Grow Rich While You Sleep!

There are some people that if they don’t know you can’t tell ’em – Louis Armstrong.

Do you agree that if you can gain more time and brainpower you would solve more of your problems? Yes. And if you’re solving more of your problems, you would undoubtedly be producing more results in quality and quantity. These results will translate into more riches for you in monetary and non-monetary terms.

A lot of folks sleep for upwards of eight hours in a day. By the time they’re sixty, they would have slept away 20 years of their life.

The good news today is that you don’t have to be one of the folks who’ll waste one third of their lifetime sleeping. I can show you a way to use this idle time to solve your problems, to obtain information, to make free use of other people’s time and brain power, and to perfect your plans.

I know what you’re thinking: “How can I have enough rest if I’m using the time I’m supposed to be sleeping for work?” Good question. The body needs rest and sleep but not the inner you.

Remember that rest and sleep are activities too. The inner you has never needed rest and sleep and will never need rest and sleep. And really, many of us sleep too long. With proper diet and exercise, the right mental and emotional attitude, a short nap in the mid afternoon, each of us can sleep much less than we do at present, produce better results, and be healthier.

Now, a question for you. Has it ever occurred to you that you can be dreaming and be conscious of the fact that you’re dreaming? It’s possible that you’ve always suspected it to be true all along.

There’s also the possibility that you think I’m off my rockers! Just have a little patience with me if the latter is the case. The taste of the pudding, they say, is in the eating.

Eat three to five hours before you sleep tonight. That’s to make sure the food has digested before your bedtime. Otherwise your body will be working over time, using all your energy to digest the food; and you end up tossing from one side of your bed to the other, sleeping much longer than you need to, ending up with poor digestion (or constipated), and worse, not remembering your dreams.

If you love alcoholic beverages, depressants and stimulants, leave them out or control your intake as long as this exercise lasts. You want to be in full control of all your faculties; depressants and stimulants distort your awareness. No pizza or ice cream just before bedtime, please.

Place a small notebook and a pencil or pen (or a tape recorder) beside your bed, and a torch light (or bedside reading lamp) – if you have a sleeping partner. You’ll disturb your partner’s sleep if you have to flick on the bedroom light in the middle of the night to write down (or dictate) your experiences.

Decide exactly what you want to dream about. If you have a pressing problem on your shoulders, picture, hear, feel yourself discussing the solution with a trusted friend in a garden, in a park, in your living room, or beside the beach.

Visualise (or hear and feel) exactly what you’re wearing, what your friend is wearing, what you’re sitting on, what your friend is sitting on, the environment and any other individuals or living things about it. Feel and see the grasses and trees, the weather and the skyline. If you feel like visiting one of your loved ones (e.g. your mother), picture where your mother lives and feel, see, and hear the two of you talking.

Make these postulates. One: I can dream and be conscious of the fact that I’m dreaming. Two: I can participate consciously in my dream and direct it to the areas that most interest me. Three: I can remember and recall my dreams.

Expect a surprise. Your expectation must be like that of a child. In your imagination, see yourself waking up to write down (or dictate) your dreams, then going back to sleep. Still visualizing, in the morning what a great surprise to you when you’re reading from the notebook that what you dreamt of was exactly what you wished!

If you tell yourself, “Well, I’ll try, but I know it’s not true, I know it’ll turn out false,” you’ll end up with a self-fulfilling prophecy. Know you not that your expectation is everything? If there’s one single factor that determines what experiences you’ll have or you’re having or you’ve had in life, it’s your expectation. Your experiences are not determined by what you do but by what you expect, because even if you do all the right things and still expect a failure, you will end up with failure.

Make a conscious effort to observe things in the dream state. Touch the walls, how does it feel? Shake someone’s hands and notice how it feels. Is it any different than the waking state? Stamp your feet on the floor. How does it feel? Is it any different from the waking-state equivalent?

Are you dreaming in colour or black and white? A lot of people dream in black and white. If you’d like to dream in colour, you can too. If you habitually dream in black and white and you’d like to dream in full colour, tell yourself (repeatedly) with a strong conviction that you’d like to dream in colour. If you do it well enough with feeling and expectation, before long you’d be dreaming in colour.

Let’s pause briefly and agree on some basic points. What’s a dream? A dream is a record of our experiences in the dream world. Is the dream world as real as the physical universe we’re living in? Yes, in a way. It’s rules or laws are different, though. A lot of us, because of ignorance or impatience to master the details, just dismiss it. That’s too bad for then we’d be missing a grand opportunity to tap more wisdom!

Let me give you a little hint. Dreams happen on more than one level. Some dreams are about a recent past, some about a distant past. Others are about the immediate future. Some dreams of the future happen exactly as you dreamed them, others are dreams of opposites. Depending on who you are, your dreams may be a dramatization of your fantasies, fears and frustrations or a resolution of them. There are unconscious dreams which dwell on your current obsessions, passions, desires, habits, etc. Greed, lust, vanity, anger, alcohol, drugs, negative thoughts and high fever could result in nightmares.

There’re dreams inside a dream; you could dream and see yourself going to sleep in the dream and waking up in another dream on a different level. There are dreams in which you’re fully conscious; and in which your awareness is so expanded you could perceive things so far away in time and space.

Time in the dream world is slower than time in the physical world. Matter is less dense in there than out here. What this means is that in a given time you can get more done in the dream world than in the physical world. In the dream state your thoughts manifest faster. You could have as many as ten dreams in a short while. If you don’t record your dreams you’ll forget them. You might wake up with many as ten dream impressions in your attention. To remember them all, first write down a key idea, person, place, or event that’ll help you remember each of them. Then go back and write them out in details using the keywords as guide.

If you do not remember your dreams, do not be discouraged. Repeat the exercise the next day and the day after. Persist. “Victory,” Napolean Bonaparte says, “belongs to the most persevering.”

If you dream of something other than what you intended that’s a good start. At least you’re able to remember that. Repeat the process till you start dreaming of what you want. Even if you don’t dream of what you intended, practising this exercise WILL improve the quality of your dreams.

As a guide, if you set out to solve a problem in the dream state, on waking up the solution will be uppermost in your consciousness. Between sleep and full time day consciousness there’s a period in which you have access to a much higher awareness and you can get solution to your problem. You may also find out that while what you dreamed wasn’t what you desired, you were nevertheless a conscious participant. Congratulate yourself for such successes and keep on. Notice whether you were dreaming in colour or black and white. What were you wearing? The chairs – what were their colours?

Many people are not able to understand and interpret their dreams as many of them come in symbols; usually the dreamer is in the best position to interpret his own dreams. If you don’t understand a dream, ask inwardly for it to be revealed or explained to you. The revelation can come in another dream or through events in your daytime. If you don’t like a dream you can cancel it and re-dream it as you desire – you’re the master of your universe, you know!

Summary of key points:

You can be dreaming and be conscious of the fact that you’re dreaming. Eat light – and preferably three to five hours before you sleep – if you want to remember your dreams. Have a dream journal or a tape recorder beside your bed. Decide exactly what you want to dream about or the problem you want to solve. Visualize and feel yourself involved in the dream. Expect a surprise. Be observant. Persevere and persist. It’s easy to dream in colour.

Go through this article again, and starting from tonight, put the exercise into practice. Record your experiences for it is your road map to riches.