“When it comes to dreams, Raechel is an artist. She has a way of opening doors to unexpected places where surprise, healing and truth emerge. We have worked together for years and I truly feel the shape and energy of my life is enriched by her wisdom and guidance. Our dialogues are so insightful and deep that I am often “awakened” by our exchanges.
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Dreams are a provocative source of inspiration and direction for our lives. When we sleep, the divine spark within each of us seeks us, wanting to expand our limited beliefs about our lives. Our dreams may startle, confuse or. please us, but if we can understand them, we can alter our perceptions of ourselves and change our lives.
When dreams appear, they often come full of energy, color, a movie-like quality, full of bizarre events, twists and turns. Perhaps the reason we often laugh at them and say, Oh it was only a dream, is because we are afraid of the power and intensity of the dream’s meaning for us. For if we allow the dream in, really let its message enter our consciousness, we will have to open our eyes and see what we’ve been avoiding, where we are blind, what possibilities we aren’t seeing.
So we look from a distance. For example, I had a dream of being given a horse who sticks her head into my kitchen where I am focused and busy with chores that must be done. The horse is aggressive and I am afraid she will bite me. Finally I reach out and put my hands on both sides of her face, near her eyes, and talk with her and explain what needs to happen, that she will have to wait awhile and then I will give to her, feed her, walk her. As I talk to her in the dream, she calms down and I feel my love flowing to her and her eyes begin to shine with love. We are now blissfully loving each other and I am no longer afraid of her power. Now we will work together. So it is with your dreams: The dream comes, pushes its head aggressively into your awareness. Will you turn away? If you turn away, a stronger dream will come and bite you because the soul is relentless.
This dream of the horse woke me early one morning long before I had planned to wake up. I knew I could choose to avoid it or move into the dream, working with it in order to experience love and power. The dreams that intrude on our tasks are simply our souls trying to communicate with us. Unconsciously, we fear the truth of our dreams. We can continue to avoid our dream lives, or we can reach out, put our arms around our dreams, and let the most surprising love affair begin.
The style of dreamwork that I was drawn to comes from Colette Aboulker-Muscat, a Kabbalist, creator and teacher of imaginal and waking dream therapy. I was never able to study directly with her, as she lived and worked in Jerusalem and died soon after I published Awakening the Dreamer, but I studied with three individuals who were her direct students. I consider her my lineage.
When I work with a dream, it is the dream of Now because dreams exist outside of time and space: They vibrate in real time, alive the moment we step back into them. So I approach the dream asking, “What is it offering now?” The dream you bring is no longer the original dream. It changes the moment you begin to write it down and explore it. We explore your dream from both the outer mind and the inner imagination: We meet it in the present moment. We look at the issues of your life that are concurrent with the dream. Our conversation and interaction with the dream is Now. I never explore a dream the same way because each dreamer is a unique, individual with a particular path and our dreams are attuned to each of us. So I connect with both the dream and the dreamer and listen to my intuition in relationship with both.
Your dreams can be a constant life-compass giving you direction: They can show you what you are not seeing—where you need to go. We all need an honest map, a trustworthy mirror to reflect the truth to us. We all have this inner map; all we need to do is learn how to read it.
