OUTRO

Hello friends!
So today was the last day of the semester for me, and as I approach exams like tank this upcoming school week, I thought it would be nice to quickly sum up and pause to reflect what Bible class 2013/2014 has done for me.
All in all, it's been great. I always love to discuss the interesting points we have in class, and while some would argue that in Bible class, you should study the Bible, this past semester has taught me that no matter what, EVERYTHING can be related to God and the Bible, using something called, The Biblical Throughlines:

We were asked to somehow relate the Biblical Throughlines to our passion projects we've been working on all semester, and that got me thinking about things outside this project on this blog, which I think was the purpose of learning them!

Here are the throughlines I thought fit well with the topic of dreams:

-God-worshippers

-Idolatry-discerners

-Creation-enjoyers

-Order-discoverers (this one is unfortunately not featured on the picture, but it is a throughline!)



 

Generally though, with this project I would just like to say how thankful I am to have had the opportunity to learn about dreams! Having so much freedom in this project helped me discover the importance of how you have to be on top of yourselves, which is a key necessity for the real world. We can learn so much from these projects, other than just the obvious. While I truly believe that this is forever my last post on Somnium Ignotis, I would love nothing more than to continue to search my own dreamworld and what God has to offer me in my life beyond school (I'm graduating in June), and how everything relates and intertwines. This experience has been great, and I can't wait to do more. Huge shout out to my mentor, Betty Brandt for helping me out when I was on the dim side with knowledge about this topic. Thanks for reading, keep it real.

WHY DOESN'T EVERYONE REMEMBER THEIR DREAMS?

First of all, I'm going to put the rumour to rest that not everyone dreams.
Every single person dreams while they are asleep, just not everyone remembers what those dreams are. Some people have very vivid dreams, and can recall everything the next day. Other people can remember what a dream was in the morning, however throughout the day, the dreams fades and by the evening they cannot remember a single detail. And yet, there are even so some people who wake up, completely unaware of what they dreamt during their sleep. It's curious, really. According to livescience.com, scientists aren't even one hundred percent sure as to why not everyone can. New research suggests however, that people who respond more strongly than others when hearing their name.
Also, I imagine it may not be too much of a stretch to believe this, but it appears that more creative people tend to dream (or remember their dreams, rather) more rapidly, vividly and avidly. Dreams full of colour and backstory's and all that jazz. The reason why? Rowena-cory-daniells.com states that, "People who are prone to daydreaming and fantasy have less of a barrier between states of sleep and wakefulness and seem to more easily pass through them."
In addition to THAT, it also seems that video game players are able to control their dreams to a point, due to their high levels of concentration. These video game players are also more common in being able to lucid dream (dream, but knowing that you are in control).
Now I would like remind everyone that these facts are just generally speaking. Just because you don't remember  a super vivid dream, that's not to say that you are not creative. And just because you don't play video games excessively, doesn't mean that you cannot control your dreams to a point, or even lucid dream (I lucid dream quite often, and I can't even remember the last time I touched a video game remote!). And if we're talking about dreams that God sends as messages, I would say that that is not based on your creativity or video game standards either. THAT is about the person, not just dreams that you have because your thoughts have been racing on a specific subject or something along those lines...

Dream, Interrupted

Although it has been an excruciatingly long time, as promised I finally have my dream from....November? December? I can't even remember, it's been too long!
I'm going to start by summarizing it as brief and best as I can, and then I will give my mentor's take on what it means:
"My family and three friends went to this "haunted" cabin (that I've dreamed of before) to stay for a vacation. While we were there, my three friends were staying in a small room together, and it blew up. I didn't see them again in the dream, so I think they died. Throughout the dream, I discovered that it was not in fact (or as far as I knew) haunted, but that Loki (villain in the Thor movie series and Norse god of mischief), kept come and causing mischief for fun, and using a magic trick he has in the movies to turn into other people and just stir up trouble. Sending replicas of himself to cause trouble, he would disappear before anyone could catch him, except he was fond of me, so he would let just me get a glimpse of him, then would disappear so that I knew it was him behind it all. My family however, was freaked out since they thought it was legitimately haunted, so we left the cabin early, and right when I woke up, Loki was trying to keep us from leaving because he didn't want me to go."

Here's what my mentor had to say:
"Regarding your dream, it sounds to me like the dream itself is not significant but because you have had the same dream several times, I would say it is your emotions in the dream that are important. God often wants to show us things about areas he wants to heal in our emotions. For example if you constantly have emotions of fear or shame in a dream, then it is God saying that you have fear or shame in your life that you need to be freed from."

WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY?

"Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone into the world." - 1 John 4:1

"Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has great reward." - Hebrews 10:35

"As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom, and Daniel had understanding in all visions and dreams." - Daniel 1:17

"Now Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers they hated him even more." - Genesis 37:5

"For nothing will be impossible with God." - Luke 1:37

"For God speaks in one way, and in two, though man does not perceive it." - Job 33:14

The Bible suggests (from what I understand) that, 1. To understand dreams is a rare gift, 2. It's not always a popular gift, 3. Dreams are not always from God.
I spoke briefly about this before in October, how some dreams are from God and others from Satan. 1 John 4:1 relates and emphasizes that. Personally, I am still quite confused on how to decide which is from which, but I'll look into that more in the coming weeks...
Understanding dreams and visions is such a unique thing to have. You are decoding messages from God in your brain. Things He has sent you, things not everyone understands. The brain is so complex, and for me, doing theophostic prayer for example has really helped me to decode those thoughts from Him. He sends you messages in your thoughts, feelings and memories. Dreams are just the tip of the iceberg.
Also, understanding dreams are not always popular. Joseph could understand his dreams, and while that ended up getting him a high position in Egypt, being able to prophesy dreams from God was what first got him kicked out of his home at the beginning of his story.

THEOPHOSTIC PRAYER

Well, this past weekend concluded my first theophostic prayer session. And yes, I am still alive.
I met my mentor (her name is Betty) for the first time, as well as another woman, called Barb. The pair of them helped guide me through my first prayer appointment.
A few describing words about how it felt: Incredible, beautiful, amazing, strong, powerful, connecting. I have never ever, felt anything like this before. I learned some things about myself, and felt emotions that I had forgotten about. I smiled and cried throughout it, and I don't even remember some of the things that I said throughout the experience.
One of the things that I learned during my meeting was that it is more important to feel things than it is to figure everything out. I think that that is very relatable for everyone in our lives and in our day to day activities. I love trying to figure things out, it makes me feel smart and brave, but I didn't realize that in all those memories, I was thinking things and feeling emotions that are so very important, but I was too busy trying to figure out what was going to happen to me at the time, I didn't have time to sit there and pay attention to myself. I'm also the type of person of who loves to be in control of things (that's one of the reasons I personally feel so drawn to one of my other passions - writing stories). Reliving some of my worst memories that put me (so to speak) at the bottom of the totem pole, where I wasn't able to control what was happening to me...that was a part that put me in my place. While it's still okay to like being in control things, this helped teach me that ultimately, God is the One who controls things, not me.
During the prayer session, God speaks to you. I heard this from my friend who had been through it as well, and I can also speak out that He talked to me as well. Such a breathtaking experience, let me tell you. After the session was over, and I was reflecting on my time, I was so awestruck by how incredible it was to hear God speak, and put thoughts into my head. He loves me, and He wants the best for me. This was a beginning strand of my healing process, and I can't wait to do more.

The Beginning Strands Of Theophostic Prayer

Hello friends!
One of the things I wanted to do as part of my project was something called, "theophostic prayer."
From what I understand, theophostic prayer is a ministry where you seek the Lord in prayer. It is not a form of counselling, it simply identify's with your emotional pain that is harboured through your experiences in your life. If your emotional pain is being rooted by a past experience, it is not likely that you will be able to let go of it until you find God's perspective in this prayer and are able to use Him as a guide to let go of your past and find comfort in what lies ahead.
My mentor does theophostic prayer with people, and so I will be attending an appointment with her this Friday, November 22 (It's also the first time I will be meeting her, so I'm very excited for that too!).
Again, from what I understand about it, is that you go into your appointment with a problem in your life, one that you would like to strive to fix. This problem may not necessarily be what you will end up fixing, because God is the one being sought by you, and He will show you whatever He wants you to see. Our minds are so complicated, and we may never completely understand what's going on inside of it, however God can help.
All in all, I know that this is not the greatest mother load of information, and if you would like more, please go to theophostic.com. They certainly know more than me (haha) and it's a whole website dedicated to the ministry.
I am currently still in pursuit of more information myself, seeing as I am mentally trying to prepare myself for what will happen. One of my friends has done it before, and she's told me what it's kind of like, but I don't want to put anything down on here until I've experienced it for myself. After my appointment on Friday, I'm sure to make a post about it to share with you all about how it went!

WHAT DO DREAMS MEAN?

Dreams are sent from either God or Satan, it is our jobs to decipher which dream comes from which. Like I said in the earlier paragraph, "our deepest wishes and desires are disguised in dream because they would be too threatening to our mental health if they formed while we are awake" -- I believe that those dreams would mostly come from Satan.
Dreams from God however have good, knowledgable reasoning behind them.
1. To warn us.
2. To offer direction in our lives.
3. To give us hope for the future.
4. To expose what we are believing is false.

As for interpreting a dream, here are some basic, yet more deep steps:

1. Journal the dream.
2. Evaluate the emotions you felt when you woke up.
3. Ask yourself what emotions you have experienced or issues you were processing the day/night before the dream.
4. Ask yourself if the dream represents the future or is based on past or present events.
5.Ascertain if the dreams is literal or symbolic.
6. Ask yourself if the dream is about you or someone else.
7. Go through each symbol in the dream, seeking revelation of each symbol until you sense in your spirit that the interpretation is complete.


HUGE SHOUT OUT TO MY AWESOME MENTOR FOR A TON OF THE INFORMATION I GOT TO SHARE WITH EVERYONE. THANKS!!! :))

Mind-blowing

The brain named itself. Whoa.