I know a lot of people don’t want to take dreams seriously. Many will say they never remember their dreams. I’ll tell you now that when you make the conscious decision and intent-to-grow as far as you can, searching for your true Self, seeing what your life is truly about—dreams will be the instrument of communication.
Here’s my Cliff Notes version of things I learned that were helpful in recording and interpreting dreams. This will also help when you come back and review your dreams in a week, month, year or years later.
From experience I know that reviewing your dreams almost always sheds more insights. There was the time when I was in much emotional pain from ending a relationship that was unhealthy. Lamenting my pain to a friend, she advised me, “Look at your dreams a year ago.” And sure enough, a year before it had all happened, was a dream in which ‘on a dark road (in the dark/unknown) a man had fixed my car (the way I go thru life), then left with two children (the man in question had a boy and a girl). I was grateful for his help, sad that he was leaving, and when he left, I said: “I hope you will come back.” Having the whole scenario played out, a year before it happened, gave me an understanding and then acceptance one year later that the man had done what he was supposed to do, and that was all. Acceptance brings relief from pain.
So here’s a practical practice of using dreams—shorthanded:
- Write down THE DREAM no matter how weird or convoluted it seems, as much detail as you can—main characters, places, background, weather, colors, odd things, all of the details.
- Write a SHORT STORY LINE or overall one-sentence-type theme to the dream which may give you a reference as to the meaning. Edgar Cayce says to check to see if the opposite is true in your life. If so, the dream may be letting your know you need to find the happy medium between the two opposites! (See Compensatory Dreams below.). Watch for a (many times humorous) play on words, “all wet,” “the stronger the wind, the higher I can fly,” “something ‘bugging’ you,” “something under your skin,” “let go of the baggage,” “in over your head.”
- Give a brief overview of the EVENTS OF THE DAY before because you learn that most dreams are reactive to something conscious or unconscious that was stirred in the previous day’s activity. An emotion perhaps that flashed for an instant but you tamped it down. Your dream wants you to recognize/acknowledge that emotion. Plus it also gives you context if you come back to review your dreams a month, a year, a decade later.
- What were the FEELINGS in the dream? Do they relate to a like-feeling from the day before? Or to something that is happening in your life now? Sometimes dreams will take a feeling, especially a scary one and construct a scenario around it to show you just how afraid you are (whether you want to admit it or not) and help you acknowledge/face/accept/deal with it.
- First consider if it is a PHYSICAL WARNING in some way? For example, I had received notification of a recall on my car for something in the front suspension. Busy life. I didn’t want to be bothered to take time off work and go to the dealership, yet I was wondering if I was feeling something symptomatic in my car or just imagining it. I had a dream that showed my car wobbling as I was driving it. This dream was enough to make me act, and, indeed, the car was in need of the repair.
- Note the MAJOR SYMBOLS in the dream. What did you choose in set-dressing your dream? Describe what the symbols mean to you specifically (even just writing adjectives helps). If that description brings to mind any “incidents” or memories, (called associations), note those, too. i. e. That ‘symbol’ or that ‘feeling’ reminds me of the time ________. Dream interpretations can be non-linear, too. Sometimes just remembering this ‘association’ and ‘that story’ all of a sudden fits the two together and you feel “aha” or “ooohhh” coming out of your mouth before you even know it.
- Also know that some symbols contain specific meaning for you, like Mr. Stewart, my favorite teacher, father figure. Others are of the ages, from the myths, the psyches of all humans over our entire evolution. When from the ages, the symbol carries more than just the obvious—it is the best possible symbol for your unconscious to communicate to your conscious self. Writing adjectives to describe each symbol may help identify what issue or part of your psyche you are dealing with. (I remember one person explaining, “try to describe the symbol as if you were explaining it to someone not from this planet.”)
- If it is a ‘series dream,’ repeating a specific symbol or location or even an entire dream— try to see the differences in the dream. How are you doing—disintegration or improvement? Or is it trying to bring home a point that you just are not getting or acting on?
“Dreams which are not interpreted are like letters which have not been opened.” The Talmud
Learning to interpret dreams is an-ever-progressing lesson. You’ll get recurring symbols, like Blake Book (for my art), or my high school teacher, Mr. Stewart, who always affirmed there was a “lesson” in there somewhere or he was starting a new class or I was failing my ‘test.’
You learn that your house means you, your life. Dream of your house? Describe the house. Does that sound like how you feel/see your life? Are there new rooms that you didn’t know were there that seem happy, intriguing, you’re pleasantly surprised to find and want to explore? (That’s all you!) One time in my dream, my house was completely destroyed (representing a year that was so financially distraught that I feared I would lose my house). Yet in the dream, it dawned on me that I would now be able to rebuild it any way I wanted. The dream identified my biggest fear and gave me an entirely different approach and outlook to my fear. (You may also remember the lesson I learned from the Catalyst: When you are irrational from fear, determine the worst that can happen, come to accept that even if that happened, you would still survive, be you. It takes you from irrationality to being rational enough to focus on thwarting that outcome.) This dream did that for me.
Windows in a house? Probably your “outlook.” I saw a big garbage heap from one window. Was that the way I saw my world at the time?
Your car can represent your life and the ‘means by which you go through life.’ Sometimes my car would be lost, stuck, sitting in a parking lot, have flat tires. I called these “status” dreams—they were letting me know how well I was (or was not) doing.
Flying dreams are by far about the best. I came to learn they usually referred to my ‘spirit soaring’ because I’d made a discovery or had a realization the day before. Think of the exhilaration that soaring gravity-free must bring—gravity-locked no more!
Flying is usually related to the ‘mental’ aspects. Many times my flying dreams would encapsulate the “free” feeling of joyousness when I had realized something that ‘elevated’ my life, my way of thinking, my insights into The Big Picture.
In most of my flying dreams, flying was a mechanical focus. It required body control and torque, arms out for stability. But one notable dream, I made a startling new discovery—a shortcut to flying! I dreamed all l I had to do was ‘think’ and I ‘dissolved into the air’ is how I described it, yet it felt as exhilarating as flying—even moreso because I had discovered a new way to fly.
After writing down the dream, I went to record the previous day’s events (#3 Above) and realized that amazing dream was capturing the elation my soul was feeling.
The previous day, my good friend and I had been with my ex-husband who was showing her a new house. He took us to dinner, and there he related to my friend that what I had done to claim a life of my own had been a very brave thing to do. He explained that he would not have learned some of the things he did if I had not left. He, whose heart I had broken, called me brave. The dream held the depth of the exhilaration I felt to hear such acceptance and affirmation from the father of my daughters.
Dreams Can Spell It Out for You.
Occasionally you get a pretty obvious dream. My journaling notes: “When I had this dream, there was this subtle urging—“you should remember this dream”…it was like I understood the symbolism while I was dreaming it. From my journal:
“House in the background—it belonged to me and the man I was with. The two of us started to soar, up above everything but I couldn’t see a landscape. I was hanging on to some ‘baggage,’ heavy cumbersome suitcase-like thing. I’m not sure exactly ‘what’ it was, but I was holding on behind it, being pulled through the air. The man was sorta leading, encouraging, reassuring me that if I let go, I could soar even more. I finally ‘let go’—releasing the ‘baggage’ to really let myself soar—and I gleefully and proudly proclaimed, “I finally let go!” There was a little jerk like you might feel if you jettisoned something heavy, but I recovered stability immediately. I was proud of finally ‘trusting’ to ‘let go’ like a kid learning to trust your balance on a bicycle or trust floating in water.”
“Let go of the baggage, I could SOAR!” (I’d even packed ‘all my stuff’ conveniently in a bag!) I finally let go and trusted! (Trust had been a highly suspect emotion in my experience!)
This dream came seven years after I had encountered The Catalyst (kissed awake). I had been working to claim my life for my own—which included integrating the Animus/masculine attributes of independence. Was the ‘encouraging male’ who said if I just ‘let go the baggage, I could soar’ my Animus? (If indeed my Animus, I described him as ‘older, wiser, a mate, comfortable, low-key, quiet, assured. I’d like to think my perfect opposite would be just like that!)
One flying dream was interpreted as I flew: “The stronger the wind, the higher I can fly.” I took that one to heart. It gave me courage to face whatever was blowing me about in my life at the time, and to see strong headwinds as merely the opportunity to soar even higher!
There is also a category called, Compensatory dreams. You can have a dream that is pretty much the extreme polar opposite of what’s happening in your life. It’s for the purpose of recognizing you need a balance between the extreme in the dream and the extreme opposite in your life. The human mind seeks balance and equilibrium. Your dream Maker is the communicator between your conscious existence and what your unconscious needs for your best life. I have to confess that sometimes in my lowest, hardest, most painful conscious life, many times I would have a compensatory dream that woke me up laughing! I needed balance.
I’ll also confess there were some dreams I just had to record and hope for further clarification at some point. Hence why we need to press the Pause button from time to time and ‘look back.” Sometimes it would be weeks, even years later, I’d be reviewing my dreams from a bigger picture and perspective view-point, and the meaning would ring clear as a bell.
We modern day humans try so hard to quantify our lives—numbers, years, net worth, fixed dogmas, final answers, five-year plans and retirement plans. Objective at the expense of the subjective. Discount and discard what we cannot see or grasp. Working with dreams connects you with a feeling that there is something inside each of us, working with us— something more than just numbers and things and stats—something that wants us to fulfill our soulful yearning for a meaning to life, our life.
“If one watches this meandering design (of dreams) over a long period of time, one can observe a sort of hidden regulating or directing tendency at work creating a slow, imperceptible process of psychic growth –the process of individuation.” Carl Jung “Man and His Symbols” p. 160
If you want more detail and depth on working with your dreams, besides buying books, I found this site: https://cafeausoul.com/dreams/inspired-by-dreams/dream-expert-kari-hohne She has incorporated both Freud and Jung in dream interpretation and has a very easy-to-read, practical approach which can be quickly helpful.
If you’re new to Mesmarriah Miracle, it’s best to start at Post #1 and continue in numbered sequence, like Connecting the Dots.