How to Address the Necessity

What is the necessity?

This is the essential question for living a life worth living and for being the master of our dreams. When we ask this question, pause, and allow a response to emerge, we open up to something greater than our small minds and we co-create with life itself.

Living by addressing the necessity of each moment is a guide to exceed being healthy and happy. It is a guide to be flourishing and joyful, in each moment tending to the needs of the present to continually be unfolding the highest possibilities moment to moment. In this moment my necessity is to allow the words to flow through me. What is yours?

If your necessity is to continue reading, then you are in luck for in a few lines I will example out how to address the necessity of a night dream. Before we get to that, let’s be clear- sometimes a necessity is to take an action and other times it is to simply be. There are moments in life when our greatest necessity is silence, beingness, contemplation, reflection, laughter; while other moments require jumping-jacks, running for the bus, calling a parent, expressing our anger, taking a step backwards. Different necessities are required in different circumstances, each individual and unique.

Dreams during the night are no different; each dream is unique to our individual experience. Each dream has a necessity- whether it is to simply enjoy the presence and experience, or to take an action to move the dream in a new direction. Another way to see it is that our night dreams are either resolved or unresolved. The unresolved are the dreams that are calling our attention to take action to address something in the images.

This way of seeing dreaming and taking the empowered actions to address the necessity is first introduced to me by my teacher, Catherine Shainberg, in her life-transforming book, Kabbalah and the Power of Dreaming. Every dreamer must experience this book.

Power of Nightmares

The most powerful unresolved dream is the nightmare. But if we are fear stricken with a night terror, how are we meant to even begin to address it? This requires us to rewrite our understanding of what a nightmare is…

A nightmare is our greatest ally; it is our most expressive signpost, guiding us to take immediate action to address our dreaming images in order to step into a new way of being.

Reflect for a moment- when in your life (perhaps it is right now) have you had a nightmare? Looking honestly, it is often when we are faced with a decision to make, or have just made a life altering decision, or when we have fallen asleep to some very important information that may help us in living a life worth living, or are repressing a certain emotional experience from emerging to the light of day.

Whenever and for whatever mysterious reason it arrives, a nightmare comes to express that we must take immediate action to shift the dream of our life.

Which brings us to: how to address the necessity of a dream, or more specifically a nightmare. In order to address the necessity we must remember that we are the dream and the dreamer just as we are the creation and the creator of our lives. Resting within this deep knowing, that we are the dream and the dreamer, gives us the courage necessary to wield our swords and bear our shields.

Not only armor is required, we also must have a clear mind and our imagination cap on. When waking up from a nightmare at midnight, we are often caught in the racing emotional heat. For some this is the perfect time to become the hero, for others it will be too much of a leap. Know thyself, and decide with resolve to re-enter the dream or to go back to sleep and address the dream once the emotions have subsided a bit. Either way you write your dream down as mentioned in this post (if possible please link to other post).

Addressing the Nightmare

When you are ready and looking at the nightmare, envision that you are the shining knight with a shield and sword of light, and dream up a way of confronting the beast that has arisen.

Allow your breath to settle, allow yourself to surrender to your breathing for a few moments. Then, from stillness, exhale and see and feel the dream again. Be the dreamer and dream.

If you are being stalked like prey, perhaps you may catch the stalker in a net of light, or call the police and have them taken away. If you are in a scary building that is on fire, go outside into the light and imagine as you have a giant hose to put the fire out. If something is broken, fix it. If something is dirty, clean it. Be practical while imaginative; be focused while surrendering to the movements of the dream.

Interact with the dreaming as we would with our daily ongoing, adding greater imagination and attentiveness. Pay attention as the images flow and the dreaming unfolds. When you feel that the nightmare is no longer negative, when you feel a relaxed openness returning, when you feel it to be resolved, when you see a new space and image, when you feel it to be complete, exhale and open the eyes.

Like all of Life, Practice is Key

In this way of interacting with the dream, we are not analyzing and using our logic to reach a grand conclusion. Instead we are flowing and communicating with our dreaming. We are realizing and remember that we are masters of dream.

Developing relationship with our dreaming requires patience, practice and sometimes a bit of trial and error. As life unfolds we are constantly given a new experience to practice in, so take the moment as it comes and the dream images as they arrive.

You are the master of your dreams. You are the dream and the dreamer.

Be gentle and kind. Be imaginative and courageous.

Have heart. Have fun!

Sweet dreams xxoo