What is Dream Surfing?
Dream surfing is making a commitment to get your dreams analyzed for an extended period of time (a month, a year, indefinitely…) and take action on the messages you find there.
Is that a thing? Who does that? And why would you want to?
Yes, people do it! Some of the most successful people, in fact. Your dreams are the secret weapon to life that is your birthright. IMAGINE THIS….
Imagine you are an alien sent to Earth
In order to fully immerse yourself in the experience of ‘being human’, your memory of your past is wiped. All you know is the reality you see around you. Now further imagine that you were sent here on a mission – a mission you helped develop and plan out yourself back on your home planet. But once you are ‘undercover’, it is easy to forget that mission and get caught up in the grind and responsibilities of surviving as an Earthling.
The good news is, you are not entirely left to swing in the wind. There is a communication mechanism that allows ‘mission control’ to send you messages that can get you back on track when you stray from the mission. And, in general, to support you in having the happiest, most fulfilling experience you can on Earth. These messages are not sent to your conscious, waking self, because that self has no memory of being an alien. They are sent to a secret part of your being that does remember.
That secret part of you is your soul, and those messages are your dreams.
DREAM SURFING BRINGS THESE MESSAGES INTO YOUR CONSCIOUS AWARENESS
If dream messages are so important, why don’t we just listen to our dreams subconsciously and act on them automatically?
Because the soul isn’t the only part of you. There’s the conscious mind you, which is worried about practical things like making the mortgage, your son’s failing grades, or your no-good husband. It’s so preoccupied that it often ignores the urging of the soul. Have you ever watched a TV show and felt, in your gut – I’d love to be a firefighter? Or a nurse. Or a ballet dancer. But it seems so impractical. Or maybe your heart tells you “I need to get out of this abusive relationship” but your conscious mind says, “What about the kids? I can bear it another 5 years until they’re out of the house.”
Then there’s your subconscious mind, where all your programming has been stored over the course of your life. You know what programming is. You’re two years old and your father is never around or, when he is, he’s drunk and abusive. You feel unsupported and the message your subconscious decides upon is: the world is not a safe place. I need to hide. That feeling may cause you to turn down many opportunities. You may carry that feeling all the way to the grave unless you deal with it.
Our subconscious mind has picked up some dirt, ya’ll. No one supports me, I’m not worthy of a good job, I can’t trust women, I can’t trust men, I’m not loveable, I don’t deserve… We pick up many of these things as children, even in the womb! These subconscious blocks impact how well we listen to our dream’s nudges and urges. Your subconscious may respond with a whole lot of, “YEAH BUT, I COULD NEVER DO THAT!”
By now you may be thinking it’s hopeless. Between practical considerations, stuck routines, and subconscious programming, how can we make any progress in life—dreams or not? You may tell yourself that your life isn’t that bad. It could be worse. Besides, we have Insta and TikTok and Netflix to distract us.
But there’s the thing: Life could be so much more. When we listen to our dreams, we bring their messages into our conscious mind as well as our soul. And THEN we can make conscious decisions about them. Maybe we ignore the message about being a ballet dancer—for now. Maybe we make a three-year plan to save money for ballet school. Maybe we sign up for a single dance class to see if our dreams are flipping crazy or what.
But at least we now can consciously become aware of what our higher self (mission control) advises and make the choice to follow the advice or not.
That’s what Dream Surfing is all about.
How do I analyze my dreams?
I’ll be posting in more detail about this soon, but, in short, I recommend working with a dream interpreter. Working one-on-one with a dream interpreter will give you insight into the kinds of messages your dreams are telling you, as well as letting you gauge how often, and how richly, you remember your dreams.
I worked with a dream interpreter for several months during a therapy program. And, call it navel-gazing, but I found the messages in my dreams utterly fascinating! ;-) They showed me things about myself I didn’t recognize, especially about the spiritual gifts I came here to use and past trauma that was blocking me. I’ve been hooked on dream surfing ever since and went to Aisling School to learn dream interpretation. You may want to learn to interpret dreams yourself, but to start, I recommend working with a dream interpreter for at least a few months.
