14 June 2017

Every night for the past week I’ve dreamed about work as a detective. I can always tell it’s a detective dream because the sense of adventure is off-the-charts high and yet the details of where I’m going, who I’m with, what I’m doing and why are not clear.

There will be this one image, like a still-camera shot taken from a video stream, and the image will be something like me with a flashlight walking in the dark with 2 or 3 others, following foot prints in the mud along a river between two patches of foresty areas.

And that will be it.

But when I see that one scene, that one image, when I wake up, in my mind’s eye I also see everything that came before it and everything that came after it.

I don’t want to seem braggadocious  but the way I see it happening in my mind is a lot like the way we hear Sherlock Holmes do his deductions. The details and information comes streaming at me like a flood. In the recent BBC hit SHERLOCK there is such a great example of this. In those moments when he has done his observations and calculations and then starts streaming off the facts, that is what my mind is like when I see just one image and yet I gather 100 facts from it.

I know I’m not alone in this. What makes me unique I guess is that most people who have this gift don’t also write about it. Even in SHERLOCK, one is a detective and the other the writer. It’s not easy to be both. That’s what has made my life so unique. One of the things, anyway.

So there is it. I dream every night of doing this detective work and when I wake up all I can articulate is that I’m working on a case which is complex in nature, life-threatening in scope, but that I am 10 steps infront of the criminals, even though they think I am behind them.

Being a detective is a really great metaphor for Dreamwork. When we take our dreams like detectives and look at them under a microscope, so to speak, then we can really begin to unravel the mysteriest to whatever is leading us to not fulfill what our true self wants in life.

Wherever there is pain, fear, or depression, or feelings of anger or hopelessness then there is an opportunity for growth and progress.

Fear can be transformed into Courage.

Grief can be transformed into Peace.

Anger can be transformed into a Sense of Justice.

Disappointment can be transformed into Acceptance.

But to do so, we must be like detectives and be willing to go into the dark and scary places of our minds, hearts and memories to really look at the negatives, to face the “boogy-mans” of our past, and to realize what qualities exist in us already which we can use to deal with the challenge.

In this way, we grow and develop our own skills, capacities and qualities. We become more Peaceful, more Forgiving, more Cooperative. We become Stronger human beings. We can be filled with Enthusaism and Optimism. We can help create really positive environments for others to do the same.

But it begins with the willingness to ask questions and the readiness to accept the answers when they emerge.