The Art of Dreaming

I love to dream. At least I love to dream good dreams and still suffer too many nightmares. Dreams provide a glimpse into the inner workings of the soul and are very much worthwhile recording. OK, some dreams are just a mish mash of nonsense but some hold deep significance. In my book, Inner Journeys, I talk about a dream that I still have periodically. My house dream.

I can’t truly express how I feel about this house, well, sprawling mansion. I adore it with an intensity that defies description. Sometimes, the house seems partly unfinished, partly built and occupied and in other areas, partly ruined and left to the ravages of time. This house contains treasures beyond description and its nooks and crannies contain surprises; sometimes unpleasant surprises.

In this house, I feel at home. I feel a sense of wanting to move in to it and yet a sense that I already occupy it. It is a strange dichotomy of feelings that can be summed up as a sense of longing to be inside that house.

I have come to understand that this house is me. The different rooms are different facets of my make up. The treasures inside the rooms are the collected experience and memory of my life. The ruined aspects of the house are aspects of myself either left behind or perhaps neglected and the half built parts of the house are aspects of me that are developing.

When I find myself dreaming of this house, the dream can take on a quality unlike other dreams – almost a lucid dream as I realize where I am and then determine that I want to revisit certain areas or avoid others. Its as if the dream awakens in me the art of dreaming whereby I can to some extend exercise control over the dream.

I recently thought that since this dream is so powerful, so alluring and so ingrained, I should try to visit it in meditation. It is definitely something that I intend to try out to see what I can learn about this house in a more conscious manner. I’ll keep you posted.

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