A Dream That Caught My Attention
One morning, I woke up from a dream in which I was in a situation where someone was acting slightly negatively towards me and I reacted back with stronger negativity, really aggressively. It was a short scene, but seeing myself overreacting like that drew my attention to it.
In Belsebuub’s work, I have come across the advice that when you spot a negative state in your dreams, this is the most urgent thing to look into in your daily life. The setting of that dream scene definitely seemed a bit random, but my reaction and the situation itself clearly signified a negative behavior. So I thought I will follow Belsebuub’s advice on dreams and pay attention so as to spot that pattern during my day.
Nothing in what I knew I was going to do that day even hinted at the situation from my dream. But I tried to be on guard during the day, and I did spot memories of events in my mind that were similar to the dream scenario. Still though, that day I had other more pressing thoughts and emotions to deal with.
Seeking Peace and Quiet Through a Spiritual Practice
By the end of the day, there were so many other emotions I had to cope with that I had completely forgotten about my dream. That evening I went to meditate, but found it difficult as I felt a lot of emotions, so I spent half of my meditation time in silent prayer trying to process the day and bring myself to silence.
Eventually, I did feel some peace and quiet. Then I lay down on my bed and decided to relax and go into meditation. The prayer gave me some insight and direction on what to do, so I didn’t feel the need to meditate on the situation from the day related to my current emotional state, somehow it didn’t feel necessary at the time. I could focus elsewhere, but where?
So I Meditated on My Dream
This is when I remembered about my dream. I recalled the situation in it and remembered similar situations in my life where people had been negative towards me in that particular way. Recollecting one particular event made me feel a burning feeling of anger in my solar plexus. I paused. I moved my focus to my heart and sought to regain my focus so as not to be caught up by this gripping anger. I just wanted to observe.
After remembering all the events that I could, seeing what happened and how I felt, there came a moment where my mind got stuck. I couldn’t recall anything else. So, I allowed my mind to stay silent and yet in a way connected to everything I had just retrospected on.
After a few moments of silence, I felt a stream of memories being unlocked, where I was the one being negative towards other people, beginning in childhood and going through my student years.
After that, I saw occasions where I was naturally trying to balance that out by standing up for people who were treated badly by others. These events were very few compared to the ones where I was the instigator of negativity.
Then I saw occasions where I judged other people and it felt like my judgment was ‘raining down’ on them, it was so much! I saw many examples from my current daily life. I understood that judgment and prejudice to be at the core of the initial situation I was shown in my dream. And it was actually present in my daily life.
I prayed for the elimination of this negative behavior. I felt very grateful to have been shown that small situation in my dream as it opened up a whole new perspective!
Interesting to read how you reached the point to start studying this dream. A day can pass so fast and such memories and experiences to be left behind very easy.
And in your case looks like it was rewarding to finally be able to go through this meditation practice.
Thanks for sharing it!
This was amazing to read, thank you Pavlin for sharing. I was especially toched by your faith and trust in Divine to show you what you need to see in the practice of meditation. I often get impatient with that practice exactly at the point that you describe as the point where everything has been recalled and there seems to be nothing more to recall. At that point my mind tends to become bored and go off tangent. So it was nice to read that if we somehow manage to keep that “silence” going, while still somehow maintaining the focus on the ego – a stream of further information and memories may follow.
I can also relate to “showering others” with my negative thoughts and judgements and these states are indeed one of the pivotal rasons for anger. I found it has a lot to do with lacking respect towards others, and how important it is to respect other people’s ways of doing things (even if they are contrary to what I think is right, good, etc…), and even their negative states, as everyone can only do so much at any point in their lives, and judging them does not really improve things anyway. To respond calmly when all your rules and habits are challenged (often in not very sensitive ways) is indeed one of the greatest challenges! :-O
Wishing you a lot of strength and continuous connection to the Divine.
Hi Lucia,
Thank you for sharing this. All these points that you mention are so important and challenging. Sometimes I want to just hold onto the Divine and focus on my heart, because I can only see how the alternative of my lower self is to create chaos. If I persist though, I can be saved from it.
I know those dreams of having really exaggerated emotional responses to someone or something. They tend to catch my attention too because it’s plainly telling me here is something I need to look into in my daily life. Even more so than the dreams where there are no such very strong inner states going on. I kind of feel grateful when it’s showing it to me so clearly, but also get the feeling right now I could be making much more use of it to help me change.
How your judgement was raining down on them – this metaphor has stayed with me since I read it in your article as it kind of struck me how I have a similar huge amount of judgement towards others and myself often going on and it helped me pay more attention to it.
It’s amazing how those memories arose from the silence. I tend to get a bit impatient or frustrated in that kind of a situation but it shows me how I could have more faith that more will be shown if I try to be quiet and receptive.
Thanks Pavlin!
Yes!
Very nice Pavlin. I can relate to your story, as I have also gone about the same way of dealing with such dreams as you have. In a way this is so peculiar really!? on the other hand maybe it’s not when trying to make this study happen.
I’ve also had dreams like that where I wondered and doubted their relevance, yet then also considered that exact advice from Belsebuub. I would go through my day on the lookout for it but would not actually see it. My mind might trick me into saying yes it was there you just didn’t see it, but no. In my case by the end of the day having already had the chance during the day to look into the situations as they happened. I would feel I ”didn’t have anything to look into”. Only to then remember the subject matter given to me to study in order that I did have something to look into. By then end of that practice I would be surprised how important it actually was.
Anyway my rewriting of a very similar experience to yours is not very interesting 🙂 But I do find it interesting and peculiar that you chose to navigate your way through things in such a similar fashion.
Thanks for the reminder as well that dreams that feel important often are, even if I don’t always manage to follow up on decoding them.
I am very happy to read your experience Pavlin. Your relaxed approach to dream recall is a helpful advice as I have bad memory and often struggle to remember things from the past. This is a reason on why I do not often use the meditation on an ego practice.
I am also happy to read your experience because I had a similar kind of dream last night. As I woke up and wrote down my dreams I understood the ego that it is related to. I know the ego to be a big one, yet I do not see it as particularly damaging, and so i do not normally pay much attention to it during the day.
As I did a bit of a reflection on it I began to see how the ego is related to a major weakness of mine, a psychological state that is crippling me in almost all spheres of my life. I also remembered how this particular ego provoked anger in the past and as I prayed for help I noticed how it relieved something that I had in my chest at this moment.
That sounds like a revealing experience, Alex. I’m also surprised sometimes to discover that some things can be more damaging that I’ve thought. Thank you for sharing.
That’s great you were able to gain that understanding Pavlin and see the effects of that inner state throughout your life. Thanks for sharing it.
What you wrote about the stream of memories being unlocked reminds me so much of my own experiences with a meditation on an ego. Getting to a point where you can’t see how to go further or what more there is, and then for that silence to soon leak out a plethora of content to extract knowledge from never ceases to amaze me. How does it happen!?! I always wonder at it. And each of the memories that start coming back after that silence really serve to help the analysis of that particular inner state immensely. For me at least, I can come back to that information for days and days and still get new understanding from it.
Thanks very much for sharing your investigation here, Pavlin. : )