4 Benefits of Using Dreams to Work with Grief

Emerging Dream Insights of Ashlynn Acosta

Dreams of loved ones either shortly or long after they have passed seem to indicate that our ties with them are not cut. Over many years of working with my dreams and helping my students work with theirs, I am of the belief that a relationship with a deceased loved one can actually get resolved or made better through dreams.
Dreams provide the opportunity to meet once again with a person who is irrevocably gone from us on this earth. Through a visitation in a dream, we can say what we need to say and hear what we need to hear from the deceased. For example, while she was alive, I always thought my mother never really understood me even though I knew she loved me. However, the night after she died, I saw her standing before me, looking healthy, happy and radiant. She told me that now she did truly understand who I was and how special I was to her. This dream healed an old heart ache and provided great joy. As it would be for most people, this dream was for me a serendipitous gift given; something not consciously intended but some great and fortuitous “A-hah” experience that just happened out of the blue.

We Can Request a Dream Meeting with a Deceased Person

What most people don’t know is that a dream like this can be requested for a specific purpose. All that is needed is a strong and sincere intention or request made before sleep to have such a dream. Be as specific as possible why such a dream is desired. Write down the request on paper and put it by the bed.
This method is especially good in working with nightmares connected to the loss of a loved one. In Dead Men Do Tell Tales, Ashlynn Acosta learns that by asking for dreams about her mother she can even turn nightmares into dreams of joy and abiding peace—good indicators that the grief associated with her loss is healing as well. So through a visitation in a dream, like Ashlynn, we can say hello again, ask how the person is doing on the other side, seek advice from that person or work through issues that remain unresolved. Through dreams, discovery is made at the gut level that:

1. The deceased person is still alive and in relationship.
2. The deceased is nearby and helping in some capacity.
3. Goodbyes and good wishes can still be given and received.
4. Old issues can still be resolved.

4 Reasons for Teaching Meditation to Teenagers

Ashlynn Acosta Learns to Meditate

Learning to meditate is basically learning to use the inner intuitive resources we all have within us—resources which unfortunately are rarely recognized in our society as an educational necessity and are almost never developed in a conscious fashion until we are in middle age. Considering that the great breakthroughs of science and artistic creativity involve using these internal assets, it is a wonder that education hasn’t been more systematic in developing programs to help younger people access and develop this dimension of being human. Learning to meditate is important for teenagers because:

1) Our Educational System Usually Works Counter-Intuitively

The big irony is that we are already born intuitive, and as small children dwell in a world alive with the insights and wonders of the imaginative mind. It is education itself that often whittles away at our natural instincts by telling us to act rationally and be realistic, whatever that means, trusting only what can be seen with the eye and be proven by statistics. In a sense, it is like asking us to operate on half a brain, seeing things in black and white and ignoring all the shades of gray.

2) Teaching Meditation Goes Far to Bring Along the Child’s Sense of Wonderment into Adulthood

Teaching meditation to teenagers is important at a time when kids are losing that magical state of childhood to the demands of social and peer pressure with the need to conform and measure up. Kids need to know that important aspects of their childhood, like their sense of wonder, their love of stories and oneness with things, is not to be forgotten. Just the opposite, these memories and abilities are meant to be nurtured and brought forward into adulthood. Meditation brings the mind and heart back to the mindset of a child lying under a tree looking up at the clouds with all the time in world gaze at the wonders of the world.

3) Teaching Meditation Gives Teenagers Access to Inner Resources

All of us in life will be faced with uncertainty, and be put in dilemmas where there are no concrete answers or where we are powerless to act based on what is available to the waking mind. In these cases, accessing and gaining intuitive information can go far in making choices that reflect the key values of the person—informing choices that a person can live comfortably with later no matter what the consequences. Dead Men Do Tell Tales is a teen mystery novel where the protagonist, Ashlynn Acosta, learns how meditation can help her in a powerless situation. She discovers resources she didn’t know she had to solve a crime and save a friend.

4) Discovering Inner Resources Builds Confidence and Self-Esteem

Much has been made of the role of parents in building self-esteem and confidence. These are factors coming from without and depend heavily on the child’s relationship to the parents. However, when a child discovers his or her own inner resources and power through meditation, the chances of that new level of self-awareness sinking in are much greater. Here is a case where” seeing is believing” is really true.

Luke 5: The Opening of Intuition in the Face of a Calling

A Miraculous Catch of Fish

The Biblical witness often has God’s presence inserting itself in the ordinary: The calling of Moses while tending sheep (Exodus 3), Gideon while beating the wheat (Judges 6), Isaiah serving in the Temple (Isaiah 6), and here in Luke 5, Peter while fishing. Do you have any sense of God’s call in your life today? Where is God in your “ordinary” day?

In Luke’s story of Peter called to join Jesus, Peter sees a miraculous occurrence of many fish caught in his net when before there were none. Peter is flabbergasted. Intuitively he knows he stands before a master who can summon the powers of nature. How does the miraculous fit into your calling? What special event or what insight from out of the blue prompted you to turn your life around and follow a new path?

A Defining Moment Often Brings Intuitive Insight

In almost everyone’s life there is a defining moment that closes one door and opens another, where the moment is often underscored by something unusual or serendipitous, either happening on the physical plane or in the intuitive heart, beckoning us in a new direction. At such a moment, intuition often opens up briefly like a flower in its full and glorious bloom, as if to make sure we understand what is being asked us of us.

In my own life, when I first encountered kundalini energy coursing through my body, I experienced a huge opening of my third eye. I saw visions. I saw auras around people and saw energy links between myself and another person. Colors and smells took on a fresh vibrancy. Insights about the purpose of my life and the next steps to take with unwavering certitude, even outlandish ones like packing up my bags and moving to Hawaii, popped into my mind with great urgency. I could not ignore these urges to give up my career and follow a whole new path, despite the great surprise of friends and family. And when I began making the changes, doors opened easily and naturally, offering no resistance.

Fed by Energy

Today, whenever I make choices that support the path I have chosen I feel a certain vibrancy, an energizing and often insightful enthusiasm, which floods over into the work I do and into the people I meet. It’s as if an energy from an outside source, or a deeply inward source, is filling my being so that I can do the work of my calling.

Want to Rely More On Your Intuition? Try These Four Tips to Get You Started.

Intuition: A Light Out of Darkness

Relying on one’s own intuition is often thought of as a little dicey but the following tips about intuitive insight can help you develop your inner powers by learning to recognize when intuition occurs and when you can trust it.

1. Intuitive insights are often very subtle, but this doesn’t take away their truthfulness or helpfulness. You are not alone if you think they are vague and hard to grasp. Insights may be nothing more than a fleeting memory, a sensation at the back of the neck, a few notes of music heard out of the blue. The key here is to be aware, and to take nothing as accidental, especially if you are experiencing something in your body or your mind that wasn’t obviously prompted by something else. In Dead Men Do Tell Tales, Ashlynn Acosta often feels the hairs on the back of her neck stand up when her intuition kicks in. Other people may experience a tingling in the neck, or the traditional “gut feeling.” Just being aware of how your body customarily picks up intuitive messages is a starter for learning how to recognize intuition when it comes.
2. Intuitive insights seem to come out of nowhere; even if you may have been deliberate and specific in asking for a particular insight. It is very different from saying, “Now I am going to imagine a red house,” and I see a red house in my mind’s eye. Usually, insights float into consciousness as images, feelings, trains of thought, and physical sensations which may seem at first unrelated to what was on the mind. Sometimes they can come in a sudden flash, the typical “A-hah!” And the answers are usually quite different from what you’d expect. Ashlynn in a remote viewing session is surprised to discover that the possible suspect picks an object up from a scene she is remembering. This is new to her conscious mind. She didn’t remember this happening. The image comes from out the blue and surprises her.
3. Intuitive insights often have an oddity to them such as the tone of voice if one hears a voice or a unique rhythm if words come to mind in a sentence. They have the quality of something so odd; you just know you couldn’t have thought it up yourself. For example, Ashlynn finds the dog that is leading her in her dream to be odd. She doesn’t own a dog nor does she know anyone who owns the kind of dog she sees in her dream. She recognizes this image as being an important piece of intuitive information and knows to ask questions around this image.
4. Intuitive insights have the characteristic of wanting to reveal themselves and will respond to gentle questioning and reflection. Ask a question of an image and then let the image percolate in your heart for the day and see what associations arise. For example, if a strange and interesting image comes to mind, ask yourself, like Ashlynn does, what associations also come to mind that are connected to this image:

• What does this image remind me of in my life right now?
• If I asked the image a question, what would it say?

If you get into a habit of working with intuition along these lines, you will find that answers do come and that they can be relied on. You just need to practice a little. Just try it and see!

Related articles

• Bringing Gratitude, Caring, Focus and Intentionality to Creative Problem Solving (frankramer.wordpress.com)
• Ashlynn Acosta: A Teen Detective with an Intuitive Edge (frankramer.wordpress.com)