Tag: death | In your dreams …

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Posted on February 19, 2013 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

“What does the nightmare in A Nightmare on Elm Street mean?” asked Steve and Abbey, presenters of the PowerPack breakfast show where I interpret callers’ dreams.

I’m a movie lover, but horror is not my genre, and it took a few arm twists before I agreed to download it so I could answer the question.

“Don’t watch it alone,” Abbey warned, “I wouldn’t.”

So I watched it with my husband, Michael, and son, Euan, and right from the start we giggled with relief. Thirty-one years on, the movie was interestingly benign from a horror point of view. Maybe it was the acting style, maybe it’s the sophistication of today’s persuasive movie techniques, or maybe I’ve just listened to so many nightmares during my twenty-plus years as a dream analyst that it didn’t engage my horror buttons.

Our first exciting moment came when Euan said, Is that Johnny Depp?

Our first exciting moment came when Euan said, “Is that Johnny Depp?” and we realised we were watching Johnny Depp in his first major movie role, aged 21 but looking about 14. As Nancy’s boyfriend in the movie, he came to a very sticky end. Or did he?

How much of the movie is about a dream?

When Nancy wakes from a nightmare, is she really awake or has she slipped into a dream within a dream? Is she awake at the beginning of the movie? Is she awake when she goes back to school the morning after the first death? Is she awake when she visits the sleep laboratory? If you’ve seen the movie, how did you feel in the penultimate scene where she steps into the dazzling bright morning light, and walks towards the car? Was she awake then?

Craven named the villain after Fred Krueger, the boy who bullied him during his adolescent years.

Written and directed by Wes Craven, A Nightmare on Elm Street is a slasher movie, slasher being a horror sub-genre. I’m glad I didn’t know that going in. Craven named the villain, Freddy Krueger, after Fred Krueger, the boy who bullied him during his adolescent years, so it’s interesting that Nancy and her friends are all adolescents who live in fear of Krueger and what he’ll do to them.

The movie is celebrated as one of the first to intelligently explore the boundaries between illusion and reality – and between dreaming and waking life – by manipulating and confusing the audience. Craven’s original ending (spoiler alert) was for Nancy to kill Krueger by ceasing to give him her energy and time, and then to wake up and realise it had all been one long nightmare, but the studio, New Line Cinema, asked for a twist ending. Both endings were filmed, and the movie was released with the twist ending where the whole plot is a dream within a dream within a dream, with no awakening. Craven pulled out of the proposed A Nightmare on Elm Street sequel over the twist ending.

In the movie, Nancy and her friends all dream the same dream. Two of the friends die during their sleep, slashed to pieces by their nightmare ghoul, Freddy Krueger. Nancy and her boyfriend realise the same fate awaits them, so they try to stay awake for days, and days. This idea was inspired by several newspaper articles Craven had seen about Khmer refugees fleeing the Cambodian Khmer Rouge genocides who were so frightened by their nightmares that they tried to stay awake. Several died in their sleep when exhaustion prevailed.

Craven was also inspired by Dream Weaver, by Gary Wright, which explored the way we each dream up our experiences.

Craven was also inspired by the 1970s song, Dream Weaver, by Gary Wright, which essentially explored our differing perceptions of the world, our illusions about reality, the way we each dream up our worlds and our experiences.

So on one level the film explores illusion and reality, while on another it runs past some sleep theories. Nancy is taken to a sleep laboratory where we learn a little about REM sleep and dreaming – only to realise, of course, that this episode is a dream. We learn about how staying awake for days is fatally detrimental. Severe sleep deprivation kills. And we learn about false awakenings, the dream in which you dream that you wake up but you continue in the dream.

Let’s get back to the original question:

“What does the nightmare in A Nightmare on Elm Street mean?”

In the movie, Freddy Krueger was a real life child murderer who escaped jail due to a paperwork error. The parents killed him to keep the neighbourhood safe, but his ghost returned to take revenge on their children by killing them in their sleep.

It’s helpful to look at everyone and everything in a dream as reflecting something about the dreamer’s conscious and unconscious feelings and beliefs. Freddy Krueger represents danger and risk, and the more we try to sanitise life and play safe, the more these energies are called into being. In Craven’s original ending, Nancy wakes from her dream once she confronts Krueger then withdraws her attention and energy from him. In life, when we face our fears, understand them, deal with them, then withdraw our focus and energy from them, they disappear. In this context, the nightmare is about facing – or not facing – fears about danger, risk, and safety.

In Craven’s original script, Krueger was a child molester, not a child murderer, which is telling.

The other strong thread in the movie is adolescent promiscuity (remember, this is the early 80s), and loss of innocence. In the nightmare, teenage promiscuity leads to slashing, mutilation, destruction, death. No matter how much parents try to protect their adolescent children, the teenagers naturally explore their sexuality, and the results – loss of innocence, guilt, emotional trauma, an end to childhood – are reflected in such nightmares. In Craven’s original script, Krueger was a child molester, not a child murderer, which is telling. As a dream analyst, I notice how common it is for young teenagers to experience violent dreams as they encounter the conflicts of leaving childhood behind and growing into independence.

Finally, for Craven, perhaps the movie is an unconscious working of the bullying he experienced as an adolescent. Bullying continues to cause pain well beyond school years – it can haunt an individual for a lifetime unless it’s confronted and addressed. Maybe Craven did just that, via Nancy.

Have you seen the movie? What did you make of it?

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Samsara Alchemy

Posted on December 30, 2012 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 6 Comments

I saw the movie Samsara yesterday, and awoke this morning with a New Year alchemy idea for you to do. I’ve called it Samsara Alchemy, and as I type those words something deep within jumps to attention and formulates a concept for a book by that title, so I take a note to self.

In Sanskrit, Samsara means continuous flow, the repeating cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth – impermanence, the ever turning wheel of life. Samsara, the movie, (directed by Ron Fricke and produced by Mark Magidson), is a visual meditation on this theme, filmed over more than four years across twenty-five countries and five continents.

According to the Samsara website, the movie “explores the wonders of our world from the mundane to the miraculous, looking into the unfathomable reaches of man’s spirituality and the human experience. Neither a traditional documentary nor a travelogue, Samsara takes the form of a nonverbal, guided meditation.”

The best way to enjoy the movie is to immerse yourself in its flow, to suspend (or at least quieten) the intellect’s need for information, location, and details. Flowing frees your mind and allows you to experience a Buddhist perspective of life’s dramas.

Some of the images are confronting – death, destruction, factory farming – while others are heart-achingly beautiful. Recurring close ups of eyes staring unmoving into the camera – or the camera staring deeply into eyes – interplay with panoramic bird’s eye views of the startling patterns we create as we move through life.

A favourite for me was the recurring theme of watching the sun move through a building or landscape, throwing patterns of shadows and light, followed by moonlit shadows and the passage of starry heavens before rebirth into morning light.

Mecca Ramadan

Patterns, patterns, recurring patterns, up close and grandly sweeping, patterns, patterns, recurring patterns, life, death, rebirth, continuous flow, Samsara.

Does Samsara speak to you of circles or spirals? Do you see a pattern of evolution, or devolution, within the grand recurring patterning of life (a spiral), or do you see one ever-repeating cycle, always returning to the same place (a circle), though perhaps seeing it with different eyes?

The countdown begins. Those of us who follow the western calendar are living the last day or two (give or take time zones) of 2012, about to mark the end of the old year and greet the birth of the new. Instead of writing New Year resolutions, I encourage you to immerse yourself in a Samsara Alchemy. This is what to do:

Samsara Alchemy

Begin by sitting quietly, perhaps after a meditation, and let some images come to you from your personal life during 2012. Write down the images that come to you. They might be obvious (the big events, both highs and lows), or they might surprise you (an image of a forgotten event or experience). Review your list. Make sure you have a mix of highs and lows, and a mix of mundane and unusual. Make sure your list includes some dilemmas you encountered during the year as well as some insights and epiphanies you recall.

If this seems difficult, begin again. Remember that Samsara means flow. Let it flow. Don’t approach this logically. Let images come to you.

If you enjoy words, simply take a piece of paper (as big or as small as you like), and write a single word for each image or thought that came to you. For the images that had a big impact on you, write the words in big letters, and for the images which were less impactful at the time, write the words in smaller letters. (Think of tag clouds on blog posts.) Arrange your words anywhere on your paper, at random, all over the place, or in a pattern. When you’ve finished, step back from the snapshot picture of your life in 2012, and let it speak to you.

If you enjoy art, create an artwork from your collection of 2012 images. Draw, paint, sculpt, collage, or choose any medium, then step back from your remembered vision of 2012, and let it speak to you anew.

The idea of this alchemy is to borrow the vision of the Samsara filmmakers to create a meditation on (to paraphrase the filmmakers) “the wonders of your personal world during 2012, from the mundane to the miraculous, looking into the unfathomable reaches of your spirituality and your human experience”. Your picture will help you to see and appreciate life’s continuous flow, the repeating cycle of birth, life, death, and rebirth. As you step into 2013, consider how this perspective can assist you in choosing what you birth, or rebirth, and how you flow, as you begin a new cycle of life.

(All images are stills from the movie.)
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Messages from the other side?

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 17 Comments

When someone who has died appears to you in a dream, are they communicating with you from spirit, or are these dreams symbolic? Dreaming of a loved one after death can be the most precious, comforting, uplifting experience, especially when the dream is full of love, embraces, and tender messages, and when the person looks healthy, full of life, and perhaps even presents at a different age – younger for someone who died in old age, adult for a child who died young.

Many a bereaved dreamer cherishes such exquisite moments in a dream, and although they wake up to a world empty of their loved one, they draw on strengths from the night-time encounter and a feeling of receiving support from spirit to get through the early days.

People often feel devastated and abandoned when they discover their loved one is appearing in other people’s dreams, but not in their own.

Many more wish they could have just one such dream, and often feel devastated and abandoned when they discover their loved one is appearing in other people’s dreams, but not in their own.

On the other hand, many bereaved people have experienced distressing dreams where the deceased person, who was loving and kind in life, is completely different in dreams – angry, blaming, hurtful, controlling, or condemning. In other cases, people who were difficult in life continue to be difficult in dreams, often leaving the dreamer feeling the deceased person is controlling him and restraining him from moving on with life.

There are instances where accurate information has been communicated by the deceased in dreams, information, for example, about the circumstances of death that have been later verified, however these are extremely rare. Contact through dreams in the early days following death may sometimes be the case, but as time passes, you can be increasingly certain that these dreams are symbolic. If a loving person acts negatively in a dream, you can be certain your dream is symbolic.

When anger, abandonment and blame come up in your dreams, these are your own emotions being processed.

Dreams of the deceased usually deal with grief and healing. For example, it is normal, during grieving, to feel angry with the person for dying and abandoning you, even though this is irrational. When anger, abandonment and blame come up in your dreams, these are your own emotions being processed. When forgiveness and letting go come up in these dreams, these reflect your own readiness to heal and move on, your own resting in peace.

Look at the person appearing in your dream as symbolising your loss, or your feelings about death, or your feelings about that person and the role they played in your life, and then see the rest of the dream as exploring and resolving these issues within yourself.

[Extract from 101 Dream Interpretation Tips, Jane Teresa Anderson]

Further reading: Dreams of death and the departed

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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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Episode 118 The Dream Show: When you fall in a dream …

Posted on October 21, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

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Adelaide, my guest in this month’s episode, dreamed of falling from a window. She hit the ground and thought she had died, but a passing cat licked her face and revived her.

Later in her dream, she found the perfect home – old, falling apart, holes in the walls, a broken drinking glass in the kitchen. Yes, she thought it was wonderful! The real estate agent couldn’t believe she wanted to live there, but Adelaide felt it was just right, exactly as it was. No renovation or repair required.

It’s commonly said that if you fall in a dream and hit the ground, you’ll die in your sleep. Definitely not true! These dreams are exciting milestones.

Listen in to find out why, and to hear how my interpretation corresponds with what is happening in Adelaide’s life.

Dream interpretation, dream therapy, and dream alchemy combine to help Adelaide move forward in wonderful ways.

Listen here.

Our next show, episode 119, will be released on November 18, 2011.

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Love your bad dreams

Posted on August 12, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 4 Comments

Here’s a simple formula to apply when you have an unsettling or frightening dream and you want to reduce the chances of having it again. Actually, it’s far more powerful than this. Not only does this formula ease your dreams, it also creates deep and lasting positive change in your waking life by subtly reprogramming your unconscious mind to solve the issue causing the bad dreams. Here’s what to do.

Love your bad dreams into good ones. Do this by rewriting your dream in your journal, or visualising it in your mind’s eye, changing the bad storyline into a good one, making sure that all your changes come from a place of love. Here are some examples.

Love your losses into founds, your deaths into births, your failures into successes, your limitations into freedoms, your lateness into smooth timeliness, your obstacles into open roads, your judgements into forgiveness, your muddy waters into crystal pools, your intruders into friends, your poverty into wealth, your wicked witches into good fairies, your broken down cars into golden chariots, your tsunamis into relaxing spas, your hurts into healings, your heavy luggage into uplifting wings, and your scary shadows into loving light.

When a wicked witch receives love, she can’t help but be instantly transformed into a good fairy.

The key is transformation. For example, don’t kill a wicked witch because this leaves a hole in your psyche. Everything and everyone in your dreams represents something about you and your beliefs and feelings about life, so anything you do to anyone or anything in a dream (or a dream rewrite) you are really doing to yourself. Transform a wicked witch into a good fairy by whatever way feels good to you when you rewrite your dream. Best of all is to use love as the transforming force. When a wicked witch receives love, she can’t help but be instantly transformed into a good fairy.

Finish your rewrite with a bit of wisdom and a happily ever after ending. Reread it, or replay it in your mind’s eye, over and over again, making sure you feel uplifting emotions and plenty of love throughout. Take that ‘happily ever after’ feeling forward into your day.

As you can see, Patricia has transformed the worried male alchemist in my last blog’s image of The Alchemist in Search of the Philosophers’ Stone, by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797), into a radiant woman.

Today’s blog is from my book 101 Dream Interpretation Tips, and, talking of transformation, I know you’ll love this reworking of the image from last week’s blog, Alchemy and Dream Interpretation. Patricia Mottram, from Ayurveda TLC, reworked the image and sent it me saying, “I had to play with the picture of the old male alchemist who looks very worried that it’s all going to blow up in his face!”

As you can see, Patricia has transformed the worried male alchemist in The Alchemist in Search of the Philosophers’ Stone, by Joseph Wright of Derby (1734-1797), into a radiant woman. I have it on good authority that it is, indeed, Patrica herself. Nice bit of alchemy, hey?

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Episode 108 The Dream Show: Dream dogs

Posted on May 20, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

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Alison dreamed about trying to hide from violent pursuers who chased her back to her childhood home. Later in the dream, just when things were beginning to look good, she found dead dogs along a ridge, just beyond an ancient, deserted town, and woke up in fright.

What does it mean?

Listen as Alison and I explore the details of her dream, and hear Alison’s response as I interpret it and she relates the interpretation to what’s going on in her life.

How can Alison use the insight she gains from this?

A new podcast every Friday. Listen here or subscribe on iTunes.

Naturally, dream alchemy plays a part, and you’ll enjoy picking up tips you can apply when interpreting your own dreams and when creating dream alchemy visualisations.

Listen here (Episode 108) or subscribe to the whole series on iTunes.

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Episode 101 The Dream Show: Murder

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

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Viv, my guest today, dreamed of murdering her husband. She wanted a canteen of cutlery, and the only way to get it was to deliver a quick blow to the back of his head while he slept.

It was a harrowing dream, the kind that many people keep to themselves, frightened to share for fear of what it reveals.

And what does Viv’s dream reveal? It’s an entirely positive and uplifting dream once the scary symbols are confronted, a dream that marks a turning point for Viv.

A new podcast every Friday. Listen here or subscribe on iTunes.

Listen in to absorb the process of dream interpretation, to pick up interpretation tips, and to be inspired by Viv’s new vision.

Listen here (Episode 101) or subscribe to the whole series on iTunes.

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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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Episode 92 The Dream Show: Metaphor magic

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

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What do dreams of flying into power lines, feeling the ground shake, going round and round in circles, and meeting an old man close to death have in common?

They’re all in today’s show, they’re all metaphors for waking life situations, and I use these – and other dreams – to show you how to design your own dream alchemy practices. The steps – and the show – are simple and light-hearted, yet they’re very powerful.

In fact, the whole show is about the power of metaphors, in dreams and in waking life, to heal and transform.

There’s some science too, some recent research showing how the brain processes metaphors which will make you smile as you think, ‘yes, that’s why dream alchemy works’.

A new podcast every Friday. Listen here or subscribe on iTunes.

And I conduct a tune up to help you get your vibration right; an easy, fun exercise guaranteed to bring you more of the good stuff in life and leave you with a song in your heart.

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Tag Archives: death

A Nightmare on Elm Street

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Samsara Alchemy

Samsara Alchemy

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Messages from the other side?

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Cheating dreams

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Episode 118 The Dream Show: When you fall in a dream …

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Love your bad dreams

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Episode 108 The Dream Show: Dream dogs

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Episode 101 The Dream Show: Murder

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Navigating changing times

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Episode 92 The Dream Show: Metaphor magic

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