My Monday morning dream group is celebrating a year of being together, consistently working on their dreams! The payoff for all of them has been tremendous.

This past Monday, we spent our time together looking back over a year’s worth of dreams. Here were my questions to them.

• What patterns are you seeing in your dreams?

• Have you made any specific changes in your waking life based on your insights from your dreams?

• Are there images that you are drawn to and that you are thinking about in waking life?

The answers were amazing. I have asked permission of one dreamer to share a story with you.

Last year, this dreamer began having dreams about being abandoned by masculine figures in her dreams. At the same time, she began to have dreams of her childhood home. Most of them were of destruction of the home in some way. Through the group’s work on these dreams, the dreamer realized that before she could move forward, she had to make peace with her traumatic childhood.

Over the course of the year, her dreams began to have very supportive masculine figures. She also had a dream in which she was performing a very courageous act!

As we discussed her transformational journey, she shared that as a child, she wanted to be invisible. As an adult, she was often the quiet one in a group. When she was asked to do training for a group, she found it almost impossible to do.

This year, everything has changed. She makes a point to speak at every group meeting and has begun to do training at her church’s Stephen Ministry program!  She attributes this growth to the work she has done with her dreams.

When asked to share how dreamwork has helped her, she said, “You can go to a “shrink”, but when it [the message] comes from me, it is much more powerful than when it comes from someone else.”

So, consistent attention to dreams can change your life. What impact have dreams had in your waking life? Share with me below.

Have you ever wondered why we weren’t given an instruction book on how to navigate life? I remember thinking after the birth of our first child that it certainly would be nice to have an owner’s manual!

Paying attention our dreams can provide us the guidance we seek. It’s kind of like having a roadmap of our soul. Dreams can give us clear messages about our biggest roadblocks and what changes will shift our life to a new place of joy and happiness.

I came across this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson today.

“What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you. “

If you are like me, you’ve spent most of your life looking outside yourself for guidance, when the answers are present within your own soul.

Try this experiment. Commit to writing down your dreams every morning for a month. I know you probably won’t remember a dream every day. Record as many as you can.

At the end of May, I will provide a way for you to sign up for a free 30 minute consultation with me to discuss your dreams. I’m sure we’ll be able to begin construction on your roadmap!

Today, I was looking through some notes I made several months ago as I began working on a book about dreams. I was reflecting on some of the many ways working with my dreams has helped me grow spiritually. I want to share three of them with you.

Dreams can help us discover what our heart’s desire really is. Just this past weekend, I was conducting a workshop. As in all of my workshops, the participants share their own dreams and we all give our projections of what they mean to us. One of the members shared two dreams. Both of the dreams seemed to be saying to me that I should be playing more, not to be so serious. Since my projections about other’s dreams are about me, I have taken this to heart and have been playing more this week. Guess what?  I feel much more balanced.

Dreams can let us know when a belief or action no longer serves us. Many times this will show up in a dream as me fleeing for my life. I am going to be killed. This is me not paying attention to my Self saying “it’s time to let go of old ways and grow and change”. If I will pay attention to who or what is pursuing me, I can let go of my resistance to change. As I let go of what is no longer serving me, I open myself to new beliefs that do serve me.

We can learn what the next steps are in our own psycho-spiritual evolution. If you are trying to find a solution to a problem, ask a question like, “Where do I go from here?” before you go to bed. In the morning, record your dream. The answer might come to you directly, or it could be hidden in the symbols of the dream. Your unconscious is your greatest spiritual guide and is just waiting for you to ask for help!

Look back through your dream journals and see if any of these dream patterns show up in your dreams. Leave a comment below and tell me your story of how dreams have helped you grow spiritually!

What we really want in life is to be spiritually connected and be filled with joy, right?  For me, this happens when I am connected to my inner Source. One open door to Spirit is through your dreams.

Last week, I was sitting in a coffee shop thinking about you and wondering what it is that I really want you to know about dreams. This is it. Understanding your dreams can be a source of joy and creativity.

How have my dreams brought me joy? There is an inner awakening that happens when I pay attention to my dreams. I can see things about myself that I totally miss in waking life. I love the “aha’s” I get from working with my dreams.

Even those pesky shadow figures point out aspects of myself that can use my attention. They are an invitation to own all of the parts of myself.

The goal in dreamwork and, in life, is wholeness. The more we know about ourselves, the more we can relax into who we are. We get glimpses of our true brilliance.

As I accept all of who I am, I unleash my creativity. I see that I am unique. I have gifts to offer the world! My dreams become the source of my own creative thoughts.

I hope that all of you are recording your dreams and working with them. May they be a Source of joy and creativity for you.

Please email me if I can help. Here’s the email address: nancy@nancyhuslage.com

I was speaking at the International Women’s Day celebration in Raleigh a couple of weeks ago and someone asked me, “What makes Transformational Dreamwork different than other dreamwork?”

I answered that, in my experience, this technique, actually takes you to the deepest message the dream has for you. Every person in the group is sharing their deepest insights and we are all transported into a deeply spiritual experience in the process.

Transformational Dreamwork is a way of connecting deeply with your own inner knowing. Jung called it the Self. Charles Fillmore, the founder of Unity, called it inner vision.

Wouldn’t you like to have the experience of connecting to this inner source of guidance? Come and spend a day with me exploring the fascinating and enlightening world of dreams. I promise, you won’t be disappointed.

This day of transformation is open to 12 seekers. I know that this will take you straight to the heart of what you most want to transform in your life!

Click on the calendar button in the menu bar for details!

Today, I am going to give you a way of working with the characters in a dream. The associations we attribute to the people in our dreams can give us clues about what our own dream is asking of us.
Here is an example. Say, I have a dream about my good friend. I’ll name her Mary. So, I ask myself to name 3 adjectives to describe Mary’s personality. My adjectives are: hyper-sensitive, kind and generous.
Depending on the context of the dream, I might ask myself, is there a time lately when I have been hypersensitive? Is there a time when I had an opportunity to be kinder or is there a kindness was shown to me that I didn’t appreciate? What does this dream tell me about generosity?
Knowing three things about the characters in your dream can lead you to a new level of understanding . Obviously, this technique works best when the people in our dream are people we know in waking life!
Next time you are puzzled by someone who shows up in your nightly movie, try the power of three and see if it helps you gain clarity!

This week, I was on a conference call with a wonderful coach. She was talking about how to get clear on who your ideal clients are. I started thinking about this and came up with these 3 things that identify the people I love to work with.

1. I love working with bright, intuitive folks. Dreamwork is symbolic and requires the intuition to find the meaning embedded in the symbols.
2. I love to work with creative people. It is so much fun when people use their dreams to fuel their creativity… perhaps creativity they have not tapped into before. I have someone in one of my dream circle now who has started composing music. Her dreams are supporting her in this work. I know it has been a source for my own creative pursuits for many years.
3. I love working with spiritual seekers. Dreams are such a window to the soul and can be the source of our ever-expanding consciousness. Dreams are a way in to an ever-deepening experience of our connection to the Divine.

I know you find yourself in this list several times. Otherwise, we never would have found each other! I am so grateful that we have come together through this blog. We are going to have many other opportunities to connect soon!

Several of you have asked me to offer a one-day workshop. I am offering a workshop in this format on April 6. This is going to be a great introduction to Transformational Dreamwork.

Even if you have done dreamwork with me before, you will learn so much in this one day! What makes the Transformational Dreamwork process unique is how you are taken to the heart of the message very quickly. You will be amazed!

Click on the calendar button above for details.

Lately, lots of people have reported snakes showing up in their dreams. Is this happening in your dream world?

Most people think that, because they are terrified of snakes in waking life, snakes are some sort of bad omen in the dream world. It is not the case!

Remember, as my friend Jeremy Taylor reminds us often, “Dreams come in the service of health and wholeness.”

In Man and His Symbols, Carl Jung writes, “perhaps the commonest dream symbol of transcendence is the snake, as represented by the therapeutic symbol of the Roman god of medicine Aeseulapius, which has survived to modern times as a sign of the medical profession. This was originally a nonpoisonous tree snake; as we see it, coiled around the staff of the healing god, it seems to embody a kind of mediation between earth and heaven.” Think about the caduseus as the symbol of the medical profession.

Another characteristic of the snake is its ability to shed its skin as it grows. It actually renews itself. The snake will actually shed it’s skin 4-8 times a year. So, if we combine this knowledge with Jung’s idea of the snake being “a kind of mediation between earth and heaven”, we might see snakes in our dreams in times of spiritual renewal.

In The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets (1983 ), Barbara Walker points out that practically every culture has a snake in its mythology, and most often it is seen as a symbol of wisdom, healing, initiation, and secret knowledge, or it is associated with eternal life and ongoing renewal.  Snake is the archetypal symbol of the Great Mother Goddess, incarnate in one of her most universal forms. This symbol of the Divine Feminine may show up as a symbol of healing from patriarchal religion, particularly, but not exclusively in the dreams of women.

The coiled snake may be indicative of the Kundalini Shakti energy. Kundalini is the is the sanskrit word for “coiled up” and is symbolic of the cosmic feminine energy that fuels spiritual awakening. In Kundalini Yoga, the snake is curled at the base of the spine and it moves up through all the chakras as one awakens spiritually.  Play with the idea of the coiled snake being an indicator of moving into higher consciousness.

So, if we see snakes as the spiritual symbols they are, perhaps our distaste for these glorious creatures will subside… at least in the dream world!

People ask me all the time if I think that people who have died actually come to visit us through our dreams. I always tell them that I believe that it does happen, but that not every dream in which someone who is no longer with us is a visitation.

Then, the question becomes, how do you know the difference between a visitation dream and a dream in which the character represents an aspect of ourselves?  The answer is complicated.

I think this is best illustrated with a dream out of my own dream journal. Several weeks ago, I learned of the death of one of my junior high school friends. I hadn’t seen her since we were in college. A couple of weeks later, I had a dream about her. It was as if she was in the room with me. I was having great appreciation for our friendship and telling her how much I valued her as a friend. She was telling me similar things. The feeling was very strong in the dream. When I woke up, I was sure I had been visited by Ellen.

For me, the way I know that I have been visited is by the intensity of the positive feeling and the sense of encouragement associated with the encounter. There is also a dialog with the person, or a physical encounter, some sort of affection shown.

Perhaps this has to do with my belief that, in the afterlife, we are in a place of pure, positive energy. I know that a person who has left this world would only come back to give me encouragement.

If Ellen had shown up in my dream as a character in a scene, I would see her as portraying an aspect of my own personality.

I often dream of my mother who has been dead almost 23 years. She is usually an aspect of my shadow. I can only remember one dream in which she visited me. She was so encouraging, affectionate and affirming in that dream. She came to tell me that she was sorry that she hadn’t been encouraging enough while she was alive, but that she was so proud who I am as a person.
It was a visit I will never forget.

How does one break through from the other side into our dream state? I don’t know. There are so many things we don’t know about the way the Universe works, but, in my book, all things are possible!

Want to take a fresh look at your dreams? Here is a new question to ask yourself when you are thinking about that very strange dream you had last night. Ask yourself this: what is the point of transformation for me in this dream?

Let’s go over some basic steps for working on your dreams.

1. Record your dream in present tense. (“I’m in the grocery store….”)
2. Give the dream a headline, and make it specific. You want this headline to make the dream easily identifiable. You may have lots of flying dreams, so if you name every flying dream something simple, like, “flying”, it won’t help you find it after you have recorded hundreds of dreams. Instead, for example, say something like, “Flying over Madrid with Fairy Wings”.
3. Draw sketches of unusual images.
4. Remember, dreams come to break new ground and give us new insights.

While it is always preferable to work with someone, either one-on-one or in a group, there is some dream work you can do on your own.

I think one of the most valuable ways to work with the dream is through a little meditation exercise I have created. Read the dream and get a real “felt sense” of it. Now, close your eyes and ask yourself the question, “What is the point of transformation for me in this dream?”

Wait for a thought to come. It may take a few minutes. You want to allow the thought to emerge. This is a very different approach from taking each symbol and doing mental exercises to figure out what each symbol means.

In my experience, this is much more personal and deeper work. In this process, we are truly letting our dreams transform our waking life. This process takes us to the heart of the matter.

You may get a message, as one of my students did, to make a phone call he had been avoiding making. In working with the same dream, another person realized that she had a situation in her life that she was avoiding.

The thing to remember about dreams is they come to bring us health and wholeness, and they come to tell us something we do not know. So, allow new thoughts to emerge.

Dreams take us in a positive direction in our lives. Yes, even the nightmares!

This exercise will take you to one level of meaning of the dream, but every dream has multiple layers of meaning. Those other layers are best discovered working in a group. Stay tuned.
New groups, either in person, or by teleconference will be forming soon!

Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you! I thought that on this day of love, we would focus for just a moment on the spiritual aspects of love. I believe that we were put on this Earth to experience love, first and foremost.

Valentine’s Day, like so many holidays, has become what my son calls,”just another Hallmark day.”  This day doesn’t have to be only about romance, as Hallmark would want you to believe.

The things we give our attention to are the things we attract into our lives. Who doesn’t want more love? Let’s spend the next few moments appreciating the great gifts of love we have in our lives.

Close your eyes for a moment. Think of 14 people, animals, or situations in your life that you love. Now, as you remember them, say a silent prayer of gratitude for each of them.

Are there people in your life that need to hear “I love you” from you today? How about sitting down and writing them a handwritten note this evening.

Is there someone you work with who has done something for you or always treats you with respect. Thank them today.

The more we appreciate one another and make a point showing our appreciation, the more love multiplies itself in this world.

Being a loving presence in the world is our greatest spiritual practice.

Love to all of you!