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Spirit of Ma'at: "The Dreamtime" — Vol 3, No 10 by Susan Barber
Like shamanism, automatic writing, and other forms of conscious mediumship, Jane Roberts's performance in channeling the Seth sessions drew upon talents and abilities that most of us do not possess. At the least, many psychic abilities require that we devote years to daily meditation and other spiritual practices. But anyone, Seth said — anyone at all! — could duplicate whatever results are achieved by shamans, mystics, and long-time meditators, simply by learning to make use of their dreams. Changing Our Sleep Time Seth's most original — and perhaps most difficult — advice on the subject of using our dreamtime may be his suggestion that we sleep in shorter segments. Early man, Seth points out, was used to awakening several times during the night because of the need to guard himself and his family. It's not really natural for human beings to sleep for extended periods. When we are asleep, Seth says, our consciousness is away from our bodies. And it's not good for us to be away for so many hours at a time. Seth recommends two sleep periods of three hours each as the ideal, but adds: There are many variations, in fact, that would be better than your present system. Ideally, sleeping five hours at a time, you gain the maximum benefit, and anything else over this time is not nearly as helpful. Those who require more sleep would then take, say, a two-hour nap. For others a four-hour block sleep session and two naps would be highly beneficial. With suggestion properly given, the body can recuperate in half the time now given to sleep.[3] One advantage of not sleeping through the night would be that we might take walks during the early hours when negative ions are most prevalent. These walks, Seth says, would be most beneficial to our health. Also: As a result of more frequent, briefer sleep periods, there would also be higher peaks of conscious focus, and a more steady renewal of both physical and psychic activity. There would not be such a definite division between the various areas or levels of the self.[4] Seth even suggests that many common psychological problems, including schizophrenia, would be alleviated if shorter sleep patterns were adopted. But the most important reason for changing our sleeping patterns, Seth says, is that it "would definitely result in greater understanding of the nature of the self." The inner dreaming portions of the personality seem strange to you not only because of a basic difference of focus, but because you clearly devote opposite portions of a twenty-four hour cycle to these areas of the self. You separate them as much as possible. In doing so you divide your intuitive, creative, and psychic abilities quite neatly from your physical, manipulative, objective abilities. It makes no difference how many hours of sleep you think you need. You would be much better off sleeping in several shorter periods, and you would actually then require less time.[5] How to Remember Our Dreams Seth says that to remember our dreams involves nothing more complicated than simply giving ourselves suggestions, before going to sleep, that we will awaken as soon as a dream is completed. We will keep a dream journal or a recorder beside our beds, and write the dream down or speak it into the recorder upon awakening. A variation of this idea is Seth's suggestion that the sequence of our dreams is important. For example, we might give ourselves the suggestion that we are going to awaken after our first four or five dreams, remembering all of them, or even awaken after each of our first five dreams in order to record them individually.[6] Later, when we have accumulated many dreams over a period of time, Seth says, we would compare these dreams based upon the order of their occurrence — for example, we would compare the second recalled dream from any one evening with the second dream from all other evenings. If such experiments are carried on consistently over a period of years, then the results could lead to excellent evidence for the various layers of the subconscious and inner self.[7] Recording Our Dreams Some of the things we should make a note of in our dreams, according to Seth, are:[8]
In our dreams, we are on a voyage of discovery, and it is through comparing waking reality to the dream state that we will "discover the nature of human personality": In your sleep, you may have greeted friends who are strangers to your waking self. But consider the other side of the coin. For when you are asleep, you usually cannot find the street upon which you live in your waking hours, and when you are asleep, you do not know your waking self. The sleeping self is your identity. Dreaming and the Conscious Mind The ego has a difficult time entering into dream reality because, Seth points out, its entire job is to provide an interface between the self and physical reality. It must, he says, "have its feet upon solid earth."[10] But through doing dream work, the ego can become cooperative, as it sees that information obtained from dreaming can be of use in the waking state. This will then allow us to proceed into the relationship between waking and sleeping personality and discover the many ways in which the personality's aims and goals are not only reflected but sometimes achieved in and through the dream condition. ... ways in which conscious goals can be achieved with the help of the dreaming self.[11] Acting Within the Dream In order to take action within our dreams, we must first find a way to become conscious in dreams. This is done by giving ourselves suggestions before going to sleep that we will "come awake" within a dream and know that we are dreaming. What do we do once we know that we are dreaming. What dream-actions can we suggest to ourselves before falling asleep? In one of Carlos Castaneda's books, don Juan suggests that Carlos simply look at his hand. Seth's suggestions are a bit more interesting, for he basically says that we should start to explore the multidimensionality of the dreamscape. We can, for example, try to follow a street as far as it goes, or walk through all the rooms of a dream house. We might attempt to go backward in time — back to "before" the beginning of our dream. Or if we seem to be in an out-of-body state — for example, we are in our bedroom, but we know we are dreaming — we might explore our house, or even go outside and explore the neighborhood. Alternatively, we might decide to instantly project ourselves to the home of a friend, or anywhere we might like to visit.[12] Useful Suggestions for Dreaming As a hypnotherapist, I have found that suggestions about dreaming are the most universally accepted. Perhaps because the critical mind is the only real source of doubt and is not active during the dream state, we do not need any kind of preparation, such as induction or progressive relaxation, in order for suggestions about dreaming to be effective. The simply stated intent that something will occur in the dream state seems to be sufficient. And although any given suggestion may need to be repeated — perhaps several times — eventually (not necessarily on the night the suggestion was given) we will achieve the desired result. As Seth recommends throughout his material on dreaming, the two basic suggestions we need to make in order to "do dreaming" is that we will wake up from our dreams in time to remember and record them, and that we will become lucid dreamers — that we will become conscious in the dream state and recognize that we are dreaming. Seth also notes in several sessions that we can suggest solutions to specific problems or the working out of difficult relationships through dreaming. And — as Seth also points out more than once — we can make suggestions about how to handle frightening situations that may occur in the dream state. In one early Seth session, he suggests that nightmare characters be dismissed with the phrase, "Go in peace."[13] Some of the most amazing and miraculous-seeming dream stories seem to arise out of using this technique — a hint at what we might achieve if we could do the same thing in waking life. Dream Interpretations Unlike most teachers of dreaming, Seth does not focus on making interpretations. He does not see dream imagery in terms of symbols with esoteric meanings — metaphors that stand in for other things that are "real" in physical terms. Seth always stresses that everything is real. Our main goal in dreaming, then, is to explore dream reality itself, to become aware of it as part of the totality of the Self. (For more about this exploration, see Becoming a Dream-Art Scientist). In making this exploration, there are no hard-and-fast rules about meaning. Instead, we find our own meaning through becoming as conversant with dream reality as we are with waking reality. This process of learning and exploration provides its own teachings and guidelines. Our dreams themselves will tell us all we need to know. Footnotes:
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