Two nights ago I had a dream where I was going downhill in a sort of half walk, half- run trot about the speed of a camel, and as I approached the bottom a group of about 4 children around the age of 10 or 11 went racing up the hill full of energy and life.

The speed I was running in the dream was about the same that I had done in real life the day before at Cherating Beach in Malaysia after I had been surfing the day before for a few hours in water that had a really strong current which made paddling and walking a real effort.

So when I woke up after the dream and prepared to go out and a do a run I was already feeling tired and depressed, but I also realized that the boys in the dream were symbols for how I needed to be.    When I went out running yesterday,  my first moments were really stiff and extremely slow, but as the run progressed I started to become aware of the dream and the boys’ enthusiasm and energy.     So then I gradually began to act as if I were those boys by feeling what it would be like to be them and so the run turned out to be the best one that I had had in a couple of years.  I went 5 k further than the planned 10k and I also felt more energetic the whole day long.

Lucid dreaming is the ability to change a dreaming while you are dreaming it by being aware that you are dreaming and then doing some kind of intervention to change the outcome to a more positive one.   I am not a big fan of lucid dreaming because I like to see the whole dream and get its entire message before I start intervening in it.    I like to analyze a dream and its symbols and then change the negatives to positives when I am awake.

The steps are first to be dissociated from the negative feelings as if you are stepping back from the dream and looking at without emotion.   If you write the dream down, it can help the detaching process so that whatever is negative does not continue to act on you.   After you have seen the negative emotions and figured out the patterns and principles, then they can be replaced with positive ones that solve the dream.     Finally you try on the positives by being associated into the energy.

Here is the sequence.

1.  Leave the negative feelings that you have associated into in the dream by becoming dissociated through the process of analysis.   It is like stepping out of the negative emotions and looking at them.

2.  From a dissociated point of view, you analyze the negative feelings and symbols until you get their meaning.

3.  Maintaining a dissociated view, you figure out the solution by figuring out the correct principles and positive energies.

4.  Try on the positive solutions in an associated form to see if they work.   If they do, then you just allow them to act in your life by giving them a direction and then they usually do more than you would have expected.   If the feelings do not work well, then you can just back to figuring out a better solution.

Sometimes it is difficult to figure out a solution to a dream,  but if you can remember the negative feelings and the patterns that they generate, then when the same feeling appears in real life during the day, you can stop and begin to try on some new feelings that my work better.    It was really interesting for me to just try on the enthusiasm and energy of a 10 year because it really got me out of rut.