I dedicate this post to all those with me on the 21-Day Challenge - much love and respect :)
"I've got dreams, yeah dreams...to remember."
Buddy Miles, Dreams
"I've got dreams, yeah dreams...to remember."
Buddy Miles, Dreams
A few weeks ago I started writing my dreams down first thing in the morning. By having the intention to remember them the night before it helped me to recall them after I woke up. Initially they seemed quite chaotic and random but then the day after I posted #97 , inspired by Mike Dooley's story in Infinite Possibilities I set myself a 21-Day Challenge to visualise for 5 minutes every night before I fell asleep. (I managed to recruit a few people to join me on this challenge too!)
My dreams changed immediately, they not only became more positive but something else happened too, they started connecting to things that would happen later. For example where I was at 10 Downing Street talking to Margaret Thatcher which made no sense to me. However the next day after spending some time in Chelsea/Pimlico with my girlfriend just as we were leaving the area I saw "The Margaret Thatcher Infirmary". Small coincidence right? I also had a dream where someone I used to teach boxing wanted to work with me again, in a subsequent conversation he confirmed that he did actually want to train with me again and had been meaning to ask. This is not something we'd discussed, in fact we hadn't spoken about boxing for ages - I contacted him to ask if he'd be up for the 21-Day Challenge. The highlight of the dream spookiness however was last week Saturday when I had a dream connected to a friend of a friend - "L". I couldn't see her in the dream but I could sense her and I had the feeling that we were collaborating on a creative project of some kind. I woke up from this dream on Sunday morning and fell asleep returning to it again - I couldn't tell if it was music, poetry, something to do with my blog perhaps...it was like when you see a person and you can't quite remember the name, like it's just on the edge of your memory.
D: "Hey L, how's it going?"
L: "That's weird, I called you back but your phone didn't ring it just went straight to your voice."
D: "OK, well it rang this end....hey this might sound a bit strange but I had a dream about you last night."
L: "Was I slim and lovely?"
D(smiling)"I don't know I couldn't see you. I just kind of...sensed you and I had the feeling that we were collaborating on some sort of creative project."
L:"Didn't you get my messsage?"
D: "No."
L: "I sent you a message on What'sApp"
D: "No I didn't get that."
L: "Hmmm..."
D: "What?"
L: "I was contacting you because my cousin is having a book launch next Sunday and we need a speaker."
D:(The hairs on the back of my neck stand up): "What's the book about?"
L: "It's called Patterns of Daydreams"
I look to my right at the dream diary laying on the couch beside me.
I spoke to L's cousin that day, met him for a drink the next day and the next Sunday was helping host his book launch, an amazing event where I met some really wonderful people. I left there walking on air (just as I visualised I would).
The icing on the cake as far as dreams is that my intuition told me to not over-prepare, to keep it more natural so I didn't practise as much as usual which was a little out of my comfort zone. In fact, the ideas for what I did and said at the event on Sunday actually came from a dream I had the night before. I dreamt I was both hosting the event and practising the material simultaneously on the audience. The scene kept repeating itself like a movie shoot where you get multiple takes as I tried different things. When I woke up I wrote the ideas down and took the two things from the dream which felt right.
They worked in the dream, and they worked on the night.
The lines between the dream-world and this one continue to blur, each one creating the other and I am beginning to gain more control over both. It's an exciting time.
I have learnt two key things from these experiences:
1) The things you are thinking about and feeling in the last few minutes before you fall asleep have a huge effect on your sleep, your dreams and how your day goes tomorrow
2) I think we do our dreams a disservice if we dismiss them as nonsensical or meaningless.
It seems strange to me that so little attention is given to sleep and dreaming considering it constitutes one-third of our existence. There are some people who say they don't have dreams, but actually we ALL have dreams, it's just that very few of us wake up to remember our dreams.
“All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake up in the day to find it was vanity, but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.”
― T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph
Do you remember your dreams?
I posted this song with a previous post but it fits so well...I had to do it again
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