T9 - Dreams - C 4
Oh, yeah, this book's a cornucopia of bizarre dreams and analyses. Last night I dreamed I was a horse. One minute I was the horse and the next I was riding on the horse. What I make of this is 'I am my own rider.' That is, I direct myself in life. In my dream I was riding or being ridden through a dessert. It was flat terrain, sandy, and had sparse vegetation. I remember that I felt that I wouldn't have enough to eat when I stopped to camp for the night. I guess this means that 'directing my own life' might not be as nourishing as I thought it would be. What does this say for me about my notions of wanting to be free? That freedom might not be all that it's cracked up to be or that it wouldn't provide me with the sustenance that I need? Hmmmm.....
posted by Russ | 1:37 AM
2 Comments:
Russ, the author
Here’s where you can post your own dreams AND YOUR INTERPRETATIONS.
Here are brief instructions on how to interpret your dreams: first list the symbols that
appear in your dream. Then ask yourself, ‘What does this symbol do in REAL life?’
‘What does a mouse or a dog or a car do in real life?’ Then take the answer and
relate it to each of the other answers for the other symbols and what’s going on in
your life today. Let’s say off-handedly that you have a dream of a mouse and a house
and it puzzles you. So you ask, ‘What do mice do in real life?’ Well, maybe to you
mice are frightening creatures - they frighten people. Other people may think that
mice are cute or dirty or whatever... Then you ask yourself, ‘What do houses do in
real life?’ Well, maybe houses protect people from the weather. Maybe, in your
case, you answer the question by saying that a house is where people store their
possessions. So, blending or relating the two answers you might say that your dream
is about your fears of your possessions. You ought to then ask yourself if this relates
in any way to your current ACTUAL life. Do you have any fears of anything? If not,
ask yourself the question, ‘What are possessions (treat possessions as a symbol)?’
Maybe you answer, ‘my most treasured possession is my mind.’ So, blending
symbols, you might then ask yourself, ‘Am I in fear of my mind?’ ‘What’s happening
in my life that’s so threatening to me and so overwhelming that my mind seems in
danger?’ And then you relate this answer back to the themes of the dream again,
that is, fear and possessions. You’re developing the themes of the dream and you’re
relating those themes to what’s actually going on in your life today. You’re giving
your dream a meaningful interpretation (for you). If you have to repeat this cycle
again it’s okay. Sometimes it takes two or three repetitions of questions, answers
and symbols to come up with a complete interpretation.
Trust your answers to your questions and stay with them for the duration of your
interpretation. Your first answer is usually the most true and offers the deepest
insight. Be aware of the ‘lightbulb effect.’ You experience the effect of a lightbulb
going on above your head when you hit on something which feels instantaneously true
to you. When this feeling occurs you know you’ve hit on something which is
absolutely true.
Ways to add information to your interpretation process are: ask ‘Are there any
obvious emotions in the dream in addition to the images and symbols?’ Incorporate
these emotions into the process. Also ask, ‘Are there any further details? and ‘Are
there any other characters and who or what are they?’ Then include this additional
information in the process of your interpretation. The additional information
sometimes offers up more refined viewpoints about the main symbols and if it’s
needed it can help answer the questions that you pose to yourself. Sometimes these
additional symbols, feelings and details can be part of another branch of
interpretation which may reflect on and compliment your main interpretation or take
off in a supplementary direction. Some dreams can seem incredibly complicated and
filled with many sections but usually each section can be analyzed and in the end all
the interpretations, if we see them as separate sentences, can be put together to
form a ‘paragraph’ which has a larger meaning. For complicated dreams like this it
is helpful to use pencil and paper to write the symbols and sectional interpretations
down and even to diagram the sequences of the dream. Some dreams are short and
to the point and others can be unbelievable long. These take patience and, of
course, interest and an investment of time.
This is only a brief example. It gives you a method to interpret your dreams which is
a more active, participatory one than the usual one that most people use of giving
symbols in their dreams a fixed meaning that they read about in dream books. This
method can give you individually important interpretations, important to yourself and
even to the other people in your life who are part of the issues that the theme(s) of
your dreams touch on.
So, please, post some of your dreams and your interpretations.
Tom from Phoenix
I was riding on a fairly modern train through urban areas and I got off at the wrong
stop. There were no name signs for the station on the platform. Walking around on
the unfamiliar platform (metal, concrete) I talked to a few people and then crossed
over to the other side to ask several more, “What station is this?” Finally one person
told me that I’d gotten off one stop short of my destination and the best thing for me
to do was to take the next train in about half an hour because my destination was too
far to take a taxi.
Then the dream shifted to a more abstract vision in which I was floating over the
tracks and trying to adjust the gauge (width) of the tracks to insure that they were
exactly parallel. I came across a merging track and floated closer to examine the
intersection of the two sets of tracks to make sure that the straight tracks continued
their parallel path through and beyond the intersection. I woke up with these images
clear in my mind which was in that zone between sleeping and being awake and
quickly wrote down a description of these images on the back of a tissue box.
This is my interpretation: getting off at the wrong station indicated to me that I need
to find my ‘right station’ in life, the way of living that would be best for me - most
fulfilling and satisfying. I’m living my life one stop short of most desirable. I laughed
when I thought, “That’s better than ten or five stops short.”The taxi represented a
convenient form of transportation and since my destination was ‘too far’ to take a taxi
I would have to inconvenience myself in order to resolve the issue that this dream
presented to me.
My abstract concern for the rails being parallel was obsessive and in the dream felt
compulsive. In my waking life I’m not an obsessive-compulsive person. My need to
insure that the tracks were perfectly parallel and safe represented my fears about
whatever steps or rides I would have to take to arrive at my most desirable
destination or life style or station in life. The obsessive feeling told me that this
problem wasn’t going to go away and I needed to think about it and try to
understand what my fears are. The compulsive feeling had me thinking about destiny
and my infrequently reflected upon need to make some changes in order to fulfil
myself more.
Interpreting the dream this way helped me to reflect on these ideas and start thinking
about what I really wanted out of life. I also thought of some concrete steps I could
take towards making some of them happen.
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