Intention Medicine

So how are those New Year intentions working out for you, and what have your dreams had to say about your new approach to life?

The thing about stepping out in a whole new way, or even taking micro-steps as you tentatively test new ground, is that you can trust your dreams to give you the inside information on the tricky bits.

Like why you want to do something with all your heart but you’re not taking action. Or why the simple steps you envisaged have turned out to be too complicated, too hard. Or why too many little things seem to be getting in the way of what you want to do. Or why you don’t feel you’re getting the support you need from people close to you. Or why you’re beginning to doubt your ability to live your intention. Or why you’re suddenly really tired, or unwell, or anxious, or confused, and beginning to think that what you really need is a long rest, time out, and clarity. Or another piece of chocolate.

Some intentions flow naturally into being. They feel like the obvious next steps to take and if you encounter no internal (unconscious) resistance, you’ll take those steps with ease.

But most intentions focus on more challenging change. Consciously the prospect of that change excites you, energises you, but unconscious resistance to moving beyond comfort zone has the stronger sway, bringing up fear, doubt, and a whole platter of negative beliefs designed to keep you ‘safe’ in known territory. Its ace card is to take the wind out of your sails.

Intentions are good medicine.

It’s healing to identify what you’d like to change in your life. It feels good to acknowledge that the old way isn’t working for you, or isn’t working as well as you’d like it to, or that you feel a chapter has ended and it’s time to begin a new one.

Living a good intention is even better medicine.

But the best medicine of all is to be found in the dreams that come on that tricky path between setting an intention and living it.

What can those dreams tell you? How can they help you to bring your intentions to fruition?

The job of your dreaming mind is to update your perspective on life, to find solutions to problems, to resolve issues, to process new ideas and new experiences, to consolidate new learning, to process emotions, and to keep you safe.

But there is an inbuilt limitation. It’s YOUR dreaming mind that does all of this. It checks in on itself, checks in on your past experiences, memories, emotions, beliefs, on how you think the world works.

Not only that, but it checks in on your unconscious mind as well as your conscious mind, so while its job might be to solve a problem you’re experiencing, unless there’s life-changing new input, it can only work at resolving the problem with the tools it’s got: your mindset, your unconscious beliefs and emotions about this kind of problem.

A major role of dreaming is to keep you safe, but safe according to your past experiences.

Any new challenge will be scanned for risk, but scanned by YOUR mindset, your unconscious beliefs and emotions.

If your 2016 intention is to speak up for yourself, your dreaming mind is going to scan your unconscious resistance to speaking up: maybe fear (due to what happened when you spoke up as a child), doubt (due to how you felt about yourself at school) and so on. Your dreaming mind tries to keep you safe (from another dose of what you experienced as a child, or at school), and it will reinforce your unconscious resistance to your intention.

All of this happens whether or not you remember your dreams.

This is why we generally inhabit our comfort zones, not understanding that we’re living a false sense of safety that may no longer be appropriate or helpful in our adult world, a false sense of safety that may be limiting our growth.

If you’re feeling resistance to your intention, if it’s not flowing in the way you had imagined, look to your dreams.

When you can interpret and understand your dreams, you can understand your mindset and identify the unconscious beliefs and emotions that are keeping you from flowing with your intention. This brings you awareness, and that is powerful, but more powerful still is to apply dream alchemy techniques to heal the past and change those unconscious beliefs into ones that support your intention.

Now that’s good medicine! Let’s call it Intention Medicine, administered by looking at your dreams and applying dream alchemy techniques to heal and transform what needs to be healed and transformed to live your intention.

 

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