buddingrose4u's Blog

This method is from Dr. Henry Sharam.  I do not find it the best method for the beautiful, mysterious dreams that cross our paths now and again; but it is a useful tool just the same.  It will get you used to working with your dream symbols and finding word associations for those symbols.

1.  Write down your dream.

2.  Underline all the nouns in your dreams.

3.  List all the nouns you underlined leaving lots of space in between.

4.  Write down all the word associations you can think of for each noun you listed.

5.  Underline the word association for each noun that has the most energy.

6.  Rewrite the dream replacing the nouns with the word associations you underlined.

If you are so inclined, share with us how this method worked for you.

I have never received a dream about death when getting a "head's up" that a loved one is soon going to cross over.

 I hadn't been working with dreams very long when I dreamt that my father and I went shopping for a wicker basket.  I thought that was unusual because my father and I never go shopping together. Twenty-four hours later, my father and I were shopping together to pick out a casket for my brother who was killed in a car accident the afternoon following this dream.

Years later, I dreamt of my  father (who was deceased by this time) sitting at a child's table eating ice cream with a little girl.  In the dream, I kept asking "Who is that little girl eating ice cream with Dad?"  The following week my niece (a young mother at the time) died in a tragic house fire.

Back a few years ago, my brother was having some health problems.  The night before his wife called me with the news that he had leukemia, I had a dream that I was trying to help him cross a chasm out behind our childhood home.  I went towards the house to see if I could find a part where it wasn't so wide.  When I found a spot and turned to tell him, he was already over on the other side.

 When my brother's wife called me the next day to inform me of his illness and that he was starting chemo treatments, she was feeling very hopeful.  Because of the dream, I knew what was coming and, therefore, was able to arrange to travel the thousand miles I needed to travel to be with him.  He died about ten days later.

I am grateful, over and over again, that I opened myself to my dreams and the wisdom they hold for me.

I dreamt of a red workshop on a green, grassy knoll.  In the dream, I was feeling very sad because my husband was spending all his time in this workshop and neglecting me.  What struck me most about this dream, upon reflection, was the vibrancy of the colors.  The blue sky was a more vibrant blue than I have ever seen.  The same with the green grass and the red workshop. 

A month after I had this dream, we found out that my husband’s cancer had returned.  I suspected that this dream was preparing me for his departure from this world. 

He died nine months later.

 By learning how to work with my dreams, I have been able to avoid getting so far “off track” that my dreaming self has to resort to scare tactics to get my attention.

Ghosts
disturbing my sleep
haunting me
with their presence.

Parts of me
fearfully disowned
horrifying me
with their persistence.

Nightly they come
begging to be acknowledged
to be accepted
as part of the person I am.

My struggles are in vain.

In defeat
I lovingly embrace
loathsome apparitions
in a final effort
to make peace with myself.

The next significant dream was not so pleasant.  In fact, I found it very frightening.  I dreamt that I was in prison having a sword fight with another prisoner.  I lost; and my heart was cut out with a sword. 

Did this mean I was going to die?  My flower dream came true.  Maybe, in similar fashion, this dream was going to come true as well.

But the days passed and I remained alive, thankfully.  I began to suspect the dream had a different meaning to it, but for the life of me, I didn’t know what the meaning was.

In many of his writings, John Powell said, “If you don’t know the answer to a question, then live the question and the answer will come to you.”  So, that is what I did with this dream.  Every now and again, I would go over it in my mind, reliving the experience of the dream.  I would wonder to myself what it meant; and then I would let it go.

I was doing a lot of inner work on myself at that time in my life.  Being the survivor of an abusive relationship, I had a lot of healing to do during the grief process.  My goal  at that time was to become a more loving person and to have my life reflect that.  It took awhile but eventually I realized the dream was telling me that the change was actually happening.  I had been given a “new heart”.

Twenty nine years ago I had a dream of some pink and purple flowers.  I didn’t think anything of it because at that time in my life, I didn’t pay attention to my dreams. 

The next day, the seniors who lived next door to me asked if I would like to have some flowers to plant.  They had accidentally purchased more than they had room for.  I had never planted flowers before but thought it might be fun to give it a try,  so gratefully accepted. 

After planting the flowers,  I turned to survey my work before going back into the house.  And there were the exact flowers I had seen in my dream the night before!  This really piqued my curiosity and so I started paying attention  to see if this connection between my waking life and my dream life ever happened again. 

I noticed that it actually happened very often.  I did not know what to make of this but I was paying attention to see where it might lead.