Announcer (00:00:04) - This is Dream Power Radio. The place where your dreams turn into reality. Here is your host, Debbie Spector Weisman.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:00:13) - Hello, hello, hello and welcome to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, Certified Dream-Life Coach Debbie Spector Weisman. This is a place where we talk about dreams, both daytime and nighttime dreams and how you can use them to make the internal shift to a life you love. And rediscover the truth of who you really are. Who doesn't love a great mystery? I can't tell you how many hours I've stayed up late at night to get to the end of her particularly gripping mystery novel, not quite sure how it's all going to turn out until the final pages. And I'm not so mechanically inclined as to take apart an object like my car to see how it works. But I do find myself curious about other mysteries, like what lies beyond our planet, or why setting the oven 25 degrees higher makes all the difference between soft and crispy chocolate chip cookies.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:01:11) - And then there's the greatest mystery that all of us face. Who are we? Why are we here on earth? That one may be the hardest one of all to crack. But we do have a way to get insights into that answer that we can't get any other way. And that's with our dreams. We talked so much on this show about the power of dreams to help us answer the mysteries in our lives, and I'm always grateful when I have the opportunity to discuss dreams with an expert who can help us take an even deeper dive into our nighttime adventures. That's why I'm thrilled to welcome Dr. Michael Lennox to Dream Power Radio today. Michael is a psychologist, astrologer, and expert teacher in dreams and dream interpretation. He's also the host of the weekly podcast Conscious Embodiment: Astrology and Dreams, and the author of a number of books, including Llewellyn's Complete Dictionary of Dreams and his new book Psychic Dreamer: Exploring the connection Between Dreams and Intuition. So let's talk about dreams, Michael.
Michael Lennox (00:02:12) - Debbie, glad to be here.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:02:13) - Oh, I am thrilled to have you here. And I'm just going to dive in. So, Michael, you say that you had your first memorable dream when you were three. So what made you believe at that very young age that this dream was important enough to not only remember, but to stay with you, even to this day?
Michael Lennox (00:02:33) - Well, because of how powerful the experience felt like it was a terrifying experience. So it stuck with me. Though the imagery was really simple and clear that the image of the dream was just me in a landscape, aware that I was just in my body being my little three-year-old self. And then I had this sensation that there was something bigger than me at an enormous proportion, and that simultaneously there was something minuscule inside of me. And those words like, I can't even describe the sensation in the visual experience. But why it stayed with me was I woke up terrified and had to be comforted. And I just never forgot that sensation of the bigger the medium place where I was in the tiny. So that when I became an adult or learned things about how the universe is structured, I found an alarming connection to the idea of the infinite nature of the universe was being shown to me at three years old, and it's terrifying.
Michael Lennox (00:03:39) - The universe is a terrifying place to be, and I think that just having that experience of yes, Michael, this is what it looks like when we peel back the curtain. And it's terrifying that it lived in my body. When I then discovered more about how the world works, I loved having this dream to kick off my lifelong obsession with the nighttime realms.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:04:01) - Okay, well, Einstein said the universe is friendly. Why do you say it's so terrifying?
Michael Lennox (00:04:07) - Well, I think because of death. We come into these bodies. And the promise at birth is you're going to leave; you're going to die. And so that idea of death sets us up in our little bodies to be fearful of anything that would look like it might take our life force away. And then if you just think of the enormity of the universe itself, even just the size of it, we're tiny. The enormous universe is overwhelming. That alone gives us a terrorized feeling when we get down to the really fundamental places where we're in, like just the bare bones emotional impact of being in a body.
Michael Lennox (00:04:45) - It's life and death.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:04:48) - Can we use our dreams to help us cope with that terrifying feeling?
Michael Lennox (00:04:53) - I think so, I certainly have done that organically and simply because we visit the unconscious realms when we go to sleep. Where is our fear and our terror? It's not in our conscious mind, and our conscious mind would just try to do the best we can and create lives through the principles of manifestation and follow our dreams and interact with others and create loving, beautiful experiences. But in the unconscious, we are in fear. We are in lack. We are in doubt. We are in all of the ways that we're not in our center. Well, if we don't visit those places, how can we face the scariness of life on life's terms? And so I believe that that is one of the elegant things that's happening when we go to sleep is we just get to visit where we are most terrified so we can wake up the next day ready to face life on its own terms. Yeah.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:05:45) - Do you say or are all dreams meaningful?
Michael Lennox (00:05:48) - Great question.
Michael Lennox (00:05:50) - My answer is always the sort of ironic only if you choose to interpret them. So if you're going to interpret a dream, why this one? Yes. And that one. No. So the idea is if there's something that's happening on the inside of me that I can only understand by interpretation and dream world opens me up to that realm, then ipso facto, it would stand to reason that every dream is glimpsing into a place that if I interpret it, I might gain some interesting value. The question really is: would you want to interpret every dream? You'd never get anything done, right? So I believe that the best way to posture what dreams to work with are just you wait until the one that comes along that really grabs your attention, rather than paying attention to every single dream you have every night.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:06:41) - Well, something that that I advocate and most certainly a lot of dream workers I've talked to advocate is keeping a dream journal and writing down those dreams. So what what's your take on that?
Michael Lennox (00:06:52) - Absolutely. In fact, I would add a third dynamic to that. You set the intention to remember your dreams. You had the dream journal near your bed in the morning so that you don't have to go far to get to the place where you're going to record it. And if you're looking to increase dream memory, and it's not happening with the regularity that you would like, the third step would be go to that dream journal and write something down. Even if you don't remember anything that signals the unconscious, that you have the desire to keep that window of memory open. And so when I was a young man, I mean, I have boxes of dream journals because I did write down every single dream that I have, and that as I've gotten older and wiser, I've been able to sort of pick and choose when I work with them. But writing that down, going to the page, is such an intimate act for a person to begin having a relationship with their own inner mystery. So I think that dream journal becomes a tool, even if you never pick it up and read the day's writings.
Michael Lennox (00:07:56) - Just going to the journal and having something that's internal being expressed externally in the dream journal will increase your inner ability to navigate those unconscious realms with more grace and power.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:08:11) - Yeah, because that's a way of telling your subconscious that things are important.
Michael Lennox (00:08:16) - And I believe, and maybe you do as well, Debbie, that the act of dreaming and going into those unconscious realms and waking up is having a value for us, whether we remember the dream or not, so that everything that we do in the direction of increasing our connection to those dreams ups the value. Writing them down ups the value. Even if you don't go back and reread it, sharing it with another human being, I think puts it up to an even higher place, and then actually doing some dream work with the dream images that come sort of takes it to an even higher sort of value. Value ratio reward.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:08:57) - Yes. And do you advocate writing them down as opposed to recording them?
Michael Lennox (00:09:02) - I would rather have somebody record digitally over the choice to not record.
Michael Lennox (00:09:10) - But if you can at all. Force yourself to pick up pen and paper. I think it's more organically visceral because the body is participating in the communication, where the digital recording removes the sort of bodies participation. And I don't think you have as deep a connection to the unconscious. But I'm also old, like I live in a world where all we did was write. And so we're watching the young people shift how they operate. So I would never want a young person to hear, I think you'd better write them down than have them shrink away because they're oriented towards the digital technology. Have at it. But writing is better.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:09:53) - Yes. Yeah. Kind of old school now. Well.
Michael Lennox (00:09:57) - Listen, honey, when you and I are dead and gone, then nobody will be writing anything anymore. It's on its way out. Right. So we may be the last generation where we understand the direct intimacy of written expression.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:10:11) - Now, maybe by that point, we're all just going to be communicating telepathically. Maybe it'll just be the way it goes.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:10:17) - I want to turn now to your new book, Psychic Dreamer, which is just fascinating. And I think it's a wonderful introduction to people who don't know a lot about dreams, really just laying out the beauty and the majesty of Dreamwork. It's beautiful. So one of the things that you talk about, because you do talk about specific type of dreams and the one that I find particularly fascinating are visitation dreams.
Michael Lennox (00:10:42) - Yes.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:10:43) - When the departed loved one enters our dream space. Well, do these have a typical pattern?
Michael Lennox (00:10:50) - Absolutely. In fact, they are undeniably specific in my experience, and I've heard thousands of these. So over my whole life, I think I have enough empirical evidence to declare this to be so. Dreams that are typically storyline narratives are chaotic. They change scenes. All kinds of crazy things happen. Anything can happen and probably will in your dreams. A visitation experience is never that. It won't have a plot line. In fact, I just used this phrase singular location. Often that location is the very room the person who's sleeping is sleeping in, right? That the dream will be I'm in my bed, the person comes in, maybe they sit on the bed, or they're present in the room sometimes.
Michael Lennox (00:11:36) - Oddly enough, this is crazy movie trope. You'd see this happen. Like if you were writing a movie about this, you might set it on a bench in an idyllic setting. And then that's where these dreams often take place. On benches, in parks and things like that. But singular is the key. No chaotic scene changes. The person visiting will almost never be speaking, although if there is a verbal expression, it's very singular and simple, like all is well or I love you or some sort of loving message. And that's when you know that you're in a visitation dream because of that sort of simplicity of the dream experience. But if you've ever had such an experience or spoken to someone who has, the real key is how different a visitation will feel. The person who has had it knows that something else has happened that isn't typical, and I have spoken to people where such a dream became their spiritual awakening, because there was an undeniable threshold that they crossed before and after, of maybe there's a connection after death to, oh, I'm certain there's a connection after death, because that feeling was undeniable.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:12:58) - Yeah, I tell you, I don't recall ever having a visitation tree myself, but I witnessed one, and that was with my mother. She was dying, and she was a person-- she didn't know -- She didn't pay attention to her dreams at all. And this happened to be when I was first studying dream work, because it came late to life for me. And she's in her bed and she definitely is asleep and I'm watching her, and I hear her call out, Papa, Papa, Papa, Papa and candy. And when she woke up, I told her about this, and it just brought her this incredible peace because obviously it was her father. And the interesting thing for me was that he died before I was born. So I never knew him. But when she talked about him, she'd always referred to him as Pop. So Papa meant that she was a child, right?
Michael Lennox (00:13:51) - Really connected. Wow. How beautiful.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:13:54) - But the thing about it that I loved it was that it just gave her so much peace.
Michael Lennox (00:13:58) - Yes, yes. In fact, I've had conversations with people who were and are oriented towards their spiritual connection. There's that side of life who work with dreams, who will report to me that they feel sad, that someone who has passed has not come to visit, and they long for that, and they want that. And the question is always, why does that happen or not happen? It's like, I don't have a handle on why that might or might not happen. One might say to someone who's asking about that as a point of comfort to say, well, if they haven't visited you in the dream, maybe there isn't a need for the healing that that might bring, but I can't guarantee that that's an absolute. But I do know that it's such a gorgeous experience when it happens. It doesn't surprise me that people who are aware that it's possible would live in a kind of anticipation of it happening when someone passes.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:14:54) - Right? Well, this is just so fascinating and there's more to share, but we have to take a short break. Now we are speaking all about dreams with Dr. Michael Lennox and we'll be right back.
Announcer (00:15:42) - Welcome back to Dream Power Radio with your host, Debbie Spector Weisman.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:15:48) - Yes. Welcome back to Dream Power Radio. I'm your host, Debbie Spector Weisman, and we're talking all about dreams with Dr. Michael Lennox. Well, Michael, before the break, we were talking about visitation dreams. And the point that you mentioned is that we really can't program them. It's like if I say I want to get in contact with my mother, I can't say tonight I want to dream where she comes to me.
Michael Lennox (00:16:12) - Well, I mean, intention is everything, and I certainly encourage that. But yeah, I wouldn't want somebody to be set up to be in a consistent request of something that might not be on its way.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:16:24) - Well, we think of visitation dreams. Usually we think about a situation where an older relative, like a parent or grandparent, makes a connection. Is it different when a younger deceased person comes into our dreams?
Michael Lennox (00:16:40) - It's such an interesting question, Debbie. And I confess I've never been asked that before, so I'd have to say I don't have an answer to that. That comes from my experience. But there has to be something about a passing that doesn't come from a natural arc of a life well lived, where the body says, now we're done. So I do think that there's probably a psychic energetic difference to a person whose live stream ends before the body's natural arc, and therefore, I wouldn't be surprised if there were ways to think about this question and say, hmm, someone who leaves before they're done with the body might have a wisdom that is different than the experience of letting the body tell us when it's time to go. But I'll have to sort of keep my ears and eyes open for seeing if I can see if there's a distinction in there from stories I get told.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:17:37) - I tell you, the one thing that's just wonderful about Dreamwork is there's always something new to learn. Yes, all of it. Okay, I asked you the question about whether I could program having that dream. And I usually refer to programming dreams as dream incubation, you call it petitioning.
Michael Lennox (00:17:54) - Yeah. Petitioning, incubation. All great words. Yes. This is the idea that we can, in fact, ask our dreams to support various things that we're experiencing or working through. I think this would actually then be a valuable place to sort of say when you do that work, when you ask your dreams in an intention kind of way, to give you information or help you solve a problem or get a deeper message from someplace beneath the surface of your unconscious, you have to trust the dream that comes. It's not a movie.
Michael Lennox (00:18:27) - It's not always going to be an exact answer to the question. Get a clear answer. You have to be more fluid and trust that ongoing, dynamic conversation between conscious mind and unconscious answer from dreams. But yes, we it's a very powerful way to work with dreams.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:18:45) - Yeah, but it's also not just as simple as just saying to yourself, okay, tonight I want to petition to have a dream about X. It's a little bit more involved than that.
Michael Lennox (00:18:58) - It's a little more involved in that. And for me, one of the reasons I sort of focused a chapter on this in the book Psychic Dreamers, is that there's such a desire out there in the world today to understand what we typically call the Law of Attraction, the idea that we can manifest that which we desire by focusing our thoughts on the thing we want, aligning our feeling body as if we already have it. And this sort of meditative, prayerful act is the sort of basis of the manifestation notion. I want something, I can have it, and the manifestation teachers will tell you, you can have anything that you want.
Michael Lennox (00:19:36) - Now that's nonsense. You cannot have anything you want. You cannot create something that you don't have the capacity, ability or talent to create. And most importantly, you cannot draw something to you that you feel undeserving of in your unconscious mind. So you can say, I feel rich, I feel rich, I feel rich all you want with your conscious mind. But if below the surface you're like, that's not true. The unconscious is always going to win in the game of manifestation. So here's where Dreamwork comes in. I want the thing, the new job, the partner, the soulmate. The more grace and ease for my anxiety, whatever, whatever the thing is that you are desiring to manifest, you petition your dreams to address the unconscious resistance. Or the way in which we don't know that we're pulling back from our magnificence, from fear, but our dream world does.
Michael Lennox (00:20:47) - And the incubation might be to write or think, or I used the word prayer, or set intentions before bed. All right, higher self, I want this soulmate. What might be inhibiting me from attracting that in a manner that is not known to me? Show me in my dreams. And then you go to bed. You have a dream and there's a shift. Your unconscious mind and your conscious mind had been in a conversation, and you may not have a clear sense of, oh, this dream makes sense to me, but something will shift because you've gone below the surface to where you might be saying no to the conscious yes of the thing you want to create. Put these two together. Now you're working both in the conscious mind during the day. I want this thing; I want this thing. And in the in the unconscious place where your fearful thoughts and feelings might be holding you back.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:21:35) - Okay. So let's talk a little bit about the mechanics. What would be your method for increasing the chances of having that dream to give you that answer?
Michael Lennox (00:21:44) - I think that intention is key. So anything that can increase the sort of vibration of that intention setting counts.
Michael Lennox (00:21:55) - So what I mean by that is you can casually think to yourself as you're getting ready for bed. Oh, I think I'd like to have a dream that might help reveal my resistance about this issue. But man, oh man, sit down with your dream journal before you go to bed and write a little request. Dear Higher Self, show me. Bring me a dream that reflects my resistance to this thing that I want. Now you've taken that intention setting power, and you've turned the volume up a few notches, much more powerful to sort of ritualized the intention setting. I believe, in the power of spoken and written word as greater vibration than thought. So speaking it out loud or writing it down, I think, amplifies the unconscious readiness to offer some interesting dream information. And then again, trust what comes. Go to the dream journal. Write something down even if you can't remember a specific dream, and then trust that the unconscious is responding.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:22:58) - Very well said. In your latest book, you do cite numerous examples of all different kinds of dreams. And one person you referred to a lot is a man named Eli, who had powerful dreams that led to mystical experiences. Do you believe he's unique, or do we all have the ability within ourselves to become mystics?
Michael Lennox (00:23:19) - You know, Debbie, I'm covered with goosebumps at the question. It's a beautiful question because the truth is, he is not unique in his mystical experience. What he is unique in is his ability to perceive them without his rational mind interfering with his declaration that something mystical has taken place. This is unique and was in him as a little boy, so that he was having half-life dreams, connections to other dimensions like crazy as a child, but didn't have a sort of an automatic, rational mind pushing away of it. He was open. And that, I think, is unique. But really and truly, if there's a message to be heard in this moment is, is that we all have the same ability to connect with the multidimensional consciousness that we are, but it's at different levels.
Michael Lennox (00:24:24) - And if it's undeveloped, it's undeveloped. I liken this to singing. Everybody who can speak and hear can sing. It's just elongated speaking. Now some people have lovely ears and can hear tone, and when they sing, we like it. Some people, when they sing, we don't like it because they don't have a good ear. Can they both sing? Yes, they can. That's kind of like us with our mysticism connections. We all have it, and all of us can increase our ability to perceive such information through practices like meditation, embodiment, work, and changing the instruments so that you can perceive more deftly.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:25:08) - So it is all about believing, also believing in motivating your ability.
Michael Lennox (00:25:13) - I would even add this Debbie believing it and trusting it without going over the edge into magical thinking and being certain that every little intuitive hit you get must be accurate because of your magic. I think people get a little bit off the center where we want to always respect, we live in a mystery. It's always a mystery, and dream interpretation is the closest we'll get to understanding that mystery, but it's still an interpretation of that which is not fully knowable.
Michael Lennox (00:25:46) - Life is like that. It's not fully knowable or understandable. And when we live in relationship to that, not knowing in a graceful way, I think we have a richer, more passionate experience of our lives.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:25:59) - Yes, indeed. Why do you call sleep and dreaming the sweet death of sleep?
Michael Lennox (00:26:05) - Oh, I do call. You really did your homework. I do call it that. And I actually have a prayer as I go into bed every night. That is my prayer. I release the day. I let my body disengage and I enter the sweet death of sleep. Because we are here, I believe, like, why are we here? We're here to learn how to die. We're born and then we die. The knowledge that we are going to die is terrifying. We started our conversation off with this idea, and I do believe that our drive to know the most that we can about our internal mysteries is so that we can die a more graceful death when we get there. And I think we practice death every night.
Michael Lennox (00:26:53) - We go to sleep. We are practicing death every time something ends that is scary or sad, we're practicing death. Every outbreath is like practicing death, because breathing in is to take in life force, and to breathe out is to die. So anything that we can do along the way to our literal deaths, to practice the symbolic deaths, I think make that final exit a little less terrifying.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:27:23) - Dreams help us in so many different ways like that.
Michael Lennox (00:27:27) - That's true.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:27:28) - It is true. Well, I mentioned in the introduction that you're also an astrologer. So as an astrologer, can you tell me if 2024 is going to be a good year to greet the possibilities of the world, or should I stay in bed all year?
Michael Lennox (00:27:41) - I will say this. 2024 is actually going to resemble in timbre and intensity, 2023. There's a way in which we measure astrological moments, sort of like in intensity. You can well imagine that 2020 and 2021 had some pretty high-level intense transits, the geometrical movement of planets.
Michael Lennox (00:28:07) - And so those years were crazy. 2023 had a measure of mildness compared to that kind of change. And I think we've got a bunch of planets changing signs in 25 and 26 that make those years intense in a way that next year will not be so in the scope of anyone turning on the news and being frightened at the world gone mad. I think the world's going to go mad even more in the next couple of years, but not so much in 24. It's more of the preparation. What I mean by that is turning within, knowing who you are, healing your own wounds, having a spiritual practice so you can meet life on life's terms, so that when we need the resilience that will be required of us in 25, 26 and beyond, we have it. And so I think you can expect it relatively to what life is like on the planet this year. You can expect 24 to be however reasonable you found your 2023.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:29:14) - Okay, but be very, very fearful about the future future.
Michael Lennox (00:29:19) - Debbie, I would say don't be fearful. And when you are afraid, ask your dreams to help you process the fear so that you can wake up and meet life on life's terms with more courage.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:29:33) - That's a perfect answer for that. Michael. One final question how can people find out more about you and your work?
Michael Lennox (00:29:39) - MichaelLennox.Com is my website. It's just my name, Michael Lennox. And everything about what I do can be found on Michaellennox.com.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:29:50) - Wonderful Michael. Thank you so much for being on Dream Power Radio today.
Michael Lennox (00:29:54) - It was my great pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Debbie Spector Weisman (00:29:56) - Okay. We've been speaking about the power and mysteries of dreams with Dr. Michael Lennox. I hope you've enjoyed today's program. If so, please hit that subscribe button so you don't miss out on any future episodes. Till next time, this is Debbie Spector Weisman saying sweet dreams everybody.
Announcer (00:30:13) - You've been listening to Dream Power Radio with your host Debbie Spector Weisman. For more information on Debbie or to sign up for her newsletter, go to DreamPowerRadio.com. This has been Dream Power Radio.