Remembering Your Dreams: Try Again Later

A lot of conventional wisdom on remembering dreams insists we should write them down immediately upon

Sometimes the best way to remember a dream is to forget about it until later

 waking, that preferably we should wake naturally, and spend some time in bed letting the dreams crystallise before we get up or even talk to anyone.  I agree this is the most likely way to recall dreams.  But how possible is this for most of us, most of the time?  Chances are, such luxuries are confined to rare holiday breaks or being sick and stuck in bed!

The good news is, that even if we can’t experience the ideal awakening, we can still work on remembering our dreams – later in the day.  A dream that has not had a chance to come to light at all can be a bit like a cleanly amputated finger (sorry for the macabre symbolism!  Stick with me!)  That is, as long as the dream is complete and untampered with, it can actually survive for a limited time on its own.  If you try to remember the dream during the day when you are distracted and listening to other conversations or absorbed in other tasks, it can result in the dream being half remembered, confused, and then forgotten.  Cut off from the source of your consciousness, it will shrivel and die.

But leave it alone, don’t even think about it, and it can be like putting the finger on ice.  Then, when you have all the necessary equipment, which in the case of remembering dreams is primarily space and time to be undisturbed, and you may be able to effect a full recovery.  What dream recall needs is your full dedicated attention, but not to be forced.  You need to be able to relax, close your eyes, and let your mind drift away.  If the dream has not been “bothered” through-out the day, so the memory has no stress or sense of effort attached to it, you may find your dream comes simply floating back of its own accord.  (Even if you did leap out bed when the alarm rang or the baby cried and immediately started to think about the 50 million things you had to do that day.)

Dreams can come back later in the day if you invite them, rather than force them.  It may be when you have a bath, just go into the bedroom or living room (with the TV off!) and lie down and close your eyes for a few minutes.  You may even find that you remember your dreams from the night before just as you are drifting off to sleep the next night.  If this is the case, it’s often a good idea to rouse your self and write the dream down then.  This will “clear” your mind so that there is space for a new dream to come, and allow you progress with your dreams, instead of trying to revisit the same things night after night because you haven’t had the time to remember.

The important thing to realise though, is just because you don’t remember your dream straight away, doesn’t mean you can’t try and recall it later on.  Try and do it the same day though.  Dreams tend to have a short life span without being pinned down to paper, and will dissolve in your memory to make way for the next one.  So if you think you don’t dream, instead of trying to remember your dreams when you wake up, look out for them making a guest appearance as you fall asleep!

Dream Symbols: Body Parts: Legs

What beliefs and attitudes are supporting you?

Dreaming of legs invites us to look at what is going on with our basic foundations, our beliefs and attitudes that support our outlook on life, and our ability to move around – either physically or metaphorically.

If legs are important in our dreams we can consider how key phrases might apply to our life.

If we have no legs, or have lost or legs, maybe there is some conviction we hold that we should consider changing our mind on, as we “don’t have a leg to stand on.” Or maybe we feel as out of control as when intoxicated, and feel “legless.”  This could be a good thing, if it is associated with a love interest for instance, which might make us go “weak at the knees.”  Dreams of losing our legs, or having weak legs might even indicate we need to take a stronger stance in some matter and “stand up for ourselves.”

 

Other phrases that might be helpful are:

• To shake a leg – see a leg being shaken, or even shaking your own leg?  Maybe we need to hurry up with something
• To break a leg – usually applied to success on the stage, might mean a sense of having to perform well in front of others, fear of not performing, or wishing someone else to perform well
• An arm and a leg – if you dream of these two limbs conspicuously together, it might be indicating a high cost.  So what in your life do you feel is costing you too much, maybe in terms of time, energy, focus or actual money?
• Pulling your leg – is something literally pulling at your leg in your dream?  It might be something trying to get your attention, or it could be a sign of someone having a bit of a joke, not being really serious. Is there something in your life you  are taking too seriously, or somewhere you should look beyond face value at what is really going on?  It might just be a joke…
• Give or receive a leg-up – this might be the act of hoisting someone up, or being helped, or it could be a physical act of literally lifting up a leg somewhere in a dream.  Is there someone who is helping you advance in life, or are you helping someone else, or could this be even just helping yourself get on with things?
• Leg of the journey – often refers to the last part, so could encourage us to question something we have been looking to make progress on, how far have we come, and how far do we have to go?

Legs of course also give us mobility, so we can look to how we are moving as a reflection to how we feel about our own ability to move ourselves through life and make progress with our goals and tasks.  Are we running freely, with energy and strength?  Or are we dragging our feet, reluctant to go forward?  Maybe we are part of a group, or perhaps someone has given us “marching orders” maybe implying it is time to either leave or get on with something.

Dreams of legs can be about own confidence and mobility.   When we learn to walk as a baby, we are on the way to maturity and becoming and adult.  Leg dreams may appear when we are learning new things, going through phase of growth and development, where it can feel like we are learning to walk all over again.

But remember, we must learn to walk before we run.  And then when we can run, we can learn to fly…

False Awakennings: A Dream Within a Dream

If you’ve ever had the experience that you get up as usual, maybe go to shower, have breakfast or start

Are you really sure you have woken up?

getting dressed, only to notice something is not quite right – maybe all the towels in the bathroom have changed colours, there are only spare car parts in the pantry or you mysteriously seem to have forgotten how to do up your buttons, then you may have had a “false awakening.”

Also known as “a dream within a dream,” false awakenings are characterised by a belief that you have woken up and started your day, only to realise that you are in fact dreaming.  It is not unusual to have multiple false awakenings in one session.

Although they can be confusing and frustrating, false awakenings can provide a useful trigger to understand how we change consciousness throughout sleeping and dreaming.  False awakenings give us the opportunity to question how we know dreams from waking life, how we define reality and what assumptions we make about the nature of consciousness.  Some people use false awakenings to become “lucid” or aware in their dreams.  Other people believe from this state they can astral travel.  Whatever your belief or approach, false awakenings do at the very least show that sometimes at least, our own mind is able to fool us quite convincingly!

If you find your self in a situation where you aren’t sure if you are dreaming or not, look at a digital clock (like a clock radio beside the bed) or a digital watch, then look away, then look back.  If you find the numbers have moved in a surprising way, you can be pretty sure you are dreaming.  Another good test is to try and read something.  For some reason that no-one yet seems to be able to explain, it appears that no-one can read continually and accurately in a dream, or at least, not when they are aware they could be dreaming.  If the letters sneak around and change into fanciful shapes and movements, you can rest assured you are in a dream.  (By the way, if anyone knows more about the the reason you can’t read in dreams, please let me know!)

If you do have a false awakening (or many), you can look at it as an opportunity to examine your preconceptions, to engage with your dreams in a new interesting manner, and maybe even find new clues as to how your subconscious engages with your conscious mind.  If you are lucky, you may even stay aware in your dream long enough to enjoy it!

How to Begin Dream Interpretation – Getting a Few Things Clear

Our dreams have much to teach us, if we are willing to learn from the lesson

So many people I speak to say “what does it mean when I dream of…?”  If you have been reading these posts for a while, you may know that I don’t believe anyone else can tell you what your dreams mean.  But beyond figuring out a bit of symbolism, how can you really make sense of all those strange night-time imaginings?

Let’s go back a few steps and start at the begining.  When we talk about understanding our dreams, what we are really talking about is understanding ourselves.  Think of dreams as a movie that is playing back to you the story about your life as it is right now.  It does not just play back to you everything that you have seen, heard, physically felt, smelled or tasted, for what would be the point of that?  It would just be like a re-run and very boring, with nothing new to add.  Instead, your dreaming mind looks not just at what your physical body did and where it went, but what was going on inside your mind at the same time.  When you went to work in the morning, how were you feeling?  When you drove past your old school what memories did that provoke?  When you and your partner had that argument, how did that connect to previous arguments in your mind?  Your dreams will play back the things you felt emotionally, the thoughts you had, the memories that came up and anything else that was goingon inside your mind that is important.  Maybe you were frustrated at work.  But how do you show “frustration” in your dream movie?  It is an abstract concept, not a thing.  So your dreaming mind will create something to symbolise this feeling in your dream story.  It may be a character, an animal, a colour, a situation.  Your dreaming mind will go through all the memory files in your mind and think, “hmm, what is frustrating?  Where have I felt frustrated before?  Who has frustrated me?”  This then becomes your own dream symbol.  Maybe it is your old sports coach who wouldn’t let you on the field so you could show everyone what you were made of.  So Coach becomes a symbol of frustration.  Maybe it is being stuck at the traffic lights which has made you late for work in the past, so red traffic lights become your own symbol of being frustrated.  This is the process where in your mind, “a picture can tell a thousand words.”

But of course, you have many different feelings and thoughts in a day.  Knowing which feelings and thoughts from the day are in your dream is a little bit trickier.  You have so many in one day, it would be difficult to dream about them all.  So which thoughts and feelings are the most important from your dreaming minds point of view?  There are a couple of things that it is worth knowing to help you get your focus right:

1. Our dreaming mind will try and point out the things that we didn’t pay much attention to, but maybe should have.  Too busy on the phone to play ball with your child, and didn’t really notice how sad it made him?  So used to your usual exercise routine that you didn’t really think much about the niggling pain as you were running?  This is where your dreaming mind may say – hey!  Stop a second and think about this!  Is this really what you want to keep doing?  Have you thought about the repercussions of this?
2. Our dreaming mind will go the next step and make us recognise things we are actively trying to ignore, are procrastinating over or are in denial about.  Know you should really give up smoking, eat a bit healthier or attend to those finances?  Your dreaming mind won’t let you rest until you do.  Where do you suppose those thoughts you had but didn’t want to face, go when you aren’t thinking about them any more?  They go to the “back of your mind.”  Of course, they can’t live there forever, so our dreaming mind will remind us very diligently about all those thoughts we “put off till later.”  It can get very crowded there in the back of our mind.  Our dreaming mind wants us to clear it out.
3. Our dreaming mind will always look at things we feel conflicted about.  If we are unsure, hesitant, undecided, confused or reluctant about anything in life, our dreaming mind will try and help us resolve these feelings.  It likes nothing better than play out little scenarios that help us look at all the different things we need to consider in order to make a decision.  Many times it already knows what the answer is, and will show us interesting symbolic dramas that play out not only what the best decision might look like, but also where our wrong decision might lead us.  Some of these dreams can be quite disturbing, but this is just our sleeping minds way of saying to us, hurry up and do what we need to do.  Sometimes it is not about a “wrong” decision, but just helping us realise that we are in charge of our own destiny, and that even if the decision seems difficult, it is ours to make.  Sometimes we just have to decide, even if there is no right or wrong.
4. Our dreaming mind will try and fix what is wrong.  If we are feeling hurt, fearful, anxious, angry, guilty, depressed, lonely or any other of those really unpleasant emotions, our dreaming mind will explore the causes for this in an attempt to put things right.  Sometimes this can seem the opposite of what it is doing, as these dreams may seem as dark and upsetting as our moods.  But look at it like surgery.  The dreaming mind has to open the damaged area so it can get in and see what is wrong, take out whatever is poisoningus or causing us pain, and then close the wound again.  In surgey there can be a lot of blood, but it is necesarry to heal in the long term.  Confusing and unsettling dreams when you are going through tough emotional periods can be like this.  But ourn dreaming mind is just like our waking mind, it wants us to be happy.  But properly happy, addressing the things that might cause us trouble in the long term.
5. Our dreaming mind likes to look for connections.  So much of what we do in life, we do because we have learned it.  This means we don’t have to think about how to react to something every time it happens, which can save us a lot of time.  But sometimes the lessons we learned originally aren’t working for us any more.  Maybe we learned to emotionally “shut-down” when people were angry or upset around us.  This may have been helpful as a child in a family with much shouting and fighting, but as an adult it may prevent us from forming close relationships.  Our dreaming mind will look for patterns in our life, and play these back to us to try and make us realise what we are doing by instinct now.  This is an opportunity to decide if we want to keep this behaviour pattern, or change it for a new one.
6. Our dreaming mind likes to seize on opportunities to celebarte progress and growth.  If you have made progess in confronting a fear, healing a wound or in some way learning more about yourself and how you relate to the world and people around you, your dreaming mind likes nothing better than to have a symbolic party to recognise the great achievement.  This will often appear in dreams as the opposite of what was bothering you before – instead of feeling ashamed and naked, you are wearing beautiful new clothes, instead of being stuck at the traffic lights, you are coasting down a highway.  Our dreaming mind, like our waking self, doesn’t like to take things too seriuosly all the time either!

The things that is worth remembering, is that your dreams are really just a part of your mind that wants to communicate with you.  Whenever we use words like “the back of my mind”, “I knew deep down”, “I had a feeling”, or other similar phrases, we are talking about our subconscious, and our subconscious is where our dreams live.  It’s the part of our mind we ignore, don’t listen to, to or hide things in.  But it is still a part of our own mind,  And we can’t hide from ourself forever.  It is also the part of our mind that comes up with great creative ideas, solves problems and nutures our most fundemental needs for love and belonging.  It is nothing to be afraid of, it is only our selves we see.

So when you next go to try and understand your dreams, stop a moment and think about what is really going on in your life, what are the major issues in your life; but also, what have you put off thinking about or don’t want to face?   When we start to admit these things to ourself, we bring the dark and mysterious things from our subconscious into the light of our awareness.  And understanding our dreams from there becomes a whole lot easier!

(Other possibly related posts are “Your Dreams Want to Be Understood” and “A Word on Recurring Dreams”)

Understanding Your Dreams – Is It Even Worth It?

Sometimes the unfolding of our own personal growth can feel like we are going in circles

After a while you may wonder if all this work in understanding your dreams is even worth it.  It is natural to feel exhausted, like our energies could be better directed elsewhere, or to get bored or frustrated with the whole thing.  When we have diligently kept a dream diary, worked hard to understand our own dream symbols at this particular time of life, patiently tried to synthesise them all into a meaningful whole and then consciously attempted to apply these messages to waking life, it can seem sometimes like we are simply going around in circles.  So you have figured the baby in you dream is your new work project, and you are trying to give it attention to make it successful, while also nurturing your own inner child by having fun and still maintaining balance in your life; then to go to sleep and dream… of a baby!  Again!  You may wonder if anything you have done made even the slightest bit of difference.

It has.  Don’t get discouraged.  Our personal growth is not in a straight line, but it is not going round in circles either.  Think of it more like a spiral.  Even though the place may be familiar, you are not the same person who was here before, this is a different time and even the place has changed.  We grow in cycles like the seasons.  Just as each Spring is unlike any Spring that has ever been before or will ever be again, so too is our experience of life. 

So why should we work in understanding our dreams?  The short answer is of course, that we don’t have to.  Millions of people around the world either don’t remember their dreams, don’t remember them well or pay them little heed.  Even those with more than a passing interest rarely dedicate themselves to a path of disciplined self study, and are content with the odd discussion or flicking through a dream dictionary.  And do these people seem to be missing out on anything special?  Not if you don’t know what you’re missing.  And you only know that once you apply yourself.

Consider this: we spend a third of our lives asleep.  Many people perceive this time as wasted, which it is to a degree if you don’t do anything with it.  It could be argued that these people actually spend their waking lives only half awake, for they do not understand the mysteries going on inside them every night, and every day.  We take for granted that we lose consciousness every night, that our minds are filled with strange and marvellous visions and experiences. Tibetan Yogi Tenzin Wangayal Rinpoche points out the over the next ten years we will spend 3 years asleep.  If we were to take ourselves to a remote monastery or some distant mountain top for three years and reflect, mediate, work on our spiritual practice and attempt to know ourselves fully, imagine what progress we could make in our lives!  Imagine what amazing clarity of mind, what insights, what wisdom, what inner peace!  How better equipped we could be to get the most out of the rest of our lives, to free ourselves from the illusions of fear and doubt, to unbind the chains of self limiting beliefs and behaviours that bind us, to heal our selves from the lingering pain of past hurt that continues, even though the source for it is long gone.  And yet, we can do all this and more in our dreams.  We can come to know ourselves, and enhance our lives, simply by practicing our dream work.  And all this while still holding down a job, looking atfer the family and taking out the garbage.

Life is so short.  It is so precious.  We should not waste any of it, sleeping or waking.  And we absolutely should not spend any of it being unhappy, when we could find a way for ourselves to be happy.  So even if it feels like we are taking baby steps, at least we are learning to walk.  One day we will run and even fly.  If it feels like we are going in circles, at least we are moving, and remember it is only our distorted perception that makes us seem like we aren’t progressing.  Given time, we will be able to look back and see how much we really have learnt and grown.  But more than that, we owe it to ourselves to do everything we can to experience the magic and mystery and wonder and delight that it means to be conscious, to be human, to be alive.

We must remember to patient, persistent, and to enjoy the ride.  Afertall, it will be over before we know it.

Dream Symbols: Baby Dream Part 2: Lost the Baby!

What important thing is slipping away from you?

I have already written a post about babies in dreams in general, but I would just like to take a moment to address in more detail the concern I hear frequently about a dream of losing your baby.  You may or may not have a baby in real life, but in your dream, you are responsible for a baby that you forget, lose, let slip down the drain, have to give away or discover was never even yours at all.  These dreams can cause a lot anxiety and heart-break, so I would like to hopefully put some worried minds at rest.

Remember, even if you are pregnant or have recently become a parent, this dream is not about your baby, but about yourself.  To new and expecting parents, these dreams can seem particularly worrying, but there are variety of reasons why you may be dreaming of a lost baby at this time.  Some (but no means all!) reasons include:

• Pregnancy releases hormones that drastically effect sleep and dreaming.  Studies show that dreams even change according to which trimester the mother is in, and which hormones are effecting her.  So on one level at least, you know Mother Nature has a hand in all of this!
• It is not  unusual for pregnant women, especially first time mothers (and also fathers), to experience a high degree of anxiety about the impending birth and the responsibility of parenthood.  Dreams of stressful situations may be a way for the subconscious to work through all your deeply held fears; but more than that, by having a kind of imaginary “dress rehersal” of all the worst case scenarios (often totally unrealistic) the subconscious mind somehow seems to build a sense of confidence that it can cope with anything.  Therefore the far more realistic challenges of parenthood seem a breeze by comparison, so these dreams serve as kind of pressure valve and enable parents ironically to feel less anxious in waking life. (One study shows that women with high degrees of anxiety dreams during pregnancy actually experienced shorter labours,  suggesting there may be a link between preparing or practicing for a smooth birth in your dreams so when it comes to real life, you know what you are doing!)
• Dreaming of losing the baby when you are caught up in the serious planning required for a new or extended family can be an indication that you feel you are losing a part of your self.  This may be your inner child, that you can re-connect with by having some fun, kicking back and letting go of the serious grown up part of life for a while.  (Try doing something totally childish and playful - blow bubbles, draw with crayons, play on the swings in the park, whatever makes you laugh, relax and remember what its like to feel young again.)  Or it may be that in becoming a parent, you feel you are losing something else important to you.  Maybe you have had to give up a career, a creative hobby or a fulfilling past-time.  Either way, dreams of losing the baby in this sense can be a suggestion to take care of yourself, and nurture something that is important to you as well.
• Baby dreams may come up when you are having your own family because you are reminded of a past hurt or unresolved issue from your childhood.  In this case, your subconscious may be asking you to look at what you really feel about experiences in your childhood, and to learn to love and nuture yourself in order that you are fully healed and available for your own children.  You can do this by a simple visualisation technique, going back to the time and remembering your pain, then imagining yourself as you are now, all grown up and about to give your own child lots of love.  Imagine yourself giving yourself as a child this love too.  Or alternatively, put a picture of yourself as child in the baby’s room.  Each time you see it, and see your own child, remember how much you love them both.  This can help heal your own inner child.  For more serious unresolved issues or extreme persistent anxiety, please see if you can discuss this with some one who can help.)

Even if you have no children, dreams of losing the baby can be shocking and traumatic.  This kinds of dreams are common amongst parents and those withour children alike.  No matter who has a dream of losing a baby, we can consider:

• What is the precious thing in our life that we have recently lost, given away or fear we will have to?  What are we missing out on?
• When as a child did we feel hurt, rejected or unloved?  How is this similar to how we feel now?
• Where are we neglecting our own needs? 
• Where are we being too serious, and losing touch with what is fun, simple and enjoyable in our lives?

Dreams of losing a baby invite us to look at our ways of behaving and any old beliefs we carry with us from childhood that maybe aren’t helping us grow anymore.  They remind us to nurture ourselves, tend to old wounds so that we may heal and let go of the past, and not give up what is most important to us.  In life, we are often forced to make choices that seem like we must give up one thing special in order to have another.  Dreams of losing the baby help us recognise that the most important thing to never give up on is ourselves.

(I am researching dreams during pregnancy, so if anyone would like to contribute, please email me with a description of your dream and what trimester it occured in.  You can contact me at: dw@thedreamwell.com)

External Influences on Dreaming: Weather

Are your dreams striking or unsettling? It may be the weather..

Next time you have a particularly interesting or vivid dream, pay attention to what the atmospheric conditions are.  Some people have wild dreams when storms are imminent, while other people are effected by pressure systems.  This is not all that unusual, when you think that our ancestors used to be much more in touch with our environment and the natural world than we are in our busy and civilised lives.  It does not mean that we have lost the skill of understanding the weather, simply that we have forgotten how to pay attention, to listen to our instincts.  Often our dreams will tell us things that we know instinctively, but our conscious waking minds no longer value as important and therefore relegate to the subconscious.  Once, detecting the signs that a storm was coming could have been a matter of survival if it meant avoiding flash floods or being caught out in the open and the risk of being hit by lightning.  At the very least, knowing to protect your home and batten down the hatches, or ensure a crop was either harvested or protected before storms would have been a valuable skill.  These days in Western society, knowing a storm is coming often (though of course in notable exceptions, not always) means little more than staying indoors or carrying an umbrella.  Similarly, to our ancestors knowing that you could relax and let the crops grow, or safely go on the hunt would have created a great peace of mind.  It is possible for us to re-tune ourselves to the subtle messages nature gives us, by re-tuning ourselves to our own subtle natures.  One of these ways is through listening to our dreams.

As you keep your dream diary over time, notice where particular images, themes or symbols seem to recur with certain weather systems, be they storms, lightning, a prolonged high pressure system, snow, rain or winds.  You may also wish to pay attention to the cycle of the moon, and the way you may attune your self to periods of waxing (growing, expanding energy) and waning (retreating, introspective energy.)  You may also see themes change in line with the changing seasons, with periods of growth and counter periods of consolidation and inward reflecting.

Being in tune to the world around us, and understanding the patterns, the drivers and the cause and effect of things is not the same as being a psychic, though with time you may develop your intuition and ability to sensitively read the weather to such a degree, that to other people your predictions may seem to be so!

Dream Symbols: Colours

What are the colours that make up your life?

How colourful are your dreams?  The more practiced you get at recalling your dreams, the more likely you are to remember vivid colours in them.  When we dream in colour it is often a  sign that we are actively engaged with our imaginations, and that we are feeling more “fully alive,” noticing the richness of life around us even when awake, which carries over to our sleep and dreams.  People who work in very visual fields, such as artists, graphic designers, fashion designers, merchandisers, interior decorators and film makers are likely to have very colourful dreams, but so too are people who pay close attention to the world around them, such as writers, journalists, naturalists, surveyors, scientists or anyone with an interest in the world.  Children, who are very inquisitive and imaginative, are frequent dreamers in colour.

Sometimes though, more than simply dreaming in colour, we will have a dream where a particular colour seems to stand out.  It may be that something is the wrong colour, such as the sky being green, an elephant being pink or blood being blue instead of red.  Or it may simply be that you are left with a very strong impression of a colour that seemed to “wash” through the dream.  A lingering sense of golden light, or a deep purple richness.  Or it could be that you didn’t notice anything else in the dream even was coloured, apart from the shiny red apple, the dream person’s startlingly blue eyes, the bright orange shirt you were wearing.

Depending on how these colours appear in our dreams, they can have different meanings.  You can start by looking for puns, jokes or common phrases.  Seeing blue coloured blood might mean literally “blue blooded” and be a referece to nobility, your own noble qualities, a sense of birthright etc.  Pink elephants may refer to being drunk, or as a symbol to be “intoxicated,” maybe with your sense of infatuation with a new love, or a love of life.  Something appearing the wrong colour may be an indication that something you are considering is unlikely or improbable; or even the exact opposite, that something you thought was impossible may be actually hapenning or about to happen.  For example “that will only happen when the grass turns blue and the sky turns green.”  Other common colour associated phrases include:

• The “green eyed monster” for jealousy, or being “green with envy”
• The “blue eyed child” as a symbol of a favourite, or one who has received blessings
• The “scarlet lady” (may have scarlet, skin, hair or clothes) who represents wickedness, an affair or sexual freedom depending on your point of view
• “White as a sheet” to indicate fear or shock
• “Grey/Silver haired” to symbolise age, wisdom and experience
• Going through a “purple patch” when everything seems to be going well
• “Tickled pink” to be very pleased when something is working out

Beyond phrases, colours can have very individual meanings.  These may be positive or negative, or somewhere in between.  A colour does not have any intrinsic meaning of its own, it has only the meaning we give to it.  So in order to understand colours in our dreams, it can help to ask:

• What feelings does this colour produce in me?
• What does this colour remind me of?
• Where am I seeing a lot of this colour in my life?  Or where in my life is this colour missing?
• What other things in my life that are important to me are also this colour?

As you work with your dreams over time, you may start to notice when colours re-appear.  Do you always dream of something red when you are falling in love?  Something yellow when you are going through a creative period?  When we notice our own patterns, we can start to recognise the unique messages our dreams are giving us, and develop our understanding of our own secret dream language.

Depending own our culture, colours can have very different meanings (some cultures get married in red, for example, and some have funeral processions in white); we can have national symbolism associated with colours (such as the “red white and blue” of the American flag, the Union Jack as well as the Australian flag) and more personal associations (including wearing a certain coloured uniform, our association with a particular political party and so on), so it is best to make sure what our own interpretation of a colour is first.  But here are few ideas to get you started:

What does each colour mean to you? And is it the same as yesterday?

Red:anger, passion, life-blood energy, power, vitality, danger, warning, stop-sign, sexuality, confidence, flashy, intense, blood energy loss, war, desire, aggression, wrath, excitement; Socialism, Communism, Labour (political)
Yellow: creative, positive, optimistic, sunny, happiness, coward, shame, expectations, overload, stimulation, intellect, play-fullness, sickly, hazardous, childish, simple, caution, aged, vintage
Orange: vitality, earthiness, change, health, strength, endurance, heat, invigoration, appetite, action, balance, flamboyance, attention seeking, warmth
Green:growth, newness, fertility, freshness, money, wealth, inexperience, envy, jealousy, greed, sickness, toxic, stagnant, mouldy, fulfilling, healing, peace, planting, environment, ecology, go (“green light”), eternal life (“evergreen”) good luck
Blue: clarity, openness, authority, friendliness, sadness (having the “blues”), depression, stability, trust wisdom, masculine, corporate, reliable, mental, spirituality, heaven, truth, obscenity, new ideas (“blue sky”), tradition, serene, classic, serious, professional, tranquil, cool, cold; Liberal, Conservative (political)
Purple: royalty, authority, weird, alternative, unusual, power, luxury, wealth, extravagant, wisdom, mystery, magic, gloomy, artificial, outrage, bruised, ceremony, arrogance, sensual, braveness (purple heart), spiritual
White: innocence, pure, clean, untouched, vacant, faith, medicine, impersonal, spiritual, light, hope, peace, bleach, drained of colour, artificial, pristine, washing, sterile
Black: formal, elegance, prestige, mystery, unknown, fear, mourning, grief, night, unknown, power, dread, foreboding, bad mood, potential, opportunity, anonymous, rebellion, anarchy
Pink: soft, feminine, gentle, newborn, helpless, romantic, mild, child-like, flirtation, blushing, embarrassment, pleasure, innocent, health, love
Brown: earthiness, strong, natural, dull, home, outdoors, dirt, endurance, solid, reliable, disgusting, nature, rustic, tradition, wholesome, simple, rough, hand made
Grey:age, conformity, boring, constricted, dull, maturity, respect, humility, neutral, inoffensive, oppressive, man-made, mechanical, city, old age, boredom, unsettling, expectant, moody
Silver: intuition, magic, age, wisdom, illusion, purification, serenity, hopeful (“silver lining”) valuable, second best, pride
Gold: wealth, success, prestige, status, superficial, fake, culmination, extravagance, high quality, value, glory, divine, winner

Sometimes an object will appear in colour just to make sure we notice it.  It can be a bit like our dreams highlighting the text with a flourescent marker pen, or getting a giant arrow and pointing saying “notice this!”  If colour is used like this in our dreans, we would do well to pay attention to both the object itself, and the colour of it. 

It is only by looking at what is going on in our lives, and what other symbols and feelings are to be found in the dream, and then by applying our own intuition, that we can really start to undertsand colours in our own dreams.  And even once we know what a colour means in one dream, we may find, just like the apperance and then disappearance of a rainbow, that this meaning will change in the next dream.  It all depends on how we feel, and what other assoictaions we make in our waking lives.

Dream Symbols: Sex Part 3: Ex Sex

What feelings about your past relationships remain obscure?

Uh-oh!  You thought you were soover him/her!  And yet, there you were, locked in a passionate tryst even more intimate than anything you ever experienced in real life together!  You might even be with someone else now.  So why is your ex popping into your dreams now? 

Dreaming of an ex-partner can happen for a variety of reasons, and is nothing to be ashamed of.  Conversely, these dreams don’t necesarrily mean you want to or should go rushing back to someone you left behind.

Our previous partners in dreams can appear to help us reconcile the past.  Sometimes the ex may represent all past relationships, or the concept of “romantic love” or “The Relationship” - this is more likely if this was your first partner and they made a significant impression on you, or you were with them for a long time, and this person came to represent what it meant to be with someone.  When we leave a part of our life behind, our subconscious needs to spend a bit of time reconciling our decisions and feelings, sorting out our emotions from logic, and in this way, help us to learn the profound lessons that came from any relationship and any major life change, and also to ensure we are primed and ready for the next person when they come along.  If they have already come along, these dreams of an ex may be our subconscious revisiting the mistakes of the past to ensure they don’t happen again, or in a more positive frame, making sure we have learnt all the right lessons to make sure this relationship has the best chance of success. 

When we leave someone behind, we don’t forget them.  At some level they will always exist in our mind, so the healthiest way for this to happen is to consciously recognise what was good and what was bad about that relationship, so the memory that lives is like a lesson, a gift for our present or future partner, rather than a ghostly feeling that haunts us because we never really acknowledged what was going on.

Dreams of an ex help us to move on in our lives.  They can help us “get over it” where we need to, to help us heal our pain, and sometimes, when we have something new and better, they will remind us of what we were lucky to leave behind, or what we are even more lucky to have now.  Dreams of an ex-partner should not induce feelings of guilt in yourself, but I would suggest you be tactful and sensitive if you do mention such dreams to a current partner.  Not everyone spends as much time as we do in understanding our dreams, and it may be easy for them to misunderstand such a  dream as wish fulfilment or regret.  We, of course, know better, don’t we?

Dream Symbols: Sex Part 2: Cheating

[caption id="attachment_302" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="What parts of your own personality are you suspicious of?"][/caption]

Dreaming of seeing someone else making love, especially if that someone is our partner, can really test our ability to be logical and objective.  So you know by now dreams are all going on your own head, then why do you feel so worried and hurt?

The first thing to do is take a big deep breath and a reality check.  Nothing is more sure to poison a relationship than suspicion and lack of trust.  The next thing to do is look at why we are dreaming about our partner having sex with some one else.  What can this mean?  Well, I will say it again, but it can mean many things depending on what is going on in our lives.

To start to understand what this dream may mean for you, try listing down all the feelings that came up for you in your dream.  Did you feel hurt, betrayed, angry, depressed?  Did you feel detached like you didn’t really care?  Did you feel resigned, like you were somehow expecting it to happen?  Next, look at where in your life you may be having these feelings.  What do these feelings remind you of?

If we remember that the person in our dream is really just us, to see our partner cheating on us can mean that in some way we are cheating on ourselves.  It could mean we are lying to ourselves about our true feelings, or that we are ignoring something important, hiding it away like an illicit affair. 

Dreams of seeing our partner with another can lead us to question:

• What in my life am I hiding that I should really bring out into the open?
• Where am I denying myself the love and affection I crave?
• How am I cheating myself out of something I really deserve?
  

  Did you really see what you thought you saw? Dream lovers are often not what they seem

Dreams of cheating can be a sign that we aren’t letting all aspects of our personality be together in a happy and harmonious way.  Seeing our partner make love to someone else reminds us that we need to be involved with all aspects of who we are, and invites us to address the parts of us we ignore.  Remember as well, just as the partner you see in your dream is a part of you, so too is the person they are having sex with a part of you as well.  The question then, is why do you feel so detached that you have watch other parts of yourself together, and yet keep yourself so distant?  What are you watching but not participating in?

Dreams of witnessing a betrayal can also be a reminder of past hurt.  If you have felt let down or abandonded, cheated on or lied to in the past, you may fear the same thing happenning again, which can cause these kinds of dreams to surface. But if we overcome our own insecurites and fears, we can create an atmosphere of love and trust, where relationships can thrive.  Insecurity and doubt are no foundation for a happy life!

The most important things with dreams of seeing your partner with someone else, is not to imagine that this is really about your partner or the person they are with.  That other “someone else” is you too.  What is it about that other person that in your dream your partner likes?  How can you be more like that?  The “other woman” or “other man” in your dream can be a symbol for characteristics you wish to hide from your self.  These kind of dreams invite us to become the other woman or other man.  Write down what qualities they have, that will help you separate the person from the symbolic meaning.  Maybe it’s time to embrace those qualities you are ashamed of, or let go of a past hurt and enjoy the present, and your realtionship, for what it is, here and now.