Soul Haunting and The Dream!

Thursday, October 31, 2013

Dreams, especially nightmares, can be loaded with haunting! Exactly...you did read the right words, just as I wrote them. Nightmares have lots and lots of juicy psychic stuff for insight, enlightenment, and soulful growth in the form of haunting. Thing is, we're so often afraid to listen to it, to the haunting. To listen to inner disturbance as it comes out in nightmares means facing the ghosts that always bear tidings of one sort or another.

Halloween and All Souls Day proclaim the existence of an unseen world. The veil between the world of waking and sleep, the realm of the deep unconscious mind, the spiritual world, thins. Spirits are real. People have reported dreams and waking visions of seeing spirits. I have a colleague, a psychotherapist, who is also a trained shaman. Unseen souls can inhabit homes, place, generate havoc! She's the one to call to exorcise the spirits so the home will sell. It's worked countless times for countless folks.

In the world of soul, the unseen world and the spirits that populate it bring messages into the world of consciousness. They haunt us till the message gets  through. They help us to grow, if we're willing. The spirit that appears by our bedside at night, the nightmares that haunt sleep, the dark events that come out of nowhere can shock us into consciousness...inspired change!

I had a rip-roaring nightmare last night of a literary demon. He was trying to force me into the mainstream literary establishment. I'd be abandoning my writing in dark fiction. It was frightening to say the least. A complete abandonment of self, of soul, was what the demon demanded. I awakened knowing that I had to remain true to my writing, true to myself.

Listening to the message of the nightmare, the spirits of the unseen world, means partaking of organic soul food and not Halloween trick-or-treat candy. Symbolically, candy can refer to a sweetening up of what's bad so that we don't taste it, feel it. Halloween tricks or treats...pass them up in favor of contemplating the haunting, the candle in the center of the carved out pumpkin head, its flickering, its eerie and unrelenting soul meaning.

Anxiety, Soul Sickness, and The Dream!

In this morning's newspaper I read an article about how anxiety increases perceived pain for those diagnosed with chronic pain conditions or those suffering from acute physical pain. In other words, the research stated that anxiety makes body pain worse. Anxiety also increases emotional and spiritual distress. When we're uptight everything goes out of whack. We're seeing through a magnifying lens of grotesque proportions. The soul has become sick.

"We all got a push for the crazies inside us," a very insightful person remarked. He went on to describe a dream in which he was splurging on ice cream. "As I ate, little tiny ants crawled up my arm."  The ants brought a terrible anxiety. Ants were messengers; raw angst crawling on him. "For me, bugs mean buggy. Sweets have  been an addiction. They're denial in my life. I'm in denial and I know it, can't run from it anymore. It's making my mind, body, and soul sick. It makes me anxious." Anxiety was a signal of denial at work, something needing to be faced and learned from.

Anxiety inflamed various physical disorders. He suffered from one aliment after another. His doctor told him that stress (anxiety) compromised his immune system. Running from what needed to be faced loaded him with anxiety. Ice cream in the dream signaled how he was wanting to sweeten things up.

The dream came, as dreams do, to enlighten. He was willing to see how he'd been "out of whack in my life." The crazies had bitten into him. Ants in the dream crawled over his skin, were in his mind, had infected soul. He'd become soul sick. The dream enlightened him about issues that needed to be faced, decisions that needed to be made. Anxiety was a symptom of soul sickness and the dream came as gift guiding the way to, what he described, as a "sense of getting it and getting myself whole again."

Dreams, Gentle Whispers, and Peace of Mind!

It's one thing to talk about dreams, it's quite another to actually take them to heart and follow their inspiration. With a new book out, I've been listening to them; but, really taking them to heart has been a challenge. Outside voices from the book industry have said do this or do that. Dreams come and offer guidance in gentle whispers.

Gentle whispers from dreams mean that there is genuine inspiration coming our way. We don't have to have nightmares to get the message if we listen to the whispers. A couple of times I've gone back on what my dreams have whispered regarding my book. My soul has patiently waited as I then learned from what could have been avoided had I listened. It took energy from me to go through this, but I learned what I needed to learn. I also learned to listen and follow the gentle whispers of my dreams despite outward urging from others to do this or that, all contrary to the gentle whispers of dreams.

Peace of mind returns when we listen to the gentle whispers of dreams. We become realigned with Self. When the alignment with Self is interrupted then the mind is fractious, anxious. Alignment with Self, as happens when we listen to the gentle whispers of dreams, brings in peace of mind.

Well, I feel back on track with my writing and a new book making its way through the world. It's a good thing to move with and live with the peace of mind that comes from listening to the gentle whispers of dreams. Last night, as I dreamt, it was clear that innocence was being restored and my soul righted. Back on track, with a new and replenished sense of self making its way through the world, is a good thing and it comes with peace of mind.

Soul Care and a Happy Mind!

Soul care yields a happy mind. After over thirty years of professional practice in depth psychology and over forty years of personal dream tending, I've come to the conclusion that caring for the soul takes us into a strange realm of contentment and well being. Happiness of this sort is not common. Soul care requires patient and tender devotion to the psyche. As we cultivate such devotion through sensitivity to self and others and by consistent dream tending, there comes a gentle but definite knowing that all is well.

I've heard colleagues and acquaintances argue about happiness, some saying it's superficial or irrelevant. Their fierce manner and twisted expression betrayed an underlying frustration. Often, in hushed tones, they'd complain about disturbed sleep, chronic conflicts, and a host of physical ailments.One psychoanalyst recently commented, "Well, after all, Freud did consign us to everyday misery being about the best we can hope for." I knew he had missed out on a vital facet of life experience, evidently unknown to Freud....happiness.  Happiness, when denied and thus never integrated, turns south and morphs into legions of suffering.

Patients who heal and learn to tend soul gradually, sometimes incrementally, experience consistent happiness. The archetype of happiness reveals herself in dreams as a flush of oneness with self and the world. My own Native American influenced cosmogony (my grandmother Pueblo Indian and medicine woman) looks at unnecessary pain and disease, to include unhappiness, as resulting from a disruption in harmonious cosmic patterns involving gods and spirits, people and animals, the archetype of nature herself.

Tending the soul by asking what caused imbalance, what disrupted natural life harmony, may yield corrective insight so that we return to a harmonious cooperation with nature and life that brings soulful well being and happiness.