In the world of dreams, anything can happen and probably will. They take us to landscapes in which we are powerfully creative, and there are seemingly no limits to our capacity to generate extraordinary realities within the dream state. They say that life is but a dream, and in some ways, we can approach our waking life as the dreamer of the dream, able to create as if out of magic. In fact, there are techniques available to people out there designed to teach individuals how to manifest the life that they desire. The notion is that you can have absolutely anything you want in life; you simply have to learn a technique or two, and the life of your dreams is there for the asking. But is this true? And to the extent that it is, how can we aid this process and become truly powerful manifestors? Well, the answer to this may lie in working with your dreams as part of your manifestation work.

Let's take a look at this idea of having anything you want a little closer. This is simply not accurate. You cannot create anything that you do not have the talent and capacity to make. More importantly, no matter what you attract, if you do not feel worthy of that thing, you will not be able to keep it. Consider the lottery winner who is out of money after a few years. The windfall may align with the exact desire for wealth they used to manifest such a boon, but they lose the money because they don't feel worthy of the abundance. This is the challenge for us all when faced with the blank canvas of what we want to have more of in our lives. If you don't feel worthy of the thing you are trying to create, working with your dreams in tandem with your manifestation desires may be just the thing to take you to the next level.

Here are the fundamentals of manifestation. We start with thoughts about what you want to create, where the conscious mind focuses on what we desire. Then we trigger the emotional body into feeling the joy of that desire as if it were already present. The challenge is that if your conscious mind says, "I feel rich," and your unconscious is a solid, "No, you're not," the unconscious will always win. Here is where dreams come in. One of the many mysterious things that dreams offer us is a visit to the realms below, where all our fears, lack, limitation, resistance, rage, and shame live. If the unconscious mind is where we say yes, and the unconscious is where we say no, working with dreams as part of your manifestation process may be a requirement to release the unconscious resistance to all that you desire to attract in your life.

But not everyone readily remembers their dreams. Fortunately, there are simple techniques to expand your capacity to remember them upon waking. Everything starts with intention, and creating a more sacred approach to bedtime that includes asking for dreams to be remembered is a setup for success. Having a way to record your dreams by your bedside is key; you don't want anything to interrupt the sensitive amorphous grasp on dream memory by having to get out of bed to write down your dreams. Unequivocally, the most important thing to do is go to your dream journal in the morning, even if you don't have a dream to describe. You might just say, "I don't recall anything from last nights' dreams." Then give yourself a moment to reflect, and only then, get on with your morning. This last act signals the unconscious that you mean business about keeping that window of memory open long enough to record your dreams.

Let's turn our focus to a technique that I call petitioning your dreams. This is when you ask your dreaming self to offer information about a challenge you might be moving through in your waking life. While in that liminal state that comes between turning off the light and beginning to drop into sleep, you might ask your higher self to bring a dream to illuminate a particular struggle you are having. You might even consider writing this as a little letter to your higher self to solidify the ritual in a more practical way. Here's an example from a woman I once worked with who was having some ambivalence about a man she had recently started dating. The new relationship felt mostly good, but she could not escape the constant doubt, so she turned to her dreams in this way, and petitioned her dreams one evening to offer her some more information from her unconscious about the waking life struggle.

Here's the dream that followed, in her words. "I was at an event of some sort, it felt like a celebration, complete with tables, guests, catered food, and lots of friends gathered. I understood this to be a celebration of me and my partner's anniversary, as I was married in this dream. I was in the party space, and my partner was in the other room. It was ironic, because the celebration was for the relationship I was in, but privately I knew that it was over for me. There was also the knowing that my partner had been behaving badly at this event, and that added to my discontent. After a moment, he entered the main room and came up to me. I was astonished to see that it was my father." Needless to say, we were both gobsmacked and amused by this. Indeed, this dream was telling my client that while it may have felt good in some ways, clearly the message from her uncosncoius was that it was reflecting her past. My client had outgrown these patterns, and within a few days, she ended the relationship with a strong sense of clarity and conviction.

You can attach the technique of petitioning your dreams directly to a manifestation desire with which you are working. Whether it's a shift in your career, moving homes, or attracting a soul mate, remember that you may be clear on your yes, but it is more important to find the ways you may be saying no under the surface of your conscious awareness. Take some time before bed and consider the desire in question, and ask your higher self to offer you a dream to illuminate any unconscious obstacles to that desire. Then have your dream journal at the ready, and record any dreams that come. Sometimes it may be as obvious as with my client, but more often than not, what comes may be as convoluted and chaotic as most dreams are. Trust that your unconscious knows what it is doing, and even if you can't interpret the resulting dream with satisfying accuracy, trust that just by setting intentions, your dream psyche will take you to the place where resistance lives. I assure you; you will wake up the next day more ready to receive all that you desire.