A night at the Dream Oscars.
This is an excerpt from my book, The Dream Handbook, (published by Hachette Australia and Little Brown UK), pages 17-20. Originally, I called it ‘A night at the Dream Oscars’ but the publishers felt it was safer, for legal reasons, to call it ‘A night at the Dream Awards’. I understand that, but here, in blog format, I think I’m safe to return to the theme of the Oscars. Enjoy:
Thank you. I’ve got a piece of paper here somewhere. Oh, the tears! It’s been quite a journey from base metal to Dream Oscar! Now, where was I?
Thank you. I’d like to thank my dreams for the spiritually inspiring alchemist’s stones they delivered that helped me in precipitating the solution that became my awakening. I see it all so clearly now.
In a good night’s sleep you have about five big dreams, usually all concerning the same question. Each one contains a Philosophers’ Stone – an insight previously unknown to you that you can use to transform your waking life from base metal into gold. What treasure! What potential!
Each night as you fall asleep you teeter on the verge of bringing home the gold.
After ninety minutes of deep sleep, the first big dream is – well, let’s say the first dream is ‘screened’. The first big dream of the night is usually the most vivid and surreal.
Imagine the excitement down in the basement of your deep unconscious – maybe tonight’s the night! Picture this. Your dream director paces in the dark:
‘Maybe tonight’s the night!’
‘Maybe tonight’s the night to bring home the gold. Maybe tonight we’ll screen the dream of a lifetime. Maybe tonight she’ll finally get the message. Maybe tonight we can pull out all our best stops. Maybe tonight it’s Dream Oscars all round! What’s the theme for the night?’
‘The theme?’ echoes a rumbling voice from the Script Development Department in the depths of the dark unconscious. ‘We thought we might have another look at the self-esteem question tonight. We laid some good foundations with the power issue last night, so we’re ready to take a fresh look at self-esteem.’
‘Ah, big one,’ replies the dream director, one eye on the clock. ‘We’re ten minutes down and the clock’s ticking. Eighty minutes and we need the first big dream up and ready to go. Order up the early life memories please – run a combined search on “power” and “self-esteem”.’
The staccato splutter of modems firing up to download the memory neurons of the brain mingles with the smell of start-of-shift coffee.
The dream director taps her microphone. ‘Metaphors Department, you in yet?’
‘In and rolling. We’ve got a good round-table blitz group in today. Should come up with some crackers tonight. I hear the Puns and Wordplay Department has a top-class crossword puzzle expert on the job tonight. We might be up for the Dream Oscars with tonight’s screenings.’
The dream director drums her fingers on her desk. ‘Seventy-five minutes and counting. Casting Department, you on board? We need a big cast for tonight: the best you can, we’re going for the Dream Oscars. Theme is self-esteem and power. I want people from waking life, people from the past and a couple of characters from fiction. Stick to theme, but think extremes; even go as far as caricatures. Oh, and we’ll need two extras. Make-up are standing by to archetypecast the extras.’
At ninety minutes exactly the first big dream is screened and recorded for posterity in the Unconscious Memory Archives Department. At the same time a copy is sent, as always, to the Conscious Recall Database but with no expectation of success as the IT technicians are still chasing the dream deletion virus that entered the system at the same moment in history as the Industrial Revolution.
After the screening, brief congratulations are exchanged and then all heads are down to create the second dream.
This time conditions are tighter. The deep sleep interval between dreams decreases as the night goes on and the dreaming periods get longer. With less time for creativity and production and longer stories to shoot, it’s no surprise that dreams closer to morning tend to be a little more mundane.
By morning the film crew are partying and retiring to doze at the Back Burner Inn for the day. You stir, fleetingly in contact with Conscious Recall Database, battling the dream deletion virus to archive the data over to the permanent conscious memory store. Somewhere between dreaming and getting out of bed a partial victory is declared, a dream or two are remembered and the still vigilant dream director wonders, before hitting the sack, if her movies have worked their magic.
Stop right there! So your dream director pulled off an Oscar worthy dream of a lifetime? So you’ve remembered most of it? So you’re going to entertain a few people with it today? So you’re going to interpret it too?
That’s excellent, but remember: you can interpret your dream and learn heaps about yourself and your life, but unless you take action based on what you learn you’re missing gold by a million miles.
And that’s not all! You can take action, but to counteract those unconscious beliefs that can still powerfully trip you up, you need to do your dream alchemy practice.
It’s doing the dream alchemy practice that undoes any unconscious beliefs that are in your way. (…)
Rushing to remember and interpret your next dream is certainly not going to do it for you if you haven’t done your dream alchemy practice on the gift you have already been given.
Each dream remembered is a gift. Each one contains a ‘Philosophers’ Stone’ or profound insight to enable you to transform your waking life and, above all, your self from base metal into gold. If you are not prepared to do your dream alchemy practice you will have a pile of beautiful, philosophical insights. And while that is something awesome to treasure, it’s when you put the elements of alchemy into practice, following the formulae presented by your dream insights, that real magic begins.
You have the base metal of your waking life and the Philosophers’ Stone insights of your dreams. You are, and always have been, a Dream Alchemist. Awaken and go to it.
Excerpted from my book, The Dream Handbook, (published by Hachette Australia and Little Brown UK), pages 17-20.
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