Dreaming

AH, the strange, beautiful, terrifying and personal wonder that is dreaming. The key word here is personal–dreams read like your own novel; they are thoughts and emotions and experiences expressed with your own individual metaphors. Dream dictionaries are not necessary. The answers, ideas and release that are present in our dreams need only a bit of reflection to be understood.

A few years back I had had a dream in which my car kept breaking down and eventually fell into a body of water through a break in the road. At the time I was dreaming vividly and recorded my dreams adamantly. It wasn't until a few days after the dream that I realized the car was a representation of my body and my psyche was asking me to take better care of it. I had been thinking about the various things a body does prior to having that dream, and, among other aspects, came up with the words "My body gets me where I need to go." The faulty car in my dream was a warning, a request for respect and honor towards my physical being.

Love's Executioner by Irvin D. Yalom is an excellent book showcasing the healing power of dreams. It is a collection of ten case studies, and each of Yalom's patients undergo vast changes and delve deep into their own hearts and minds. One of the patients in his book, Dave, is terminally ill and shares this dream:

"Death is all around me. I can smell death. I have a packet with an envelope stuffed inside of it, and the envelope contains something that is immune to death or decay or deterioration. I'm keeping it secret. I go to pick it up and feel it, and suddenly I seee that the envelope is empty. I feel very distressed about that and notice that it's been slit open. Later I find what I assume was in the envelope on the street, and it is a dirty old shoe with the sole coming off."

After discussing the dream with Yalom and his group members, Dave comes to see the shoe as himself: "'My God! A dirty old man whose soul is about to leave him! That's me all right!' He chuckled at his own creation. A lover of words (he spoke several languages), he marveled at the transposition of soul and sole."

Yalom states in the prologue that there is no singular meaning to a dream. Dave's dream could have pointed him in any number of directions, but that moment of epiphany gave him the understanding he needed at the moment. One could spend days peeling away the layers of meaning in a dream and still have much to explore.

Another interesting dream perspective someone shared with me is to take on the role of every character in your dream. I told her about a dream in which someone wouldn't make eye contact with me, and she parleyed with, "Maybe you're not making eye contact with yourself."

There's much to explore when you wake up from a vivid dream. Next time it happens take the time to write it down and see what you're trying to tell yourself.