What is really behind the Ogre in your dream?

What about transforming him into a prince?
By Rocio Morales

It is always exciting to read about scientists and researchers that have been working for many years trying to understand human dreams.
Even more so is to read their recommendations on how to deal with nightmares and its relation to ancient yogic practices.

It seems that we will be talking a lot about dreams because of the release of the new movie "Inception" where a thief is able to steal secrets from the subconscious and even produce a nightmare on the subjects he is stealing from.

In a recent article by Melinda Beck in The Wall Street Journal, she mentions about dreams that "Once thought to represent repressed sexual urges, or simply neurons firing randomly, dreams are now believed to be mash-ups created by the unconscious mind as it processes, sorts and stores emotions from the day"

In many yoga traditions specially in Kriya Yoga we learn to pay attention to our dreams as a way to decipher the symbols that come from the subconscious mind. We do this not only because they will show the emotions we have been dealing with and the unresolved issues in our awake state but also because learning the meaning of those symbols can have an impact in the near future.

Nowadays a small group of psychologist and psychiatrist like Shelby Freedman Harris, director of the Behavioural Sleep Medicine Program at Montefiore Medical Center in N.Y. uses Image Rehearsal Therapy to help people who have frequent nightmares and those with post traumatic stress disorder. The therapy consists in recalling the nightmare in detail and write a new script that they envision several times during the day. This technique gives the patient control over the symbols making them less threatening.

If you are a lucid dreamer, you know that dreams can have different qualities, some of them can definitely relate to our emotions and activities from the day and others have an almost prophetical quality.
How to know the difference? It is recommendable to have a dream journal, it will help to write the memory of the dream and to relate to those symbols 72 h after the dream. This can be a very useful technique to gain control over the symbol and to neutralize the situations that might come around.

Want to have lucidity in your dreams? Do what Yogis and Buddhists have known for centuries:

a) Go to sleep with the intention to remember your dreams
b) Prepare yourself to sleep, turn off the TV, the lights and any other noise around you in other words, slow down.
c) Have a dream journal at hand where you can write the dream symbols as soon as you wake up. On one side (usually the right, write the most important events in your day and on the left the dream symbols)
d) Check some days after the dream and analyze if any of the symbols can relate to that event.
e) If you have a nightmare, as soon as you wake up, go back to the dream (visualize it in your mind) and recreate another ending, make the Ogre a prince and the tarantula a bird.
f) Give your dreams a name
g) Watch for recurrent symbols and its relation to actual events in your life.
h) Most importantly have a sense of wonder and playfulness.

You might be surprised by the frequency and the lucidity of the dreams in a short period of time.

Above all, remember that symbols in your dreams are the language of your subconscious mind. Also it is normal to have periods in your life where you can't remember your dreams.Give yourself time and prepare to fly in your magic carpet!