2007-01-09 04:09:05 · 5 answers · asked by Anonymous in Social Science ➔ Psychology
Dream incubation; programming dreams:
We dream about what we think about, what is on our mind during the day. What is in foreground? Consciously, the dreamer might ask herself:
What troubles me? What do I worry about? What do I fear?
What’s on my mind? What are my principal concerns today?
What preoccupies my mind? What holds my energy and attention?
What am I most attending to? What am I obsessing about?
What plagues me? What haunts me?
What important solutions/decisions am I contemplating?
What should I do next?
What are my choices?
What are the significant consequences of my different choices?
In a many ways, each time we go to sleep, our dreaming mind works on answering these questions. By holding in our minds whatever is on our minds as we drift off to sleep, we have unintentionally programmed ourselves to dream about this subject—and all its connecting subjects.
Programming a dream
To use your dreams for guidance to specific problems, your questions and your focus at bedtime will help in pointing your dreaming self in the direction you want to go.
1.Ask yourself what it is exactly that you would like to know. For example, I want to know what I can do and tell myself so that I will be more at ease at parties.
2.Write out this question, using different wordings until you find the one that best captures your request for clarity and information.
3.Be specific. The question should be open-ended so that the answer is more than yes/no, but it should also focus on a specific image, idea, problem, or person. Or all of these. Imagine the party where you’d like to be more at ease. What does “at ease” look like? How does it feel? Who are people who embody (literally) this impression? What do they do and say at parties? What can I tell myself that will help me feel more at ease? Everyone else is nervous and shy too. They just are better at pretending to be confident. I’m only human and it’s okay to blunder.
4.Enter this context as much as possible to ask the question—feeling as much as possible what it would be like to be in the context, using all five senses if possible. In the party example, I might imagine whether I’d be sitting or standing, how I can hold my body with confidence and poise, see myself smiling and making eye-contact when I speak with people, taste the drink I will have in my hand, smell the odors in the room that I associate with a party.
For another example, if I want guidance about something related to my work, I can visualize myself working with the issue already resolved and the feelings of satisfaction of seeing, hearing, and holding the solution physically, such as the completed report or invention in my hands. The details of this kind of visualization will vary a lot between people because we have different versions of what makes something vivid. (For more suggestions on visualization, see chapter 8, page ___.)
5.Know that you will dream. Remind yourself that you dream every night.
6.Before going to sleep, see yourself recording the dream when you wake up.
7.Have a means for recording or writing the dream ready at your bedside.
8.Assume whatever you dream is an answer to your question(s).
What you can expect
Expect a dream and expect an answer. The next dream you have is probably an answer to your question although it may not appear to be an answer. Often, the dream you get after incubation seems totally unrelated to the subject matter you had in mind. Remember that dreams come in the language of metaphor and symbol. These are usually the metaphors you’re likely to use in your daily speech¾the same clichés that are part of your conversation habits. But they may also be brand new metaphors and imagery that you don’t recognize as your usual dreaming pattern.
2007-01-09 05:39:23 · answer #1 · answered by joanmazza 5 · 1⤊ 2⤋
What works for me is waiting till i have an undesirable dream. At the time i notice that i am in a dream i wake my-self up, then quickly resume to the dream i left, this time choosing to undo the bad that had happen and thus reprogramming the dream.
2007-01-09 12:26:35 · answer #2 · answered by jerome2all 6 · 1⤊ 1⤋
For us ignorant people, what IS dream programming?
2007-01-09 12:32:33 · answer #3 · answered by Buchyex 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Keep a strict log of when and what you consumed every day.
Keep a log of your general activities and major events in your life.
Keep a log of your dreams each night.
Spreadsheet them.
Watch for a correlation.
2007-01-09 12:14:34 · answer #4 · answered by Cribbage 5 · 1⤊ 1⤋
check out the post "How to incubate dreams"
http://spirita.blogspot.com/
2007-01-09 14:28:34 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋