Finding the Center Within: The Healing Way of Mindfulness Meditation. by Thomas Bien

Author:Thomas Bien [Bien, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ePub Bud (www.epubbud.com)
Published: 2011-12-10T16:00:00+00:00

F I N D I N G T H E C E N T E R W I T H I N

silly or absurd to reject perspectives foreign to it. But sometimes a silly fragment of a dream that you almost forget turns out to be very important. “The stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner,” said Christ. Psychologically, this means that the very elements of ourselves and our experience that seem to lack value can often prove to be the most valuable in the end. This is especially the case with dream contents. Note carefully those discrepant, odd little details. By respecting this material in its entirety, you are sending a signal that you are ready to listen and learn.

Another way to help you remember dreams and also to dream more vividly is to make it a practice to meditate at least briefly before going to sleep. Breathe in and out calmly as you review the day’s events, letting them settle down. Ask that you have wise and helpful dreams. Ask to remember them. Understand the Alternative View

Freud called dreams the royal road to the unconscious. And dreams are a powerful tool for getting in touch with aspects of ourselves that normally remain hidden. One of the things that makes dreams a royal road is that they have built-in safeguards. If you are not ready to confront certain unconscious contents, then you will forget the dream. While you may encourage yourself to remember your dreams, you should not force the process. If you have tried unsuccessfully to encourage dream memory, back off a little bit or take a break from doing dream work for a couple of weeks before gently trying again. Do not try to override the safety feature.

Freud believed dreams always contain a hidden wish. The wish is hidden in such a way that you have to decode the dream to find it. He was especially fond of finding hidden sexual wishes in dreams—which may tell us more about Freud and his time than it does about dreams. While it is sometimes true that dreams contain wishes, and while it may be worth inquiring into what wish a dream may contain, it seems forced to try to view every dream that way. Similarly, while sexuality is a vital and important aspect of our humanity, it is overly reductive to view every dream in this light.

To understand how a dream might represent a wish, consider that the outcome of the dream plot may in some way be desirable to you, 06 BIEN.qxd 7/16/03 9:53 AM Page 131

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