Dream daze

What should you do when you can’t seem to shake off a dream, when it haunts, dazes, or distracts you from your daily tasks? Is it a good thing to linger with the theme that tugs at the edges of your heart or mind, or are there dangers in reliving and replaying the dream over and over again?

Why do some dreams linger longer than others? There are dreams that fade faster than you can commit them to memory. There are dreams you remember in the middle of the night, only to forget as you doze back to sleep. There are dreams you can recall, if need be, for a morning, perhaps even for a day before they slip away. And there are those doozies that permanently etch themselves forever in your memory, totally unforgettable for a lifetime. A typical lifetime doozie is either a childhood recurring dream or a dream that was so inspirational or hilarious that you told the story over and over, cementing it into your long term memory. What’s your favourite dream doozie – the one you love to tell?

Between the fades, the dozes, the dailies and the doozies are the dream dazes you can’t shake today but will forget by tomorrow, or soon after.

There are several features of a dream daze. You feel as if you’re still partly in the dream, almost in parallel to your waking life. You feel the emotions you felt in the dream in a heightened way, often in an overpowering way because they seem more important than any other emotions you ‘should’ be feeling today. You feel slightly confused about something you can’t quite put your finger on – it’s as if something that used to make sense no longer computes, but you can’t identify it. It’s a little bit like being a stranger in a world you once knew. It’s as if something has shifted, or someone’s changed the rules and hasn’t informed you.

You’ve probably guessed, from reading the above, that a dream dazes you when it strongly resonates with an unconscious feeling, memory or belief and, in doing this, shifts that feeling, memory or belief, just a little, into the edges of your awareness. You wake up just a little conscious of a long-lost or long-denied feeling, memory or belief – not conscious enough to understand it, but conscious enough to feel haunted by something you can’t quite put your finger on.

The dream feels parallel to your waking life because it has nudged a feeling or belief that has been running parallel, in your unconscious mind, into semi-awareness. It’s nudged a bit more of yourself into awareness, so you have that somewhat dazed sense of different emotions brewing, or a long-held memory or belief being undermined and shifted, changing the way you see life. It’s like half-recognising something in the shadows.

So you wander about in a daze on the day following the dream, and sooner than you might imagine, you adjust to the slight shift and a new normal emerges. You still may not be able to put your finger on the exact feelings or beliefs that shifted, but you do notice, over days and weeks, that you – or your attitude – has changed in some way. The new normal looks slightly different from the old normal. In fact, that old normal looks a bit bewildering – you look back and wonder how you could have thought or felt or acted that way back then. That’s when you know you’ve made the shift – when the old way no longer makes as much sense as it used to.

All this happens naturally. You don’t need to understand the dream that dazes to make the shift. Effectively, your unconscious mind began the shift – as seen in your dream – and this continued over a day or so until you settled into your newly conscious view.

But is every shift a shift in the best direction?

There are times when we shift in ways that extend us, and there are times when we shift in ways that limit us. Either way, the shifting dream can daze us. The new normal can be extending or limiting – different from the old way, but not necessarily better.

This is where dream interpretation is empowering. When a dream that dazes is interpreted, you get to understand which of your unconscious feelings, memories and beliefs are shifting, and you get to understand what triggered this. You ‘get the message’ that a certain shift is happening and how this shift will most likely influence your life. Best of all, you get to decide whether this is a shift you would welcome or if you would prefer to engineer the shift to create a more desirable outcome in your life. This engineering is achieved by applying dream alchemy.

So you don’t need to wander dazedly into a ‘new normal’ not of your choosing. You can pick a new normal that will work for you.

Either way, take the daze as a signal that you need to take some time out, if you can, to focus on the dream long enough to ‘get the message’. Let yourself drift with your dream long enough until you recognise how it resonates with your life. If your dream is about death, for example, drift with it long enough until you can relate a similar feeling – of something coming to an end – in your waking life. Or if your dream is about discovering a long lost love, drift long enough until you can relate a similar feeling – of getting back in touch with a something wonderful you had lost – in your waking life. Or if your dream was about rescuing a distressed animal, drift long enough until you can relate a similar feeling – of how you handle distress and rescue – in your waking life. Once you’ve drifted and identified, stop replaying the dream and move on to ‘get the message’. Once you’ve ‘got the message’ move on to decide whether the shift in the dream is one you want to encourage or redirect. Then move on from there to apply your dream alchemy – either to accelerate the dream shift or to change it.

Why is it important NOT to keep replaying the dream? Every time you replay a dream you re-visualise it and further cement it. Your unconscious mind creates your dream symbols, so the more you visualise a dream, the more you endorse your unconscious mind’s view on the matter. If the dream shift is one you want to accelerate, re-visualising is good. If the dream shift is one you want to change, then you will need to visualise a changed version of the dream, one that will result in the shift you desire.

Either way, you will need to drift with the dream first so that you can identify and acknowledge the shifting unconscious feelings, memories and beliefs. You cannot change what you do not know. An enemy is best befriended, a fear best faced, a truth best acknowledged, before you can move forward. But do move forward – beware becoming trapped in the reverie, replaying the dream over and over. Take the enchanting, dazing fabric of your dream, identify its threads, then be the dream alchemist and reweave, reframe and hang your new dream picture in your mind’s eye to direct your visualisation.

 

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