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What new insights can you gain by sharing your dreams?
Dreams can be perplexing things. At times it can feel like we have the weirdest dreams possible, and nobody could possibly appreciate what we have dreamed, let alone understand any meaning in the cryptic tales.
But in actual fact, not only do most of us have extraordinary and fantastical dreams, but in many instances, other people are able to more quickly guess at what our own dream might be telling us than we are ourselves. Sometimes we are so close to the brush-strokes that we can’t see the whole picture. Other people can help us see patterns that we ourselves might miss.
Dream sharing can be an invaluable tool to help us gain unique and sometimes surprising insights into our dreams. Sometimes simply the act of telling a dream to someone else can help us to suddenly see things from a new perspective. Sharing our dreams can also help us start to see common symbols in other people’s dreams, and hep us appreciate how we can be so similar to others, and yet so profoundly different at the same time. Sharing dreams can help us realise there are other people as just as quirky and strange as we are, so we don’t feel so alone. Even just getting a dream off our chest and out into the open can be an immensely satisfying process.
So if sharing dreams is something you would like to do, there are a variety of ways to go about this. It can be as simple as starting with friends and family, though if personal experience is anything to go by, not everyone will be a wiling audience! If you are lucky enough, as I have been, to have a patient mother, partner or other special person, all well and good. If not, you may wish to start a “dream sharing group” – basically a regular gathering of like minded individuals to talk about and gain deeper understanding of each others dreams.
Or if you prefer a more anonymous and on-line version, you might want to try this site, www.yourdreamjournal.wordpress.com a place to come and be your dream self in all the honest, weird and wonderful glory that you are! Dream Well!
What can you do in waking life to honour the messages from your dreams?
Many people don’t realise that understanding dreams is only really the tip of the iceberg when it comes to tapping the vast mysteries of our subconscious. Even if we don’t fully understand what a dream means to us, we can still gain a lot of value from it. To do this, we can undertake “dream work.”
I have mentioned dream work many times through-out these posts, so I thought I should explain a little more what I mean by that, beyond simply recording and analysing dreams. Dream work basically refers to how we interact with our dreams when we are awake, how we bring our dreams out of the night into the day, out of the unsubstantial realm of the mind and into the touchable, see-able physical world.
At its most basic level, dream work can mean painting, sculpting or creating something from our dreams. At a deeper level however, dream work can allow us to address the things in our dream that bother us or acknowledge what gifts they have provided. We can create our own personal rituals to enact a different ending to a dream, such as creating a sculpture of the monster chasing us and then putting it into a cage or re-shaping it to be less scary. Or we can build a personal shrine to honour a character who gave us wisdom, we can even make a pilgramige to a special place that we have dreamed about. We can light candles, plant seeds, throw out old clothes or donate to charity – it will depend on what the dream said personally to you, as to how you decide to learn the message of dream, effect its outcome, or give thanks for it.
Whatever we decide to do, the important thing is to do something – not just think, not just write, but take action. When we behave in this way we send a powerful message to our subconscious that what we dream is important. And our subconscious will respond in equally powerful ways, not simply changing what we dream about, but helping create significant personal growth, healing or learning, effectively transforming our inner world.
When we engage our dreams as an ally for improving our life, and combine this with actual physical action in waking life, amazing things can start to happen. We can engage in the mystery and wonder of life on a whole new level. We can thin the veil that separates the conscious from the subconscious, and come to know ourselves in meaningful and rewarding new ways.
The first step to understanding our dreams is to isolate:
- The individual symbols we can remember
- The different feelings the dream evokes
- Whether the dream has a conclusive ending or not (see Dream Endings: Happy Ever After?)
What does the bigger picture reveal when you put all the pieces together?
By listing all these elements we can gain valuable insights into the hidden meaning of our dreams. This process of breaking down into smaller parts we call “analysis,” which is one of the most common words applied to dream understanding. But the real leaps in knowledge come not from analysis alone, but from a process we refer to as “synthesis.” This is when we take all the different parts we have identified, and try and put them back together again.
Synthesis can be one of the most challenging aspects to dream interpretation, and one of the reasons the meanings of our dreams can be so elusive even when we are familiar with the symbols of our own dreams.
The first step to good synthesis is to look for relationships. We can do this by trying to see how symbols in our dream evoke similar emotions, or seem to be imparting a similar message. So a bear and tree to one person may both have similarities in that they are imparting a message about “wildness.” To another person a bear may symbolise baring your soul, and the tree may also be bare of leaves. Only you can draw the similarities in your own dreams.
Another step to help synthesise our dream is to look for an over-riding theme. Do all the symbols seem to communicate a sense of loss, an excitement of a new prospect, a feeling of love, and so on.
Finally, we can see if we can make the symbols string together in a story of their own. Instead of the story of the dream, can we tell a tale about the symbolic items that we dreamed? For example, to look at the bear in the tree, instead of saying “I chased a bear and it ran up a tree,” we could try “I am seeking to capture my wild spirit, but it eludes me by returning into natural spaces where I don’t go.” You get the picture.
It can be a fine art to master putting back the pieces of our dreams into one overall cohesive whole, but the effort will reward us with a greater understanding of not just our dreams, but also ourselves.
Do you need to take a dose of your own medicine?
We have looked in previous posts at how our dreaming subconscious mind may be more in touch with what is going on with our bodies than our conscious waking minds, but I feel this deserves a little more attention.
While science has not been able to prove a definitive link between dreams and the diagnosis of illness, individual experience can be quite convincing. Often referred to as “Prodromic Dreaming,” is when we dream of something before it becomes apparent, and is most commonly used in the case of detecting a sickness before any other symptoms are obvious or before it has been officially diagnosed.
We need to exercise caution when approaching our dreams for diagnosis. Remembering that dreams are often symbolic, dreaming of having cancer may be more a sign of some “cancerous,” behaviour or relationship in our life that is damaging and harmful to us, than an actual sign of illness. However, there are anecdotal cases of people who have dreamed of things such as spots on their organs or shadows in their bodies that have actually turned out to be cancer. The important thing is not to panic, and to look carefully at all the different things a dream may be saying. Dreaming of taking medicine for example, could be an example of us learnign a lesson in life, of having to “taste our own medicine.” Dreaming of a heart attack can be a symbol of a “broken heart” after a relationship ending, dreaming of not being able to breathe can be a symbol of feeling “suffocated” in a relationship or job and so on. (See the various entries for “Dream Symbols: Body Parts” for some other suggestion.)
To understand how symbolism may be linking to a body part in order to communicate an illness, it is important for us to recognise our own personal symbols. For example, to dream of blocked pipes might be a symbol of kidney stones or a urinary problem to someone who thinks of that part of the body as being like pipes, but to another person it may refer to a possible clogged artery, if that person thinks of ther vascular system as being like a network of pipes.
Key symbols to look out for when trying to assess if a dream may be about illness include images of things rotting, breaking, crumbling or fading away. Dark spots or patches, shadows, ghosts, imps and demons can also indicate a sickness. In some cases, we won’t dream of our body so closely, but may be informed by a guide that there is something wrong. This advice may come from an angel, a departed relative, a doctor or medical person, or some wise stranger or animal. These dreams may also have other symbols of the medical profession, such as x-rays, potions or pills, ambulances, a red cross, hospitals, beds or surgical knives. Yet still other dreams of illness have no medical symbology whatsoever, remember we all dream uniquely, so it is up to us to learn to recognise the signs.
Another way to recognise whether a dream relates to illness is the feeling we get from it. Dreams of impending sickness may start as a whisper, like a headache before a full blown flu. We know something isn’t quite right, even if we aren’t feeling really bad. These early dreams are often warnings to slow down and rest, to eat healthier, to exercise, or stop some sort of bad habit. When we are left with a feeling of urgency or are quite troubled, this may be a sign action is required quickly.
If we suspect a dream may be indicating an illness that has not yet been diagnosed, I would suggest seeking
Can you hear your body's whispers before they become shouts?
professional advice as soon as possible. It is not necessary to advise your doctor you are there because of a dream. Some doctors may be sympathetic, but others may be skeptical, and it is worth making sure you are at least being taken seriously. Only you can make the call how much you wish to share. If the dream has come after a negative diagnosis, and you still feel troubled, seek a second opinion. No human is perfect, and it is worth checking to see all possible angles have been covered. Sometimes a dream of sickness after a negative diagnosis may just be our subconscious mind working through our feelings of anxiety, but at other times it could be a warning that the first diagnosis was wrong. Again, no-one will know this better than you yourself.
From anecdotal evidence, it seems many dreams that warn of impending illness and that are accurate, are fortunately able to be treated because they have been identified so early. If we suspect something is not quite right, it is usually best to catch it early. Our dreams can be like an early warning system that metaphorically gets us out of the burning building in time.
Sometimes though, these dreams themselves contain the cure. They may contain advice to stop eating a certain food or using a kind of cleaning product that we didn’t know we were allergic to, or they may indicate a herb or combination of foods that will help us feel better. These kind of dreams can be really insightful in helping us to heal ourselves, and often on more than simply the physical level.
Can you find a way to resolve you conflicts?
We can learn about important meanings from our dreams depending on how they end. When we start working with our dreams, it is easiest to begin with looking at symbols, how they inter-relate and our feelings about what we experience in the dream. But as we are able to better remember our dreams, we can use our understanding of the narrative or story of the dream to reveal extra meaning to us.
The first step in using this new level of understanding is to look at how our dreams end. This of course presumes that:
1 – The dream actually had a clear ending. Some dreams seem to just dissolve away or merge from one dream into another. What we are looking at in this instance is a clear ending to a series of events.
2 – That we remember a clear ending. If we only remember key symbols and messages, this can be helpful to dream work, but it will not provide the new insight that an ending will.
Clear endings are easy to recognize, as we feel we have come to a definite conclusion in our dreams. The extra level of meaning is revealed by how we feel about this ending. Did we have a happy ending or not? Did we have a dream of running away, where we decided to face our chaser, and they changed shape or ran away themselves? This would be a conclusive happy ending. Similar scenarios might involve struggling through various obstacles and coming out to the other side; transforming something that was attacking or scaring us into something friendly or comical; finding what we were looking for; getting advice, an apology or instructions from someone; or learning a new skill to changes the direction of the dream. We can refer to these kind of dreams as “resolution. ” This basically means we had an issue, and the dream is showing us an answer to our questions, it resolves our problem. Such dreams are very powerful, and have great advice as to what steps we can take to really change our lives. This can help us have a real break-through in waking life, and change our life for the better in way we never thought possible.
If, on the other hand, our dreams have a scary, negative or inconclusive ending, we would describe these as being “unresolved.” To be unresolved means we have no clear understanding of a way forward in our dream, which is usually true of our waking life as well. We often have unresolved dreams when we feel stuck, frustrated, conflicted or confused. Our dreams in these cases will show us always running away from the faceless person who chases us; being attacked by the creature who always catches us; or wandering lost from place to place and not knowing where we are going. This may leave us with a sense of fear, anger, helplessness, sadness, loss, frustration or anxiety. But that does not mean these dreams are negative in themselves!
Even unresolved dreams contain clues to show us the way forward. By working with our dreams and understanding their symbolic meanings, we can start to identify where the blocks and problems are in our waking life. On the one hand, we can start to identify and change the things in our waking life that are causing us conflict or concern, but on the other hand, we can also focus on actually facing up to things in our dreams themselves that we need wish to change. Whether we confront the boss who is bullying us or the absent parent who let us down in waking life; or alternatively we decide to fight back the creature attacking us or turn and confront the mystery person chasing us in our dreams, BOTH things can help us improve our lives. And BOTH things can help us have happy ending in our dreams.
When our dreams show us conflict, they also provide us clues how to resolve that conflict. And whether we choose to address the resolution of this conflict in our waking life or our dreams, both ways can change our lives for the better. And our dreams will show us quite clearly when we are on the right track, and reward us with dreams that show us a way to live happily ever after.
Understanding our dreams is like building a bridge between our conscious and subconscious minds
In a busy life, it can seem like we have no time for ourselves. We all seem to have such full lives, every waking moment is taken up by work, looking after the children, cleaning the house, studying, exercising or sports, trying to find time to spend with friends and family. Squeezing anything else in can feel like an impossible task.
The great thing about dreams is that no matter how full and busy our lives are, we still need to sleep, and we we will always dream. Dreaming is as essential to our health and well being as exercise, it is like oxygen for the soul. Still, many of us think that all we need to do to live a happy, healthy life, is to sleep and let dreams take care of themselves. And if we have never experienced anything different, it is easy to believe that is true.
But if we ignore our dreams we ignore a part of ourselves. Just as we need to find space in our waking lives every now and then to keep in touch with our mother, or play with our children, so too must we find the time to listen to what is going on in our own minds. Dreams allow us to learn lessons from our mistakes, so we are not doomed to repeat them. Dreams allow us to to see what is really going on in a certain situation, so we can make the best decisions. Dreams offer us peace, wisdom and solace, so that we may heal and recover from past hurts. If we ignore our dreams, we ignore ourselves.
Dreams that are ignored may become like a child that is neglected. Such a sad child is likely to be naughty and misbehave to get attention, any attention at all, even if it is being told off. At least by being punished someone is paying attention. Our dreams may act in a similar way. If we don’t pay attention when they are gentle and mild, our dreams may become more insistent, turning into bad dreams, recurring dreams or even nightmares. If we ignore them completely for too long, they may even go underground, manifesting as illness or anxiety.
To only focus on our waking lives, and not pay attention to what happens when we sleep is to live a disjointed life. If we make no space for dreams in our waking life, it is like living only half a life, ignoring what happens when we close our eyes. It does not take much to start listening to our dreams. It really starts with simply paying attention, deciding that our dreams are worth listening to. By taking a moment when we wake to remember our dreams, and finding some space later in the day to contemplate them, to consider what we dreamed and what it might mean, we build a bridge between our conscious and subconscious minds. This means we are not stranded on an island of wakefulness, and can start to access the wisdom of our dreaming mind.
Even if writing and recording dreams seems to take up too much time, we all have times in our day when can spare a few minutes thought to ourselves. It might be in the shower, on the train, waiting to pick the kids up from school, or those few minutes alone over that cup of tea or coffee. We have the choice what we want to think of, how we wish to use our time, where we want our minds to go. Even those few moments of reflection, of thinking, “what does this mean and what can I learn from this?” can be profoundly helpful.
We all owe it to ourselves to spend a little time in taking care of ourselves. And even beyond that, when we take care or ourselves, we find resolution from conflict, the confidence to make the right decision and the wisdom to act thoughtfully. This kind of behaviour is not just good for ourselves, but everyone who we come into contact with. A pretty grand result for just taking the time to listen to our dreams…
