So, let’s imagine that you are having a dream where you are being chased by a big growling bear. You are frightened beyond measure because it is about to devour you. At the moment that you are about to get pounced on, you suddenly wake up. This is from the category that I call “negative dreams” where the only emotion you feel in the dream is negative. You are probably thinking, when you wake up from a dream like this, that you are just so happy that the dream is not real life, that it happened in dream life, and now you are ok. That would be a mistake! When I have a dream like this, despite the terror, I tell myself to have the opposite reaction, which is that this “negative dream” is trying to wake me up and take me to a positive place. I can do this now because of decades of working through scary dreams with myself and others. I rub my hands together and get enthusiastic because I know that whatever the dream has to bring to me, it is perfect.

However, you have to be a bit cautious when you have an intense dream like the bear dream. You don’t want to go in there right away and play with the bear. It will put you into something like a trauma response. When you are dealing with a very intense dream, you need some distance, some detachment so that the fear doesn’t overcome you. Writing the dream in a journal is a good idea because it puts distance from what is going on internally to an outside source. You want the fear and the bear outside of you, not inside with fear. This is probably why in some past cultures people had the practice of telling a group of people what they dreamt the night before.

The next thing you need to understand, when you have a fear-based dream, is that it is about your past. At some point, probably more than once, you were attacked by a metaphorical bear. It happened. So you need to answer two questions. What is a metaphorical bear and when did the attack occur? A bear as a metaphor represents someone in your past who had a lot of negative strength and used it against you. It occurred when you were in a vulnerable state without much strength. So why do you have the dream now? If you can ask this question, then you are onto being able to change the dream into a positive quality. The dream comes to you so that you can develop something new in you that you never fully had developed before. It means that you are ready to develop the new quality in yourself. The bear tells you what the positive quality you need is, and running away gives you a clue of what you are going to do once you have the quality. There is another reason you have the dream. It is a bit of a warning to you. It is a prediction of the future. If you do not transform the fear of being mauled into having a lot of inner strength, then the real life experience of being attacked is going to happen again and you will go running away from the situation.

Let’s play some more. What if you were a really positive bear with a lot of inner strength? If you had a lot of inner strength, what would you be able to accomplish that you cannot do right now? Here is where the playing is involved. Keep the negative bear in the journal and out of your mind, at least temporarily. Now go inside the positive bear and feel what is like to be strong. You can do this by standing and imagining that your bear is in front of you. Feel it. Hold the feeling. This is exactly why you have had the dream. This experience gives you a sense of the quality of inner strength. And once you are in the bear’s skin, then you ask what you are now capable of doing that you couldn’t do before. What can you do besides running away?

The next step is very important. More play. Have a conversation with the inner bear. That’s right. Go inside and speak to the bear. The inner bear is a representation of higher positive energy that we call inner strength. Inner strength energy is connected to higher energy that contains all positive energy so it has a “sense of knowing” that goes beyond simple reasoning. First you can thank the bear for coming into your life. It is so happy to be there. Then you can ask the bear what the next steps are for developing the quality. It is connected to higher wisdom so it will know. As you continue to do the work and are able to embrace the bear, the old fearful bear will fade away because it is no longer needed. (And when you find yourself really stuck in a negative emotion that you cannot get out of, consult a professional that you trust.)

Try the same thing with a snake dream and feel what it is like to have incredible flexibility and to be able to shed your old wounds lIke shedding skin. Try it with an eagle and feel what it is like to have great vision.

What if your dream is all positive? imagine a dream where you are in a beautiful garden? If your dream is all positive, then you do not need the distancing step as in a negative dream. You need playful action of being in the garden, even being a rose, for instance. You can smell the rose or you can be the rose, and you can talk to the rose. The rose will want to inform you of how to be in the world. It will have messages for you, because, like the bear, it represents a positive quality that is connected to a higher source. Its quality is inner beauty. What could do you if you had inner beauty?

You can think of the dream world as a real place that you can revisit in waking like. You can have a lucid dream while you are awake. And if you take the ultimate leap of playfulness, you can begin to see the “real” world as a dream. When you can take this step, then real magic begins. So step into the world of magic by playing with your dreams.

More coming in the next post!!