Hi again
,
I am not prone to having bad dreams, however, throughout my life I have had a few bad dreams where I have woken up in a state of fear or upset and before learning to meditate, I just accepted this as normal.
At that time, I would probably wake up feeling terrified and the best scenario would be to thank goodness it was a dream, cuddle up to my husband, eventually go back to sleep and tell him all about it in the morning. Worse case (for my husband anyway) was I would feel so scared or upset that I would wake him up and tell him all about the horrible dream
Before learning to meditate, I used to get involved with the story - after learning to meditate I realised the importance of not getting caught up in the story and thoughts about it. You have to focus only on the physical sensation in your body.
After meditating for some time I had a bad dream and woke up with a dreadful feeling as though I was paralysed with fear. It was about 4:30 in the morning and as I was about to shake it off and thank goodness that it was only a dream, I realized this was an opportunity to observe and release.
I closed my eyes again, accepted and observed the feeling. Now, I'm sure you'll agree, things that happen in the dark of the night always seem more scary. This was certainly true in this experience. It took for me, amazing courage to do this - I even felt that I might become paralysed if I observed this physical sensation which was in my spine. Anyway, I observed and curiously asked the question in my mind to the sensation "Where are you coming from?" After what seemed like about 20 minutes for the sensation to move slowly down my spine and disappear, the words betrayal and abandonment came to my mind.
When the sensation had gone I knew something big had been released and I got up and wrote four A4 sheets about the experience.
We all experience frightening things when we are little and for me, when I was aged 2, my mother had a complete mental breakdown and went to hospital for 9 months. The specialists told my father she would never be well again and she certainly wasn't in a healthy state for her two little girls to see.
I have no conscious memory of this although I'm sure this would have been traumatic to a little 2 year old at the time. Almost a year later I had polio in my right leg - fortunately after being hospitalised for a few months and attending many physiotherapy sessions I learned to walk again and was cured.
Who knows if there is a connection to this dream - it doesn't matter - what does matter is, that night I found the courage to face a fear and realised after, just how good it was to release it. It wasn't real - it just appeared that way.
That night I learned that I could observe anything I experienced - it's just a great release process. I have had 4 more dreams since then (all different and all dealing with different emotions) and now, when they happen, instead of shrugging them off, I just accept and observe, knowing I am letting go of things that have restricted me in the past. For me, observing the sensations from the first dream were the worst, probably because our minds struggle to hold onto and suppress these emotions.
Now, I believe, through learning how to observe and release emotions that had imprisoned me, my mind is freed up, allowing me to be creative, focused and able to find solutions so easily.
Here's something you maybe could try in your daily life which will help prepare you to observe. The next time you are about to react with a negative emotion like fear, frustration, anger or hurt to something or someone, just stop and notice the physical sensation which always accompanies this - it may be a tightness in your shoulders, a knot in your stomach or a lump in your throat - Focus on the physical sensation, not the thoughts. Just accept the physical sensation, unemotionally and as you observe it, with simple curiosity, you should find it will simply dissolve. This may take a few minutes or a little while longer.
Once you realise how you can do this you will find it to be a very freeing experience.
I hope this is of help and wish you an abundance of peace and joy
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Hi again, I am adding this part 22 hours later, because I actually had an unpleasant dream last night (the first in quite a long time) I couldn't post earlier due to a busy schedule today and unfortunately as the day goes on the vividness of what I wanted to tell you has paled somewhat.
Anyway, as I awoke from the dream, I began to focus on the sensation in my body and became aware that my mind was trying to get me to focus on the story - it felt like a game of cat and mouse if that makes any sense. The point is I became aware that this was happening so I could explain better to you how not to get caught up in the story and how hard your mind will keep trying to interrupt the process of you just accepting and welcoming the sensation while curiously observing it as a child might. I also noticed and remembered that my face always perspires during the process. Because of this realisation (I felt it was a chance to tell you how hard your mind works on distracting you) I couldn't focus on the 2 things at once and so I didn't continue observing. This doesn't matter to me at all because if something is going to surface, it will do again and I will just do the simple exercise of unemotionally observing it. I really hope this makes some kind of sense to you and is of help to you in the future.
Update
( there so many things that are happenning....in my BODY AND MY MIND NOWADAYS....
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