Even Our Nightmares Teach ….

photo credit: Hadi Zaher

I spent the day yesterday struggling with an inner state of low-frequency mind-spin. The thing that triggered me seemed to be emotional fall-out from a nightmare I’d awakened from that morning.

In my nightmare I was in a once-upon-a-time-all-too-familiar state of rage of the kind I used to experience often some years back when the victim-mind ruled. I was railing and ranting in my nightmare at my husband (who wasn’t my present mate, Daniel) about something he said or did. I was striking out at everyone around me and blaming my mind-spinning behavior on anything and everything BUT me. I was all about being right, and I was totally focused on seeking vindication for how wrongly I felt I’d been treated. My nightmare was, in essence, a flashback to how I’d once lived

my life!

I awoke from my nightmare feeling totally hung-over, as if I’d been on a drunk, and, in truth I had been! I’d spent the night underground, hanging out in the dark, dank, and dangerous hellholes of my own inner making. And my nightmare showed me, in vibrant technicolor, the misery I am still capable of producing for myself if, and whenever, I choose to believe my own insane thoughts about life around me.

The low-frequency emotional state I awakened from my nightmare in stayed with me for the rest of the day. In the past, I would have tried to escape the feelings, to shake them off, deny them, or I might have spiraled into worse feelings generated by the “reasons” behind such a nightmare, and what it was saying about me and my problems.

Instead, this time, I struggled to bring consciousness to my thoughts about it. Rather than feeling at the mercy of my “mood” and dumping it on to those around me, as I might have once done, I contained my emotional reactivity instead, and studied the thoughts. Even though I continued to carry some heaviness through the day, I was also aware of some relief, resulting, I think, from having consciously refrained from totally identifying with my unhappy thoughts.

It really wasn’t until the next morning during my daily practice that I was able to fully resurface from my dark inner cavern. Like the sun breaking through dense clouds, the light of Reality finally broke through the heavy layer of story-laden fog that engulfed me, and ‘en-lightened’ (shone light from within) me, and in doing so, inner peace was restored.

I’ve come to the conclusion that these “nightmare” moments, whether they occur in sleeping or waking life, are great teaching moments – may, in fact, be a necessary part of expanding our consciousness. I have more to say on this topic next time.

Blessings, Lynne