Dreams and Self-Healing

When I formed the intent to heal my hip and leg, I asked my guides for help... every minute, it seemed, for a time. What did I need to know? What were the aids and tools I needed? I asked for directions to the people who could help...and most of all, I asked for their assistance in acceptance of this unrelenting pain.

One of the ways I receive guidance is by listening to dreams, one of the most common ways we receive answers after questioning our guides. Understanding the messages, though...that takes discipline, deep intent, true faith and huge belief...the list goes on. Dreams hold the answers...

Now I have to learn how to decipher them.

Wanda Easter Burch the author of She Who Dreams
uses dreams for self-healing. Her book suggests that dreamwork "offers techniques that will help you observe, question, and delve into the meaning behind the stories you tell yourself when you sleep". Ms. Burch should know...she is a long-term survivor of breast cancer. In this book she tells her story, and gives me tools I need as I walk a similar path...the one of self-healing and dreams.

I state my intent to dream before I fall asleep at night. In case my guides may have missed my many requests (highly doubtful...there were so many of them!) I again ask for assistance in healing my hip. This time I ask that I remember a dream of consequence...and to make it easy to understand. I am definitely not in Ms. Burch's class!

But I do have a natural ability for dreamwork...I am able to walk in other people's dream stories as well. Intuition is the guidance I have used. Now I am learning how each symbol in a dream gives a message and just how many messages I have missed over the years. There are dreams I have had that I still hold close, that I still draw on for assistance, years after I dreamt it. I call these my milestone dreams.

As I described in my last post about Lennix, I recently had a dream that involved him and a small child. The child seemed to be a combination of all my kids; but it didn't take me long to recognize Lennix, an unforgettable cat. Cats, as an ally or power animal, give protection. According to About's cache of sites on cat messages and properties, the cat visitor gives me a challenge to explore new horizons and a message for in- dependent strength and confidence.

In my dream, Lennix was supposed to be in my car, as there were dogs about. The small child was playing among boxes that were set up on a platform. Suddenly the dogs began to snarl and bark; there were people holding them back. I glimpsed Lennix sidling in amongst the boxes...he never could resist playing with kids, or boxes, for that matter. I told the child (all the names of all my children went through my mind) to grab Lennix and put him back into the car, as the dogs seemed ready to do damage.

Lennix stopped, turned around and stared at me with his remarkable eyes, and I became calm. For interminable moments, he tried to convey his message to me, his greenish golden eyes pinning mine. The dogs quieted, and seemed to disappear. The child laughed, and began to change into many different children, all filled with joy and laughter. And all the while, Lennix invited me to understand what his presence in my dream meant to me. Then I awoke.

I knew this dream was important for the simple reason I couldn't get it out of my mind, let alone forget the contents. My intent is to heal; what did this dream have to do with my quest for self-healing? Who was the child/children? They seemed so familiar to me. And Lennix died five years ago...even though I often receive visits from pets that have passed over, this was the first time I received a visit from him.

The dream would become fairly clear over the next few days; I am in the process of writing Reiki and Dreaming, in which I explain what this dream means to me in terms of my own healing. I have learned to keep pen and paper to hand on my bedside table...dreams I have determined never to forget have drifted off into the ether too many times. If I request an answer from my guides, I had better honour them enough to be prepared to receive it. That's where the diligence and discipline comes in...

As Graham says, nobody said this would be easy.