Dreaming—The Sacred Art

Lori Joan Swick

Description

Awaken to the wonders of your dreamself, and energize your spiritual potential for self-understanding and self-healing.

"Without a doubt, people of all times and places have had the capacity to dream the sacred. I write this book in a sincere effort to create space for us to share these dreams and to provide a practical guide to nurturing sacred dreaming as an art."
—from the Introduction

Sacred dreams—those in which the dreamer experiences the immediate presence of or communication with the Divine——have shaped the spiritual history of humankind. Jacob's ladder dream, Joseph’s dream verifying Mary’s virgin pregnancy and Herod’s plans to destroy the child, Siddhartha Gautama Buddha’s auspicious dreams on his journey to enlightenment, Muhammad’s night journey dream—the pervasive power of the sacred dream is part of the scripture and lore of virtually all the world’s religions.

This fascinating introduction to sacred dreaming celebrates the dream experience as a way to deepen spiritual awareness and as a source of self-healing for people of all faith traditions—or none. Includes practical, step-by-step exercises in every chapter.

Introduction vii

Part One
Entering Sacred Dream Space

Chapter 1
The Art of Cultivating Sacred Dreams 3

Chapter 2
The Thin Veil between Waking and Sleeping
Consciousness 17

Part Two
Dreaming as a Sacred Experience

Chapter 3
Mystical Dreaming 37

Chapter 4
Lucid Dreaming as a Sacred Art 53

Part Three
Interpreting Dreams as a Sacred Art

Chapter 5
Sacred Dream Recall 81

Chapter 6
The Art of Discerning the Deep Meaning of
Sacred Dreams 93

Part Four
Sacred Dream Work as a Means of Personal
Fulfillment and Spiritual Growth

Chapter 7
Sacred Dreaming and the Creation of Sacred Art 123

Chapter 8
The Art of Sacred Dream Healing 136

Chapter 9
The Nuances of Gender in Sacred Dreaming 161

Conclusion
Nurturing the Sacred in Dreams 181

Notes 186
Suggestions for Further Reading 194

Sujets

• Dreams
• Self-help
• Spirituality

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 05 mai 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781594735714
• Langue: English

Extrait

For those who come to me
in my dreams
-and speak to my soul
with enlightenment and love



Contents
Introduction
Part One
Entering Sacred Dream Space
CHAPTER 1
The Art of Cultivating Sacred Dreams
CHAPTER 2
The Thin Veil between Waking and Sleeping Consciousness
Part Two
Dreaming as a Sacred Experience
CHAPTER 3
Mystical Dreaming
CHAPTER 4
Lucid Dreaming as a Sacred Art
Part Three
Interpreting Dreams as a Sacred Art
CHAPTER 5
Sacred Dream Recall
CHAPTER 6
The Art of Discerning the Deep Meaning of Sacred Dreams
Part Four
Sacred Dream Work as a Means of Personal Fulfillment and Spiritual Growth
CHAPTER 7
Sacred Dreaming and the Creation of Sacred Art
CHAPTER 8
The Art of Sacred Dream Healing
CHAPTER 9
The Nuances of Gender in Sacred Dreaming
CONCLUSION
Nurturing the Sacred in Dreams
Notes
Suggestions for Further Reading
About the Author
Copyright
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Introduction
Dreams have shaped the spiritual history of humankind. The pervasive power of the sacred dream is well documented throughout the scripture and lore of virtually all the world s religions. According to a popular Hindu myth, all of creation is the divine dream of the god Vishnu, flowering forth from his navel as he floats across the sea of reality in his sleep. Siddhartha Gautama Buddha s journey toward enlightenment was marked with auspicious dreams and, as a result, Buddhists throughout history have valued dreams as spiritual guides. For centuries, monks of the Tibetan Bön tradition have practiced self-mastery of lucid dreaming in order to prepare the soul for life after death, and Taoists sought immortality through dream interpretation. In Mesopotamia kings like Gilgamesh were sent important and powerful dreams from the gods, and the Egyptians viewed dreams as sacred portals through which they could communicate with the dead.
In the Hebrew Bible, Jacob s ladder dream established the importance of the dream as a means of revelation and prophecy (Gen. 28:10-22), and Joseph s ability to decipher the pharaoh s dreams elevated the skill of dream interpretation to a religious art (Gen. 41:1-54). In the Christian Gospels, Joseph was visited in dreams by angels who verified Mary s miraculous virgin pregnancy (Matt. 1:20-24) and who warned him of Herod s plans to destroy the child (Matt. 2:19-22). The significance of Muhammad s night journey dream as the foundation of the Islamic faith cannot be overstated, nor can the Dreamtime creation story of the Australian Aborigines.
Ideas about what a sacred or mystical dream is vary according to what is culturally or even personally considered sacred. For some people, what is sacred is limited to what is also considered divine, while for others, the sacred can be experienced in the simplest forms of nature, such as the beauty of a perfectly formed leaf, the flight of a bird, the colors of a sunset, or the birth of a child. Within the historical records of sacred dreams from all corners of the world and for this book, sacred dreams are those in which the dreamer experiences the immediate presence or communication from a source he believes is of spiritual or divine origin. For some people, that is understood to be God or Jesus. For others, it could be Allah, the Goddess, or Vishnu, the Tao or Way, or even pure energy. Because the human experience of the spiritual or sacred is expressed in many different ways, I will refer to it as either the Divine or Ultimate Reality. I am aware these terms still do not capture the essence of spirit (and for that, I offer my sincere apologies), but I find they are acceptable to most people.
In spiritual-presence dreams, the dreamer usually experiences the Divine in the form in which she visualizes it in waking life or as an infusion of pure light. Common divine-communication dreams include visits from deceased love ones, animals, or any variety of metaphorical symbol systems. Sacred dreams are often accompanied by metaphysical experiences, such as feelings of expansiveness, out-of-body travel, and healing. Frequent metacognitive dream gifts include clairvoyance and prophecy.
Dream researcher Kelly Bulkeley conducted a study on spiritual dreaming for the American Psychological Association. He discovered that most people describe their most memorable dream as a mystical one. He underscored the significance of this study by claiming he had found sufficient data to conclude about half of people have mystical dreams. 1 In light of Bulkeley s findings, that Western religious scholars have largely neglected this vast and fascinating arena of human experience is staggering. (Eastern scholars and mystics long ago developed sophisticated systems for exploring dreams as a sacred art.) I suggest the reason for this lies in the fact that the Western academics have worked hard to secularize their religious and scientific research. Once the scientific study of dreaming was relegated to the field of psychology, its spiritual dimensions were left to languish on the laboratory table. The purpose of this book is to help bridge this gap.
My aim is to celebrate the dream experience as a high form of sacred art by providing a useful guide to those who now have spiritual dreams or wish to cultivate the ability to experience them. The techniques I present for incubating, navigating, and working with sacred dreams are based on those I have learned from a variety of spiritual dream traditions and adapted for use in sacred dreaming seminars. I undertake this task as a frequent dreamer of dreams I perceive to be of sacred or spiritual significance and as one with formal training in religion, philosophy, and the spiritual and artistic dimensions of dreaming.
I started experiencing vivid lucid dreams-or dreams in which I was aware of the fact that I was dreaming-after I had surgery as an adolescent. Because I did not understand that the brain autonomously turns off the muscles of the body during deep-dream phases of sleep, my awareness of being conscious and not being able to awaken or move my body resulted in a pattern of frequent night terrors. As I grew older and learned more about the lucid dream state, I eventually trained myself to control the initial instinct to prematurely yank my mind and body from the dream state, and allowed myself to drift through the dream with a sense of adventure. In time I developed a greater sense of reflectiveness-or thoughtful control-in my dream sequences, which often resulted in experiences of expansiveness, communion, and self-transcendence.
In my studies on the psychology and history of religious dreaming, I have discovered my journey of dream awareness is not unique. Sacred dreamers from religious and cultural traditions throughout the world have shared that their experiences often began in youth during an illness or injury that left them bedridden for a period of time. During the deep sleep of recovery, the line between the waking and dream worlds tends to soften and in some instances slips away entirely. In many indigenous cultures the shamans, or medicine men or women, of the community obtain their status by healing themselves from a physical trauma through sacred dreams. Community members perceive that the shamans have been gifted with the ability to receive and decode occult messages from the spiritual dream realm.
Other sacred dreamers have been initiated into the process through other circumstances and report a wide variety of spiritual dreaming experiences, including communion with what they perceive as divine, visitations from the deceased, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, prophecy, and out-of-body dream travel. In short, a person who has mastered the art of sacred dreaming is able to transcend the physical barriers of time and space.
In addition, the art of sacred dreaming has tremendous potential as a source of self-healing. In a scientific study, dream-study pioneer Fariba Bogzaran asked lucid dreamers to incubate dreams of their concept of divinity. She found reason to affirm the therapeutic value of lucid dreaming for waking life in that it can lead an individual to reflect on her behavior; work through psychological concerns, problems, dysfunctional patterns, and unfinished business; practice creativity; cultivate more lightness and joy; and evolve toward spiritual awakening. 2
People of Western consciousness are on the brink of an age when we can expand on our scientific discoveries about human dreaming with a rich variety of cultural and personal sacred experiences. Many of us are awakening to the spiritual depths and wonders of our dreamselves. I write this book in a sincere effort to create space for us to share these dreams, and, by borrowing on the techniques of those who have historically been proficient in sacred dreaming, to provide a practical guide to nurturing sacred dreaming as an art. From my experience guiding myself and others through this process, I have no doubt that those who practice this art can learn to explore their dreams to further their own spiritual potential, and to bring about self-understanding and healing that is often more sophisticated and effective than any therapy available in conversation with another or off the pharmacy shelf.
The Structure of This Book
This book is designed to facilitate sacred dreaming through four steps: entering sacred dream space, dreaming as a sacred experience, interpreting the dream as a sacred art, and using sacred dream work as a means of spiritual growth and personal fulfillment. In each step, I will explore noteworthy historical and cultural dreamwork methods and rituals and provide a gu