A Night Alone can be the Perfect Dream Date

Relationships take time to develop, there’s no doubt about it. They require care, focus, dialog, patience, and an open mind. Often, we have to teach ourselves how to hear with a more sensitive ear, or see with more insightful eyes. Sometimes we have to trust our intuitions and follow the invisible pulls even when we don’t know where they are taking us…and so it is with dreamwork.
One of the very first questions I receive from people interested in dreams is, “I dreamt that… (fill in the blank), what does that mean?” We are conditioned to believe that our dreams are meant to be immediately interpreted, that they “mean” something if only we could figure out what that is.

In working with clients over the years, I find that the best way to work with dreams is to develop a relationship with them. Instead of rushing to find the meaning of a dream, it is important to take our time and get to know our inner landscape and imagery. Just as it can take years to truly know someone, the same is true for working with our dreams, and even then there is always more to learn. Our responsibility in the partnership is to get to know our dream images, to stop and question, to pay attention, to open ourselves and listen, to trust, and to develop communication with them for the long haul. Dreams are the storytellers of our lives, slowly sharing one paragraph at a time in symbolic language, offering invaluable guidance each and every night.

So let’s prepare for them just as we would prepare for a date with a special person. We start by setting our intentions to remember our dreams and decide what it is we want to know about them. Then, we invite them in by setting a notebook and pen by our bedsides awaiting their visitation. We can light a candle, read a poem, smell a flower, and make going to sleep a gentle ritual into the deeper realms of who we are. Let’s take ourselves on a Dream Date and be sure to write down all the details we can remember of the evenings unfolding story, whether we had a great time or felt disappointed. This is where we begin to cultivate our relationship with our own dream imagery.

The healthiest relationships are those in which others support us in our blossoming. Dreams offer us this gift, for the betterment of who we are, and who we want to become. All we have to do is say, “yes.”