Every night, in the dream state, your soul communes with your higher self and probable/reincarnational brethren, and carries guidance and advice back from its nocturnal sojourn. Given the choice, most people would readily say they welcome such guidance, yet they struggle to hear but the faintest echoes flowing from the higher realms. What tools are available to loosen the barrier between waking self and higher self?

First, one must recognize a cold truth: the higher self's plan for a lifetime may horrify the ego. The ego's wants are simple: shelter, food, love, sex, health, money: as much and as often as possible. There is nothing wrong with desiring any of these; they all contribute to a stable, comfortable life. But here lies the challenge to even the most evolved ego: the higher self may consider fulfillment of these wants an impediment to its life plan.
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Every culture, from aboriginal tribe to complex civilization, recognizes the significance and esoteric mystery of dreams. History, literature, and poetry swarm with dreams' prophetic and symbolic power. Modern western thought, its vision narrowed by the blinders of materialism, struggles to make sense of dreams. In one view, the purpose of sleep is to allow the body time to rest and heal, with dreaming a mysterious byproduct. Dreams are variously explained as the random static of neurological chaos; a means of emotionally processing the day's events; or the symbolic patina on material rising from the deeper strata of the psyche. Whatever one's view, all agree that the realm of sleep and dreaming remains a dark mystery.
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Why do dreams so often seem chaotic and confusing? They seem so because what transpires during the dream state and what is recalled upon awaking are two sharply distinct processes. Recalled dreams represent your conscious mind's best effort to make sense of material of a frequency and depth which it is not designed to process. Raw dream material must be decelerated many levels of frequency to be processed by the conscious mind, losing fidelity and richness in the process. The seemingly random chaos of dream imagery stems from the brain's inability to coherently synthesize the raw stuff of dreams, which operates on a different, deeper logic and order.
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Can our mind really display extra-sensory abilities beyond the five senses? One expert set out to define and prove the validity of such psychic powers as precognition, clairvoyance, psychokinesis, out-of-body experiences, and telepathy.

Neuroscientist Diane Hennacy Powell, a former Harvard Medical School professor, attempts to logically answer long-standing questions about the possibilities of psychic phenomena, and the relationship between our brain and consciousness, in her book, The ESP Enigma: The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena. Extra-sensory abilities can be explained, she says, by applying the theories of Einstein and quantum physics. She also provides empirical data developed over the past few decades from several well-designed and rigorously supervised experiments that reinforce the existence of such phenomena.
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Most people believe that their dreams are messages from their unconscious mind. A new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology shows 74% of Indians, 65% of South Koreans, and 56% of Americans believe in the significance of dreams in relation to their waking self.

The authors of the study and this Time.com article, however, discount this belief, instead attributing the nightly images to highly predictable brain activity and the "anchoring" phenomenon. Read the rest of this entry »

I've noticed a subtle form of self-sabotage that I would like to bring to your attention. It concerns any goal or dream you may have that is particularly ambitious — a desire of your heart that is exceptionally great, grand, and glorious.

That kind of desire is like a destination that lies much further down the stream than other destinations that are closer, simpler, and easier to reach. Because of the "distance" that is involved, a great deal of patience may be required on your part as you "row with the flow" toward the fulfillment of your dream.
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Dream consultant Mary Grandy likes to give helpful advice on how to remember your dreams and how they can positively impact our daily lives.

While most people find it hard to remember upon awakening what they've just dreamed, Mary says it can be done. "The subconscious mind is easily programmed; if you really want to remember your dreams just tell yourself you want that information and it will provide it," she said.
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