Tag: dog | In your dreams …

The beholder

Posted on February 10, 2012 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. What you see is what you get, depending on how you see it.

As your eye changes – as your experiences change – so does what you get.

Have you noticed how a favourite story from childhood is different when you reread it as an adult? Or how the message of a movie can change from one viewing to the next? Or how even a non-fiction book can seem to impart different information when you review it years later?

Beauty – and all other value judgements and interpretations of life – is also in the ear, mouth, nose, skin, mind, heart and soul of the beholder.

Have you noticed a difference in what you get from reading a story to what you get from hearing it?

If you’re primarily a visual person, you may feel you get more from reading an article than from hearing it, and if you’re primarily an auditory person the opposite will probably be true.

Yet the challenge of listening as a visual person focuses your attention in a different way, and what you get from listening may be quite different from what you get from reading. And vice-versa.

Test this by listening to this month’s episode, episode 122, in which I read four of my blog articles, all interlinked upon a theme. Oh, and of course there’s a bit of chat too.

This is what you get in this episode, depending on how you get it!

The Dream Show, a free monthly podcast with Jane Teresa Anderson

This is what you get in this episode, depending on how you get it.

What’s the moral of The Princess and the Pea? If you were to sleep on twenty feather beds piled high upon twenty feather mattresses, would you feel the pea the Queen had placed beneath this luxurious mountain of a bed, and would you mention your discomfort to your royal hosts in the morning? There are life lessons ripe for learning here.

Far more uncomfortable than a pea under the mattress are those dreams where you feel over-the-top loss, devastation, rejection, betrayal, anger, or other painful emotions. Why do we have these kinds of dreams from time to time, and what do they mean?

In this episode, we also take a light-hearted look at life through the eyes of a dog and cat, explore how we interpret and misinterpret waking life, and interpret a dream at four different levels – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

This is a power-packed episode that will broaden and deepen your approach to dreams, and get you thinking again about the goals you pursue in life. Enjoy.

Listen here

(Our next show, episode 123, will be released in four weeks, on 9 March 2012.)

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Episode 111 The Dream Show: Ethereal girl

Posted on June 10, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

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Sophia is my guest today having her dream interpreted while you listen in to witness the process, pick up interpretation tips, and share the insights.

Sophia went to bed the night before our recording, asking for a special dream to bring to the show. She had seven dreams, and since all dreams on one night are usually connected in theme, we looked at three of these and quickly browsed the others. We struck plenty of gold.

There’s the ethereal winged girl with eyes like white bird’s eggs that flies down to chat with Sophia, there’s a warehouse packed with plane parts, there’s an unconscious, dehydrated dog, a policeman with a special gift, a sea voyage that is successful against the odds, and a trip to see the Queen.

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

How are these all linked, how do they relate to Sophia’s life, and what insight can she take from this night’s worth of dreams to make a big difference in her life? Listen in to find out!

Listen here (Episode 111).

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The leashes that bind

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

Dreams, even when they’re scary, can be very playful. Some are laugh out loud funny, like Brig’s dream of taking her dog for a walk only instead of her dog what was on the end of the leash was a bit of lamb’s fry (offal). Deep and meaningful though the dream was, you’ve just got to laugh, and Brig’s co-presenter and anchor on Radio Mix 101.1FM Melbourne certainly made meat of that one on their breakfast show last week. It was an offal dream for Brig, but perfect breakfast fodder for the team, and we managed to get to the bottom of it pretty quickly.

Yvonne phoned the station with a dream of being a passenger in a plane, enjoying her trip until she looked out the window and noticed the plane had no wings. What was keeping it airborne? She looked towards the cockpit – chickens were harnessed to the plane keeping it aloft. That was fine by Yvonne until she remembered, in the dream, that chickens have clipped wings. She painted a playful picture, and look at those plays on words – cockpit and chickens. We’re ‘chicken’ when we’re scared, and Yvonne was pretty scared at the thought of being at the mercy of a band of wingless chickens. A wingless plane, wingless chickens, and yet the plane was safely flying along and getting somewhere.

Yvonne was pretty scared at the thought of being at the mercy of a band of wingless chickens.

Yvonne’s dream suggests she can achieve far more than she thinks and fears. She may fear that her plans and ideas don’t have wings, but they do. There’s so much more to Yvonne’s dream than breakfast radio allows time to say, but simply looking for word play is fun and gives a clue to the interpretation.

Rachel’s dream of dating a dentist who gave her a gift of a dental cup containing dental floss and mouthwash made us all smile, and she related to my brief interpretation about taking a new attitude to how she communicates – clean, clear, fresh, positive words and intent. “Yes,” she said, “that makes sense.” How playful of her dream to go for a dental hygiene theme to encapsulate this.

Andrea’s recurring dream was more frightening. She dreams of being smothered by hair while in bed, and sees a chest at the bottom of the bed with a light that pulls her down. She wakes up struggling for breath.

My quick on air interpretation was that Andrea’s dream comes up when she feels restricted during the day, as if she can’t breathe to claim her space to express herself, and that this ‘pulls her down’, depresses her. It was spot on, she could relate to it. There’s so much more to her dream, but notice again how helpful it is to look for word play. The chest at the bottom of the bed is also Andrea’s chest, the place where her lungs are situated, her breathing centre. Although she feels depressed about finding it difficult to express herself fully, there’s ‘light’ here, like light at the end of the tunnel. When we can get to the bottom of our feelings, we can see the light about our blocks and how to overcome them. I wonder whether Andrea also suffers from having too many ideas (head stuff, like hair), that she doesn’t know how to ground (make happen), so she feels smothered by too many ideas and no action. The chest is at the bottom of the bed, near Andrea’s feet, and the place for feet to be is on the ground. If Andrea can just ‘pull down’ one or two of those ideas and ground them – make them happen – then there’s light at the end of the tunnel!

Strange creatures, dogs and humans …

And what about Brig’s dream of the dog that wasn’t, the dog that was, in fact, a bit of lamb’s fry? I won’t spill those beans in this blog (you can get to know Brig and her dreams by tuning into the show next time I’m on), but it does remind me of the time Michael and I took a dog we were looking after for a walk. The dog had been a bit porky, and he trimmed up in our care and was looking pretty good. He had a bit of arthritis in his paws, so he was a plodder to walk. On that particular day we took a slightly longer walk than usual, and we had to slow our pace to match his drag towards the end. Suddenly, home in sight, the leash slackened, and Michael said, “He’s picked up his pace, got a bit of energy now he can see home.” I looked back and there was the dog, still plodding along slowly and faithfully, a long way back down the road, while the empty leash trailed behind Michael. The next day we tossed his old fat dog collar and bought him a nice slim one, though I think the sight of us dragging a leash is all it takes to keep him plodding along. Strange creatures – dogs and humans – conditioned to believe in limitations long since gone.

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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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Dream interpretation results: Margaret’s news, episode 55

Posted on July 19, 2010 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

Margaret’s dream featured a dog at a vet surgery. It was about how she handles situations.

Here’s an update from Margaret who was my guest in episode 55 of The Dream Show.

“Where do I start? So, so much has happened. The dream we discussed was a recurring dream theme. It turned out to be about how I’ve needed to manipulate situations so I can do what I want or show who I truly am. I realised that I had never felt I would be accepted or understood in just being who I am.”

Margaret had had this recurring dream theme for ten years, but this time it had a positive ending. It marked a deep change that occurred in the days leading up to the dream.

“The dream was evidence that a previous alchemy I had done had worked its magic! It healed and transformed this belief.”

Margaret’s dream featured a dog at a vet surgery. I set her a dream alchemy practice based on artwork: she had to create a certificate signed by Tom the veterinarian. In the days following the podcast, while she was doing the artwork, she experienced a synchronicity:

A synchronicity occured: “A beautiful, friendly, lost staffy male dog approached my front door.”

“A beautiful, friendly, lost staffy male dog approached my front door. He was obviously much loved. I gave him some water and went for a walk with him. I thought he may be able to find his direction home. This was not successful. He followed me back to my house. I did think of keeping him but he was owned and loved by someone else. I phoned the local Vet and took him there as they could scan for a microchip and find the owners.”

Synchronicities come up when you are experiencing deep change. They usually involve symbols that your unconscious mind has expressed in a dream. As Margaret put it:

“This is synchronicity at its best! I have always loved the personality of the Staffordshire Bull Terrier. This dog was so loving and not afraid of receiving help from me. It seemed like he knew he had to trust and surrender to me to find his way home. Very much like me at the time!”

Although this was a dream that reflected recent positive change, our discussion during the podcast uncovered deeper levels that led Margaret to new breakthroughs.

“Following this path of self development allowed me to identify a much deeper negative belief. I have pinpointed and named the core belief that has caused me to experience judgement, fear and the need to control.

When I faced and acknowledged this core negative belief, I allowed myself to heal. I am already experiencing abundance, love, peace and acceptance and I know that these positives will increase over time.”

Margaret noticed that her creativity increased as a result of these changes.

“This has led to getting the community involved and I am having a lot of fun working on this project.”

“I am confident enough to follow what I would like to create without the need to manipulate. I have wanted to self publish a book that is a collection of children’s quotes about how they perceive their parents and what it is they enjoy or like best about mum and dad.

In the past, I procrastinated with this (due to fear) and therefore created blockages. These blockages have now been removed and I am proactively gathering my quotes. My thinking has shifted from ‘how can I do this, I can’t get access to enough children, blah, blah, blah’ to ‘I am only limited by my thinking so, change my thinking’.

This has led to getting the community involved and I am having a lot of fun working on this project. A large percentage of profit from sales will go to the charity Act for Kids, and several local businesses have donated prizes, as all the children’s responses will enter into a draw.

Never, ever, did I think I would have the confidence and the ability to do something like this.”

I offered to share the link to Margaret’s project so you can have a look and give her your support. Margaret agreed and added, “If you have children I would love it if they could participate.”

Margaret’s blog

Original podcast: episode 55

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Look for clichés

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 1 Comment

When you interpret a dream, think like a painter.

Sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. How many of these do you sense in your dreams? The more practised you become at recalling your dreams, the more you’ll notice a whole range of senses, but one thing that most people agree on is sight. Dreams are highly visual. You don’t fall asleep to listen to a story. You don’t go into the dream state to smell your way through the night. You settle down to a visual feast.

Has the cat got your tongue?

When you interpret a dream, think like a painter. Ask how a painter might communicate without sound, touch, smell, and taste.

One method dreams employ is to express issues and feelings in your life as visual clichés.

For example, if you’ve had a couple of days where you’ve been ‘chasing your tail’, going round in circles, getting nowhere, your dream might present an animal chasing its tail.

Or if you’re experiencing a difficulty communicating with someone, your dream might show a cat with a human tongue hanging from its jaws if you’re familiar with the cliché, ‘The cat’s got my tongue’.

You’ll pinch yourself at what a clever-clogs you are when you identify a cliche in a dream.

Or perhaps your dream has you in a car being ‘driven round the bend by someone’, or maybe your dream shows you revengefully setting an angry dog onto someone and then that dog ‘comes back to bite you’ indicating karma, that you get back what you put out.

Some of the weirdest dream symbols are visual clichés. Keep your eyes open for them. They give you a great belly laugh, and you’ll pinch yourself at what a clever-clogs you are to come up with these instant messengers in your dreams.
[Extract from 101 Dream Interpretation Tips, Jane Teresa Anderson]

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Episode 55 The Dream Show: Angry dog

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 1 Comment

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

Episode 55 of our free weekly podcast, THE DREAM SHOW, is now up.

Margaret is my guest with a recurring dream about being back at her old workplace, faced with a wild, angry dog.

She’s had the dream for ten years but this week, it changed! Her new dream had a happy ending.

Why the sudden change in this long term recurring dream? What happened in Margaret’s life, ten years ago, to trigger this recurring dream, and what happened last week to finally deliver a resolution to her dream storyline?

Listen in through the laughs and the serious stuff as Margaret and I trace her story from childhood to last week’s breakthrough.

If you’ve ever wondered why recurring dreams tend to take you back to the past, listen to this episode. And if you’ve ever wondered how to put an end to a recurring unresolved dream/issue in your life, listen to this episode. And if you want to understand how dream alchemy works and how it feels … you’ve got it: listen to this episode.

You can listen here (Episode 55) or subscribe to the whole series – a new free episode every week – at iTunes.

If you’d like to have a dream interpreted on the show, please contact me to book yourself in!

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Charlie’s bone

Posted on May 3, 2010 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

A dog, Charlie, sees a meaty bone tantalisingly just out of reach.

A dog, Charlie, sees a meaty bone tantalisingly just out of reach, on the grass, on the other side of a high wire fence. The aroma twitches his nose, moistens his mouth, and fixes his eyes to the tasty prize. The only problem is the fence between where he is now and where he wants to be. It’s too high to jump, too solid to squeeze through. What’s the solution?

Hours pass, and Charlie sits in his garden, totally focussed on the bone. You could say he spent the morning visualising gnawing the bone, imagining how it would taste, how happy he’d be. That’s true. But he was also focussed on that dratted fence, occasionally trying to burrow beneath it, lunge at it, poke his nose through it, each time feeling nothing but its unrelenting resistance barring his way to where he wanted to be.

What’s the tasty bone you’ve been visualising in your life recently? What’s the fence? Have you been spending as much time and energy visualising the fence as visualising the bone? Which do you think will manifest, getting the bone or strengthening the resistance of the fence?

Do you find yourself analysing the analogy, picking holes in it?

Does this little story resonate with your heart (does it feel right, does it deliver an Aha?), or do you find your head analysing the analogy, picking holes in it?

Legends, myths, fairy tales and parables are lovingly passed through generations because they offer insights and solutions from the safety zone of a story.

The story does not judge the listener or tell them what to do. If the listener resonates with the story, inner shifts begin. If she doesn’t, it isn’t the right story for her current predicament.

An analogy works best if it’s not too close to home, or even not close to species. Think Disney, Pixar, movies featuring animals, fables. Why is this?

You’re not a dog. You probably gag at the thought of eating a raw bone. Yet maybe you resonated at some level with my simple little story about Charlie.

An analogy works best if it’s not too close to home, or even not close to species.

In fact, the story may have a deeper impact on you than a realistic story featuring someone like you in your exact predicament. The more the details resemble your life, the harder it is for you to see solutions because you start to lock into the way you see your life, with all your familiar fences, obstacles and problems included. Your blind spots engage. Comfort zone prevails. But when the story takes you away from the life you know and gets you to look through the eyes of, say, a dog, you are suspended from your attachment to your own situation for long enough to see new possibilities.

I might have told a different Charlie analogy. How about the one where Charlie focuses so intently on the fence that he realises it is nothing but a myriad atoms floating in space, giving the impression of solidity, so he just walks through it?

Or how about the one where Charlie’s frustration with the fence makes him bark louder than ever before so that a passing stranger hears his cry for help and tosses him the bone?

Analogies are full of holes. Mere atoms of storytelling breath suspended in voids big enough to step through. But isn’t that the point? Aren’t analogies simply vehicles to transport you to the next … ah, anyone spot an analogy coming?

Dreams can be seen as analogies.

Dreams can be seen as analogies. Dreams reflect the last 24-48 hours of your conscious and unconscious experiences, compare these to your past experiences, update your personal worldview, and project forward, based on this blueprint of your expectations. The resulting dream, encompassing all this stuff, is mostly a production of your creative right brain. Left brain logic doesn’t get a look in. Approach a dream as an analogy of your current mindset, and you’re well on the way to accurate interpretation.

For example, you dream of being lost, unable to find your way: where, in the last two days, did you feel lost at some level, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually? Or you dream of being bogged down in mud: where, in the last two days, did you feel, at some level, bogged down? Or you dream of seeing a tasty reward, out of reach on the other side of a tall fence: where, in the last two days, did you feel blocked from attaining something rewarding?

When you interpret a dream, identifying the analogy is a good starting point. It helps you to relate your dream to the waking life situation it applies to.

Then you can bring in all the interpretation tools you’ve learned from me along the way (through my articles, books, podcasts and so on) to interpret the details, uncover how your mindset is affecting your life experience, and flesh out (oh, that bone again) personal meaning.

Just as analogies can be full of holes, dreams – being analogies – can reveal the holes in the way you look at your life.

Just as analogies can be full of holes, dreams – being analogies – can reveal the holes in the way you look at your life. And just as analogies can inspire insights and solutions to problems, dreams – being analogies – can do this too.

And just as the best legends, myths, fairy tales and Disney productions are analogies whipped up into spellbinding stories, you can whip your dreams up into spellbinding dream alchemy practices. Simply write an inspirational dream as a children’s story, or rewrite a dream that reveals a personal limitation as a children’s story with a happy ending.

If you resonated with Charlie, spin some magic right now by writing a one page children’s story about how Charlie finally got his bone.

[Copyright Jane Teresa Anderson, May 2010. First published as a Dream Sight article.]

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It’s a what?

Posted on November 23, 2009 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 1 Comment

Or was it a set of bagpipes?

He was tall and rivetingly handsome, striding towards the ocean, wearing a new, seafaring sweater and carrying something under his arm. What was it, an inflatable raft?

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing to the raft. Or was it a set of bagpipes?

He looked bewildered, as was I by now, but an old lady behind me coughed up, “It’s an urggg, urggg, urgggg …”

What was going on?!

She struggled on, a kind of phlegmy stutter, getting worse.

“It’s a kkkhhrrrkk, kkkhhrrkk, kkkkkkkkkkkyakyakyak.”

As I turned to look at her, I woke up and saw the source of her guttural utterances: the dog we’re minding was splayed out on her back beside the bed, snoring like a ten ton hippopotamus, “kkkhhrrkk, urgg, yak, yak, yak.”

Sounds, smells, lights and other stimuli from our sleeping environment often get absorbed into our dreams, challenging our dreaming minds to incorporate them into the dream storyline in a way that makes sense. A squeaky overhead fan once made it into one of my dreams as a screeching witch, while a biting mosquito transformed into a hypodermic syringe.

I wonder how long that dog had been snoring? Some time, I bet, given my struggle, in the dream, to name the mystery object: an inflatable raft and a set of bagpipes are both airbags, and that handsome dream man was carrying them exactly where lungs belong, under his arm. It’s the job of our dreams to make sense of our world, and mine did pretty well, linking snoring with lungs. Maybe I can catch up with the tall, rivetingly handsome man tonight.

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Watch your feet

Posted on October 23, 2009 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 1 Comment

The path

“Just watch where you’re walking when you come home,” Kit said, “the dog does her business all over the lawn, so watch your feet.”

We’re looking after Kit’s dog and house while she’s on holiday for a few weeks. Much as we love living in the city, we’re enjoying the opportunity to live closer to the sea, and working so much online, we can do this easily.

If you’ve listened to the last two podcasts, you’ll have heard the dog snuffle, snort and woof her way into the recording. We promised to stick with her routine, so she also sleeps by our bed, snoring throughout the night.

Routines. How many routines do you go through, stick with, live by, each day?

Looking after someone else’s home – and dog – means changing routines, questioning the way you habitually do things, finding new ways.

Which brings me back to the poo-laden lawn. For three weeks we did exactly as we had been instructed. Whenever we came home, we parked the car, opened the garden gate, and stepped gingerly across the lawn. We put a torch in the car to help when we came back after dark. No matter how often we cleared up behind the dog, she randomly and abundantly deposited her little piles of poo to welcome us home.

We were so focussed on carrying out Kit’s instructions to the letter – following her lawn-tiptoeing routine every time we came home – that it was only yesterday that I saw the light: right by the car parking place there’s a little fence, so small that all we have to do is step over it onto the nice, clean, poo-clear brick pathway that leads all the way to the front door. No lawn, no watching our feet, no poo worries.

How easy is that?! The moral of this waking life story? We follow routines and focus on daily habits for the strangest reasons, many of which leave us blind to an easier way. Far from making our lives easier, routines can complicate matters, leading us the long way through … well, I’ll leave you to contemplate the metaphors while we enjoy more of that lovely sea air.

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Tag Archives: dog

The beholder

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Episode 111 The Dream Show: Ethereal girl

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The leashes that bind

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Charlie’s bone

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