Author Archive

The Left and Right Sides of the Brain

The right and left hemispheres of the brain to generalise, if your approach to life is dominated by your left brain hemisphere, which is largely rational and analytical, your best way of learning would be in learning facts in a sequential and logical order.

If you are largely a right brain person your approach to learning would be to understand details by gaining an overall picture of what you are studying. The details then fit into this concept of the whole and make sense to you. You would also be more open to learning through your feelings and intuitions, and through hands on experience. You would be more about living in this present moment. It thinks in pictures and learns through experiences of our body.

Its explosion of information comes through our senses, and our right brain forms a picture informing us of this present moment. We are energy beings connected to each other through these amazing inputs.

In a way, the opposites seem to be true if your dominant use of you hand in left or right.

The left brain experiences life completely differently, and it is almost like two different people living in one body. It sees things linked on a long line connected our past with our future. This side of the brain takes in the enormous pictures and experience of the present moment and reviews them in enormous detail and then categorises them, organises them, then protects them into the perceived future and forms an impression or picture of our immense possibilities. It thinks in language and is what we often call hunches or gut feelings that reminds us not to go out without our purse or wallet, or to take care of feeding the kids.

Also, it is what gives us identity and says, “I AM.”

In Occult beliefs the Right-Hand Path, or RHP, is seen as a definition for those magical groups that follow specific ethical codes and adopt social convention, while the Left-Hand Path adopts the opposite attitude, espousing the breaking of taboo and the abandoning of set morality. Some contemporary occultists have stressed that both paths can be followed because essentially, they have the same goals. See

Example: Last year while exploring these ideas, I had a dream expressive of these dual forces in us. “I was in the basement of a house I lived in as a teenager. I pulled up some floorboards and was stunned to see an enormous white snake and the dead-yet alive-body of a woman connected to it. Together they plunged into the earth. I felt they lived in a huge lake which underlay the whole city and were dangerous to us all.

What I realised from my dream was that it depicted two of the major forces with which many individuals find themselves in conflict: namely, one’s own biological drives and group or social pressure. Conflict with biological drives can be seen in such wide-spread occurrences as anorexia, sexual dysfunction, rejection of menstruation. Conflict with society can be seen in criminality, terrorism, social authority problems, repulsion in regard to religion, avoidance of work, etc.

Such conflicts use enormous amounts of our energy and can make years of our lives ineffective and miserable. As individuals interfaced between the huge forces of biological drives and social expectations, we can seldom satisfy both. What we inwardly desire may be socially frowned upon; what is socially expected of us may spark no real interest internally. So, the way of resolution for many people is through creativity unity of the opposites or through innovative actions such as seen in the lives of people like The Rolling Stones – The Rolling Stones were at the forefront of the British Invasion of bands that became popular in the United States in 1964 and were identified with the youthful and rebellious counterculture of the 1960s. Rooted in blues and early rock and roll, the band started out playing covers but found more success with their own material; songs such as “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “Paint It Black”.

Idioms: Two left feet; Left-Hand Path; keep on the right side of somebody; in one’s right mind; in the right; mister right; set somebody right; right hand man; right in the head; start on the right foot; give one’s right arm.

Useful Questions and Hints:

Why do people continue to confuse the Mind with the Brain? (The mind uses he organ if the brain to express physically).

Do my dreams make reference to turning right or left?

Or are there mentions of left or right sides of my body?

Do I often feel a big difference between what is right and what it wrong?

See Summing Up – Jesse Watkins Enlightenment – Identity and Dreams

Ways To Go Beyond Limitations

A war that has been happening for thousands of years is that between the ruling class, the governing body, those with great wealth – and the workers, slaves, the ordinary population.

Governments ask you to vote on anything except this – an even and fair sharing of the nations wealth. It is unfortunately true that those we vote into power often end up millionaires. Or if they are already millionaires their wealth is increased.

The recognition that we are programmed by a social influence that basically is saying, “You will never survive in the world unless you get a job and work, for without that you are penniless and a dropout.” This is a huge view that keeps most people locked into its influence. You actually belief this a truth of life and not an awful scheme put into place thousands if years ago by the ruling class, the Boss type people who forced the ordinary people to work for the Boss and Ruling Class and even though this work was massively productive, the rulers only paid them just enough to survive, keeping them, as happens today slaves to keep them working. Take Apple company; they put away billions in overseas investments.

As Wilda B Tanner writes in her Magical World of Dreams, “All too often, we teach and are taught how to avoid anything which is ugly, painful, distasteful, or upsetting to us. One of the most important things we need to learn is that our problems actually serve as beacons of light or as magnifying glasses, emphasising or pointing out our most crippling fears, our most restrictive attitudes, prejudices, and misconceptions which are holding up our progress-things we really must face up to and overcome if we are to grow.”  See https://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/questions-2/#Victim

Unfortunately you cannot let go of what is built into you – you have to transform it. See Transformation

At one point the images were to do with aggressive people, “people who would eat you”. There are people like that. In some parts of the world or the country, it is best not to get out of your car. Don’t open the door to ask the way. It is too dangerous. When you have so many wolves around, it is not good to act like sheep. So, it is true that when we truly give up our life long control and struggle to survive and cope, we gain an amazing companion who fights with us – it is our connection with what has lived through all wars and battles – Life. See https://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/water-wonderland/

Another war that few are the veterans of is one that takes great courage and perception; it is the war and conflict that all of us are involved in without many being aware of.

The fight is against the human fears, anxieties and terrors many are subdued by, the great emotions that tear people lives apart. Also the enormous amount of failure, shame, sense of personal defeat that crush many of us. But the height of the battle we meet is within ourselves, our very nature.

We can be crushed by difficult events, by the loss of someone, by an accident, by criticism or even by our own moods. Sometimes we allow parts of us such as love or creativity actually crush us. Perhaps without being really aware of it, you already know your body is a screen. When you see a film or read a book you might be moved to laugh or cry, or shout out in fear. Considering that the book and film is not reality, what is happening?

But the essence is that we are capable of reaching into wider awareness, in which you leave the limited view of the three dimensional world most of us are trapped in, and enter a world beyond what is usually known; because our physical senses tend to leave us almost blind and deaf because our eyes are only sensitive to 1% of visible light, and only 1% of audible sound – and as for smell we are only wriggling grubs compared with dogs and other mammals. Our body life is to learn important lessons by being locked in time, space and our body, with its gender and its limited view of life. See  https://dreamhawk.com/inner-life/extending-your-awareness/

 

Warning Feelings or Dreams

If we could have a record of every dream each person had, we would see everyone dreams again and again of being injured, murdered or killed. Because these are common themes, some dreams are going to coincide with an actual accident or plane crash. Because these dreams are common themes, many dreamers attempt to link the dream with a later event. But such dreams are usually about psychological injury or anxiety; nevertheless, many people do have warning dreams, feelings or hearing voices.

Example: While walking home alone along a road I had walked hundreds of times; I was suddenly hit by an enormous feeling of fear which I felt told me to get as far away from the road as I could. It was a country road in the UK, and a car was stopped in the middle of the road to turn right into a factory yard, because cars were coming the other way. I went as far away as I could into a hedge. Then I heard a scream of tires on the wet road, and a car which obviously couldn’t stop flashed up onto the pavement and went between me and the parked car and onwards. My fear disappeared and I said, “Thank you” to whatever had caused such an amazing warning.

Example: On the night of February 17, 1964, Master Sergeant James Lee of Sheppard Air Force Base was reading in his home in Wichita Falls, Tex., when the telephone rang. It was his mother-in-law, Mrs. Rose Smith, calling from Clovis, New Mexico, about three hundred miles away. She told her son-in-law that she had just awakened from a nightmare in which she dreamed something terrible had happened to her daughter, his wife Selma Louise. Lee assured her that Selma Louise was well and that he would call her to the phone to prove it. When his wife failed to answer his call, he went looking for her and discovered the bathroom door locked. He forced his way in and found her dead.

Example: My dream of someone’s coming death was so simple, always the same. I would dream that I went to my dressing table and opening my mouth examined my teeth in the mirror. I always found a decayed tooth (I had very fine teeth at that time) which I picked out and laid on the table. If a river of blood flowed from the tooth I knew when I awoke that I would suffer agonies from the coming death; if it did not bleed, I knew the person about to die would be someone outside my immediate family, but always a relative. If the tooth was a front one the person concerned would be young, if a back tooth it would represent an old person.

My mother told me that a great grandmother of mine had the very same dreams with the same results, but I did not learn this till I was nineteen and my dream foretold the death of a younger sister, who was in perfect health at the time of the dream. I never knew after the dream who was to die as the dream always came well in advance of sickness. I used to think some malign spirit wanted to torment me and took this way to do so.’ Quoted from The Mystery of Dreams by William Oliver Stevens. Published by George Allen and Unwin Ltd, London, 1950.

Warning About Alcohol: Does the dream or voice warn us of overindulgence or dependence upon alcohol or is the alcohol a symbol of a life changing influence or an influx of power or potential.

Warnings about drugs: The dream may refer to a drug you are using and being warned about in your dream. Sometimes the fear of something is the power which does dominates us – not the thing itself. Each of us have areas dominated by such fears or anxieties.

Warning against acting prematurely. Wait until your plans, ideas or abilities are mature, or the situation ‘ripe’.

Warnings about health: In many cases in the past, dreams were looked to for signs of prophecy about important issues such as one’s health. In some way, dreaming is necessary to maintain psychological and physical health; for if dreaming is stopped by waking the dreamer every time they start to dream. The result was that within a few days, the non-dreamers showed signs of mental illness and breakdown. The same would happen if any natural process such as breathing or passing urine was stopped.

The evidence shows dreams as critical to mental and physical health and also suggests that dreams may be a last ditch stand against the inhibition of some of the most important aspects of yourself. There may therefore be a connection between the expression of subtle needs and emotions in dreams.

Example: I was in the house of a friend I knew many years ago, having just got out of bed, and started walking along an upstairs passage toward the bathroom, to wash and shave. As I took a few steps along the passageway I realised I had got wet somehow, and looking back I could see, against the sun coming through the window, a fine spray of water coming from a burst in a water pipe. Then suddenly a wave of water rolled out from the bedroom. A whole section of a large lead pipe had come away. That is, the front of the pipe had come off. I rushed into the room and pushed the pipe back in place, holding off the massive water leak. – Ken Sprague.

This dream occurred just before Ken experienced a major burst of an artery. Unfortunately, the warning was not understood.

Example: My wife was there as it occurred. She wrote, “I have the experience of Ken Sprague at my fingertips too……..he was bleeding buckets full as the ambulance took him away to Barnstaple…….I remember watching the car drive away as I hugged the two children and felt that I was seeing a dead man walking!  I thought it was the last image that the children would have of their father.   After a horrendous operation…..I was with him in intensive care as he was coming to …..in and out…  his experience of the pain was unbearable…His words….”It is worse than in the WAR.

Ken recovered and lived for several more years.

Warning or arguments about money: Worries about money or an inner warning to watch expenditure; a conflict relating to feelings about money or your personal value.

 Warning bell, voice or signal: Intuition that something needs attention in your life, either internally or externally.

Being warned by someone else or voice: You may not be living up to your own standards, or not taking notice of something you have observed unconsciously but need to give attention to.

Watch – Wrist

If a present it probably relates to the giver or circumstances of giving. So, what is said about clock is a good indication. You might have been given the wristwatch in the dream by your father for instance. It might be you therefore treasure it or have difficult feelings because of bad relationship memories. Although breaking of a wristwatch by someone you know can point to feelings about their death, or their dying. See: Time; Presents; Clock.

 A digital wristwatch can give an audible beep on the hour or any length of time so it may represent a warning or your intuition.

 

Watching Watched

Being aware of or observing something – perhaps something you have noticed from everyday events but not made conscious, or something about yourself. It could also suggest watching out for what other people are doing to you – therefore suspicion or watchfulness.

 

Sometimes we learn by watching, and if the dream has this feeling it is good to define what you were learning. Sometimes we learn by watching, and if the dream has this feeling it is good to define what you were learning. We as humans, like other mammals, in our earliest years particularly, still learn like most mammals do, and that is not verbal at all. A massive amount of information is absorbed from our parents without any effort or awareness simply by watching and absorbing. So, the lessons learned by pain or through long experience through generations are exhibited in our parent’s behaviour in dealing with events. The young bears are fully focussed watching what their mother does. There are no words spoken because we learn by copying. The young bears are learning the skills of the mother to hunt and survive. Such skills are passed through the generations, that is why ancestral worship is important.

The mental and emotional state in which we watch is also important in understanding our dreams. For if we are feeling anger or fear it changes the dream and the comment the dream is making about you, Other emotional or attitudes also change the dream and it is wise it see what your emotional and mental states are saying about you. See Emotions and Mood in Dreams 

Being watched by a person an animal or a huge powerful being suggests that you have become aware of yourself from a different perspective. That often has very important information about you, so it is important to understand it by using Being The Person or Thing

 Intently watching or observing something can lead to wonderful new insights into your own nature. A man who was observing something unfolding in him using the Keyboard Condition says, “Suddenly I was aware that something held me. It was the process that had grown me from seed in the first place. My ego had not created me or grown me. But now this deep part of me was unfolding me again, like a plant opening. I understood that we each have this force at our centre, and as I watched it working in my body and life, it seemed to communicate with me.”

Because of the many nature films shown on television we are used to the idea of mature and intelligent adults spending days or years watching the behaviour of animals such as hyenas or chimpanzees.

By watching our dreams through such observation of them it first presents information about our personal experiences and memories and how they influenced our growth and influence present responses. Gradually the information arising from such watching leads beyond one’s personal self. It shows in many cases how our unique self has arisen from, and has indissoluble links with our forebears, with our culture, with the past as a whole, and with the cosmos itself. It leads from oneself to the edge of the known, and perhaps helps us take a few steps beyond that edge into the unknown, to create new understanding.

This mind watching gradually reveals to us the many aspects of the mind’s working, and with such insight may come the growing ability to use these facets of ourselves. Not only may we discover great vistas of personal memory, but also the roots of our creativity, the subtle senses of our emotions and unconscious, and the treasures of experience we have gathered. See Your Amazing Circle – Self-Observation 

Idioms: Be on the watch for; watch out; watch one’s step; watch over; watch someone like a hawk. See: Seeing – Saw – Sight; burglar or intruder; peeping tom

How Your Worst Enemy Can be Your Best Friend

By Dina Glouberman

Dina is an amazing woman. She once called me ‘a force of nature’ – I am not sure of that, but I know it is true of Dina. She has imagined and manifested what she imagined over and over again – a True Creative.

Here are some of her work – Dina’s Creations click on ‘More Creative Retreats‘ and Worldwide Retreats – Her Books – Tony

From Difficult Times to New Beginnings… are you wondering if this is one of those happily-ever-after-ish self-help books, telling you that no matter how hard life is right now, if only you get your act together, clarify what you want, and think positive, you can sail off to a new and wonderful reality?

It’s not.

All of that does help, but you need a lot more than positive thinking. And the new reality you may be sailing to is not a happily-ever-after one. It will include the joy that flows through you, the pain that you accept is part of life, the new successes and new failures, the growing knowledge of who you really are, the discovery of what you really love, the understanding of what you contribute to the world around, and the whole package of a life that is constantly renewing itself.

Are you up for this? I hope so. Because this is what this book, and your own imagination, can help you to do.

The secret is to learn how to make changes in your imagination before you make them in reality. This is the basis of the Imagework approach I have pioneered for almost thirty years.

In fact, educating your imagination is in my view your single most important tool to understand and guide your life, and this is particularly so when you are about to turn a corner. By the end of this book, I hope you will not only have a new vision of where you are, and where you are going, and how to get there, but also a new way of thinking that you can carry on with from here on in.

That in itself is a new beginning.

You need all the friends you can get

Let’s start with something very basic and yet quite rare—really good friends. When you are facing difficult times of any kind, or just feeling stuck and knowing it is a time for a change, you need all the good friends you can get—and, if possible, no worst enemies.

You want people around who will do all the things friends or advisers do at their best: love you, have compassion if you’re in trouble but also remind you just how strong and wonderful you are, gently help you to stop denying painful truths and to start being more honest with yourself, point out your options, remind you of what you love and what you are good at, encourage you to keep going, and just help in any way they can without trying to take over. You want people who will encourage you to expand, to be the most you can be.

You certainly don’t want people who criticize you, blame you, tell you it’s all your fault, remind you just how hopeless and powerless you are, say that you might as well give up now. People like this are really pushing you to contract, make yourself smaller and weaker and more powerless.

But which worst enemy is also your best friend?

Your own imagination, of course.

Your inner imagery has an amazing power, and it can work to support and guide you or to attack and hold you back, in fact to do all those things that good friends do, but also the ones worst enemies do.

So whether you’ve got friends or enemies around you in your life—or even when you feel utterly alone–you’ve always got your own imagination.  Let’s make sure it is your best friend.

The power of your imagination

Everything that you create in your life, from an omelette to a multinational company to a love affair, begins as an image in your mind. Your deepest attitudes are held in the form of images or metaphors and your view of the future will similarly begin as a picture or story or image that you may never question.

These images are often unconscious and may originate in very early childhood, and they guide your mind, your body, your emotions, and your most basic attitudes to life without you necessarily being aware.

When is your imagination your worst enemy? It is whenever it attacks you, worries you, frightens you, humiliates you, blames you, criticizes you, threatens you with some dire end you might come to—just like a bullying worst enemy could do.

For example, have you ever laid awake at night, terrified by what will happen to you if you get too old, too ill, too damaged by Alzheimers, too poor, too lonely, too grief stricken by loss of a loved one, or all of the above? Or do you have some other haunting fear?

If you look closely you’ll discover that there’s a picture in there, of you collapsed, small, young, helpless or hopeless, which you take to be your future if this or that happens.  This is your imagination attacking you and getting you to contract, to stay safe, to go back into your cave.

Do you ever feel horribly humiliated as you remember a time in the past? Again, there’s a picture or a sense impression of you in there, even if you can’t see it right now, and it’s so powerful that you are feeling all those feelings all over again.

Do you ever feel absolutely awful because you are going over and over in your mind what you should have done or how much better your life would have been if you hadn’t made a mess? Your inner images are full of blame and accusation or are torturing you with how things would have been if you’d been different—or how wonderfully off everyone else is because they did not make any mistakes.

On the positive side, do you ever feel confident about the future? Do you have a picture or a sense of yourself being okay, smiling happily and standing tall?  This again is your imagination, being your friend, holding your hand, so that you feel safe even when things look risky from the outside.

Your images even control your autonomic nervous system, the one that includes your heart rate, digestion, respiratory rate, salivation, perspiration, that sort of thing,

all of which we normally think of as beyond our control. Think for example of trying to make yourself salivate by telling yourself to salivate. It doesn’t work all that well. But try to vividly imagine sucking a very sour lemon, and see what happens! Words don’t control it but images do.

For that matter, if you are willing, let yourself have one of those fear or humiliation, or blame pictures, and see what happens to your body, your breathing, your heartbeat? Now see yourself happy, whether in the past or the present or the future, imagine really going into that picture and feel it as if it is happening right now. What happens to you then? Are you standing straighter? Is your breathing more relaxed? Are you smiling?

Neuroscientists are now showing that when you see or do something in your imagination, it activates many of the same parts of the brain as when you are literally seeing something or doing something. Imagined physical exercise increases your strength almost as much as actual exercise, and your heartbeat and breathing increase when you are doing it. In other words, your imagery is real and has real effects, and many of our difficulties need to be dealt with in your imagination, where they begin. )

I have found through my own research that the way to deal with extreme fears of the future, for example, is not to pile up security but to work with the images that are bringing that fear about. Once you’ve done that, you can calmly assess what positive actions you really need to take to protect yourself, something you cannot do in the grips of terror.

Think of it like being in the middle of a nightmare; you can wake up in a panic and take a long time to calm yourself down, even though nothing is objectively happening in the room. Solving the problem can involve vanquishing the monster that has been chasing you, but this must be done in your imagination, and not in everyday reality.

Using imagery has been shown to deepen and speed up any learning, learning, problem solving or creative process. It is a central feature of methods from psychotherapy to sports psychology. Successful, highly skilled, health and creative people all use imagery naturally. You can learn to use imagery to enhance every aspect of your life personally, professionally, creatively, and spiritually.

All of this goes to remind us how central your imagination is to your life, and how important it is to get it on your side.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful?

Wouldn’t it be great to be able to see all the images that are secretly guiding you revealed right before your eyes?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to know how to drop out any images that have been messing up your life, and to create new ones that take you where you want to go?

Wouldn’t it be reassuring to know that some inner guidance is available from deep inside you to draw the map of the future for you so that you know that you are acting in line with your highest purpose and your greatest joy?

Wouldn’t it be comforting to have your imagery holding your hand every step of the way so that you never feel out of touch with your own inspiration and will?

And to know a fast and easy way to gain access to your imagination, so that you can hear the whisperings of your deepest self before they become shouts and get you into trouble?

You can and you will.

Mark’s story

My friend Mark, an internationally recognized management consultant with his own very successful company, wrote me about this story of how he started on his present life trajectory 21 years ago.  It all began, apparently, when he did some visioning straight out of my book, Life Choices, Life Changes!

At the age of 31 I was faced with a frustrating (if well paid) job in a large corporation.  I was doing an MBA degree with the Open University at the time, and one of the tutors had recommended your book on ‘Life Choices’ as a possible route to think about what I might do next.  So, one evening I lay on the bedroom floor in my small flat, relaxed and started to visualise… I saw a house with me in it… working upstairs… and other people, also involved in the work (I was single at the time)… and a garden… and a sign outside the door, a brass plate… and a way of life very different to the one I was living at the time. 

 After about 15 minutes, I got up from the floor.  Life really was never the same again.  I started working towards this new future right away – exploring setting up in business as a management consultant (which I did a year later), starting a relationship (a few months later), working with other people (pretty much right away)… and also starting to look for the house.  It wasn’t a case of ‘the’ house, but finding a place which would fit.  The amazing thing was how quickly it all came together – and around 18 months after lying down on my bedroom floor, I was living in a house just like the one I had seen in my mind’s eye. 

 And… twenty-one years on, I’ve moved twice, but always to a house with the same spirit and carried on similar work… and I’m still with the same partner!  And it’s been an amazing journey, and at the same time things are still rather like they began on my bedroom floor in the little flat all those years ago.  Strange, eh? 

His story is one of so very many that people have told me about over the years where through visioning they sensed the right future for them and then went ahead to create or find it and enjoy it. Was Mark predicting the future, or did he make it happen? I think it is a bit of both, that the visioning taps into your best and deepest intuitive understanding of what is the path forward that is most in line with the person you are, and then, because you have a clear map and you know you are on track, you go ahead and make it happen relatively easily.  When you are clear in this way, also, it does often seem that serendipitous events happen with amazing frequency to help you. This is the magic and the mystery of visioning.

  Past its use-by date

Mark was consciously using imagery in a positive way to understand and guide his life. But when you are not looking so consciously, much of your imagery is completely outdated, because it comes from vivid impressions and experiences we had when you were young or very powerless.  Sometimes the worst experiences are the ones you have completely forgotten, but your imagination has not, and the body tensions that go with those memories are still there under the surface, creating fear, anxiety, or depression without your knowing why.

For example, unconsciously you may have brought forward from your infancy an image of life as forever disappointing, or of men being aggressive and dangerous, or of good fortune being something that you have to pay for, or of every effort of yours being attacked, perhaps because in your childhood it was often that way.

You may not be fully aware that when your adult life looks the same to you, it is because you have unconsciously been selecting out all the real events that fit your picture, even managing to get people to behave in just these terrible ways, or being attracted to the kind of people who will behave this way and ignoring anyone who behaves well or considering them exceptions. What you see in the world is often what your inner eye projects onto the world.

In other words, you see what you believe.

Does this begin to explain why sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you seem to end up on the same old situations you are trying to escape from?

If you are having a difficult time, your imagination may well be running riot, and probably torturing you with images of what you have lost, or where you went wrong, or what could go wrong in the future, or whatever.  Whatever plans you make will come out of this very painful mindset. And you may well be making predictions that no matter what you do, what you are feeling now is how you will always feel, so you might as well give up.

Don’t. Your imagination can become your best friend if only you pay it some attention, listen to it, and help it to help you, as Mark did.

An educated imagination

The language of the imagination is the language of the child. And we all know that children can veer between being bullies and angels, sometimes with not much in between! So if we think of the imagination as a child, we can understand a bit better how to deal with it.

Let’s take this a step further. If you adopted a child who had been treated badly, you’d have to take time to understand what has gone wrong, and to help the child get new attitudes. So if you have had a difficult childhood, your imagination will reflect that, and will need your loving attention.

On the other hand, if you adopted a child who had been treated well, you’d have less to deal with and a much easier ride. Those areas of your life that were healthful and nourishing will have left a positive imprint on your imagination and will already be supporting you.

But any way you look at it, a child needs to be educated. Your imagination is the same—it needs education– and you are the one who is going to have to do it.

Think of it this way: our formal education was all about words and numbers, because this is what helps us to understand, communicate with, and manage the world.  But our imagery, which helps us to understand, communicate with, and manage ourselves, was never taught to us. So we need to educate ourselves as adults.

Your images of the future are crucial when you are setting out on a new path. If defeats and failures are terrifying to you, for example, it is impossible for you to take the risk of going outside your comfort zone to actually have a new beginning. No risk comes with a cast iron guarantee of success. The only thing you can say to yourself is that whatever happens, you will still be there, and able to ask what’s next.

This is what working with your images can help you to experience.

Not only that, but even what you think you want is often based on old unconscious expectations or childhood images so that when you vision the future in a more creative way, you may find that what would really bring you joy and purpose is very different. This is because imagery used consciously can tap into your inner wisdom in a way that words seldom do.

History repeats itself because your old images push you that way. But it doesn’t have to. Life is much richer than that, and so is your imagination. You really can have a new beginning.

Your spiritual gym

The first step towards a fresh imagination is going to the gym, in this case, your spiritual gym.  Is this something religious? No. But it is something to do with the spirit of being you.

The spiritual gym is where you exercise the skills you need for your inner life, rather than those you need for your physical body. It is the inner space in which you can discover, and practice, the ways in which imagery can help you understand yourself and guide your life. It is also where you strengthen other muscles, like the ones that help you live truthfully, stay on course, keep your heart open, and generally be aligned with your deepest truest self. Your inner imagery can help you with all of this.

Every chapter will have a workbook page or two, which will give you an imagery exercise that will give you a personal experience of what I have been talking about in the chapter. These are designed to help you find out on an inner level what is going on for you, what is possible for you, and what your next step might be.  They are probably more important than the chapter, so don’t just skip them and go on to the next chapter!  The words will help, but they won’t train your imagination to be your best friend.  Only you can do that.

If there is anyone you trust whom you can team up with to read the book together and do the exercises, that would be great. It will encourage you to stay on track and keep the fun in it. Also, the presence of someone else does enhance imagery and other deep experiences because you can surrender and feel safe in a way that you can’t always do on your own. But of course you need to know that the person is safe for you!

There are a few principles that are worth remembering when you do any form of imaging, which I will give in the Spiritual Workbook for Chapter one. For further details, do also look at my book Life Choices, Life Changes which is a full introduction to the why’s and wherefores and how’s of using imagery to guide you from within. Check out my website www.dinaglouberman.com for CD’s to buy or MP3’s to download so that I can talk you through images.

Remember that this is all an adventure. Fasten your seat belt and enjoy it. Don’t judge it as you are going along or even try to figure out what it means, and be careful not to twist it to end as you wish. See it as a game that you are playing, and if there are any conclusions to be drawn, you will draw them later.

For now, all you need is your curiosity and your willingness to be open to new ways of thinking.

Einstein once said: ”Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

You are, indeed, what you imagine you are. Is it time to take a risk and expand your possible ways of being you?

If where you are is the best you’ve been able to imagine, and if it leaves something to be desired, why not learn to imagine better?

Spiritual Gym Workbook

Exercise 1: Where am I and where do I want to be?

Materials needed: oil pastels/crayons, a pen, and five sheet of paper.

At the top of each of the five pages, write these headings, one per page:

1. Where am I?
2. Where do I want to be?
3. What’s stopping me?
4. What do I need to get past this?
5. What is my true nature?

Now start with the first heading, choose a colour or colours, whatever feels right, and start to “make marks” as artists call it. In other words, don’t try to do a picture, just let your fingers do the drawing and see what happens.  If you are very good at drawing, you might want to use your non-dominant hand so that you disarm your control mind. Don’t look for meaning now, just be curious about what will emerge. This is not a work of art, and you cannot get this wrong, or fail in any way.

Keep drawing for 3-4 minutes, and then stop, and add a few words, again without forethought, just stream of consciousness.

Do the same with each of the other 4.

Now take a look at your drawings, and see what you notice.  If you have a buddy, or even an interested friend, show them the drawings. See what they notice.

What have you learned? What surprised you? What felt like something you knew but hadn’t told yourself?  Write something about this in your workbook.

Another Approach – Tony

Having worked with Dina as a participant in her Imagework and learned so much, while in Mexico a young Mexican woman told me she was haunted by a past life memory and world I help her. I said I would and used an approach inspired by Dina’s work. I asked her first to let go of any physical tensions and asked her to stand with eyes closed. I then told her that I was going to transfer her to a magical place – I did this because the woman believe I had powers, the only power I had was the power of suggestion.

Then, still with her eyes closed I asked her to walk forward three paces and she would be in the special place. I then told her that she was now capable of seeing or knowing the cause of her difficulty. She began to cry and said it wasn’t a past life but to do with her grandmother who had raised her. She had not realised what a wonderful influence this had on her, and how she had only now got back the positive sense of herself she had with her grandmother which she had lost recently.

Of course the belief of the woman in ‘my power’ helped, but your imagination can do this by giving yourself the suggestion as you imagine walking into the place of wonder – or see a great figure giving you the directions – it works. You can approach any question you seek an answer to in this manner. For we all have the magic place within us that is usually covered up with our waking thinking and emotions and all it needs is an attitude of listening and watching like watching a film where you do not know the outcome and you do not know what you are going to hear – that is the magic we all have if we care to use it.

Another approach I devised from Dina’s work is The Peer Dream Work.

Thanks Dina for so much.

Children’s Traumatic Fears

Many people, even parents, have no idea how deeply children feel things. In nature parent animals constantly are with them, and care and guard their children. I witnessed the birth of my cat – Kitty – five kittens.

Seeing my cat, barely a year old give birth to five kits, I was amazed at its knowledge. Without any hesitation she bit through the bag in which each kitten arrived in, gave it some loving licks, ate the afterbirth, and the same for all the others and they all crawled to her teats and fed. That is the very first instinctive move to feed, in films of mothers giving birth there seem to be an awful taboo about this natural act. But then the cat with no education about being a mother never left the kittens for days, allowing them to feed. Also, thinking there would soon be lots of little messes I was astonished to see Mother took care of everything – no mess anywhere.

We humans have so much to learn about being parents. Children are not small adults, they are unique incredibly sensitive little beings. See Remembering My Birth – Going Beyond

 

“Last night my son woke us up at 1-30 am. I found him standing on the landing crying. “Everything is going faster,” he said. I led him back to his bedroom. He told me when I asked, that he had dreamt, in the dream I had run at him and put things in his bed. It all went faster and faster. I encouraged him to let himself be caught or feel the fear chasing him. He went right into living what he felt and thrashed and cried. Afterwards he said it was to do with the fear of the cupboard at Morningside. This had caused him to be afraid of the dark and perhaps to wet his bed.

He then said he was okay. We went to bed. Later I heard the light go on and my son was crying. I found him on the landing again. This time he said it was a rushing/roaring noise in the stillness. I took him to bed with us. He slept. This morning he again lived what he felt and cried and thrashed for about an hour. It then stopped. He said it was to do with being left cold and alone in his pram in the front room at the previous house we  lived in.

The cupboard experience at the previous house started because at night sometimes I used to creep in to get books I stored in the cupboard in the children’s bedroom. I noticed that my small son got terrified when this happened, so one night I crept is again, in his terror I switched on the light and explained what I was doing, I said the light had been left off because I didn’t want to wake the children. After that he was fine with me entering the bedroom.”

In letters I received from Dinah, who is a professional child carer. What follows are Dinah’s words about some of the children and parents she dealt with.

Liz and Derek are the parents of Cherry, their first baby, and Susan their second. Hazel is the grandmother – Derek’s mother.

Dinah had to deal with grandparents who felt the babies should perform in certain ways, showing mechanical affection for them when they sought it. Dinah describes how children have their own natural love if it is allowed, and if it is deserved.

Liz’s mother keeps saying that Cherry isn’t eating enough vegetables or fruit, that she should be kissing everybody when they want her to and she should be saying goodbye when they go. Liz’s mother keeps saying she should be sitting on the pot by now.

Cherry is only 13 months old and she is very loving when she wants to be. She always comes of her own accord to give me a hug when I come to work or she has been out. I have never asked her to do this and that is the difference, she comes and wants to make that body contact with me, she knows she can go as soon as she wants to, where they hang onto her for too long.

Liz becomes pregnant with her second child, and Dinah describes what leads up to the birth.

Liz had been out for the evening and came home at midnight to say she felt that she was having minor contractions, I waited around for an hour and they were every ten minutes so I said she best go to the hospital as she was 5 and a half weeks too early. They kept her in overnight and I slept the night at their place and dealt with Cherry till midday the next day when Liz came home. The Dr said she needed to be careful as it was too soon for the baby to come and to go back to hospital if she started again. They gave her a sedative the night she was in hospitaLiz

She had said to me that she had been sitting for 5 hours that evening and it had quietened down.  The next morning I got a 6.30am phone call to say Liz went in again the following night and had given birth to a little girl, Susan at 5.30 am. Could I come in to be there when Cherry woke up.

Liz’s mother came during the day and was very angry with Liz. She told me that after I left they had arrived soon after Liz had come home from the hospital the first time and that Liz was jumping up and down, insisting on dancing with Derek. The more Barbara asked her to sit the more Liz pranced about, the more Barbara was upset and angry. (Barbara has had a very bad asthma attack since then and is in bed herself). Barbara said to me she can’t help Liz look after a premature baby as she is getting to old and ill herself to be of much help.

The Dr said that if this little one had been born in the third world it wouldn’t have survived.  Liz was determined to have the child, she seems as if she can only give herself 80%. She is talking about sending Cherry one day a week to a crèche so she can have a day for her appointments etc. like hair, nails, legs waxed, clothes shopping………….Oh well ……….we have seen it all before…………!

Silly thing is she is more tied to Susan, as they are going to keep her in at least two weeks after Liz comes home… next Monday or Tuesday … as she will have to drive to the hospital at least five times a day for the milk run and to handle Susan. She has been in 9 days so far and has the bug, so has Derek, so they both know what it feels like, Cherry too. We have been eating and sleeping most of the time till two days ago when I felt a bit better.  Cherry is very good and has coped with it all so far. Two nights ago she woke up in the middle of the night and was very clinging for two hours till she went back to sleep. Still her cold medicine makes her sleepy and she is sleeping two hours in the daytime as well as through the nights. She is such a good girl and is no trouble at all.

This is a little note on how Dinah observes the signs of insecurity in Cherry, and how she relates to it.

Hopefully there is only one more week of this hectic work life and then things will settle down. Liz looks very tired now and we hardly see her. Cherry sees her for about ten minutes in the morning before I take her to the park and Liz goes off to feed Susan at the hospital. One of the grand parents takes Cherry to the hospital for a short time in the afternoon to see her Mum and Sister and then Cherry is returned to me. Sometimes Derek comes in an hour before bed time and plays with her. I have her all the rest of the time. She has been very good, only woken up twice in the night which isn’t bad for all the comings and goings that she is having to cope with. But the signs are there that it is stressing her. She hangs onto my finger like glue when she is put down to sleep or gets sleepy in the pushchair. She doesn’t want me disappearing while she is asleep.

I gave Susan a bath yesterday and for the first time she wasn’t crying all the time in the water. I started to sing to her and she just looked and looked at me and relaxed in the water. Liz came in twice while I was doing it and it was the first thing she told Derek when he walked in the door. At 7pm I bath Susan and give her expressed milk out of the bottle and at 8 I give Cherry her bath and put her to bed. It is hard for Cherry to see Susan getting the bottle when it is so close to her bedtime bottle and I think they are going to have to play with Cherry in her room while I am doing Susan as so far all we have had is tears from Cherry when she comes into Susan’s room. I would have thought that it was very clear for the parents to see what is happening but they don’t handle it or are not two jumps ahead of Cherry in the situation. Liz takes the time to express off the next lot of milk so she is otherwise occupied. Derek came in last night, gave Cherry a hug and then the doorbell went so he left Cherry, shut the door on her and went down to the front door. I would have taken her with me, but he didn’t and she was left crying her eyes out behind a closed door. So I still have lots to pass onto the parents about how to have happy children all the time.

Time for myself. Liz is beginning to say sorry all the time now when she asks me to work, the one I feel sorry for is Cherry, she is being passed from pillar to post and has started crying every time she is put down to sleep. All the time I had her she only cried once and that was when Derek woke her and then dashed out of her room, I didn’t know and went in to cover her up before I went to bed and she cried and clung to me for 1 and 1/2 hours before settling back down to sleep.

Rosi put her into bed for her afternoon nap  yesterday and was very cross because Cherry screamed and yelled and then sobbed, so much so that Derek went in and told his mother to go out of the room and he would see to Cherry. He was telling me all this this morning, he said it upset him to hear Cherry sobbing so much, and that he just hugged her and rubbed her back till she settled down and went to sleep. He then got it in the neck from his mother and he yelled at her saying Cherry had so much to deal with at the moment that it wasn’t any wonder she was crying. It is harder now that Liz is at home as she is there but not there and they gave me some time off so I had gone too from Cherry’s routine with Grandmother, cleaner, father stepping into my place. Liz is so single minded about getting to the hospital to feed and wash baby Susan and doesn’t  make any space for Cherry. I have to remind myself it is a job and I can only do so much even knowing what is messing up Cherry.

Susan is better, she is still being given solids but less, Liz couldn’t turn around and stop giving it to her…………she got into a situation where she felt it would be losing face to do it, even though  the night nurse and I both said that R’s pain, constipation was connected with the food intake. Liz instead gave her a laxative to clean her out………….it worked……….and R is happy now. She is still waking in the night and now Liz is control crying with her…………..a method she was told to do with Cherry……….if the child cries…for no reason?…………you pick it up and hug it till it stops crying and then you put it back down again………till it starts crying again and keep doing this till it stops crying while laying down. She did this with R for 1 and 1/2 hours two nights running………then she remembered that she gave Cherry Phonugan, spelling? a knock out syrup at the start so she is going to do the same to R. All because she doesn’t want to be up at 4 am each morning. R is dribbling a lot and I wonder if she is beginning to feel her teeth pushing in her gums.  I said so, so has one grandmother.

At these times I find work very hard, I say what I know and then have to hold back as Liz is going to do whatever she wants anyway.  I do see that I have a good relationship with Cherry and in time with Susan. Cherry always calls out my name when I walk in the front door even though she doesn’t see me at that point. She comes up to me and gives me a hug… where she will point blank refuse to do so with other members of the family. I have never asked her to do so and I think that is one of  the good things in our relationship, I don’t crowed her or insist she say things because I want her to…….apart from laying still while I change her nappy………….we still have a struggle with that one.

Dinah was away for three weeks, and here describes her first meeting with Cherry after this absence. The beauty of the description is in the care Dinah shows about dealing with Cherry’s own feelings of wanting contact, or avoiding it.

Cherry just looked at me when I walked in, she came up to me and then looked and looked. She put her hands in the air and wriggled her fingers and then looked some more. Then she went and got a ball for me to play with, so I rolled it for her to go after and bring back. She did this several times and then told me she had a poo. So I followed her upstairs and into her bedroom to the changing table. I lifted her up and laid her down, then she gave me a look that was saying she wasn’t too sure, kind of quizzical expression. I didn’t want to touch her without it being alright by her, so I asked her if I could take her pants down to change her nappy. She smiled so I took it to be OK.

I chatted all the time to her and then she started to play the game of where is my nose, eyes mouth etc. Touching mine as she played it. She brushed my hair, then she sat up and kissed me. She has never said my name yet, as Hazel pointed out she couldn’t ask for me even if she wanted to because she hasn’t said my name. Liz watched closely when I was downstairs as she  is going away soon without the children and wanted to see what to expect from Cherry when she comes back.

Susan has grown, filled out and really smiled at me and was trying to say something. Liz said she has just started that in the last two days. Liz looks very tired and D. looks the same. Hazel was pleased to see me, asked how you were and said I had caught the sun on my face. Leann – who took my place – was pleased to see me and went off home soon after I arrived. Her boyfriend drove her to work in the evening, 10pm, to collect her things and as she took them out she was really laughing and said to D. and Liz…….., I’m leaving here, I’m going home. She thought it very funny………. Liz said she had worked very hard as Liz had been ill and Leann had to do everything. One night M was so tired that she didn’t see that she had put Cherry to bed with her slippers on.

I am giving them. It is interesting that the younger child IS really missing both parents more than the year older one. She shows it in so many ways and keeps calling for them.

Cherry, I think will show it, when the parent come back.

Not how Liz saw it at all, as she thought it would be Cherry who was upset. Cherry only showed it when she was talking to the parents on the phone. It was her father she started to talk to and chattered on about things she had been doing, but quite soon she asked to talk to her mother. When she came on the phone she immediately said, ” Mummy come back’ in a very quiet little voice with her head hanging down. I could see she was very close to tears and that is all she would say to her mother, ‘come back”.

She sat on my lap for the next hour then we all went up to have a bath and she relaxed a bit, playing in the warm water.  With all this going on, how can I not be there as I know how it will affect them if I wasn’t part of their life at the moment, too.”

Some well-meaning parents have no idea that they terrify their child. They fail to see the body language or facial expression of anxiety, showing their child’s fear. A case I know of was of a father talking to his young son who wet himself. The father seeing this said to the child’s nursemaid, “Why has he wet himself?”

The nursemaid who had witnessed this said, “It is because the way you were talking to him frightened him.”

Voice or Hearing Voices

This is a very subtle expression of an enormous range of your feelings, hurts, wonder and creativity. The voice also depicts communication, or the reaching out beyond you to cause effects in other people or the environment. So, it is a power that can influence external people, things and events.

Spontaneous speech or a voice that speaks through or to you: Your personality or mind is not a totally unified whole. You do no identify or know some aspects of yourself. Because you disown them, or fail to connect with them, they become split from your main expression. Contacting them may be like meeting a stranger – thus in dreams they are shown as exterior to you, or a separate voice, perhaps disembodied.

Some aspects of you express spontaneously, just as your breathing and digestion does. The voice may therefore be your intuitive expression of unconscious but not integrated parts of you. These may be wonderfully enlightening, or express past pains and abuse. To aid with this see Throat .

Example: I woke in the night to pee. As I was getting ready to climb out of the bed, I remembered a dream. It wasn’t a dream with images, but it was a formless person – a bodiless voice – telling me about my son. It said that my son was destined for success and was a great man. I asked why it was such a struggle for him to find success and was told it was because he was in training for greatness, and that is what it took. I then asked when it would happen and was told when he is 50.

Example: The other day I watched a program on the television in which a man was talking about his relationship with the recent Korean air crash. He said that he was a frequent air traveller, but before boarding that plane he heard a voice saying to him not to get on the plane. He said, “Look, I travel all the time. Why should I hear a voice like that? I think somebody was trying to tell me something.” His explanation of it was that he felt there was some sort of guardian or person caring for him.

Example: I felt like an animal that could not form words and so all it could do to express its intense feelings was to make these sounds over and over. It wasn’t a sound of pain.

Such deep feelings that are made by a beautiful animal consciousness inside me, and it had to slowly rise to the level of human speech. And finally, it poured out of me in the words, “I love myself.” Which actually meant I love something hard to express – something so huge that was everything and everyone that had led me to this realisation that I am an enormous collection of hundreds of people, animals and things beyond understanding.

And that in turn became, “I felt the wonder years ago” all in a voice of great emotion. “I felt that wonder and it has been burning in me ever since.”

Example: ‘My present lover, Tony, and a man I had loved years before, were standing side by side. A voice was telling me to go to Tony.’ Miranda L

Here, Miranda’s unconscious is summarising her feelings and helping her transfer her feelings of love connected with the past, to her new lover. See Voice – Using It

 

Weeds

Things you have developed in your life which are not contributing much to your present life situation – or might even be stopping more positive personal growth. Weeds can also point to the way your thoughts or feelings have been allowed to get out of hand and grown in a way to crowd out real useful growth. So, they can suggest misplaced endeavour or energy. See: Plants.

I go into a bathroom and begin pulling weeds from my mouth; weeds, weeds and more weeds come out from my mouth – come from deep down inside me. I am still pulling them out when I leave the bathroom and someone, a woman walking behind me, helps me to pull some weeds that are still trailing from my mouth. P.

Pulling stuff out of the mouth is a common dream, and most likely expresses the feeling of discomfort we feel if something foreign is in our mouth or throat. It shows the feeling of urgently trying to rid oneself of something that is unpleasant – perhaps feelings we have taken in, or things we have said that leave a nasty taste in one’s mouth. Because we speak with our mouth and tongue, they can represent the things we are trying to say, but we are blocked by feelings/emotions that are difficult to express.

Of course, weeds are simply nature’s own living creatures, but as far as dreams are concerned, weeds often are shown as blockages for things to flow easily, or to function well, so ask yourself, “In what way do I feel blocked?” It might be emotionally, sexually, creatively, your voice or even your energy.

Example: I was walking by a riverbank near a cemetery. As I walked and drew near to the cemetery, I saw submerged in the river a record player – in fact my record player. I walked into the river and pulled it out.

Prior to this dream he had experienced several dreams showing the river being blocked, or silted up, or made sluggish with reeds and weeds, and in this dream, he was walking in the direction the river flowed, it being clear and free flowing. The river is the flow of his life, showing the energies of growth and creativity, the energies underlying emotions, thinking and sexuality. The dream shows him as consciously following their flow. The cemetery is the many past lives buried within him. The record player is the faculty of memory covered up by the emotions or flow of his inner life, but now he is bringing this faculty to the surface. He felt this dream had something to do with past lives but was far from being sure.

A weed: In the English language a ‘weed’ often refers to a person who has no physical or personal strength. Someone who may be thin, not fully developed and unattractive.

Weeding out: In dreams it can indicate you trying to ‘weed out’ the parts of you that you do not want to grow in your life; also an awareness of particular parts of your personality which need working on, perhaps negative habits that need ‘weeding out’.

Weeds in the pool: Also, emphases the dangers you may harbour in your thinking or habits, because weeds growing up from the bottom of a swimming pool may trap a person freely exploring their inner world. See Inner World

CONTACT

Being Polly

During this period (April 1976) a new technique of group or partner work was evolved. I have called it Contact. It has arisen out of much that we have done in the past. It is deeply penetrating and effective.

Actually experiencing this form of meeting can be an amazing adventure or a real enlightenment. Here is an account of one such session between Ed and Polly.

I had know Polly for some time, but I had never used this form of meeting with her. Polly is a divorcee, a nurse, and someone I naturally like. My own situation at the time was of being married.

We sat opposite each other and were quiet for a while. I wanted to be in touch with Polly’s body in some way so I told her and she felt easy with that so we moved closer and held hands. I can’t remember every detail but I remember I was feeling close but without any desire to get closer. Then Polly started telling me she had warm feelings for me. With quite some feelings she said she loved me. I had used this approach quite often so it didn’t knock me back or anything. But in observing my own feelings I couldn’t notice any response to what Polly was saying, and I had the sense she expected a reply. So I said something like, “Well, what you are saying is really strong, but I don’t feel anything like what you say. I just feel calm and observing.”

Polly seemed to experience something powerful and started crying, and when she did that I could feel my own emotions respond. Then she explained that what I had said had suddenly pushed her to remember that this situation we were in was like a replay of something that used to happen between herself and her father. She had felt it as some sort of duty to tell her father that she loved him, but in fact she didn’t have any feelings for him. She had grown to believe her lie though, and it wasn’t until we had started being honest with each other that the lie had been exposed. This relieved me as I couldn’t understand how, if someone felt love for me, I wouldn’t have some sense of it.

After that it was like a wall had been dropped between us. I began to feel feelings of warmth and connection with Polly, and she with me. We played a bit and laughed and put our noses together looking into each others eyes close up. All I could see was one big eye looking straight into me. It was a very nice feeling. Then something amazing happened and I can’t even begin to understand how. Suddenly I was Polly. I was completely in her body although I was physically sitting in front of her. It was one of the strangest things I have ever known. Although Polly didn’t feel it to the same degree, she still felt something big had happened and held me close.

Gradually the feeling got clearer. It was like I was trapped in a woman’s body, and was scared I wouldn’t be able to get out. I realised it was about being born and told Polly. She then held me by wrapping her legs around me so I could really feel a woman’s body holding me tight. Slowly I wriggled free, and in doing so knew that I was facing a fear that getting near a woman might somehow trap me, and with Polly’s help I was finding my way beyond this fear.

Boundaries – are they fear or intuition?

What is the Technique behind using Contact

It can be used either as a group where people form couples to work together, or simple a couple, male to male, female to female or male to female who wish to explore each other in depth.

It must be understood that the couples have agreed to be completely honest with each other, and they start by either choosing a partner to work with, or sitting opposite each other and really looking at each other. Take your time with this because in looking at each other you are deciding to give each other honest and straight feedback.

Such honesty might be, “I find you extremely attractive, but am scared of showing it.” Or something like, “I am feeling extremely shy and unable to really say what I feel.”

If you are being honest and watching your partner and your own feelings you often note subtle changes in your partners face or body and you know what they  indicate – if so say what you see to your partner.

An enormous part of this technique is about being aware of the flow of feelings and even emerging images that you note in observing yourself. Observing your own ebb and flow of thoughts and feelings, your own habits and responses to things, it is one of the most powerful of tools to use in transforming your life. This also leads to a fuller connection with your intuitive connection with your core.

Much of our behaviour is largely or wholly unconscious. Becoming aware of something can by itself produce a change. If you are not aware of how you act or respond, there is less likelihood of satisfying change.

But before you start, remember that some things you do are not comfortable to become aware of. Personal growth is not a constant delight. There are growing pains occasionally. Remember also that self observation is not aimed at correcting wrong behaviour. There are not a set of right things to do. But there are ways you can discover of satisfying yourself more fully, and there are ways of responding and living that have the opposite effect to producing satisfaction and peace.

Another important thing to remember is that most of what we do is habitual. It takes no thought or effort to do it. Habits feel right because they have been done for so long. Even emotional responses are often habitual. So when you change you are going to confront a habit. Practising the new thing is necessary. Practice self observation until it is itself a habit and easy. See Habits

Such honestly can have amazing effects. Here is part of an explanation of a couple of males meeting while using contact. “I also remember seeing a vision of you spinning around in a huge golden light filled tube and feeling very sad (more tears) by realizing that as a spiritual teacher it could be very lonely on that mountain top as not many people could scale those heights, then I remember us rolling around on the floor like a couple of animals hugging shouting and laughing……I described it once, as having a spiritual/psychic orgasm.”

I believe the rolling around the floor started because after some time of honest sharing, Bob said to Andrew as they were breaking through barriers that had held them apart, “But if you say you love me, I wonder if the next moment you could walk away and leave me.” To which Andrew replied, “Yes, I could walk away.”

And that broke the last barrier and led them to meet deeply.

It is so simple and yet so powerful, why not try it?

What Are Dreams

Dreams are one of nature’s miracles, not the result of a wandering mind in sleep. A dream is an interface between the process of life, our core self and our conscious personality. Life existed quite capably for millions of years before the self-aware human personality came on the scene. In all that time the ancestors of the modern human being survived without having a rational mind to reason with, or self consciousness to ask such questions as ‘What do I do about this?’ Nevertheless survival strategies were still developed in their unconscious intelligence. Dreams express this unconscious wisdom that was developed in humans and animals through millions of years of Life experience.

Life’s age old unconscious processes are still the major part of our being, yet we seldom consciously meet them – except in dreams. As our physical and psychological health depend upon a reasonable co-operation between the spontaneous processes of life – such as breathing, digestion and the thousands of other life sustaining activities and our conscious decisions and actions, the encounter in dreams is vital. As I often point out to those I am advising we are a human face on a long line of beautiful animals. In fact “You ride an ancient beast.” The ancient beast is your body, and your conscious self is the modern and recent rider of it. Some ‘riders’ do not understand their animal needs – and the fact that we have several levels of brain that are independent of each other proves this. Still active in us are our Reptile Brain, Our mammalian Brain, and our Human Brain, and the reptile and mammalian brains are still very active and constitute a large part of our human unconscious. See Brain Levels and Dreams and Levels of Awareness in Sleeping and Waking.

So, no plant or creature grows from a dead seed, and each living seed carries within it all the past gathered from all its forebears. So, the seed in your mother’s womb is as old as and even older than human kind, and you carry that wisdom or memories in you. But in this life you developed a new brain, and the memories you gathered this time are what you built your personality from, but beneath that is a very ancient self. To meet this ancient self try using Opening to Life

That suggests that dreams cannot be defined under any one heading. Like human beings, they are enormously varied in what they express. Just as one cannot say the human mind is simply a system of memory, one cannot say dreams are just the reflection of experienced events. The mind also deals with problem solving, predicting outcomes of action, playing with possibilities via imagination, creating the new out of old material, replaying traumatic and disturbing events in order to find ways of meeting them constructively. Dreams, being the mental phenomena they are, deal with all of these issues and more. The following definitions give the main functions observable in dreams.

Dreams are:-

1. Recently I have come to see dreams as the lonely voice of Life calling out to us in our often frantic search for meaning. It calls out from its vastness that is beyond our understanding, and in its loving efforts gathers the fragments of our memory and associations and forms dreams with them. It does this in its efforts to instruct, guide and even heal us; but often we miss seeing that just as Life reaches to us from its vastness using things we might understand, we too must reach beyond our often pitiful understanding to move toward and touch the wonder of Life within us.
2. An expression of what is happening in the physical body. Some doctors consider dreams to show signs of illness long before they are evident in other ways. Women frequently know they are pregnant very early on through sleep awareness in a dream. See: body; body dreams; Kasatkin_Vasily; consciousness-mind body split.
3. A link between the sleeping mind and what is occurring externally. For instance, a person may be falling out of bed and dream of flying or falling.
4. A way of balancing the physiological and psychological activities in us. When a person is deprived of dreaming in experiments, a breakdown in mind and body quickly occurs. This type of dreaming, or even nightmares, can often be a safety valve releasing tension and emotion not dealt with in waking life. See: compensation theory; self-regulation dreams and fantasy; science and dreams.
5. An enormously original source of insight and information. Dreams tap our memory, our experience, and scan information held in our unconscious to form new insights from old experience. Dreams often present to us summaries or details of experience we have been unable to access consciously. Sometimes this is as early as life in the womb.  See: creativity and problem solving in dreams.
6.    That insight comes from an amazing ability dreams have. Mostly we are lost in being aware of this moment or cares of recent events, and of our present environment, but the dream process has another view, that is of our whole life, like flying high and so have a huge view. We have taken in so much life experience, but many of  us have not learnt the amazing lessons we gained by it. But the overall view we get from dreams, visions and our intuition gives us a view that synthesises or whole life and highlights its wonder, its destiny, our real purpose and our life’s real work. See Intuition – Using It
7. A means of compensating for failure or deprivation in everyday life, and as a means of expressing the otherwise unacknowledged aspects of oneself. Such dreams are a move toward wholeness. See: compensation theory.
8. In dreams we may be integrating new experience with what we have already gathered and digested. In this way our abilities, such as social skills, are gradually upgraded. See: computer, computer-dream process as a; Evans, Christopher.
9. Dreams often stand in place of actual experience. So through dreams we may experiment with new experience or practice things we have not yet done externally. For instance many young women dream in detail of giving birth. This function of what might be called ‘imagination’ is tremendously undervalued, but is a foundation upon which human survival is built. See: imagination and dreaming.
10. An means of exercise for the psyche or soul. Just as the body will become sick if not moved and stressed, so the mind and emotions need stimulus and exercise. Dreams fulfill this need. See Opening to Life
11. An expression of human supersenses. Humans have an unconscious ability to read body language – so they can assess other humans very quickly. Humans have an unimaginable ability to absorb information, not simply from books, but from everyday events – for example science now tells us that we collect information at an enormous rate, millions of bits every second, but unfortunately we do not synthesis it to see what it means, for most of it is unconscious, only dreams access and use it. With it they constantly arrive at new insights and realisations. Humans frequently correctly predict the future – not out of a bizarre ability, but from the information gathered about the present. All these abilities and more show in our dreams. See: esp in dreams.
12. A means of solving problems, or formulating creative ideas, both in our personal life, and also in relationships and work. Many people have produced highly creative work directly from dreams. See Creative Dreaming and Problem Solving
13. A presentation in symbols of past traumatic experience. If met this can lead to deep psychological healing. Such dreams are therefore an attempt on the part of our spontaneous inner processes to bring about healing change. See: abreaction; compensation theory; nightmares.
14. In the widest sense nearly all dreams act as a process of growth or a move toward maturing. Some dreams are very obviously presenting internal forces or dimensions of experience that might lead the conscious personality toward a greater balance and inclusiveness. See: individuation; LifeStream.
15. A way of reaching beyond the known world of experience and presenting intimations from the unknown. Many people have dreams in which ESP, out of the body experiences, and knowledge transcending time and space occur. This type of dream may indicate a link between the present person and people who had lived in the distant past; or between the dreamer and all existing life. Some of these dreams present powerful insights into how the transitory human personality may arise out of an eternal consciousness. They thus deal with the spiritual aspects of human nature. See: Dimensions of Human Experience; Buddhism and dreams; Cayce, Edgar; collective unconscious; Bible and dreams; esp in dreams; hallucinations; history of dreaming; religion and dreams; yoga and dreams; Dream Yoga.

Videos of Tony

The mountain climbers were Krysia Gallien and Tony. Krysia joined in the work we did while at Ashram Combe Martin in the early 1970’s. Ashram now called Wild Pear Centre

As we were then, Krysia is the curly haired one in the middle

Follow Me Up The Inner Mountain

The following videos are filmed by CJ and are about experiences gained during a major stroke – hopeful not awful.

Entering a serious Stroke

The Brain is Not You – Because My Brain Was F****d

How Did I deal With Not Being Able To Communicate With Speech and Writing?

CJ and Tony

Seven 7 Levels of Us

1. At the base level it is movement. As our being develops from conception a first sign of life might be movement within the womb and the heartbeat. Basically Life is recognised by its ability to move, not just physically from place to place, but also the spontaneous movements the life process makes such as heartbeat, breathing, and internal organs.
2. But Life has many possibilities, so it can then express as sexual drive and the urge to procreate, which can be about producing children or can branch off into being creative socially or in the arts. It is often not realised that the beginning of all life forms was the single cell, but such cell did not become old and die but it was immortal, for it kept dividing by splitting in half and so lived on. In dividing it constantly creates copies of itself, but as it gathers new experience, it changes what is copied, so becomes the ‘seed’ for multi-cellular organism, for you.
3. There is also the urge to feed or eat, which at the fundamental level can be about eating food, but our hunger can also be to take in new information, a variety of experiences, seeking out to digest and form something new from the experience.
4. Our inner life gathers incredible amounts to ‘feed’ upon. A major source of nutrition is our life experience, what we see, hear, feel and generally experience. The process of Life itself is hungry – obviously for physical food – Life eats, it eats because of its hunger, it eats of itself. It tears, it licks, it sucks the breast, it delicately sips nectar, it sifts food from the ocean, but it is always hungry for experience and learning. It can be through feeling like an angel or a prostitute – Life does not judge.There can be the tremendous motivation to receive and give out, as in breathing. But again it can be the receiving of different emotions and love, and the giving it out from yourself to others.
5. Communication is a necessary part of living beings. According to David Attenborough, “plants can see…count and communicate with one another…react to touch and estimate time.” These claims are supported by the facts that plants turn towards the light, and even prepare themselves for sunrise by facing east in anticipation; trigger hairs on plants react to touch; there is even a social element in plant behaviour in that they fight enemies for territory and compete for mates in order to ensure the survival of the species. The desire to communicate includes speech, or in a basic way of primal sounds, crying, screaming, the roar in battle or in mating cries. But also in song, poetry or story telling.
6. Homeostasis, the power that attempts to keep our body and mind functioning at their optimum is extremely important. If we lack the ability to work in harmony with it we will never be able to be fully at ease or realise one’s amazing abilities and potential. So please see The Secret Power
7. We have a whole armoury of abilities which few have used.  A huge function which is often little developed is the ability to scan information and arrive at a creative overview. At times this is expressed as intuition which leaps beyond what is known and clasps the very new. Within our potential there is transcendence, where our experience goes beyond self and knows itself as part of the cosmic – cosmic consciousness, illumination or enlightenment. See Intuition – Using It

Another View of the Levels

The First Segment in its sleeping or dormant state is at the base of the spine or trunk and it is pictured as a sleeping snake or dragon with seven heads. This part of or segment of the body is where the legs connect, and so can be thought of as the seat of energy or movement. It is best to think of it as Potential Energy, that’s why it has seven heads, because its potential becomes the many aspects or functions of our being.

The Second Segment is the pelvis which houses the sexual, reproductive and excretory organs. The yoga named for these segments is chakras and are often described as sense organs for the subtle aspect of our nature such as thoughts and emotions. This becomes understandable when we realise that if we had been castrated or had a hysterectomy prior to adolescence, we would never develop sexually. Without that development we would not understand two people kissing; or what a mother was feeling when she held her baby. Out of sex drive develops a whole world of feelings and tenderness which enables us to understand many things we see in the world. The same is true of the other areas of our body. So this area deals with our feelings rather than our emotions, and the drives or urges that lead us to socialise. It is our basic power of creativity which can be expressed as physical sex, or lifted up into other forms of creation.

The Third Segment is the solar plexus which is the digestive realm. It deals with what we take into us physically emotionally and mentally. But it also deals with how we deal with what we have taken in to us. For example we may not digest much of our personal experience and so become lost in our inner world and so suffer depression or illness. See digestion and Life’s Little Secrets

The Fourth Segment is the chest area. Its function is to take in and give out, as in breathing.  In work that I have done, this is very much the emotional centre. Any blocks here when you lack emotional responsiveness or deny them can cause chest pain, feelings of loneliness or not being able to connect with others. Its is the heart centre.

All that potential, when in the chest, if it is lifted up we give it form. In the chest it takes in the world, just as we take in the air through our lungs. It draws from our relationship with the world and with other people. It takes what one is receiving and begins to form it into a new moving expression. In the chest questions arise as to what shape and we wish to give it? What we want to do with it? Where do we want to take that life? What do we want to do with life? We may express it as feelings for somebody else through love or care. We may give it as support to another being. We may give it as admiration that is perhaps a stimulus to another being.

 The Fifth Segment is the throat. It deals with speech and communication. Also the expression of passionate feelings as in singing. We can express ourselves easily if this segment is unblocked – that does not apply to people who constantly talk. Often our expression may come from below rather from the head. At such time we may feel we are being inspired to express deep things spontaneously. See Using the Voice

 The Sixth Segment is the brow, and it is, when awoken, the site of great intuition and insight into life and people. See Using Your Intuition

 The Seventh Segment is the top of the skull. This is Golgotha, the place of the skull and in Christian beliefs was the place where Jesus was crucified. But the Bible stories can also be seen as mythology with a symbolic interpretation. In that view when our energy has worked its way up through the body to the top of the head, we go through a transformation in which we are no longer lost in ones personality with its fear of death and its self centred interests. We face death and see through it into a vision of beauty. We experience enlightenment.

Ancient cultures taught that the highest human state is when every level was awakened See The Experience of Enlightenment

Wire

In the form or barbed wire and fencing it can depict a barrier – something in the way of what you want to do or where you want to go. Such wire can also be a protection or an area of privacy. As such it would depict your desires about that or your methods of maintaining or finding privacy or protection. See: Fence.

A fuse wire indicates the vulnerable parts of you that could fail under stress – or else the way you automatically cut off from a situation if it is problematical.

Wires have many other possible associations though, depending on the content of the dream. They can indicate connections you have with other people and what passes between you; the way you are wired inside. In other words the way your emotions might have been connected to certain ‘switches’ when you were young, so particular events or relationship situations connect with great pain or pleasure. Wires often relate to energy and how you handle or relate to it, or the trigger for an explosive device – suggesting a potent area of explosive emotions in you. In this vein we have the term ‘hard wired’ suggesting some responses are innate in you.

Wires can act as a support – the methods you use to ‘fix’ things in mind or to support things you are doing. Or even an art form –

Idioms: Got your wires crossed; wired for sound; pull your wire; wired; under the wire.

Wing

These show your ability to be independent, to have a mind of your own, and to take flight into creative imagination and spiritual awareness. Therefore injury to a wing would show how those things had been hurt or decreased. See: Bird.

There is a negative side to flying which depicts how we try to move away from internal trauma or fear by disassociating our feelings and mind from reality. We may do this by constantly reading books, watching television, or by internally deadening our feelings and body sensations. Thus some victims of sexual abuse dream of flying as an escape from their internal pain.

Having wings on: This suggests the desire to rise above things, your ability to become independent, to attain greater heights, to break free of limiting viewpoints or cultural norms. But flying also represents ambition, abstract thought, and rising above your fears.

Broken wing: It doesn’t matter whether this is a bird wing, a plane wing or anything that enables flight it shows you lack the full confidence enabling you to maintain a good flight. See Flying 

 

Wise Man

Sometimes this is a disguised image of the way you feel about your father. It can also show how you are relating to your core self and what you are getting or learning from it. We each have a ‘wise man’ in us. Part of our mental functioning is to bring together and learn from all our life experience. The results of this learning are frequently expressed by an old or wise man or woman in our dreams. See Core Self

‘I was standing on a cliff top overlooking the ocean. By my side was a man. He had short cropped silver hair, gleaming, and piercing blue eyes. He seemed old, but was broad, muscular and gave me the impression of having lived many lifetimes, or being very wise. He indicated the sea and I understood I should plunge into it. I did so, leaving my body behind, and became a part of the ocean. At the same time it seemed I could at any time stand beside the man on the cliff again.’ Debbie.

In Debbie’s dream the cliff is also the edge between life and death; between fear of death and exuberance of life; between being trapped in the concept of oneself as simply a physical form, and the freedom of realising oneself as naked consciousness. Her inner wisdom shows her these great life lessons. See Guru  

An experience Jung had when communicating with an Indian versed in yoga:

‘You don’t mean the commentator on the Vedas who died centuries ago?’ I asked. 

‘Yes, I mean him he said, to my amazement. 

‘Then you are referring to a spirit?’ I asked. 

‘Of course it was his spirit,’ he agreed. 

At that moment I thought of Philemon. (Jung’s ghostly companion.)

‘There arc ghostly gurus too,’ he added. ‘Most people have living gurus. But there always some who have a spirit for teacher’