Episode Transcript
[00:00:09] Welcome to lessons from the helpful dead, where you'll learn the world is not what it seems, and you are much more than you think you are. Here you'll learn about positive and reassuring messages from supposedly dead people whose main purpose is is to help us find out what happens after we die, why we're here, how we got here, where we're going, and discover that you are really a powerful eternal spirit. I'm Dan McEnenney. Today I'll continue on with the discussion of dreams because, as Seth maintains, they are very important and can have a large effect on our future if we know how to use them specifically. Today, we'll look at the subject of how a remembered dream is like a psychological photograph, and we'll look at the fact that dreams can be a blueprint for later quote snapshots, which are snapshots of what will be our experience.
[00:01:10] Seth explains these issues quite well. So for the most part, I'll simply read what he has told us and keep my own comments to a minimum.
[00:01:21] Here's what he says. In your terms, a photograph freezes, motions, frames, the moment or all of the moment that you can physically perceive.
[00:01:32] In usual circumstances, you may remember the emotions that you felt at the time a picture of yourself was taken. And so to some extent, those emotions may show themselves in gestures or facial expression.
[00:01:48] But the greater subjective reality of that moment does not appear physically in such a photograph. It completely escapes insofar as its physical appearance within that structure is concerned in the same way the past or the future is closed out.
[00:02:07] The particular focus necessary to produce such a picture then necessitates the exclusion of other data.
[00:02:18] That certainly is obvious because you must manipulate within specific time periods. You do the same kind of thing in daily life, and on a conscious level, you ignore or exclude much information that is otherwise available.
[00:02:37] In one way, one remembered dream can be compared to a psychological photograph, one picture that is not physically materialized, not frozen motion, not framed by either space or time.
[00:02:54] Therefore, many of those ingredients appear that are necessarily left out of any given moment of waking conscious activity.
[00:03:03] Now, that's a little bit difficult to understand, so I think he makes it simpler in the next comments. Here they are. A remembered dream is a product of several things, but often is your conscious interpretation of events that initially may have been quite different from your memory of them. To that extent, the dream that you remember is a snapshot of a larger event taken by your conscious mind.
[00:03:37] There are many kinds or varieties of dreams, some more and some less faithful to your memories of them.
[00:03:45] But as you remember a dream, you automatically snatch certain portions of subjective events away from others and try to, quote frame these in space and time in ways that will make sense to your usual orientation. And there he's referring to our waking reality. So he goes on. Even then, however, dream events are so multidimensional that this attempt is often a failure. It might be easier here, perhaps, if you compare a scene from a dream with a scene in a photograph. A photograph will show certain events natural to the time in which it was taken.
[00:04:28] It will not show, for example, a picture of a turk at the time of the crusades. A dream scene might portray just such a motif. However, it will help if now and then you imaginatively think of vivid dream imagery as if it appeared in a photograph.
[00:04:49] As during your lifetime, you collect a series of photographs of yourself taken in various times and places. So in the dreaming state, you, quote, collect subjective photographs of a different kind.
[00:05:02] They do not appear in sequence, however. Nevertheless, at a conscious level, they can provide you with valuable information about your future and your past. Now, his next statements have a lot of surprises in them, so you'll be interested.
[00:05:23] He says this in normal, generally accepted terms. The images in photographs do not change, move, or alter their relationships.
[00:05:34] The living subjective photography of dreams, however, provides a framework in which these quote images have their own mobility.
[00:05:45] They represent creativity in far different terms than you usually understand.
[00:05:52] You know what physical issue is because you see the children of your loins, but you do not experience the children of your dreams in the same physical way, nor understand that your dream life is continuous.
[00:06:08] It has organization on its own levels that you do not comprehend.
[00:06:14] And from its rich source, you draw much of the energy with which you form your daily experience.
[00:06:24] I'll repeat that.
[00:06:27] From its rich source, you draw much of the energy from which you form your daily experience.
[00:06:34] Your conscious mind is the director of that experience.
[00:06:41] Okay? Your conscious mind is the director of that experience. In your terms, however you dream, whether you are living or dead, when you are alive, corporally speaking, what you think of as dreaming becomes subordinate to what you refer to as your conscious waking life. You always examine your dreams. Then, from a quote, alien standpoint, one prejudiced in favor of the ordinary waking state.
[00:07:10] However, the dreaming condition is consequently experienced in distorted form.
[00:07:18] Often it does not seem clear.
[00:07:21] By contrast to waking consciousness, it can appear hazy, not precise, or off focus.
[00:07:27] This does not always apply because in some dreams, the state of alertness is undeniable. Now, in his next sentence, he repeats something that he's touched on before, which is that it isn't necessary for us to be so estranged from our dreaming condition when we're awake.
[00:07:49] Here's what he says. He says for many reasons, some mentioned here and some not as yet discussed, you have closed your dreams out of your lives to a large extent. While you must, of course, hold accurate focus in time and place.
[00:08:05] Remember now, that's what he's often said, that we have to have an uptight, close focus in order to navigate in this reality. Right? While you must, of course, hold accurate focus in time and place, there is still no basic reason why you must so divorce yourself from dream experience.
[00:08:25] Some inventors, writers, scientists, artists who are used to dealing with creative material directly, are quite aware of the fact that many of their productive ideas came from the dream condition.
[00:08:38] They see the results of dream activity in practical physical life.
[00:08:43] Many others, though untrained, can clearly trace certain decisions made in waking life to dreams. And you might recall that in my own experience, although I have no training in this area, I did experience a dream in which I experienced tremendous loneliness and sadness.
[00:09:04] And that is why I made a decision to leave a job where I was relatively isolated and I joined an organization where I would have more social interaction. All right, Seth continues with an interesting insight here. He says few understand, however, that private reality, that's the one we experience. Private reality is like a finished product rising out of the immense productivity that occurs in the dreaming condition.
[00:09:34] Rubert calls this the wonderworks, and with good reason. In waking life, there are fluctuations in your consciousness, periods when you're more or less alert in your terms, when your attention wanders from issues at hand, or when instead, you are certainly brilliantly focused in the moment.
[00:09:52] So there are gradations of consciousness in the waking state. Usually you pay little attention to them. The official line of consciousness that you accepted blithely ignores any deviations. And when such events occur usually continues merrily on as if nothing had happened. In the dreaming state, such fluctuations also happen. It should be obvious that there you can leap from time to time.
[00:10:21] Much more is involved, however, for there are, quote, separate strands, if you prefer, of consciousness, strands of consciousness that are naturally pursued in the dream state. And these can be followed with some training and diligence. They involve probable series of events. For example, if one particular dream event is chosen for physical materialization, then in your reality other events will appear in due time and in serial fashion.
[00:10:56] You have yourselves painted a pretty enough picture of what you think of as your own reality, as individuals and as a species, all of your institutions, beliefs, and activities seem to justify your picture, because everything within the overall quote frame will, of course, seem to agree.
[00:11:16] The picture is a relatively simple one, all in all. One in which each consciousness is assumed to be directed toward a particular focus, is ensconced in one body with its existence bounded by birth at one end and by death at the other.
[00:11:33] Unfortunately, that picture is as limited as any one of your photographs. Unfortunately, that picture is as limited as any one of your photographs. I'll go on. You are used to examining your dream state from the viewpoint of your quote waking condition.
[00:11:54] But sometime in the dream state, try to examine your normal waking reality.
[00:12:00] Simply give yourself the instructions to do so.
[00:12:04] You may be quite surprised with the results, speaking as simply as I can and using concepts that you can understand. Let me put it this way from the other side. Within what is loosely called the dream state, there is an existence quite as valid as your own.
[00:12:23] And from that viewpoint you can be considered to be as the dreamer. You are the dreamer. You are the part of you concentrating in this reality.
[00:12:35] You form it through information and through energy that on the one hand has its source outside this system, and on the other hand, the energy constantly flows into this system.
[00:12:48] And so in that respect, the systems are united.
[00:12:54] He says the same applies to all consciousness of any type or variety. In a manner of speaking, then your cells dream. There are minute variations of electrical discharge, not now perceivable, that could pinpoint this kind of fluctuation on the part of cells and also on the part of atoms and molecules, in your terms. Obviously, atoms do not dream of cats chasing dogs, yet intently. There are indeed quote lapses from physical focus that are analogous to your dreaming state.
[00:13:30] In those conditions, the atoms pursue their own probable activities, and indeed they make astounding calculations, bringing into your actuality the necessary probable actions to ensure official life forms.
[00:13:47] But neither are they limited otherwise, for their other probable directions are also actualized on different levels. In the dream state, then you are also subjectively aware of other probable realities.
[00:14:05] Your conscious intent is unconsciously brought into the dreaming condition, and that intent helps you sort the data.
[00:14:15] So from other streams of actuality, you choose those events that you want physically materialized, and you do this according to your beliefs about the nature of reality. A photograph is taken and you have before you then a picture of an event that, in your terms has already happened.
[00:14:37] Last sentence is very important here. In dreams, you take many subjective quote photographs and decide which ones among them you want to materialize in time.
[00:14:50] To a certain extent, therefore, the dreams are blueprints for your later snapshots.
[00:14:57] Now, we've talked about this idea in the past. The fact that in dreams, we can kind of look at and choose from different probable realities and from the many realities that we can sample, so to speak, in the dream state. We can then choose to make one our material reality in the waking state. That's one of the most important read reasons that our dreams are so impactful on our daily lives.
[00:15:31] Okay, that ends our session for today. And once again, I'm Dan McEnany, bringing you lessons from the helpful dead.
