Denise Linn & Dreamtime

“The best thing about dreams is that fleeting moment, when you are between asleep and awake, when you don't know the difference between reality and fantasy, when for just that one moment you feel with your entire soul that the dream is reality, and it really happened.” - Author unknown

I was lucky to be able to attend the talk The Mysterious World of Dreams Revealed at East West Bookshop by Denise Linn author of The Hidden Power of Dream. She is an internationally known healer, teacher, and author of 16 books. I was excited because this is first time that I had the opportunity to meet her.

She is an excellent speaker, impassioned about the subject of dreaming. She shared her background for those of us who had never seen her before: paraphrased she came from a family of scientists, had a near death experience, ended up sensitive to other realms of existence, and spent time studying with indigenous people here and aboard.

She believes it is becoming more and more important for people to become aware of their dreams and how to use them. As people learn to use their dreamtime, they can be a force for the good of many. "You will be like a pebble dropped into a pool. You will effect people even if you don't know it."

According to Denise, research shows that we have short 3 to 4 minute dreams about every hour and half with the last dreams being as long as 20 minutes.

She made some suggestions for activating dreams like putting water outside to absorb moonlight, putting a crystal in water, using affirmative statements while holding the water then drinking the water before going to sleep. Also, she indicated you can use essential oils like lavender or mugwort. Also, she said selenite is a good dreaming crystal, and can be programmed to help with dreams.

She. also, said we only tend to remember dreams for about 10 minutes after waking unless we make an effort to remember. The recommendations to help remember dreams are: to keep a journal by the bed to write in; use a voice activated tape recorder; mentally program yourself, crystal, or water to remember;
stretch and move your body to find the position you were in when you had the dream to re-activate it.

She went on to say that dreams are portals to other realms. We can program ourselves to go into the past or future as time isn't linear. We might have dreams that include past lives, the present and the future since time folds.

She brought forth two concepts that I hadn't consider before. One if you overcome a fear in the dreamstate this will transfer over into your waking life as part of your brain can't tell the difference between them. It made sense when she talked about the chemical state in the brain being the same.

The second concept was the more you astral travel during your dreamtime the more freedom you have. This sense of freedom then translates into feeling more freedom in your waking life.

She ended the session with a powerful guided meditation in which we activated a dream shield to keep us safe during our travels, and met our dream guide. She was a maestro at weaving us into a very deep state of relaxation.

I truly enjoyed the evening. I left with tools and ideas that I could use, and points to ponder.

If you are interested in dreamwork I, also, recommend the book The Woman's Book of Dreams: Dreaming As a Spiritual Practice (good review at Soulful Living) by Connie Cockrell Kaplan. It is a unique, useful and inspiring book. She, also, has a website, Turtledreamers.

And, I recommend the many works of Robert Moss on dreaming. I particularly enjoyed Dreamways of the Iroquois as it includes some insights into my ancestry.
I, also, like reading his blog, The Robert Moss Blog.

As to my dream world, this past week I had a dream I was kidnapped and taken to a house where other women were, also, being held (there wasn't anyone I recognized or knew in the dream). Once inside the house, I looked around and saw junk food here and there, soda pop, etc. I said, "This will never do, I need you to get me some grass fed beef, eggs from range free hens, and my sharp cheese from Trader Joe's. The next dream sequence was me and the other women escaping from the house in the kidnapper's car.

I was heartened by the fact that even my subconscious insists that I eat healthy foods. I told the dream to a co-worker who and was sure after the kidnappers heard my demands just left the door open to get rid of me.

“Dreams are illustrations... from the book your soul is writing about you.” - Marsha Norman

Oh, one more piece from Denise Linn's talk: we can, also, just program ourselves to have fun while we are dreaming.

my sweet flights of astral fancy
realms of flying tigers and purple moons
sleep deeply there is more I wish to see

May you have pleasant, soulful dreams