by Hedwiga
(Dar es Salaam, Tanzania)
Question:
I seem to dream a lot and when I wake up I try to recall the episode. Most of my dreams take me back my parental home in the village. Sometimes I dream about places I travelled to a long time ago. On awakening I spend many hours reliving the dreams and wonder why such dreams. In so doing I cannot live the present moment. Please advise what can I do to maintain inner peace?
Response:
Let the dreaming happen, but only be aware of it. If you remain interested in the dreams, then the thoughts of them in the waking state (which really are also dreams) will continue to drag you in. Fascination and belief leads you to get lost in these thoughts. It is not “wrong” to be lost in thinking like this, but if it disturbs you, then you simply have to lose interest and give no belief to what disturbs you.
The mind loves to analyse and figure out - “why this? why that?”. Then it seeks a mental answer. This is all the mind’s interests, which is also saturated with personal history.
Do not suppress anything, accept and allow – what else can be done? Suppression of anything will only lead to more intense dream experiences, so you can only surrender and lose interest. Don’t be fascinated with forms and content. Be more interested in yourself, awareness of being.
Be impartial to thinking. Let it happen, but do not interfere or judge. The sleeping dream and the waking dream will seek to pull you in, to live off of your belief and interest. Be aware of your own existence, the sense of presence , the sense “I AM” – this can draw attention from the fluctuating mind.
Lastly, you can be aware that these dreams are not real. The past is no more. If you realise this, re-living dreams cannot command your attention.
Another thing that comes to mind is to simply write your dream down on paper and be done with it. Or if you wish to analyse or revisit you can, but you need not re-live the dream in you mind – it will be on paper.
Thanks for your question, hope the response is of some use,
Adam