For centuries the moon has been the epitome of balance and the life cycle. In recent years – primarily due to the clearer skies and contemplative nature of the pandemic lockdowns – lunar living or living in tune with the moon’s phases – has become an increasingly popular holistic lifestyle choice.
The moon is also a potent symbol of intuition, emotion, and the transformative and infinite potential of your inner world or what is sensed but unseen in your life. AKA: noetic. Not surprisingly, the bond between IONS and the moon is unbreakable, given our remarkable founder Edgar Mitchell was the sixth person to walk on the moon and, during his final moon shot, had the transcendent vision that inspired him to found IONS. Chief Scientist Dean Radin has also examined the effect of the lunar cycles on human behavior, like psychiatric admissions and crisis calls (Radin, 1994), and psi abilities (Radin, 1997).
And, of course, the connection of the moon to dreams – the visionary and infinitely creative nocturnal expression of your inner world – is also apparent since both come out at night. Since leaving King’s College Cambridge University with a degree in Theology and English, I’ve been a dream researcher and decoder. For the last 25 years, I have written bestselling Dream dictionaries and decoders. I’m also the author of The Moon Fix, How to Catch a Dream, Empower Your Inner Psychic, The Premonition Code with IONS fellow Dr. Julia Mossbridge, and the upcoming Dream Rituals. After all my investigations, I have no doubt that dreams can be your greatest teacher. Dream recall is the fastest and most effective way to ignite your inner psychic and connect to your inner noetic world, but I also believe that you can use the moon’s phases to guide you in better understanding and working with your dreams.
Moon Mystery
Since ancient times, dreams have been regarded in many religions and cultures as a source of insight and inspiration for our waking lives. Being born into a family of psychics, talking to my family about dreams was commonplace. Indeed, from as early as I can remember, dreams took center stage in guiding my life in much the same way as they do in indigenous cultures like the Senoi and the Pirah. It is a wonderful development that modern science is catching up with ancient dream wisdom. Studies show that regular dream recall is good for your emotional and psychological well-being.
Dreams are your nocturnal intuition, your inner therapist (and far cheaper than a real one). When your ego goes to sleep, your deepest needs and desires can run free in the world of the dream. Your night visions are both cathartic and healing, as well as opportunities to brainstorm and discover creativity you didn’t know you had. (Indeed, a surefire way to release creative block is to write down a dream you have had.) But the biggest stumbling block to dreamwork is not understanding what they mean. Dreams typically don’t make sense because they speak to you in the language of the unconscious, which, more often than not, is not literal but symbolic. In other words, your dreams are rich in hidden or deeper meaning. They speak to you as a poet or artist would. They will use symbols, metaphors, pathetic fallacy, figurative language, association, and puns. Your role is to dive deep into your dreams and become like a detective discovering your personal clues and meanings.
Dreams — even nightmares — point to an area of your life that needs attention. There’s an inbuilt therapist within us working away night after night to help us live the life of our dreams — forgive the pun. But as my previous co-authored blogs have suggested, dreams are even more surprising than this as they are also highly precognitive, often foreshadowing future events. The only way to know if they are sensing your future is to consistently keep a dated dream journal and every few days to review that journal and look for foreshadowing in your dream associations.
And when it comes to understanding the precognitive associations of your dream symbols, tuning into the lunar vibrations associated with phases of the moon is a game changer. There are many phases of the moon’s roughly 29-day cycle, but to enhance your dream work, you only need to be aware of the four main phases: new, waxing, full, and waning. To find out the moon’s current phase, simply go online and find a moon phase calculator.
Night Vision
The New Moon: This is the phase when the moon is dark and is most associated with setting intentions and fresh starts. The new moon is the ideal time to pay attention to boosting your dream recall. It is the phase most associated with setting intentions and fresh starts. So, tell yourself you are going to take your dreams seriously again. Set the intention to dream before you fall asleep.
To start investing in your dreams, you must set the intention to regard your dreams as valuable and wonderful again. If you struggle with dream recall, pay attention to your stress levels during the day, eat plenty of vitamin B in your diet as that is the dream recall vitamin and read lots of fantasy novels. A spot of video gaming is also excellent for dream recall.
Be patient with yourself if you have got into the habit of forgetting your dreams. You are dreaming (everybody does at least five times a night), you have just stopped remembering them. Simply thinking about the possibility of dreaming and reading this blog may well trigger recall on waking again because where your attention goes during the day is what your dreams return to at night. And when you wake up, keep still with your eyes closed for a few moments as any movement pushes you too fast into waking reality, and your dreams will not catch you. Avoid alarm clocks if possible, as they are the enemy of dream recall and heart health and shake you awake too violently. Natural waking is optimum for dream recall.
The Waxing Moon: This is when the moon is steadily growing in the sky and the perfect time to take positive action and tend to your sleep hygiene. Make sure you get plenty of exercise and natural daylight during the day so that when you go to bed, you are exhausted and ready to dream. Use your mind’s creativity during the day so that it has plenty of inspiration to empower your dreams. Avoid sleep-disrupting screens an hour before bedtime. If you are not sleeping well, you will not have enough quality REM or rapid eye movement stage of sleep when most but not all dreaming happens. Make your bedroom a temple for your dreams and ensure your bed is as comfortable as possible.
And this is also a good time not so much to focus on dream decoding but on making writing down your dreams a consistent morning ritual. Put a pen and paper by your bed every night, and every morning when you wake up, write something down. If you can’t recall anything, write down how you feel because that feeling is likely inspired by a dream you had. Many of us make the mistake of interpreting or getting lost in one particular dream, but dream journaling shows that your dreams are best interpreted as a series rather than stand-alone [REF]. We recommend collecting at least 20 or so dreams before you begin the business of dreamwork. Only then can a bigger picture emerge, and you can start to see how there is a poetic invisible voiceover or narrative alongside your waking life.
The Full Moon: This is when the moon is fully lit up, and the sky is illuminated. It only lasts a few days in each lunar cycle and is the ideal time to dream decode in earnest. If you started collecting your dreams when the moon was dark or new, you should have two weeks’ worth of dream material, so there will be plenty to interpret. Think of your dreams like a TV series you love. You always have to tune into the next episode for the plot to thicken.
I also suggest writing down your dreams alongside your waking activities or what you are doing or thinking, or feeling in your waking life during this time. In this way, you have both a dream and a waking journal, and it will help you understand the interconnection between your dreaming and waking life. Your dreams inspire your life, and your life inspires your dreams.
The Waning Moon: This phase, when the moon slowly diminishes in size every night, is the perfect time to reflect even more deeply on the associations that your dream symbols inspire in you. You will start to see that your dreams are always commenting on or predicting situations in your waking life and that all your dreams are also commenting on each other. And the more you compare your waking life with your dream life, the more you see clearly that your dream life is a symbolic, poetic, artistic, nonsense, hilarious, crazy, infinitely visionary voiceover. And that’s when your inner psychic awakens.
Constant Illumination
Dreaming around your moon is an ongoing revelation. During the day, your conscious reason and logic keep you grounded. In your dreams, however, your unconscious intuition and creativity can safely go wild and transcend time and space. Dreams reflect your current state of mind and offer glimpses of your future. Dreams allow you to meet all aspects of your inner world: your essence, your inner child, your critic, your shadow, your past, your present, and your future self.
The more you tune into the phases of the moon as a way to understand your dreams better, the more you begin to understand and constantly surprise yourself. You understand that your higher self or your noetic signature always has your back and always wants the best for you. Within you, there is an inner guide, your best friend who loves you unconditionally and never lies – or dies if you believe in the possibility of your life after death.
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Learn more about Theresa at theresacheung.com. Check out her latest book, Empower Your Inner Psychic, How to Harness Your Intuition and Manifest Your Dream Life.
References
Radin, D. I., & Rebmam, J. M. (1994). Lunar correlates of normal, abnormal and anomalous human behavior. Subtle Energies & Energy Medicine Journal Archives, 5(3).
Radin, D. I. (1997). The Conscious Universe. HarperOne.
