Your biggest treasure
I stood with a group of people in the backyard of a house. People kept entering the yard through the gate without closing it behind them, which irritated me. One of the characters seemed to have felt my agitation and commented with an air of derision "what's your problem, lassie?" I responded in a typical way a person with the Balkan origin would have done (with a heavy swearword), but then I thought I might want to be more careful, not knowing if I would ever meet this character again, no matter how unlikely it seemed. I hurried to leave the place, went through the yard gate and with a great speed flew into a field with tall grass, nearly running into a white horse that was engulfed by the same grass with only its head protruding above it. The speed with which I moved increased even more, making me nauseous in my stomach and resembling that of a roller-coaster feeling. I brushed against some blue and yellow wild flowers and, at one point, spotted a lone market stand where I hurriedly took a few jewels as I went on further...Despite of the uncontrollable speed, I managed to eventually slow down.
One can derive many aspects of the psyche on the basis of this dream, such as anger due to intrusion, fears of expressing oneself freely, obsession to control things, as well as more specific symbolism in the form of a white horse, denoting personal drive and sense of power and flowers as prosperity. However, the aspect that was a very prominent clue to me personally was finding the treasure during the run in a dream that directly followed life introspection session.
Writing down dreams for many years made me realize, with the utmost astonishment, how timeless they are. I would read a book, watch a movie or have a conversation with someone that would trigger the memory of a dream I had years ago. This also brings realizations that life is not a span of events occurring in a linear manner, but resembles a circle. There are recurring themes that we have to deal with, although never at the same level from where we initially started.
Changing perceptions is the key
In a world where too much attention has been put on achievements and external validations, we have forgotten to look inside. Introspection was the main tool that psychologist Carl Jung utilized in order to devise the impressive archetypes and collective unconscious theory on the basis of his own dreams and those of his patients. To this day his studies are still being referred to, meaning a century later.
For myself, working with dreams did not start with Carl Jung, which is the mandatory literature for analysts when they embark on a quest to understanding dreams. I remember that, as a teenager, I did run into one of his books and was taken aback when I found out that there are parts of our psyche that belong to the collective, taken from some bigger "pool of knowledge" instead of just being deterministically regulated by our parents' genes pool. However, I did not study those in detail. Later in life I was introduced to lucid dreaming techniques, where I learned how to work creatively with my dreams. It is not so much about using techniques, but inner motivations about the purpose of this practice and what one wants to create.
People had a lot more dreaming awareness in the ancient past and this is one of those "forgotten" skills that the mainstream culture has never really promoted. Perhaps as it would have been harder to condition people to seek knowledge exclusively from external authorities figures and, in turn, limit their freedom. Being accustomed to instant gratifications of the material world, people might forget that any skill worth mastering requires discipline and time. And the rewards are huge! Dreaming is the practice that transcends dimensions and eventually shifts your perceptions. It has a scientific aspect to it, metaphysical and poetic.
Lucid dreams are multifaceted
Lucid dreaming phenomenon was only scientifically confirmed in the late 1970's by experiments of psychologists Keith Hearne and Stephen LaBerge. Since then there have been diverse studies across the globe showing, by monitoring which parts of the brain get activated, impressive findings that actions performed in a lucid dream provoke the same neurological responses when awake and the ability to learn as lucid dream state has been shown to support neuroplasticity.
Before we see lucid dreaming being incorporated in a more standardised manner, one thing is sure: you do not need a brain scan to know if you have had a lucid dream or what the dream has meant for you in the first place. Ancient people seemed to have been doing it for millennia according to oral traditions of Toltec-Mexica culture. Lucid dreaming practice offers first-hand personal experience of the mechanics of the dreaming body. The symbolism one encounters is designed specifically for you and over the course of time one can feel greater connection with what they can mean.
Initially my main motivation has been to simply manifest big desires in my life and I caught myself frantically asking different favours from characters I would encounter. It is only later that I realized that the purpose of the dreamscape is to serve as a gym for training perception or a boot camp for understanding that reality is more malleable than what we think. A dream acts like a cheeky martial arts master telling you there is more than meets the eye, pushing you towards situations that are surprising, sometimes frightening, but then comes the revelation that spurs to laughter and empowerment upon being shown that we had a lot more in us than what we believed. Dreams can be highly humorous, as if telling us that life should not be taken too seriously and that we act like tragicomic characters in a theatrical play, entrapped within the conditioning of our minds.
My dream diary, coined as dreamary in my novel "Beyond the Mirror", is my biggest treasure. It is the perpetual source of inspiration for my stories and mixed media art. Coming back to it to browse through is what keeps me centred in a chaotic world. Dreams give you clues that facilitate everyday decision making. They illuminate what you need to work on to overcome obstacles. Dreams also remind you what your soul mission is when you forget. It is the other, all knowing, part of the self which is your most reliable life coach.