My name is Jay Chaudhagam and welcome to a meditation on interpreting your dreams,
Your shadow theater.
Dreams are a private shadow theater.
Dreams are the original home movies,
Self-made,
Self-revealing,
Private motion and emotion pictures.
And these pictures,
These movies are edited by our conditioning and broadcast to an audience of one.
And this one is not just a witness,
But is also up usually on center stage.
Our dreaming consciousness is astonishingly creative and improvisational,
Fleshing out our shadow elements in instantly populated dramas that hold our attention.
Dreams are private shadow theater.
Our shadow elements don't sit quietly in the dark,
Not making a fuss.
Like bad children sent to their rooms,
Rather they find outlets.
They find expression in our dreams,
However indirectly.
Many of the characters in our dreams are shadow part cast in human and non-human form.
For example,
Our disowned power might show up in our dream as a frightening carnivore.
Our shadow not only manifests in multiple forms in our dreams,
But also plays a central role in the genesis of our dreams.
Dreams often dramatize conflict we are having,
Difficult decisions or relationship or work challenges.
They make explicit,
Through such engrossing drama,
What may not be obvious while we are in the waking state.
Our shadow elements are dramatized through form and feeling in our dreams,
Giving us the opportunity to see through them,
To relate to them in ways that can help further and deepen us.
Think of your dreams as short stories in which everything matters and everything has its place,
Including the kind of details that you think don't mean much,
Or you think that they seem silly,
Bizarre or inconsequential.
Imagine that the author,
You in the robes of your dreaming consciousness,
Has a three-dimensional palette,
Plus the ability to improvise entire scenes in a fraction of a second using whatever props are handy,
To create instant doors that open into new realities,
Sudden mirrors that show very different sides of you,
And much,
Much more.
To your rational mind,
Dreaming isn't much more than a discombobulated madhouse operated by its inmates.
But to the core of your being,
It's a multidimensional show,
Mirroring all that you are in a dazzling array of fittingly costumed roles,
Inviting you to peer into the shadows.
You can begin working with your dreams by choosing one to reflect on.
And I'm going to give you some navigational guides to help you get started.
Go ahead and close your eyes and recount your dream in present tense.
Recount any recent dream that you can remember and do so as if you're speaking to a very interested empathetic listener.
This will help you more fully enter into the felt sense and subtext subtleties of your dreams.
Feel free to repeat or exaggerate certain lines so long as you're doing so doesn't distract you from their flow.
Keep your intuitive radar on high.
Listen to the narrative and emotional flow of your dream without getting caught up in analysis or interpretation.
And as much as possible,
Keep your attention undivided and your curiosity alive.
Notice any associations that arise as you attune to your dream,
But don't get sidetracked by those associations.
Notice personal details.
Take note of your emotional state,
Body movements,
And shifts in delivery as you recount your dream,
Registering these details at the same time that you're focusing on the content of the dream.
Remain aware of the key highlights.
If you lose track of parts of your dream,
Which often happens,
Especially with longer dreams,
Don't worry.
Just stay present with what you can recall,
Tuning into what stands out about the dream.
When you start to work with your dream and you don't have to start with the beginning and bring more focus to the prevailing feeling of it,
The parts you lost track of may return to you in whole or in part.
And if they don't,
That's okay.
Stay with what you can remember.
Track the emotional quality of your dream from the beginning to the end.
Listen very closely to every shift in the feeling tone of your dream as you speak it out,
Including when your voice goes flat,
Gets muted or speeds up.
Can I notice what these shifts stir in you?
Let go of having to find clear meaning.
Sometimes you'll have no sense of what to make of a particular dream,
And that's quite natural.
All you have to do is hold space for such dreams,
Putting no pressure on yourself to figure them out.
Reflect on all of the above what has been said for a bit,
And then again recount your dream,
Doing so slowly,
Pausing after key points,
Taking note of further insights that may arise.
You may find that later in the day or even the next day or two,
You receive more clarification about your dream.
While we are in our waking state but are not aware of our tendency to project,
We just do it.
For example,
If we are conditioned to be nice and non-confrontational,
We can easily project our repressed anger onto others so that we get to see them as angry,
Whether they are really that or not.
And we're just trying to contrast them to us.
While we're in the dreaming state,
We projectile project,
And the result is that our landscape is largely populated by beings,
Human or otherwise,
That represent whatever in us we view as other than us.
Further,
Our dreams are filled with enough convincing realism and 3D visuals to keep us,
With few exceptions,
Taking the whole show as unquestioned reality.
To work with such projection,
Take a particular dream element,
Be it a person,
An animal or an object.
The first step is to speak as if you indeed are it.
Second,
Speak to it.
And finally,
Third,
Speak with it,
Engaging back and forth in a dialogue between this element and you.
For example,
While you're working on projections in a dream,
You might find yourself walking down a dark road and see a house.
House has got lights on it.
You go inside and you find a huge bear sleeping on the floor.
It wakes up,
Looks at you,
Comes towards you.
Now you're really scared and you can't even move.
It stands up looking directly at you.
And that's all you can remember.
Now,
Close your eyes and breathe a bit deeper.
Now speak to the bear as though you're there in the house with it.
You say,
Please don't hurt me.
Don't hurt me.
Now respond to what was just said as if you are the bear speaking to the you in the dream.
And the bear says,
I don't want to hurt you.
Now you respond to this as yourself.
Then why are you in this house?
What are you doing here?
As if you're the bear,
I live here,
I belong here.
Hearing this,
You feel kind of relieved.
Perhaps tearing up.
There's a long pause.
Now speak as though you are the house.
And you would ask the house,
You would say something like,
I have room for both of you.
Now this could be an instance where you had an overbearing father.
And as a child,
You learned for the sake of survival to be soft.
The bear in this dream is your own power slumbering until it enters its space.
This dream was revealing that your power was in your shadow all the time waiting for you to move toward it,
To claim it and take ownership of it.
Engaging in such dreamwork brings forth information and a felt knowingness that might otherwise have remained all but inaccessible,
Closeted away somewhere in your shadow.
We start to recognize that a particular dream element,
However strange or alien,
In many cases is none other than an aspect of us.
Realizing this right to our core is a liberating experience,
Deepening our sense of wholeness,
Something that had been cast out of the circle of our being and into our shadow.
And it can now be recovered.
This is a profoundly relevant reclamation project,
A gathering in,
A reconnecting of our scattered parts so that they become known parts of the internal community which makes up our sense of self.
We really grasp the essence of a dream when we approach it with more than our mind,
Seeking revelation rather than just explanation.
We must hear it without ears,
See it without eyes,
Know it without thinking.
We must cultivate as much intimacy as possible with both its details and its mystery.
To work with our dreams is to get first-hand exposure to our shadow elements.
We don't have to go digging for such elements.
In private shadow theatrics of our dreams,
We meet more than what we are,
Along with the opportunity to find more understanding and more wholeness,
A wholeness beyond imagining.
Now put your hands on your heart and notice how you feel.
Reclaiming your wholeness is integrating all parts of you and not disowning any single element because we've judged it as unwanted,
Unnecessary or bad.
Bringing all parts of you together into the illumination,
Into consciousness will help you to be authentic,
Will help you to be at peace with how you show up.
And accepting yourself is the first part on this journey of self-love.
It's only when we can love ourselves that we can only begin to share that love with others.
So in essence,
This dream work is reclaiming the love that we are.
I want you to put your palms together in prayer position at your heart center.
I want you to rub your palms briskly,
Kindling chi prana from that energy vortex that is your palms.
And then when you feel a nice warm ball of energy,
I want you to go ahead and cup your eyes one with each palm and bless yourself.
Let that energy seep into your entire body through your head.
I am love.
I am light.
I am okay.
I am safe.
I am being guided.
I am.
Bringing your hands back to prayer position at your heart center.
Notice how you feel.
And if you could summarize how you feel right now in one word,
What would that be?
And I invite you to go ahead and share that one word in the chat.
So we may all know how you're feeling right now.
