SD-1: Shared Dream Class, Week 4, Dream Guides
Here is another late entry to the Shared Dreaming class… I really apologize for these being late, but I fell way behind when I was sick and now I need more hours in the day to catch up! o.O This one is on finding your dream guide, and at least it's not as late as the last one! :P
What Do You Need?
So what are you looking for in a dream guide? This is an important thing to know before you go looking for one. Are you looking for one to guide you safely through the possible dangers of exploring other planes of existence? Are you looking for a dream guide to help you solve inner issues that are affecting your waking life such as a fear you want to overcome or a psychological issue? Are you looking for a dream guide to help you figure out external issues in your waking life such as a dilemma you find yourself in or perhaps a problem in a relationship? There are various reasons you might be looking for a dream guide, and you might need to find more than one dream guide to help you in multiple areas. No matter what the reason you need a dream guide, however, the process is pretty much the same to find one.
Know Your Goals
The first thing to do would be to focus your intent. Focus your intent both on the fact you want to locate a dream guide and on what you need the dream guide to help you with. This will help you remember to search for your guide in a dream even if you aren't lucid, and it will also send off an energy signal saying you are looking for help. Your guide may come in the form of an entity from another plane of existence or your guide may be a manifestation of your own subconscious, which often happens if the answers are buried deep within your mind and you just don't know it. Once you have focused on your desire to find a dream guide, you may need to actually search for them. Make it a goal to search the dreams you have for a dream guide, try to contact them in some way. That might be by looking through the dream you're in and asking the characters you meet there if they're your dream guide. Or you might just focus on summoning a dream guide to you. Or call out to them, look for them just like you might search for a person in waking life. Summon up a dream telephone and call them. Send smoke signals, for that matter. Any method that will get a signal to other entities or to your subconscious could work. One of the most important things is to be patient, though. If you're waiting for a visitor from another plane, it may take some time for them to find you. If you're looking for information from your subconscious, sometimes it takes some time to get the idea from your conscious mind to your subconscious. Becoming frustrated and impatient will definitely sabotage your efforts.
Identifying Your Dream Guide
Your guide will most likely take the form of someone familiar to you, usually someone you will respond to positively, someone you respect, or someone you see as being knowledgeable in the areas you need help with. The guide may appear as a teacher or mentor. Your guide may take the form of some famous individual that you will respond positively to. It is hard to tell you what to look for, however, as some entities, even if they are looking to be helpful, have a sense of humor and will appear in unusual forms. Sometimes even your own subconscious has an odd way of interpreting what a dream guide should look like. My guardian appeared as James Hetfield form Metallica because I get energy from listening to the music of Metallica. My other guide appears as Q from Star Trek, because he always presented himself as an omnipotent entity when he decided it was time to torment / guide Piccard. One of the most important things to do is to keep a journal of your dreams and look for repeating characters in your dreams, especially the ones that don't act like mindless dream characters. Unless you have been sharing dreams with others already, the constant characters are very likely either representations of your subconscious or visitors from another plane. If you are focused enough, you might be able to tell your dream guide what form you will respond best to. Focus your intent on finding your guide, and visualize your guide appearing to you as Q, for example, to let visiting entities or your subconscious know you will respond well to meeting Q.
Earning Your Trust
Unfortunately, not all visiting entities have your best interest in mind. The best thing to do is to treat any dream guide as you would someone in waking life. When you first meet them, you're not going to blindly trust everything they say. They will have to earn your trust. Until they do, look carefully at any advice they give and decide if that will really help you on your way to the goals you seek. If not, this guide may be the wrong one for you, or they may even be trying to steer you wrong. If the guide is an entity from another plane, there are three kinds of visiting entities you may encounter.
1. A positive entity seeking to help others along their journey through life, seeking to guide others to better themselves and their situation. These entities usually don't even ask for anything in return, seeking only to do good for others, or perhaps they want companionship from the deal.
2. Many entities will offer their services for a price, so you had better make it a goal to ask them what they will be wanting in return. If they are the first kind of entity I described here, they will say they want nothing in return or that they just want to see you succeed. Others will be giving you guidance for a price, often times a very reasonable price, they will do it in exchange for a bit of energy. As long as they don't get greedy, this can be a very beneficial arrangement. Be careful if they seem to be too greedy for your energy, however, or this arrangement could end up with you feeling drained both in dreams and in your waking life.
3. Hostile entities will sometimes impersonate guides, but really have their own agendas in mind. This can range from draining your energy and offering you little or nothing in return to guiding you down a path that will somehow benefit them and be at your expense. For these, you often just have to trust your instinct. If you get a bad feeling about a guide, pay attention to that, your dream self and your subconscious is much more open to sensing energy than your conscious mind, and these entities will almost always have a hostile energy about them. And don't just follow a guide blindly, look closely at what they are telling you. If they tell you that you can solve a relationship issue by being abusive or controlling, for example, this particular guide is most likely full of shit, at best they are retarded, at worst they are hostile.
If your guide is a manifestation of your subconscious, it will most likely be safe, I believe that deep down, everyone wants to succeed and do well. It is also possible, however, that you could be subconsciously sabotaging yourself, in which case your subconscious might be giving you bad information. Just as with guides that are entities from other planes, look at what they have told you to decide if it makes sense.
