Sweet Dreams are Made of These...

I just saw the movie, "Inception" with my family last night, action packed with tons of suspense and odd twists in the story.  It was the first time to see Leo Di Caprio as a daddy, and weird to see the creepy bad guy in "Batman Begins," play a rich businessman you almost want to like.  It was all about dreams, extracting people's dreams and inserting new dreams into people's heads.  All very surreal and at 2 and a half hours long, I enjoyed a pleasant nap half way through to wake up just as confused as I was when I dozed off.   I was entertained, and all the guys in my family liked it a lot, which made me happy to know they were happy.

One thing I couldn't get into was the way they treated dreams as so deep and profound, or the way they made great use of fear in dreams.  I'm just not into fear. I've learned a strange trick to turn my dreams at night to my favor if they get anywhere near scary or bothersome.  If a bullet is flying at me, I am somehow conscious that it isn't real but a dream, and I turn it into a bumblebee or a butterfly.  I force the scary things to become less threatening.  I scold the bad guys and tell them to be ashamed of themselves and watch them slink away with their heads hanging, and the monsters I just may turn into teddy bears having a picnic.  Every time I do that the emotional intensity of the dream just flattens out like someone had popped a balloon. The dream just turns to nonsense or I just wake up.

This all started when I was 7, when I had one of my terrifying recurring nightmares of being pushed off a high cliff.  In mid-air I remembered that I only fall off cliffs in dreams, which meant I could insert whatever I wanted to change my dream.  I placed a huge mattress at the base of the cliff, and then had a lovely time bouncing up and down when I reached the bottom.  The dream faded away pretty quickly after that.

These days I rarely remember a dream at all, and I think it's because my mind nullifies anything disturbing so quickly, that any dreams I might have are completely forgotten the moment I open my eyes.

I don't know if everybody is as aware of the fact that they can control their dreams, but I know all of us can control the fears and irritations we have during our waking hours.  I believe that once we know how to bind up negative attitudes and fears the moment they start to encroach on our thoughts, the easier we can handle the stresses of our daily lives.  For those who would just see this as a psychological trick, you're not going to get very far because psyching yourself out to feel good even when things are going wrong, doesn't change the fact that things are still going wrong!

Using faith to stop evil from harming us does more than give us an emotional sense of peace, but it actually stops concrete problems from happening in very real and practical ways.  There's a kind of stubbornness combined with faith that says just plain "NO YOU DON'T" to any spiritual force that is trying to tempt you with worry or fear or choosing what is wrong. It can become a part of who you are.  It's a faith that says no to the idea that God won't come through for you, no to the idea that if you humble yourself you'll just get hurt, no to the thought that your problems are just too overwhelming.  Faith knows how to put those attacking spirits to shame if you use it, and then the results in real life follow.

I've known various people who said, NO YOU DON'T to cancer, to drugs, to prostitution, to AIDS, to witchcraft, to depression, and are no longer victims of any of them.

You may not be able to turn a bullet into a butterfly, but you sure can turn around an attack on your life into a victory if you just learn how to fight back, and that's even better.

by Evelyn Higginbotham