Atlantic University

Introduction

     I offered a friend who was going through a period of transition, an opportunity to practice developing intuition for guidance by engaging with memories and dreams to reflect and analyze guidance contained in their stories.

I had listened to my friend’s struggles for the past 18 months with the dissolution of communications with her partner of many years. I read about one of Edgar Cayce’s exercises for intuition development that suggested a practice for developing intuition over a period of 20 days.

I took the notion of 20 days of practice and applied the principles of processing memories and using them in service with others to facilitate personal transformations, as described in the book, The Intuitive Heart by Henry Reed and Brenda English..

I contacted my friend, explained my idea and purpose and offered her an opportunity to engage in a daily exercise for 20 days. She agreed and together we embarked upon a process of learning how we can serve others in need and how in the process the server and the served can each uncover healing within.

The Process of Recalling Memories and Dreams

     The process we embarked upon involved each of us fulfilling daily commitments. My responsibilities involved me in the daily practice of meditation, memory or dream recall, writing down the story of the memory or dream, considering the story and offering interpretations to the receiver.

The question I held in mind every day was the same: “What is the Spiritual message I may relay to _________ to serve her today?” Every morning, I arose and meditated, using the practice of focusing on the breath and feeling gratitude within the heart to reach out to another, as described in The Intuitive Heart.

The practice of meditation is to open the heart to trust one’s intuition to receive messages that arrive through memories and dreams and to relay these to help another who is seeking guidance in life. The practice of breathing and feeling gratitude within the heart is a gentle process that warms the heart.

I found daily practice of this meditative beginning to the exercise to be a heartening one, literally it seemed to bring the heart alive to reaching out to my friend, such was the feeling of warmth that emanated within and from my heart. I followed the process of calling upon “an intuitive heart memory” to provide insights to guidance contained within the story of each memory or dream.

     Each day I wrote down the story of the memory or dream. I then sat quietly and waited for inspirations of interpreting the story of the memory or dream. While waiting for inspirations, I held in mind the question: “What is the Spiritual message I may relay today to be of service to my friend ___________?”

Once a memory surfaced, I would explore the intuitive heart memory then describe it in writing on my notepad. I would then ask for mind to be still in order to let interpretations that serve the recipient today to come forth. I asked for interpretations to arise that could serve the recipient to foster or grow her Spirit for this day as a step in the process of making and managing transitions.

     I knew the recipient was in an emotionally challenging transition within herself and in relating to her partner. I set my intention to ask for Spiritual messages that could serve to fortify and aid the recipient in creating transitions for herself and within interactions with her partner.

For the most part, I found interpretations arising with practical suggestions to the recipient. For instance, I suggested practical strategies such as breathing, stilling busyness of mind by patting the dog, giving time to self to walk in the park, to listen to the wind and birdsong, to take time to slow down the pace and to give to self in order that transitions could occur with confidence, courage and patience.

I found most days that messages gave rise to interpretations of practical strategies to apply that particular day. The sensation of the interpretations seemed to mirror the state of the Spirit of the recipient.

     As the days progressed, I sensed that the focus of interpretations daily was attuned to the recipient via the intention to be of service to the recipient for today and the willing receipt of daily interactions by the recipient.

     The interconnectedness between myself and recipient certainly bore forth vibrational interchange that manifested service to each party. On conclusion of noting interpretations for each story of memory or dream, I wrote an email to my friend. I began each email with the question for the day, recounted the story of the memory or dream, and transcribed the interpretations arising from considering each memory or dream. Each morning I forwarded the email to my friend.

     Over the course of 20 days of practice, it seemed to me that the heart became ever more alive: eager, receptive and willing to reach out to my friend. It appeared that memories came swifter and swifter as the days passed and interpretations came with ease and grace, a grace of wanting to be of assistance in a time of turmoil. On average, daily meditation, memory or dream recall and interpretations plus communicating these on the email might take 30-40 minutes.

The Process of the One receiving memories or dreams

     On receipt of my daily emails, my friend printed out the content, pasted it into her journal and took time each day to read, reflect and analyze messages for herself within the stories and the interpretations. Some times, we spoke on the telephone or via email when a synchronicity might seem really striking or when either one of us thought exploring further analysis could help either one of us. These are my reflections on working with the recipient.

     Firstly, the receptiveness of the recipient, her willingness to enter into engagement, her enquiry into the process of guidance and the functions of intuitive heart memories and dreams all served to create fluid and evolving insights into living transitions and managing them.

     Secondly, the application of the recipient to commit to daily logging entries, plus her devotion of time to reflect and to enter journaling significantly contributed to effective interactions and learning outcomes with practical applications to transformations of personhood.

The recipient offered her journal to read on conclusion of the twenty day exercise. I also elected to ask her for her reflections on the process and outcomes of learning from her perspective. Her comments about the process are given below.

     The learnings that have been evoked for her through journaling are her personal journey through which she may identify patterns that potentially may serve her growth as she calls upon them. Transforming occurs at the time and level of readiness of the individual.

Outcomes I have witnessed in the recipient have centered on the adoption of strategies that serve to still the mind from busyness, to hush the voices of destruction that abuse self esteem by overloading responsibilities such as nurturing or communicating and underloading capacity to stand in stillness, to fuel resolve to allow another to create their own journey and walk its path.

Learning to refrain from interceding, remembering to apply strategies such as focus upon the breath as a means of stilling the mind, or minimizing anxieties, or absolving worrying, are pertinent examples of practical applications of suggestions conveyed in the messages and interpretations of daily communications.

Beyond the 20 day commitment, I have heard the recipient express consistent and expanding application of strategies to serve her as she moves further into transitions within herself and with her partner. This outcome directly reflects the recipient’s value of the practicality of strategies and her commitment to manage her transitions effectively.

     One day, my friend and I discussed a dream I recorded and interpreted to the recipient and a dream that she subsequently dreamed. The recipient recalled a dream which she journalled, because she felt it directly linked to the dream I had dreamt days earlier.

We discussed the scenes recalled of the dreams and identified links and explored messages contained therein. In my experience, reflections of one another’s dreams and their analysis reveal the vibrating energy that creates a synergy between healer and healed engaged in the process of facilitating transitions.

Research on telepathic dreaming in the context of a group of persons dreaming for another person in distress reveals that those dreamers may be able to offer spiritual guidance from analyzing and interpreting the resulting dreams.

I consider the capacity to enter into the spirit of the process with openness and commitment actually invokes synchronicities that serve to support and enhance interactive reasonance.

The interconnectedness of spirit and attention to spirit are fundamental to evolving contributions that are healing and healthy, bringing harmony and wellbeing to participants involved.

Comments from the Recipient

The Process as a two way street

     I consider that this exercise showed how participants can each be healer and the healed. The process of engaging on recalling dreams and memories to serve a friend in need, served to serve my growth and development too. I grew in confidence and trust towards Divine Guidance within.

I felt affirmed by being entrusted by my friend to engage with her daily during this period of turmoil. I felt I was able to relay messages that my friend might choose or not as she saw fit to serve herself in this passage of healing.

According to the theory explained in The Intuitive Heart, the value of offering stories and reflections upon them is that meaning of the messages are chosen by the listener/recipient as they seek understanding of a situation they are managing. Giver and receiver are embarked upon a process of personal story telling which engages the hearts of both parties.

Thus are minds following the path of the heart, offering an opportunity to listen to the heart’s messages as we reach out with one another. The process is personally engaging, creating intimacy and breathing trust between the two hearts involved.

I mentioned above that memories seemed to flow faster, that the heart seemed eager every morning to engage, that interpretations seemed to flow from grace.
And these incoming thoughts and feelings of heart beat and flow of inspirations created sharing between the two of us in this process that fed each of us energy and gratitude for the presence of our friendship in our lives.

     When I reflect on the process I can honestly say that our friendship of more than 30 years deepened and expanded with ever more trust. I found the experience profoundly caring of each other.

I felt the experience to be humbling and encouraging that we can draw upon memories and dreams in practical daily life to help one another traverse turmoils, find guidance, walk forwards, feel healing and embrace increasing closeness, feeling grateful for the presence of one another in connecting in life.

     As the days progressed, my sense of being with a service to offer brought me a feeling of confidence in contributions being made daily. I found gratefulness arising in me in many situations as I went about daily interactions. I reflect on the fact that daily meditations and daily asking for intuitive heart memories came at the start to each day. So I consider the rise of gratefulness to be attributed to daily practice at the beginning of each day.

In turn, this rise in feeling grateful has brought a heightened consciousness within me each day that facilitates my interactions with others and within myself a feeling of wellbeing and ease. I think gratefulness is the right choice of word here. I looked at it just then and thought: am I really discussing awareness, a rise in awareness?

But I have decided to leave gratefulness as the word of choice because the sensation of gratefulness persists and I think it is this sensation that leads to increased awareness of day to day interactions and unfoldings. Gratefulness embodies the sensations of peace, wellbeing, serenity and interconnectedness within me towards others.

These are the sensations of gratefulness that continue within me beyond the 20 day time allotted for this activity. It seems to me that the daily encounters with intuitive heart memories coupled with reflecting upon these interpretations with a daily intent to serve a recipient has indeed served me as well!

     The daily encounters appear to me to have initiated a heightened appreciation of vital qualities that facilitate capacity to appreciate the arts and acts of living. I feel the daily encounters have provided growth streams to myself to explore the creation of interactions, communications, strategies for calming, strategies for empowering, strategies for quieting the mind which all serve to harmonize with living happily and at ease in the world.

Such an outcome is affirming and encouraging. Considering relationship between healer and healed, using memories and dreams to serve transitions has shown me that in effect the process facilitates gratitude, manifests practical strategies to serve transitions and heightens conscious awareness of vibrating energy within and between us thus enhancing and invoking our potential for interconnectedness.

A summary of processes

Processes set up with the recipient included these agreements:

Concluding remarks on applications of intuitive heart memories and dreams to serve daily living

     I found the whole experience to be affirming of my potential to contribute to opportunities for the transformational process to progress. I felt I grew in confidence within myself to apply my skills in service with another. I became aware of skills and insights within that I am capable of practically applying to daily life and living that can serve my own and others’ conscious awareness, growth in spirit and confidence to serve others.

     One of the best outcomes to witness is the facilitation that may serve another and to analyze how best service may be offered. Another really positive outcome is the sensation of gratefulness that permeates my life. This sensation of gratefulness pervades and persists.

It calls me to remember consistently, readily, assiduously, in my own life how to apply myself to living awareness of consciousness so that my own interactions with others’ expand and flourish on a daily basis.

I am able to mediate myself and with others from a center of calm and with a feeling of grace which I believe are brought through with equanimity that is evoked by the gratefulness. For this benefit, I am truly grateful.

     Trust and engagement are two further benefits I perceive result from this process. Developing increased trust in intuitive guidance flowing forth from within and expressing guidance received invokes Divine Guidance. To engage in service with another is a gratifying and humbling experience.

In this process, I witness to the power of Spirit in Oneness. I have found the experience of placing oneself in service actually allows the Source of Spirit to flow within and without. To recall and analyze memories or dreams, in this case adopting the intuitive heart memory process and dreaming, benefits both parties with healing insights for living life.

To become consciously aware of their practical applications in healing has informed my approach to working with myself and with others to cultivate spirit and apprehend presence of spirituality in living life. For me it has led to creating grace-filled interactions on a daily basis. I appreciate this experience of grace most of all.

The experience of working together with my friend, has led me to believe that application of intuitive heart memories and dreaming offer practical value in daily life that serves personal transformations within self and with others.