Dream Sight articles | In your dreams …

Is this your life?

Posted on February 24, 2012 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 2 Comments

How often has your alarm clock saved you from a worrying dream you thought was real? What a relief to wake into your everyday life, where all the quandaries and confusions of the dream evaporate and leave you free to get on with your day! You may have spent all night trying to catch that dream plane but now, awake, your confidence in getting places on time is restored. Phew. Missing a plane would never happen to you, would it? You may have endured hair-raising confrontations with a slippery, fang-endowed snake but now, awake, you know that’s one encounter you need not worry about, living in the city, as you do. Or perhaps that alarm clock intruded on a passionate, illicit love affair. Plummeting to earth on opening your eyes you console yourself that at least your waking life is guilt-free. “No,” you conclude, looking around your bedroom, “This is my life. This is what’s real. There are no missed planes, lurking snakes or secret lovers in my life.”

“No,” you conclude, looking around your bedroom, “This is my life. This is what’s real. There are no missed planes, lurking snakes or secret lovers in my life.”

But I invite you to take another look. No time? No problem! This is an easy exercise. It will take you no longer than five minutes a day and you can always set that alarm for five minutes earlier, can’t you?

This is what to do:

Write one sentence a day. It’s best to write this sentence a few minutes after waking up, while your dream is fresh on your mind, so keep an exercise book or diary by your bedside for this purpose.

The sentence is a summary of your dream, written in the present tense, starting with the words ‘I feel’ and including the word ‘something’. It can only be one sentence though! Here are some examples.

Your dream:

I feel worried that something precious and fragile may break.

It was a long and complicated dream, but the part that stood out for you was when your son was carrying a stack of precious, fine china crockery. You were moving house and were worried that the plates, cups and saucers should have been properly packed to prevent them from breaking.

Your sentence might be:

I feel worried that something precious and fragile may break.

Your dream:

I feel frustrated that so many delays are slowing me down from achieving something so simple.

It’s your recurring dream theme again. It’s long, it’s involved, and the essence is that you have a plane to catch but everything goes wrong and you never get airborne.

Your sentence might be:

I feel frustrated that so many delays are slowing me down from achieving something so simple.

Your dream:

I feel surprised that something I expected to be painful was not as bad as I had anticipated, but only time will tell the full outcome.

This dream was an epic adventure involving snakes appearing from nowhere, chasing you and threatening to bite you. At one point you were actually bitten. Surprisingly it didn’t hurt as much as you thought it would, but your dream ends in trepidation. Was the snake poisonous or harmless? Only time will tell.

Your sentence might be:

I feel surprised that something I expected to be painful was not as bad as I had anticipated, but only time will tell the full outcome.

Your dream:

I feel an attraction to something deeply and personally fulfilling, but I feel the only way I can protect my current way of life is to keep this secret.

You were magnetically attracted to an awesome person and ended up having a deeply loving sexual tryst that left you feeling elated physically, mentally and spiritually. In the dream you know you have been unfaithful to your partner. You decide the solution is to keep this affair secret.

Your sentence might be:

I feel an attraction to something deeply and personally fulfilling, but I feel the only way I can protect my current way of life is to keep this secret.

Your dream:

I feel surprise that when I dive into something I think will be painful, I discover such rich rewards.

The bit that stands out for you in your dream is the swarm of bees. You get stung, yet you decide to chase the bees. They lead you to the hive where you dive in, as small as a bee now, and see all the honey being made. Rows and rows of tasty, golden honey glisten.

Your sentence might be:

I feel surprise that when I dive into something I think will be painful, I discover such rich rewards.

In each of these examples, notice that ‘something’ is usually one of the main dream symbols: it’s the crockery, catching the plane, the snakebite, the lover and the beehive. In other words, ‘something’ can be a thing, an action or goal, a sensation, a person or a place.

Use the examples as guidelines and remember to start with “I feel” and to include the word ‘something’.

Five minutes a day to write one sentence summarising your dream. There is no right sentence. There are many ways to summarise a dream, so dive in and just do it.

Use the examples as guidelines and remember to start with “I feel” and to include the word ‘something’. As the days go by, you’ll get quicker at this.

Five minutes will become two. Just two minutes a day!

So what do you do with all these sentences after writing them down?

Choose a day, perhaps a weekend day or an evening you usually have to yourself, to take 30 minutes to review your list. Make it a weekly appointment with yourself. Allow no interruptions.

You will have seven sentences to review, assuming you remembered a dream on each night, less if your dream recall was not so hot. (If you remember more than one dream on any night, you can choose to summarise only the most vivid one, or to summarise them all.)

My relationship is precious to me but it feels fragile and in need of careful handling.

During your 30-minute weekly review, read each of your seven sentences in turn and ask yourself, “Where does this apply in my life?” If an answer comes to you, write it down, using – you’ve guessed it – one sentence.

As a guide, your answers to the examples in this article might be:

1. I feel worried that something precious and fragile may break. Where does this apply in my life?

Answer: My relationship is precious to me but it feels fragile and in need of careful handling.

2. I feel frustrated that so many delays are slowing me down from achieving something so simple. Where does this apply in my life?

Answer: Losing ten kilos in six months should be so simple, but here I am, still way overweight after twelve months of setting my goal.

3. I feel surprised that something I expected to be painful was not as bad as I had anticipated, but only time will tell the full outcome. Where does this apply in my life?

Answer: I finally got enough courage up to talk to my partner about a sensitive issue, and it wasn’t as painful I had expected it to be, though how things will turn out in the long run, I don’t know.

I want to build an energy-saving home and embrace a self-sufficient lifestyle, but to do this I risk losing the support of my family who enjoy the luxuries of life my current high income allows.

4. I feel an attraction to something deeply and personally fulfilling, but I feel the only way I can protect my current way of life is to keep this secret.

Where does this apply in my life?

Answer: I want to build an energy-saving home and embrace a self-sufficient lifestyle, but to do this I risk losing the support of my family who enjoy the luxuries of life my current high income allows.

5. I feel surprise that when I dive into something I think will be painful, I discover such rich rewards. Where does this apply in my life?

Answer: I finally decided to tackle my tax problem by enlisting the help of an accountant who not only taught me some simple, helpful bookkeeping skills but also got me an unexpected tax rebate!

What is the value in doing this exercise? These examples might give you the feeling that dreams simply tell us what we already know, but not so. It’s easy to think that, looking in on someone else’s dreams, someone else’s summary sentences, someone else’s answers. But we rarely appreciate the deeper patterns of our lives until we look closely. Your dreams draw your attention to the way your life is. They exclaim, “Hey! THIS is your life! Is this how you want it to be, or would you like to change this pattern?”

So, what might our example dreamer conclude?

She began to see why she tiptoes around her partner’s moods, fearful of breaking up

1. Her dream about handling fragile crockery helped her to see that she regards her relationship as both precious and fragile. Strange though it may seem, she hadn’t seen her relationship in this light before, but her dream view suddenly made sense of a few things. She began to see why she tiptoes around her partner’s moods, fearful of breaking up, instead of finding a mutually beneficial way of relating, perhaps taking a tip from the dream and looking at better ways of strengthening the relationship (better ways of packing the crockery). Her dream gives her a metaphor to contemplate. Does she want a fragile relationship?

The delays, she saw, were all her own work.

2. Her dream about missing the plane because of so many delays helped her to see that her weight-loss goal is achievable. Why? She travels widely with her job and never, ever misses a plane. If she can achieve something as simple as catching a plane by taking a step-by-step approach, she can achieve the equally simple goal of weight-loss. She looked at her dream again and suddenly saw all the delays in a new light: her lost baggage was her fear of losing weight, her lack of passport gave her a feeling that maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t ready to give herself permission to achieve her goal and all the rewards that go with it. The delays, she saw, were all her own work!

3. Her dream about the snakebite helped her to see that other sensitive issues that she fears broaching may also be less painful once faced. Her dream gave her courage, not only to face pain, but also to trust the outcome. She decided to visualise this dream whenever she needs to address an issue, summoning up a feeling of trust in the process.

4. Her dream about the secret affair helped her to realise just how important her desire to embrace a change of lifestyle was. It also helped her to see that her ‘secret affair’ was a form of infidelity to her family. In trying to protect them, she was hiding a wonderful part of her being from them. She wasn’t being true to them. From here she began to understand why some of her family relationships weren’t as fulfilling as they could be. She saw she needed to share more of herself. She called a family conference – an entirely new approach – and shared her dream of building an alternative lifestyle. She was blown away to discover that they also had ‘secret dreams’ and that they all had more in common than they had believed.

Whenever a task looked too daunting, too stinging, too deep, she closed her eyes and imagined flying into the hive and discovering all that honey.

5. Her dream about the beehive, you might argue, was an afterthought. She had already dived into her tax problem and been rewarded with some very golden honey, so how could this dream be of help? Dreams confirm our excellent moves, cementing in positive new attitudes and patterns. She used the dream as a visualisation from that day forward. Whenever a task looked too daunting, too stinging, too deep, she closed her eyes and imagined flying into the hive and discovering all that honey. Her visualisation helped her to dive in, uplifting and inspiring her forward.

Five minutes a day, one simple sentence a day, one thirty minute contemplation once a week. Give it a go. What’s that? Can’t stop, you’ve got a plane to catch? I don’t think so. Is this your life?

[Copyright Jane Teresa Anderson, March 2006. First published as a Dream Sight article.]

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Blinded by the light

Posted on January 27, 2012 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 3 Comments

It’s that time of the year here in Australia. It’s midwinter*(see footnote!), the air is clear and dry and the sunlight is blinding. There’s no summer humidity to water down the glare, and the widening hole in the ozone layer down this end doesn’t help. I need a new pair of sunglasses.

Which is better: looking into a glaring bright light or into a dark cave? Yes, we’re heading into dreams, but first please ponder this question. Which would you rather, total glaring light or deeply dark cave?

You cannot keep staring into a bright light. Your reflexes kick in, closing your eyes before further damage occurs. If you are forced to look into the light for too long, temporary blindness and perhaps long term damage will result. Either way, you will not be able to see clearly, if at all. What a paradox! So much light yet nothing to be seen.

If you keep staring into the dark cave what will happen?

If you keep staring into the dark cave what will happen? If you can push through the fear and stay focussed, you may begin to see faint shafts of light penetrating through hidden fissures and cracks in the cave walls. You may catch glimpses of movement, shadowy forms scuttling, lizard-like. The more you focus the more you may see that yes, these are lizards. Your eyes adjust and you discover that there are shades of darkness revealing shapes and forms.

Stars don’t slip away during the day, they shine on but their subtle light is drowned by sunlight.

Consider the sun and the moon. During the day sunlight is so bright (even on a rainy English day) that it blinds us to starlight. Stars don’t slip away during the day, they shine on but their subtle light is drowned by sunlight. It is only when we look into the darkness of the night sky that we can study the mysteries of the changing cosmos.

How much light do we need to get the best picture? It’s all about balance and your point of view.

Turn your back on the glaring sun and what do you see?

Turn your back on the glaring sun and what do you see? Your own shadow, as well as shadows cast by other objects bathed in the same brilliant light. Your shadow may be outrageously distorted but it IS your shadow and it does inform you of important parameters such as how many arms and legs you have and how your size compares with other shadows around you.

And so we move into dreams where the preamble to this article will slowly make sense. Stay with me, let your eyes adjust to the dream world and be ready to see the mysteries of your inner universe more clearly in dream light, in starlight, away from the glare of the stark light that blinds.

“Seven years without a heart,” the horse confided. Dolores was shocked.

Dolores dreamed she was watching a horse race. She followed the winning horse to the stable, keen to know the key to his success. She was surprised to find the horse weeping. He looked deeply into her eyes and told her the key to success was deep pain. He turned and revealed an ancient festering wound in his flank, and a hole where his heart had been ripped from his body long ago. “Seven years without a heart,” the horse confided. Dolores was shocked.

On waking, Dolores couldn’t shake the image of the horse and the ripped heartless hole. It stayed with her all day, distracting her from work. Slowly the pieces began to fall into place. She had been in this job for seven years since a painful marriage break-up. She loved the job. It kept her busy, far too busy to notice the pain. In fact, now she thought more about it, her successes were due to the pain. The more the pain threatened to surface, the harder she worked and the more successful she became. Why hadn’t she been able to see this before? She was mystified. It was so clear.

“Heartless,” a voice whispered from the periphery of her mind. “You’ve become heartless. You’re cold. You’ve left us behind. You don’t care,” the voice continued.

And Dolores wept, for these had been the words of her friends. The dream and Dolores’ friends both delivered the same message, but only the dream message got through.

And Dolores wept, for these had been the words of her friends. They had tried to tell her, but she couldn’t relate to what they were saying. She had thought they were rude and unsupportive, perhaps even envious of her success. She had flicked them off: the words and the friends.

Dolores’ dream had shocked her into touch with her pain, with the festering anger over the way her heart had been ripped and hurt. Her dream delivered the strong message that she could not survive much longer under these conditions. It was time to stop shutting out the pain, to end her heartless pursuit of success, to recognise the heat of her anger and heal it rather than freeze it out.

The dream and Dolores’ friends both delivered the same message, but only the dream message got through. Why?

Dolores’ friends had told her straight. Too straight. The truth was too close to home, too painful, and so her defences kicked in. She found the light too blinding. She denied any truth in it because she couldn’t see it, couldn’t feel it. Her dream was subtle, drawing her to feel the pain of the horse since she was blind to the pain within herself. Once the connection was made, Dolores was able to see the light.

People often ask, “Why aren’t our dreams literal? If the message we need to hear is so important, why don’t our dreams spell it out in a language we can understand?” The answer?

Dreams can help us to see, in shades of nightlight, what is too painful for us to see or acknowledge in blinding daylight.

Like your shadow when you stand with your back to the sun, your dreams may be outrageously distorted but their special effect is to draw your attention to yourself. It is only when you look into the darkness of your dreams that you are freed to study the mysteries of your changing self.

* [Copyright Jane Teresa Anderson, July 2005. First published as a Dream Sight article.]

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Cheating dreams

Posted on November 10, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 2 Comments

“I dreamed my partner was cheating on me. It felt so real. Should I confront him? Please help.”

Every week I receive at least one email asking this question. So, what’s the answer? Is the dream picking up on the partner’s actual cheating behaviour or unfulfilled desires? Is it about the dreamer’s fear of being cheated, perhaps based on past experiences of betrayal? Or does this dream have an entirely different meaning?

The danger of this kind of dream is that it gnaws away at you, especially if it is a recurring dream, and especially if it’s realistic. If your partner is bedding a famous film actor, for example, you won’t spend a moment worrying about whether the dream was true, but if his dream lover was someone you know, or one of his work colleagues, your suspicions might be aroused. You might wonder whether he’s having an affair, would like to have an affair, or is more attracted to the friend or work colleague than to you. You might start to question your partner about his or her time away from you, or you might withdraw emotionally or physically, creating relationship difficulties where none existed before. All based on a dream that felt real.

There are dangers in taking a dream literally, even when the dream feels so real.

Cheating dreams are not what they seem. Further in this post I will give some guidelines on what they mean, but to help you understand this, have a think about this first:

Dreams that feel real can get you into trouble. People spend years fruitlessly searching for a soul mate they met in a dream that felt real. They look for someone with the same physical characteristics as the dream mate, or with the same name, or in the same location. Unless chance steps their way, they fail because the dream is about finding the other half of your own soul (or vitality) when it has been lost. When you have found the lost part of your own soul, you are more likely to attract your true soul mate, but the journey must start within.

Another common dream that feels so real is the one experienced by many new parents.

Another common dream that feels so real is the one experienced by many new parents. The dream shows their child dying, usually either by drowning or car accident. The emotional intensity is so heightened that the terrified parent can become stressed and overprotective, believing the dream is a preview of the child’s death. But this dream is so common that if it really was predictive the human race would have died out long ago. The meaning of this dream varies from parent to parent, but it’s generally about the many changes that parenting brings into your life. (You can read more about the symbolism of death dreams here.)

The soul mate dream and the child death dream are both examples of dreams that feel so real the dreamers take them literally. They search for their soul mate because they’ve met him in a dream, and they do everything they can to prevent the death they feel they have previewed. Are you beginning to see the connection to cheating dreams?

I recently heard about a woman who had horrific dreams during her first pregnancy. The early dreams were about neglecting babies. In some dreams she forgot to feed them, in others she forgot to change their nappies. She mentioned them briefly to her partner, but in a light-hearted manner, testing his response, laughing them off. She didn’t tell him the dreams were worrying her or that she had decided the dreams meant she would be a bad mother. The more she worried about being a bad mother, the worse the dreams became. They escalated in neglect, abuse and violence. In one of the last dreams before her baby was born, she dreamed she placed the baby on the road and drove a truck over him.

Sadly, because her early dreams felt so real, she suffered misgivings about her ability to be a good mother.

She didn’t take the dreams literally. She knew she would never place her baby in front of a truck. But she did take the symbol of the baby literally. She saw her dreams as being about her future relationship with her baby.

What she didn’t know was that her dreams are very common. Mothers, fathers, teenagers, people who have decided never to have children, and people who have missed the opportunity to have a child may ALL experience this kind of dream. It’s not a dream about bad mothering instincts. It’s not a dream about real babies. It’s a dream about neglecting your own needs. It’s a bit like the soul mate dream. It’s about looking after yourself so that you can be healthy and well, for example to look after your baby.

As it turned out, this woman suffered antenatal depression. She only realised this in the later stages of her pregnancy. Her dream baby was the part of herself that needed caring for, that needed help and treatment. Sadly, because her early dreams felt so real, she suffered misgivings about her ability to be a good mother on top of her depression. She may or may not also have had real fears or beliefs about becoming a bad mother, but that was not what her dream was about.

By now you can see that there are dangers in taking a dream literally, even when the dream feels so real. The same applies to cheating dreams.

Beware ever taking a dream literally. To do so can be dangerous to yourself and others, as well as missing out on the helpful insight your dream can give you. There are occasions where some dreams turn out to be predictive, but these are rare, and by focussing on this angle you stand to lose all the personal insight each and every dream offers.

Dreams are about you.

Dreams are about you. The soul mate, child, baby, or cheating partner is a symbol for what’s going on within you.

Dreams about cheating are about what’s going on within you. Cheating is a betrayal of trust, a promise broken. Cheating is lying. When you have these dreams, ask yourself where you might be cheating yourself. Here are some examples:

1. You may be lying to yourself about something. There may be something in your life you don’t really want to admit. You deny it to others and you may deny it to yourself too. In other words, you may be ‘in denial’ over something. Explore your feelings more honestly.

2. You may be betraying something you once promised. Your promise might have been ‘I won’t eat any more chocolate,’ or ‘I will become a surgeon,’ or ‘Fromthis moment on, I’ll only think positive thoughts,’ or ‘I will live by the laws of my religion,’ or ‘I will always please my mother’. Your cheating dream may come up because you have broken your promise by eating a chocolate, thinking negative thoughts, or not doing something for the sake of pleasing your mother, for example. Your dreaming mind takes betraying promises very seriously, even when it may be healthier for you to release yourself from the hold of promises no longer appropriate to your wellbeing.

Your dreaming mind takes betraying promises very seriously, even when it may be healthier for you to release yourself from the hold of promises no longer appropriate to your wellbeing.

3. You may be cheating yourself out of giving life your best shot. You might be holding back from expressing your talents in the world, betraying your ideals, or settling for second best.

4. You may be going through some changes, exchanging old beliefs and old ways of looking at the world for new ones. At such times, halfway between the old and the new, your conflicted mind may feel like it’s betraying the old way, turning its back on things you’ve trusted up until now. Your cheating dreams may reflect this kind of transition.

So, don’t confront your partner when you next have a cheating dream. Confront yourself. Dreams help you to understand yourself more clearly, and, once you can do that, you can make decisions that are right for you.

[Copyright Jane Teresa Anderson, June 2007. First published as a Dream Sight article.]

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Spot the belief

Posted on August 19, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 2 Comments

Had a tough day? Ready for a spot of light relief, a bit of fun, a dream interpretation game that’s easy to do yet powerfully insightful? You may never look at your dreams in the same way ever again. It’s called Spot the Belief. This is what to do:

For each of the following dreams, see if you can spot the belief affecting the outcome. Let’s start with a simple example.

Jim’s dream

“I was waiting in line to buy a theatre ticket, but people kept pushing in front of me. Finally I got to the front, but then the ticket office closed and I was directed to join a long queue at another counter.”

Jim’s dream: “Finally I got to the front, but then the ticket office closed.”

Can you spot Jim’s belief?

It’s probably ‘My needs are less important than other people’s’.

Did you guess differently?

You might have got ‘I always seem to be kept waiting,’ or ‘Just when I think I’ve made it, I’m right back to where I started, or worse’. Or you might have got, ‘Patience doesn’t pay,’ or ‘You’ve got to be pushy to get what you want in life’.

These are all good answers. They’re also very similar. We’ll come back to look at these similarities later, but, for now, you know how to play the game. Don’t worry about getting the right answer, as there may be several similar right answers. Just write down the belief that you see in each of the following dreams. So, are you ready? Go, spot the belief!

Greta’s dream

“I was climbing a hill and decided I wanted to go back down again, but there were too many rocks and precipices below where I was standing. I thought that if I walked along one of the precipices I would eventually find an easy way down. The trouble was, even the precipice path led upwards, so in my endeavour to find an easy way back down I just kept climbing higher and higher. I ended up feeling stranded with no way back down.”

Greta’s dream: “I ended up feeling stranded with no way back down.”

Can you spot Greta’s belief? Write it down. (I’ll give you my answer later.)

Nelson’s dream

“I am standing waist deep in water when I notice a shark coming towards me. I am so terrified, I freeze. I close my eyes and hope it will go away. All is quiet for a while and I think the shark has gone, but when I open my eyes I see several more sharks lurking in the water.”

Can you spot Nelson’s belief? Write it down.

Bronwyn’s dream

“I am standing waist deep in water when I notice a shark coming towards me. I am terrified but I try to make friends with the shark to stop it from biting me. I look it in the eye and begin to talk and, amazingly, as I do this it changes from a shark into a huge playful fish. We end up playing swimming games. I am aware it is strong and powerful, but it doesn’t frighten me any more.”

Bronwyn’s dream: “Amazingly, as I do this it changes from a shark into a huge playful fish.”

Can you spot Bronwyn’s belief? Write it down.

Karen’s dream

“I keep having dreams involving babies aged about one year old. The dreams are different, but it always turns out that the babies fail to thrive after their first birthday. They become weak, or sick, or I lose sight of them.”

Can you spot Karen’s belief? Write it down.

Your dream

Yes, that’s you! Choose a recurring dream or a short one that’s easy to summarise. First write your dream out in a few sentences to match the length and style of the ones in this article. Then, to get some objective distance, pretend it’s not your dream.

Can you spot the belief? Write it down.

Now, keep an open mind, please, as you read on!

Dreams reveal your unconscious beliefs. They’re not so much about the beliefs you know about, they’re about the beliefs you have carried with you, deep in your unconscious mind, for a long time. How long? Usually from childhood or from traumatic events in your life. They’re the beliefs you take on because they seem to make sense at the time.

If you believe there’s a pile of gold buried under the tree, you’ll dig it up.

The trouble with beliefs is that you act on them. If you believe there’s a pile of gold buried under the tree, you’ll dig it up. If you believe you’re not worthy of being well paid for your skills, you will apply for lower paid jobs or set your fees low. This is as true for the beliefs you don’t know about as for those you do know about. In fact, it’s worse for those you don’t know about because your actions are automatic, with no chance of being vetoed by your wiser judgement.

Most dreams reveal your unconscious beliefs. You can identify them using this Spot the Belief method. At first you may reject them. ‘No, that’s not my belief! Quite the opposite!’ But stop and ask yourself, ‘What kind of actions would a person with this belief take?’ If the belief you’ve spotted is right, you’ll recognise those actions as ones you have taken. I promise you, when you strike gold in identifying that belief, your eyes will be opened and, once you’ve recovered from the shock, certain aspects of your life will suddenly make a lot more sense.

Let’s see how this works for Greta, Nelson and the other dreamers.

These are the beliefs I spotted for each dreamer:

Greta
‘Backing down is not an option.’

Greta’s belief: Backing down is not an option.

Nelson
‘Ignoring my fears and hoping for the best works for a while and then things go from bad to worse.’

Bronwyn
‘When I face my fears I overcome them.’

Karen
‘Things go well for about a year, and then they stop thriving.’

I bet your results were similar. For example, for Greta you might have had ‘The only way is up, no matter how this makes me feel’. Or ‘There’s no easy way out’.

Usually, when you look at the whole dream instead of just a summary of it, you will see plenty of clues to help zone in accurately on the dreamer’s deepest belief. However you really do need to start by working with a summary of the dream, as illustrated here, to get an idea of the belief, and then move on to examine the longer version of the dream to increase accuracy. The final step comes when the dreamer gets the big ‘aha’ and can see how the belief has been driving their decisions and actions, delivering the results they are experiencing in their life.

Unconscious beliefs lead to blindly driven actions, and blindly driven actions lead to outcomes that may not match the goals you consciously set yourself.

So there you have it. Beliefs lead to actions, and actions lead to outcomes. Unconscious beliefs lead to blindly driven actions, and blindly driven actions lead to outcomes that may not match the goals you consciously set yourself.

I can hear your question! ‘If an unconscious belief is not creating the results you want, how can you change it?’

That’s where dream alchemy and, in particular, the use of dream alchemy practices come in. You can read more about this, and how to create suitable dream alchemy practices to change unconscious beliefs in my book Dream Alchemy.

Not all unconscious beliefs work against you. Bronwyn’s dream revealed a magical unconscious belief. Such a dream may come along as a prelude to a challenging time, a gentle reminder that all will be well. Remember, though, that night by night your dreaming mind updates its grasp on ‘what life is all about and how to survive it’. We all change, and, from time to time, a dream will reveal the death of an old belief or the birth of a new one. When Nelson applies a dream alchemy practice to change his beliefs about the best way to cope with fear he may dream a dream such as Bronwyn’s.

Now you know a little about the unconscious beliefs driving Jim, Greta, Nelson, Bronwyn and Karen, how do you imagine their lives to be? What kind of actions do you think they have been taking in their lives? What beliefs would better suit them?

Karen’s belief: Things go well for about a year, and then they stop thriving.

Take Karen, for example. Karen had a dream job very early in her working life. Sadly it came to an abrupt end after a year when her employer absconded with the company funds. It was a traumatic time for Karen. She had put so much of her energy and hope into the job which she saw as a beginning to a perfect career. At that point, Karen took on the unconscious belief that ‘Things go well for about a year, and then they stop thriving’. In the years that followed, whenever a job, relationship or project that Karen was involved in neared the one year mark she began to make decisions and take actions based on the expectation that the job, relationship or project would fail. And so they did. And, until she understood her recurring dream, Karen was totally unaware of any of this.

How did you go with spotting the belief for your dream? Has this belief driven your decisions and actions? What kind of outcomes resulted in your life? Are you happy with these, or are you ready to apply some dream alchemy and start to see the kind of outcomes you would prefer? It’s your life!

[Copyright Jane Teresa Anderson, March 2007. First published as a Dream Sight article.]

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Otherwise, other wise

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

Bath time, when my children were very small, was great fun until the moment came to lift them from the water. They never wanted to get out. Eventually I found the happy solution.

“Who’s going to take the plug out, you or me?” I’d ask.

“Me! Me! I want to!” would come the unerring reply.

Once the water was gone, they were happy to leap out and move on to the next game. It worked until they were old enough to realise that I was giving them severely limited options and that it was me who was really pulling the plug on their fun.

A man once told me about a dream in which he was in a rowing boat on a calm lake when five tornadoes appeared. The tornadoes struck the water and spun it into gurgling holes, as if five enormous bath plugs had been pulled from the sand beneath the lake. He felt the dream was warning him that his money, invested in various projects, was going ‘down the gurgler’.

Our warning dreams motivate us to take action. But what kind of action should we take?

He felt the dream was warning him that his money, invested in various projects, was going ‘down the gurgler’.

Are our dream warnings accurate, or do they reflect our fears and beliefs? Was this man’s money inevitably going down the gurgler or was he projecting (and creating) this outcome based on his unconscious beliefs and experiences – his conditioning? Had the plug already been pulled or did he have more expansive options?

And, in any case, was this man’s dream about his financial affairs or did it reflect other valuable information he could apply to ensure calm waters in his life?

My children expected only one outcome: that the plug would be removed in the next minute and the water would go down the plughole. So the outcome always manifested. If they had been older they might have suggested we run more hot water, stay in the bath longer, get take-away instead of cooking dinner and still get to bed on time. They would have learned the lesson that other wise options always exist. Or they might have stayed in the bath until the water went cold and learned a different but equally wise lesson from their experience.

My children expected only one outcome: that the plug would be removed in the next minute and the water would go down the plughole.

Alternatives. Wider choices. Whichever way, we gain wisdom from our choices if we are open enough to learn the lessons they offer. Sometimes the wisdom is learned under happy circumstances (the hot water and take-away choice) and sometimes less happy circumstances (the cold water choice).

“Take the plug out? Otherwise what?” my children might have asked, had they been older back in the bath plug days. “Otherwise you will become other wise”, I may have replied.

To grow, to gain wisdom, we often need change. We need to challenge ourselves to explore the wider options of the otherwise.

If life wisdom is the path, there can be no wrong choices. Just different choices and different routes. But if we hold a vision, a goal, how can we find the best route, the one that delivers both the desired reward and wisdom?

Well, naturally our dreams provide the answers but how can we recognise them?

Our dreams are symbolic snapshots in time: picturing your current mindset.

Our dreams are symbolic snapshots in time. They show us ourselves – our conscious and unconscious beliefs, experiences, memories and feelings relating to life at the time of the dream. Specifically they show us (once interpreted) how our unconscious beliefs are affecting our waking life and where those beliefs originated.

It is our beliefs – especially our unconscious ones – that shape our future. Above all, our fears shape our future by limiting our choices. We tend not to take the path that requires us to face our fears. Pulling the plug seems an easier option.

Our dreams are blueprints of the future, projecting outcomes based on our past responses to life.

Looked at in this way, our dreams are blueprints of the future, projecting outcomes based on our past responses to life. In this way too, dreams can be said to be prophetic.

If the man’s tornado dream was indeed about his financial affairs then it may have been reflecting his fears and beliefs that his money would go down the gurgler, and such fears possibly may have created that result.

What was his dream advising him to do?

He may have saved money by withdrawing his investments if he was in danger of creating doom.

Otherwise he could use the dream to identify the negative fears and beliefs and change them, using dream alchemy practices. By changing the blueprint his projected future changes and the situation is defused.

Change the blueprint to change the future.

To change the outcome, change the belief.

To change the outer world, change the inner one.

Beware the warning dream otherwise you may miss the real gold.

(The deeper meaning of the dream: The five tornadoes represented five major changes – the winds of change – in this man’s life that, each time, had ‘torn’ his calm world apart. Water often represents the emotions. These changes had stirred his deepest emotions, even though all appeared calm on the surface. His dream reflected his belief, based on these experiences, that whenever things were calm, a huge change would sweep in and shake him to the core. This belief extended to his financial affairs, ensuring regular calamity. His dream required him to look back at those changes to reap the wisdom of the otherwise and to transform his beliefs in destructive change into constructive change.)

[Copyright Jane Teresa Anderson, August 2003. First published as a Dream Sight article.]

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Cow pat patter

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

Get a pen and a piece of paper, as you’re going to have some fun with this one while learning something about yourself and about dream interpretation. You’re going to chat with a cow-pat, a humble chunk of bovine dung – and no, you’re not dreaming this, and yes, it will make perfect sense if you play along.

Earlier this week, I was interpreting callers’ dreams on a radio show when a man phoned in with a dream about cow-pats.

“I dreamed I was driving alongside a fence on my farm and all the cow-pats in the ruts had changed into snow. What does it mean?”

“How did you feel about the snow?” I asked.

I’m going to leave his reply until later in this post, because this is the point where I want you to pick up your pen and paper and play along with me.

Imagine now that you are a snow-pat chatting to a cow-pat. This exercise works best if you do it fast, without really thinking. Just let your pen do the writing and keep your head out of it!

Arrange the dialogue on your paper like this, starting with the opening line I have given:

Cow-pat: Hello, snow-pat, how are you?

Snow-pat:

Cow-pat:

(Continue like this)

Let snow-pat reply – a simple, short sentence is good – and then let your pen move on to let cow-pat say something and continue in this way until you feel pleased with the outcome.

It’s best to do this without referring to an example, because I don’t want to influence you, but if you are having difficulty, have a look at this:

Cow-pat: Hello, snow-pat, how are you?

Snow-pat: Cold.

Cow-pat: You wouldn’t be snow if you weren’t cold, would you?

Snow-pat: I have to stay cold, even though I don’t like it, or I’ll thaw and disappear.

Cow-pat: You wouldn’t disappear – you’d become water and help plants grow.

Snow-pat: That’s your job, helping plants grow.

Cow-pat: How?

Snow-pat: You decompose and fertilise plants.

Cow-pat: Really? And I thought I was just a pile of smelly stuff people hate getting on their shoes.

Snow-pat: I guess you change for the better!

Cow-pat: Why don’t you then – change for the better, I mean?

Snow-pat: You mean thaw?

Cow-pat: Yes, move on, unfreeze your emotions and let them flow to help things grow.

(In this example, you might stop the dialogue here because you feel pleased with the outcome. You’ve received an insight about the importance of change or about letting your emotions flow to help you grow.)

If you’ve read this far without doing your own dialogue, stop and do it now. This way you’ll get maximum benefit from this article.

What can you learn from a cow-pat, a humble chunk of bovine dung?

Okay, what did you learn from doing this? Even though this wasn’t your dream, the symbols (cow-pat and snow-pat) are deeply evocative, and it’s very likely that your unconscious mind has responded to these symbols in a creative and insightful way. Just imagine how much more powerful this exercise would be if you did this with symbols from one of your recent dreams!

One of the reasons I love talking to people about their dreams on radio is that we can all learn from each others’ dreams. Yes, it’s a way of sharing dream interpretation tips and techniques, and yes, it’s a way of discovering something about yourself when someone calls in with a dream similar to one you have had, but it’s also about gaining insight we can apply to our own lives. One person’s dream may be about facing fears, and we all contemplate new ways we might face our own fears and why we might benefit from this. Or another caller’s dream may be about the rewards that can come when you look at a problem in a different way, and we all might then contemplate the rewards awaiting us if we look at our problems in a different way. Every dream – whether our own or someone else’s – provides a ‘bottom line’ meditation on life and how we approach it.

Before returning to the caller, the dreamer of the cow-pat dream, to discover the meaning of his dream, here are some more examples of cow-pat/snow-pat dialogue. Do any of these resonate with yours?

EXAMPLE 2

Cow-pat: Hello, snow-pat, how are you?

Snow-pat: Pure as the driven snow – untouched, virginal.

Cow-pat: Just came down in the last shower then?

Snow-pat: Are you saying I’m naïve, wet behind the ears?

Cow-pat: Didn’t need to – you just said it yourself.

Snow-pat: I’d rather be naïve and fresh and new than old, dried and decomposing like you.

Cow-pat: Ah, but I have lived, I have experience …

EXAMPLE 3

Cow-pat: Hello, snow-pat, how are you?

Snow-pat: Like winter, icy wet. How are you?

Cow-pat: Like summer, baked dry.

Snow-pat: You could warm and dry me, I could cool and hydrate you – want to work together to create a better balance?

EXAMPLE 4

Cow-pat: Hello, snow-pat, how are you?

Snow-pat: Excited – waiting for children to discover me and play!

Cow-pat: No-one plays with me! No-one comes anywhere near me.

Snow-pat: Not even naughty children?

Cow-pat: Ah, I have been flung with malice from time to time.

Snow-pat: I’m glad you changed into a snow-pat in our dream – it’s better to make people happy than to make them cry.

When you do dialogues like these using symbols from your dreams, they help you to identify your personal dream symbols. If this had been your dream, you might have discovered that a cow-pat was your personal symbol for malice, and snow was your personal symbol for happiness.

But it doesn’t stop there. A dialogue usually moves beyond identifying bizarre dream symbols towards insight and transformation. The insight you get from doing this helps solve and transform the issue your dream was reflecting. Now you can see why dialogues are powerful dream alchemy practices. (Other dream alchemy practices include visualisations, affirmations, art work and more. Read more about dream alchemy practices, what they are and how they work.)

So, let’s now get back to the man who phoned into the radio station with his cow-pat dream.

“I dreamed I was driving alongside a fence on my farm and all the cow-pats in the ruts had changed into snow. What does it mean?”

“How did you feel about the snow?” I asked.

(This is really the same question used in the dialogue, where cow-pat says, Hello snow-pat, how are you?)

“The snow was so beautiful. I noticed its beauty,” he replied.

His dream shows he is beginning to see beauty in the everyday mundane, since, as a farmer, he sees cow-pats every day. There are extra clues in his dream.

The cow-pats were in the ruts, and we talk about being ‘in a rut’ when we feel stuck, perhaps in the every day mundane, failing to see the beauty of each day. There’s also a clue in the fence, since a fence is built along a boundary, to keep things in or to keep things out. A fence marks a limit of territory, keeping things ‘safe’ perhaps on the inside, limiting stepping into ‘unsafe’ territory beyond. The dream suggests the farmer is about to overcome a limitation, reach into unfamiliar territory, and the key to this is in seeing beauty in the mundane. It’s about shifting his perspective, transforming the way he sees life, in the same way that his dream cow-pats were transformed into beautiful snow.

Now, YOUR insight into what cow-pats and snow-pats mean to you might be quite different from the insight to be gained by the farmer from his dream, but isn’t it wonderful to learn something from someone else’s dream? There may be a situation in your life – today or in the future – where you can apply this insight and see the beauty in the mundane. No doubt, when you do, you will recall the dream about the cow-pats and the snow-pats.

So share your dreams with those who care to listen, whether with one or two people you know or anonymously with many thousands on the radio, as this farmer did. Aren’t you glad he called?

[Copyright Jane Teresa Anderson, July 2008. First published as a Dream Sight article.]

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Navigating changing times

Posted on March 29, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

If the GFC has impacted on your life, what kind of dreams might you be having, and how can understanding these be helpful to you?

“Global tidal wave of 70,000 job cuts,” announced the online news. “The tsunami of layoffs started in Europe …”

Instantly I got the picture. It’s a metaphor that works. It describes a giant ripple effect of job loss caused by a seismic tremor in the global economy.

It also describes the emotional impact felt or feared by many. Whether you’ve lost your job, know someone who has, fear losing yours, or fear the consequences of widespread job loss and economic challenge, the word tsunami pretty much sums up the feeling of being emotionally overwhelmed, knocked off your feet and potentially dead to the world.

If you’ve ever had a tsunami dream you’ll know the emotional impact these walls of water can produce. After all, in a dream, you think the tsunami is real, don’t you?

Dreams, like some journalists, frequently express themselves in metaphors.

Dreams, like some journalists, frequently express themselves in metaphors. They may be clichéd, they may lose subtlety, they may be oversimplified, but they can help you to get a quick picture of a complex situation. That picture may be accurate or way off the mark, but it’s a picture, a starting point, one of perhaps many possible perspectives on a situation.

If the global economic situation has impacted on your life – in hard financial terms or worries about the future – what kind of dreams might you be having, and how can understanding these be helpful to you? I’ll outline these. But what if you’re having sleepless nights and lost dream recall? How can you too gain personal insight to help you navigate the tidal waves of changing times?

The classic tsunami dream, common to many dreamers worldwide, paints a picture of the dreamer’s feelings of being overwhelmed, emotionally and, sometimes, on other levels too. The overwhelm is often still unconscious at the time of the dream, as the dreamer still struggles, in waking life, to hold emotions at bay and stay in control. Of course, there are many variations of this dream theme, and the interpretation depends on the dream details, but ‘overwhelm’ is the key emotion the dreamer is processing.

How can we shift perspective and see something positively empowering in a tsunami of global job loss?

The question to ask – when interpreting a tsunami dream or a tsunami of global job loss – is how to lessen its impact by processing the overwhelm in a different way, or, better still, how to shift perspective and transform the sense of overwhelm or helplessness into something positively empowering.

Not convinced? If a waterfall can be harnessed to produce electricity, a tsunami can be harnessed to, what? Not a lot, at short notice, practically speaking, but metaphorically speaking a tsunami can move mountains. And, in today’s world, many mountains (huge obstacles) could do with shifting!

People say metaphors can be misleading, and, of course, they can. But even when they’re misleading, practically speaking, they can help us to break through conditioned ways of looking at the world. How can we shift perspective and see something positively empowering in a tsunami of global job loss? It’s a challenge, at personal and global levels. Which obstacles to positive global change need shifting or transforming? Which obstacles to personal change need shifting or transforming?

The Compass helps you to see your life, issues and situations from different perspectives, and enables you to see your way forward to your best future.

If your anxiety is preventing you from being sufficiently relaxed to recall your dreams, you can work with the kinds of metaphors that dreams – and journalists – use, to help shift your perspective, gain insight and see your way forward. (My book, The Compass, has been created for exactly this purpose. It helps you to see your life, issues and situations from different perspectives, and enables you to see your way forward to your best future.)

Whether or not you recall your dreams, you are dreaming! Around five dreams every night. So what kind of dreams might you be experiencing if your life has been touched by the global economic tsunami of job loss or fear?

Your dreams will probably include one or more of the following:

Dreams of water, such as overwhelming tsunamis, drowning, being sucked under water or mud, inundated or washed away – water tends to represent your emotions, so these dreams reflect your deep and often unconscious emotional responses to your situation or fear.

Dreams of death and birth, but most probably focussed, at first, on death – death tends to represent what is ending (dying off) in your life. Losing a job might be pictured, in a dream metaphor, as a death. All changes, actual or feared, might be seen as deaths in your dreams. Some of those deaths might be unnecessary, as some things might be able to be salvaged with the help of dream interpretation as this reveals how your unconscious beliefs are affecting your responses to your situation or fear. Other dream deaths might be necessary – how else can we move on to new perspectives (and new jobs or new ways of earning money) if we don’t first let go of the old? Dreams of birth are metaphors for how you are progressing with new approaches in your life.

Dreams of loss and not being able to find your way are metaphors for what you feel or fear you are losing (job, security, status) and feelings or fears about your direction.

Look into your dreams for metaphors that seem to match your current situation, then question those metaphors until your current perspective shifts and you begin to see a new way forward.

Dreams of animals may occur during these times, since animals provide apt metaphors for your survival instincts in times of change. Remember that some instincts, established in childhood, may not be appropriate for handling your adult world. These dreams reflect your survival instincts by comparing them to the instincts of various animals.

Finally, look out for dreams that reference your childhood – perhaps the house you lived in as a child, your school, your parents – or that reference past jobs and relationships. These may be referring to your unconscious beliefs about security or finances, triggered by your current situations. Interpreting these provides invaluable insight into how your unconscious beliefs are affecting your responses to your current situation, and provides you with the opportunity to change these.

In each case, look into your dreams for metaphors that seem, to you, to match your current situation, then question those metaphors until your current perspective shifts and you begin to see a new way forward.

[Copyright Jane Teresa Anderson, February 2009. First published as a Dream Sight article.]

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Dream interpretation: Theme alchemy

Posted on February 16, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 1 Comment

No, it’s not a drunken, lisped take on ‘dream alchemy’. It’s a way of reading across your dreams, instead of considering each dream individually. It helps you to find light when you need it most.

Here’s an example from my life. It’s the story of three waves.

Once upon a time, I had three dreams about tsunamis. Each dream was on a different night, spaced over one week, and each dream was different from the last.

As a child, I often had the classic tsunami dream – a very common dream theme for many people. Generally, this dream theme involves running away, or trying to run away, from a tsunami or huge tidal wave.

You can glimpse the meaning of a dream by summarising it in one sentence, starting with the words ‘I feel’ and including the word ‘something’. Most people who have the classic tsunami dream come up with something like this:

“I feel threatened by something huge and overwhelming that I cannot escape.”

This one sentence summary usually applies to your waking life in the day or two leading up to the dream. Like most tsunami dreamers, my childhood dream came up whenever I felt overwhelmed by issues I didn’t know how to address. Turn away and run seems the only option, but, as dream after dream goes to show, tsunamis and unaddressed issues catch up with you in the end.

My adult tsunami dream trilogy went like this:

Tsunami dream number 1

In the first dream of the series, I knew a tsunami was coming. I was on a beach and had a foreboding feeling. I warned everyone of the distant tsunami, hoping advance warning would save them. It felt good to give the warning in plenty of time.

My dream summary was “I feel thankful I have advance warning of something overwhelming coming my way.”

I could relate this to my waking life. I could feel the threat of an emotionally charged issue gathering force on the horizon. I knew from experience that you can’t escape an issue by running from it, but that you can diffuse it, and escape damage, by working out a solution to the issue. Thankful for this, I applied myself to possible solutions.

Tsunami dream number 2

The second tsunami dream came a few days later. The dream started in the same way, but then, as people listened to my warning, I saw the tsunami on the horizon start to recede. It was still big, and it would still roll on in up the beach and beyond, but the potential damage was much reduced.

My dream summary was “I feel relieved that something that felt overwhelming now seems a little less threatening.”

I could relate this to my waking life since I had spent the previous few days looking at possible solutions to this issue. This had made me feel more empowered, more capable of defusing the issue, though I wasn’t quite there yet. The dream gave me hope that I was on track.

Tsunami dream number 3

A few days later, I had the third tsunami dream. In the dream, I was sitting by a river when a whale swam by, trailing a large V-shaped ripple in its wake. I watched the ripple gathering momentum as it spread from the point where the whale’s fin broke the surface of the water. I looked closer at the fin, noticing, in the dream, that it looked like a shark’s fin but knowing, absolutely, that this was a whale. Caught in the moment I almost forgot to jump up as the ripple hit the river bank, spilled over the edge, and splashed over my legs before subsiding. I danced about at the river’s edge, like a child playing in the waves, happy, laughing loudly enough to wake myself up from my dream.

My dream summary was “I feel happy that something that appeared to be ominous was really something beautiful.”

I could relate this to my waking life as I had looked for the positive in the negative – looked for a win-win solution to the issue – and, in so doing, transformed the shark into a whale, the negative view into a positive one, the overwhelming deluge into a ripple of joy. (Did you spot the dream pun – the ripple in the ‘wake’? I was ‘awakened’ to see a ripple in place of a tsunami, a whale in place of a shark. Perhaps there was even a V for victory in that V-shaped ripple. And doesn’t laughter come in ripples?)

I danced about at the river’s edge, like a child playing in the waves, happy, laughing loudly enough to wake myself up from my dream.

But where is the Theme Alchemy in all of this? Haven’t I just done the usual thing and interpreted three individual dreams? Didn’t I promise, at the start of this article, to show you a way of reading across your dreams, instead of considering each dream individually?

To read across your dreams, select a number of dreams on the same theme. In this example, I chose three dreams on the tsunami theme. My dreams were close together, all taking place within one week, but you can choose dreams from any time period. If you have been keeping a record of all your dreams, you might like to select all your dreams on a certain theme from the past year. Or you might just like to stay vigilant for a run of dreams like mine.

The next step is to summarise each dream using the method I outlined in my example – the one sentence summary starting with “I feel” and including the word “something”.

Then place these one sentence summaries together to produce a continuous reading – a reading across your dreams. Here are mine, as an example:

“I feel thankful I have advance warning of something overwhelming coming my way. I feel relieved that something that felt overwhelming now seems a little less threatening. I feel happy that something that appeared to be ominous was really something beautiful.”

Reading across your dreams (dreams on a similar theme) shows you how you are progressing with an aspect of your life. In my example, I was progressing well, tuning into a negative, ominous feeling, taking heed of the warning, deciding to do something about it, and, finally, settling on the solution of looking for the positive in the negative. Once I found the positive, the negative disappeared.

You take a reading like this and apply it to other life situations. In my case, I learned to see the whale in every apparent shark, long after the situation that triggered this dream trilogy.

When I woke from my third dream, I did a dream alchemy practice. I took the good ending and amped it up. I visualised the whale, the ripple and the happy sensation of the ripple splashing over my legs. I repeated the visualisation over the next weeks until my unconscious mind firmly and automatically responded to every shark by looking for the whale.

Faced with a difficult situation you can ask, “Where is the whale in this?

You can also simply turn an insight like this into a contemplative question. Faced with a difficult situation you can ask, “Where is the whale in this?”

Sometimes, when you read across your dreams, you’ll see they keep going round in circles, rather than progressing. You can learn from such a dream reading that you are not progressing. Take action and, when you are awake, do this dream alchemy practice: visualise changing the ending of your dream. Eventually your dreaming mind will produce a dream reflecting your progress. Keep reading across your dreams on the same theme to monitor – and celebrate – your progress.

Theme Alchemy is applying dream alchemy practices, like visualisation, to a run of dreams on the same theme. It’s about reading across dreams on a similar theme to gauge your progress, and then applying alchemy practices to hasten that progress. It’s about finding a chink of light in a series of dark dreams, and then widening that chink until enough light comes pouring in to show you the way through. Once you’ve done this, you have a magic formula ready to apply if ever that old dream theme reappears. In my case, whenever I have even a trickle of a tsunami dream, I wake up and start looking for the whale in the shark, the positive in the negative.

If you keep a dream journal and you have one or more recurring dream themes, you might like to copy those dreams into separate journals – Theme Journals. You might have a Tsunami Journal, an Animal Journal, or a Plane Journal, for example. (Try our free dream diary database to easily sort your dreams into categories.) Practice the art of reading across the dreams in your Theme Journals, until you see the light.

[Copyright Jane Teresa Anderson, December 2007. First published as a Dream Sight article.]

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What if?

Posted on January 17, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

A man dreamed he was crawling over a mosaic floor, checking for missing tiles. The job seemed endless.

What if … he climbed the stairs and looked down on the mosaic floor instead of crawling over it? Would the missing tiles be easier to spot?

We’ll come back to Mosaic Man and his dream later, but to get the most from this article, first play some more What If with me.

A woman dreamed she was in a bar and no-one was serving her.

What if … she walked round to the other side of the counter and served herself?

A man dreamed he was drowning.

What if … he inflated his life jacket?
What if … he started to swim?
What if … he removed his heavy shoes?
What if … he let go?

A woman dreamed she was late for her plane.

What if … she phoned the airport and asked the plane to wait?
What if … she decided to miss the plane and choose another destination?
What if … she remembered she was the pilot, so she’d go in her own time?

A man dreamed he had more bags than he could carry.

What if … he put down some of the bags, and travelled lighter?
What if … he hired a truck to deliver the bags?
What if … he distributed the bags among the people he was travelling with?
What if … he looked inside the bags and re-evaluated the contents?
What if … he asked himself why he was carrying the bags in the first place?

Are you getting the hang of this? Before reading further, go back and add some more What ifs to all the above dreams. See how many What ifs you can think up.

A man dreamed he woke up to find himself in a prison cell.

What if … he started to dig an escape tunnel?
What if … he decided to spend his long years in jail writing his memoirs?
What if … he decided to write to people he had wronged to make amends?
What if … he discovered the door was unlocked, and left?
What if … he scolded himself for falling asleep on the job, finished cleaning the cell and went home?

A woman dreamed she came across a fork in the road.

What if … she took the left turning?
What if … she took the right turning?
What if … she left the road and went cross-country?
What if … she tossed a coin to decide on her next step?
What if … she followed the footprints in the snow?
What if … she picked up the fork?

Aha! Now, did you beat me to that last line? On the left hand I couldn’t resist the joke, and on the right hand I wanted to remind you that when we’re talking dreams, anything is possible. Dreams love puns, so to dream of finding a fork (cutlery) on the road may symbolise reaching a fork (decision point).

It never occurred to Thirsty Lady to serve herself.

More importantly, dreams reveal our personal perceptions and understandings of life, so when you ask What if questions about a dream make sure you question your perception of the dream situation as well as alternative outcomes.

The final What if for Prison Man, for example, questioned his perception of the dream situation. What if he wasn’t imprisoned at all, but had simply momentarily forgotten he was cleaning the cell, and was always free to go?

How can all of this help you to interpret your dreams and introduce positive changes into your life?

Most dreams are metaphors – stories that parallel your waking life situation. (When you sleep, your right brain is more active than your left [logical] brain, and it expresses itself in metaphors.) The trick is to find the situation in your waking life described by your dream metaphor.

Mosaic Man, for example, thought about his dream of endlessly crawling over a mosaic floor, checking for missing tiles. He could see the link with his work situation. He was a business owner and had recently lost several members of staff to a competing business. For months he had been preoccupied with these losses, trying to work out why they were leaving and who might leave next. He saw the mosaic floor as his staff network, the foundation of his business, and he saw the individual lost tiles as the lost staff. He could see from his dream that he was so focussed on the details of individual staff losses, that he was losing sight of the big picture. When he thought about What if he climbed the stairs and looked down on the mosaic floor instead of crawling over it, his whole perception shifted. He realised his business was suffering because he had lost touch with the big picture, with what his business was about, how it was seen, how he marketed it, how he communicated with the ‘whole’ network and much more. He saw what he needed to see to make the changes that encouraged staff to stay and the business to thrive.

We tell children fairy stories (metaphors) to help them understand life’s challenges.

We tell children fairy stories (metaphors) to help them understand life’s challenges. We tell parables and Zen stories to throw light on our lives. It’s sometimes easier and less confronting to help someone forward by sharing a metaphor than by discussing their situation more directly. We respond to the suggestions embedded in fairy stories, parables and other metaphors. Our unconscious minds particularly embrace this format – metaphors speak the language of the unconscious mind, the language of dreams.

If you’re the kind of person who tends to focus on small details and miss the big picture, it’s very likely that my little dream story about Mosaic Man has already filtered through to your unconscious mind. It will be there for you when you need it. And, neatly encompassed in the same dream metaphor is the reverse suggestion – that sometimes you may need to get closer to the small details, to get in touch with things you may overlook in the big picture.

So here’s the thing:

Most dreams are one-sided metaphors, highlighting our often one-sided perception of life. The woman who dreamed she wasn’t getting served at the bar was viewing her unconscious mind’s summary that her needs were not being served. She looked at her dream and could relate it to her waking life, but what to do next? She knew she wasn’t getting her needs met, but didn’t know what to do about it. By asking What if questions of the dream scenario, you help yourself to see your options.

It never occurred to Thirsty Lady to serve herself. She had an unconscious belief in waiting, and waiting, and waiting. Changing the metaphor (asking What if questions and imagining the results) changed her attitude by changing her perception. (This is another form of dream alchemy practice – the practice of transforming your unconscious perceptions and beliefs by changing the dream outcome.)

Drowning Man had always relied on people to save him. He let life happen to him, rather than making life happen according to his choices. By asking What if questions and imagining the outcomes, he realised he had choices. He saw his passive (let it happen to me) approach, and decided to be more active, to ‘start swimming’ towards his goals, and make it happen.

Where, in your life, can you remove your heavy shoes when you feel you are drowning?

I have given you some ready-made metaphors in this article, metaphors you can apply to various life situations. There might be somewhere in your life right now where you can remove your heavy shoes when you feel you are drowning, or choose a better destination when you are obviously intent on making yourself late for your ‘plane’, or re-evaluate the load you are carrying, or realise you’re only as imprisoned as you believe, or that what you imagined to be a fork in the road was a complete misunderstanding.

Next time you have a dream with an unsatisfactory ending, ask yourself MANY What if questions. Imagine the possible outcomes. Then look for the life situation that parallels your dream. Once you have matched your dream metaphor to a life situation, you can apply your What ifs to your life situation – and strike gold.

[Copyright Jane Teresa Anderson, February 2008. First published as a Dream Sight article.]

What if … starting today, you dream-weave a new vision of how you are in the world?

What if …

starting today, you dream-weave a new vision of how you are in the world?

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The right question

Posted on December 7, 2010 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

How can you escape being eaten by a hungry lion?

Are you looking to your dreams for answers to important questions? Do you go to bed hoping for a dream that will explain all and show you the best way forward? Are you looking for solutions to personal issues, guidance on career, or a bankable genius eureka to boost your fortune?

The dreaming mind offers all these possibilities, IF you’re looking at your dream from the right angle. And what is the right angle? It starts with the right question. The right question goes straight to the point and delivers the right answer, the best solution, the breakthrough.

Most dreams have a storyline, comprising four parts.

The first part of a dream is the opening. It’s the ‘Once upon a time …’ or ‘I was walking along …’. This is the part of the dream that sets the scene.

The second part of a dream is often a problem or question. It’s the ‘A hungry lion was chasing me …’ or ‘I couldn’t find my way …’ or ‘My car was missing ..’. Each of these can be seen as a problem or a question. For example, you might see the problem as the presence of a hungry lion, or you might see the question as, ‘How can I escape being eaten by the hungry lion?’

The third part of a dream is usually where your dreaming brain tries to work out a solution. In the lion example, you might try running faster, climbing higher, jumping into water or hiding. This part of a dream is usually the longest, as various approaches to solving the problem or finding an answer to the question are tried out.

How can I stop the hungry lion chasing me?

Many dreams end here, without a part four, in a never-ending search for a solution. These are unresolved dreams. You wake up from these with a sense of the unfinished, perhaps feeling frustrated as if you’ve been working hard all night going round in circles getting nowhere, the hungry lion still hot on your tail.

The fourth part of a dream – for those dreams that find a solution – is the resolution, the ending. Your dream may have a happy ending (you are rescued from the lion) or an unhappy ending (your rescuer is eaten by the lion, even though you are saved).

Before reading further, think of a couple of dreams you have had recently, and see if you can break them down into these three or four parts. See if you can identify the problem or question in each dream. Write the problem or question down.

How do I know the lion is hungry?

So far, so good. Thinking logically, all you need to do is identify the problem or question in part two of your dream and ask yourself how this relates to your waking life. For example, you might see the question, ‘How can I escape being eaten by the hungry lion?’ as being like ‘How can I escape the feeling that everyone wants more from me than I can give – that everyone wants a part of me?’ Once you’ve identified the waking life problem or question your dream is processing, you know that the rest of the dream is concerned with finding a solution to your problem, an answer to your question. Isn’t that wonderful!

Well, yes. It’s a wonderful beginning. Remember that dreams never tell you what to do. They tell you how things ARE. Your dreams are a result of your dreaming brain processing your experiences of the last 24-48 hours, so what you get from looking at a dream is an insight into how your brain processes your life. THIS is wonderful!

When you interpret a dream, you get to understand how you process your life experiences. You get to understand why your life is the way it is. If your lion dream features you running away, never finding an escape, then this is how you are processing your life – you are running away, never finding an escape from the feeling that everyone wants more from you than you can give. If your dream ends with your rescuer being killed, you get to understand that your brain sees a solution where you could ‘kill off’ your tendency to rescue people. Your dreaming brain has solved the problem of you wearing yourself out, eating yourself away with rescuing other people only to still feel pursued and drained. Whether or not you take this action when you wake up is your decision. Your dream does not tell you to do this, it simply indicates that your brain is looking at this as a possible solution and also reveals that this would bring up some unhappiness for you to deal with.

Most often your dreams travel old ground, trying the same old approaches because your brain (and your unconscious mind) is programmed this way by all your past experiences. The brain usually chooses the old way over the new. Occasionally, though, the brain will surprise you with a breakthrough – a new way of processing the same old stuff, a new creative solution, perhaps even that bankable eureka.

Your dream tells it like it is. It tells you about you and how you brain works today. You then make your decisions based on that message.

So, here’s the big thing

Why hasn’t the lion eaten before now?

Knowing that every dream reflects how your brain is processing your life, you must question the question your dream poses! The question in part two of your dream is just as much a result of the way your dream processes your life as the rest of the dream. You ‘see’ a problem in your life and your dreaming brain brings up this ‘problem’, exactly as you see it, because that’s its job. Its job is to process your life experiences of the last 24-48 hours, and one of your life experiences in that last 24-48 hours was the ‘problem’ exactly as you experienced – and decided to see – it.

Can you see the power of questioning your dream question? When you question your dream question you question how you normally question your life. You question why you see certain things as problems. You question why you see a problem one way instead, perhaps, of from a more insightful angle.

Here’s what to do

Take the question you have identified in your dream, and see how many other questions you can get out of it. Like this:

How can I escape being eaten by the hungry lion?
How can I stop the hungry lion chasing me?
Why am I running away from the hungry lion?
How do I know the lion is hungry?
Is the lion hungry?
Why is the lion hungry?
What’s a lion’s favourite food?
Why is the lion chasing me and not someone else?
Why hasn’t the lion eaten before now?
Have I got some other food I can give the lion?
Can I tell the lion where to get better food?
Can the lion do something for me in exchange for better food?

I’m sure you can add more to this list!

Simply doing this for the question in part two of your dream may be enlightening enough. It reveals many ways to look at a situation, reminding you that some angles or perspectives look more problematic than others. It may help you to see that you’re not asking the best question. Reframing your situation and asking a different question results in a different answer.

Consider the question, ‘Is the lion hungry?’ Maybe you’ve misread a situation as threatening and you’re spending all your energy trying to escape it, and all the while the situation is not at all threatening. Maybe that lion is running after you because he needs to tell you something helpful. Like you’re running towards a very hungry tiger!

Consider the question, ‘Why is the lion chasing me and not someone else?’ Thinking about this you might realise that you tend to set yourself up as an easy target, too willing to let others have a piece of you maybe.

Consider the question, ‘Why hasn’t the lion eaten before now?’ Contemplating this, you might be baffled. Lion are supposed to be strong, they get what they want – so this lion must have lost its strength, lost its ability to be king of the jungle. You might realise that you have been forgetting to feed and nurture your inner strength. You may see that you have starved your inner strength, and that’s why you feel too weak to stand up to other people’s demands on your time and energy.

Use your dream interpretation skills to understand your dream symbols (lion, hungry …) and see how they relate to your life. Look at your dream to understand how you are currently seeing and processing your life.

Then, before looking for an answer to your waking life problem in your dream, look for the question. When you’ve found the question, reframe it many ways.

Think about those reframed questions, and answer them. Along the way, you’ll discover the key question – the right question – that shifts your perspective and unlocks the best answer.

[Copyright Jane Teresa Anderson, October 2008. First published as a Dream Sight article.]

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