tree, you’ll dig it up.

The trouble with beliefs is that you act on them. If you believe there’s a pile of gold buried under the tree, you’ll dig it up. If you believe you’re not worthy of being well paid for your skills, you will apply for lower paid jobs or set your fees low. This is as true for the beliefs you don’t know about as for those you do know about. In fact, it’s worse for those you don’t know about because your actions are automatic, with no chance of being vetoed by your wiser judgement.

Most dreams reveal your unconscious beliefs. You can identify them using this Spot the Belief method. At first you may reject them. ‘No, that’s not my belief! Quite the opposite!’ But stop and ask yourself, ‘What kind of actions would a person with this belief take?’ If the belief you’ve spotted is right, you’ll recognise those actions as ones you have taken. I promise you, when you strike gold in identifying that belief, your eyes will be opened and, once you’ve recovered from the shock, certain aspects of your life will suddenly make a lot more sense.

Let’s see how this works for Greta, Nelson and the other dreamers.

These are the beliefs I spotted for each dreamer:

Greta
‘Backing down is not an option.’

Greta’s belief: Backing down is not an option.

Nelson
‘Ignoring my fears and hoping for the best works for a while and then things go from bad to worse.’

Bronwyn
‘When I face my fears I overcome them.’

Karen
‘Things go well for about a year, and then they stop thriving.’

I bet your results were similar. For example, for Greta you might have had ‘The only way is up, no matter how this makes me feel’. Or ‘There’s no easy way out’.

Usually, when you look at the whole dream instead of just a summary of it, you will see plenty of clues to help zone in accurately on the dreamer’s deepest belief. However you really do need to start by working with a summary of the dream, as illustrated here, to get an idea of the belief, and then move on to examine the longer version of the dream to increase accuracy. The final step comes when the dreamer gets the big ‘aha’ and can see how the belief has been driving their decisions and actions, delivering the results they are experiencing in their life.

Unconscious beliefs lead to blindly driven actions, and blindly driven actions lead to outcomes that may not match the goals you consciously set yourself.

So there you have it. Beliefs lead to actions, and actions lead to outcomes. Unconscious beliefs lead to blindly driven actions, and blindly driven actions lead to outcomes that may not match the goals you consciously set yourself.

I can hear your question! ‘If an unconscious belief is not creating the results you want, how can you change it?’

That’s where dream alchemy and, in particular, the use of dream alchemy practices come in. You can read more about this, and how to create suitable dream alchemy practices to change unconscious beliefs in my book Dream Alchemy.

Not all unconscious beliefs work against you. Bronwyn’s dream revealed a magical unconscious belief. Such a dream may come along as a prelude to a challenging time, a gentle reminder that all will be well. Remember, though, that night by night your dreaming mind updates its grasp on ‘what life is all about and how to survive it’. We all change, and, from time to time, a dream will reveal the death of an old belief or the birth of a new one. When Nelson applies a dream alchemy practice to change his beliefs about the best way to cope with fear he may dream a dream such as Bronwyn’s.

Now you know a little about the unconscious beliefs driving Jim, Greta, Nelson, Bronwyn and Karen, how do you imagine their lives to be? What kind of actions do you think they have been taking in their lives? What beliefs would better suit them?

Karen’s belief: Things go well for about a year, and then they stop thriving.

Take Karen, for example. Karen had a dream job very early in her working life. Sadly it came to an abrupt end after a year when her employer absconded with the company funds. It was a traumatic time for Karen. She had put so much of her energy and hope into the job which she saw as a beginning to a perfect career. At that point, Karen took on the unconscious belief that ‘Things go well for about a year, and then they stop thriving’. In the years that followed, whenever a job, relationship or project that Karen was involved in neared the one year mark she began to make decisions and take actions based on the expectation that the job, relationship or project would fail. And so they did. And, until she understood her recurring dream, Karen was totally unaware of any of this.

How did you go with spotting the belief for your dream? Has this belief driven your decisions and actions? What kind of outcomes resulted in your life? Are you happy with these, or are you ready to apply some dream alchemy and start to see the kind of outcomes you would prefer? It’s your life!

[Copyright Jane Teresa Anderson, March 2007. First published as a Dream Sight article.]

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Episode 33 The Dream Show: Dreams and the Law of Attraction

Posted on November 27, 2009 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

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Episode 33 of our free weekly podcast, The Dream Show, is now up. Listen here or on iTunes.

I am often asked about the Law of Attraction, and whether nightmares and dreams with negative vibes attract negative people and events into our lives. It’s a good question, and one I explore in today’s podcast, episode 33.

The real secret to getting the Law of Attraction to bring you what you consciously want – and this is overlooked by just about everyone teaching LOA methods – is to get your unconscious mind on side. Why? Because your unconscious mind is far more powerful than your conscious mind.

For example, you might choose to focus on sending out a positive vibe about money all day. You spend all day doing this, feeling totally positive and good about it. As far as you are aware, you have absolutely no block to having vast amounts of money in your life. However, your unconscious mind may have a different agenda.

You may have unconscious doubts, limiting beliefs and blocks about having so much money.

Because your unconscious mind is stronger than your conscious mind, it wins in the battle of the vibes. You don’t see the results you wanted and you declare the LOA to be a crock. But it isn’t. The LOA is working for you perfectly. Your overall vibe, dictated by your unconscious mind, is attracting according to the law. You are receiving according to the vibe you are giving out.

Dream interpretation identifies your unconscious beliefs, so you can easily pick the ones that are working against your conscious wishes. Interested to find out more?

Listen here (episode 33).

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Episode 31 The Dream Show: Destiny or free will?

Posted on November 13, 2009 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

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Episode 31 of our free weekly podcast, The Dream Show, is now up.

A man dreamed of five tornadoes ripping through a calm lake, and he believed his dream to be prophetic, a warning of financial loss. Was the dream prophetic? What did he do, on waking from his dream?

How should we respond when we feel a dream is giving us a warning?

Today’s episode looks at the choices we make, based on our beliefs, and explores other wise choices we might make instead.

There’s also a bit of a laugh in the story of the Men in Black and how they helped Michael, in a dream, to look at life in a different way.

Beliefs, choices, changes, and how to be ‘other’ wise.

Listen to episode 31.

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