Tag: fear | In your dreams …

Dream drummer

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

“Three times this week I dreamed I was the new drummer for American band Blink 182,” said Brad, calling PowerFM’s PowerPack Breakfast show where I was interpreting dreams.

The drums were bike powered, and the faster Brad peddled, the better the drums sounded. Although he can’t play the drums in waking life, he was a brilliant drummer in his dreams, and the crowds loved it almost as much as he did.

There was no performance anxiety. It wasn’t one of those dreams where you’re asked to perform but it all goes wrong, or you forget the music, or the drums turn to jelly. Brad simply stepped up to the drums, got on the bike, peddled away, and turned in a great performance.

A feel-good dream, three times in one week, must mean something good. But what?

Being radio, there was no time to spend an hour deeply exploring Brad’s dream, but there was time enough in the few minutes we had to get to the main point and give Brad something meaningful to help him forward.

Blink 182 drummer, Travis Barker, was unable to join them for the Australian tour because of his fear of flying.

I needed to be filled in on the details. Blink 182 was heading to Australia on tour that week, but their drummer, Travis Barker, was unable to join them because of his fear of flying. He was one of only two survivors of a plane crash in 2008. He lost two of his best friends in the crash, and the other survivor died the next year following an accidental drug overdose.

Travis Barker was replaced by Brooks Wackerman of Tenacious D in the waking life Australian tour, and by Brad in his dreams.

In Brad’s dream, he had no fear. No fear of playing the drums, no fear of flying. He stepped up to the plate and peddled his bike, and the more legwork he put in, the better he played.

My radio time was running out. “There’s somewhere in your life where you’re scared, but once you commit to it and put in the legwork, you can achieve it and you will enjoy it.”

“Spot on, dream lady,” Brad chuckled.

Travis Barker was replaced by Brooks Wackerman of Tenacious D in the waking life Australian tour, and by Brad in his dreams.

Our dreams reflect our conscious and unconscious experiences, feelings, and beliefs, and more often than not our unconscious holds us back. In a dream like Brad’s, his unconscious perspective was supportive. Whatever fear had been holding Brad back, something had shifted during the week of his three dreams. Maybe the fear was still there, but the motivation to overcome it kicked in. Or maybe Brad released the fear that week. We didn’t have time to discover more, but Brad now has his formula. He has an opportunity, his unconscious mind is supportive, and all he needs to do is turn up and put in the legwork.

Of course it’s not about drumming. No doubt Brad had heard about Travis Barker’s fear of flying – the media had the story – and unconsciously related to Travis missing an opportunity due to fear. It resonated with his own history of missing an opportunity due to fear, and when his dreaming mind processed this it naturally came up with the perfect dream metaphor.

He has an opportunity, his unconscious mind is supportive, and all he needs to do is turn up and put in the legwork.

Brad’s “Spot on, dream lady,” tells us that Brad knows what the opportunity is and what to do about it.

Brad could add some dream alchemy to enhance his confidence. He could visualise peddling that dream bike, drumming those dream drums, tuning back into the dream feeling of enjoyment, and the more he does this, the more his confidence will grow, and suddenly he will find himself doing the legwork that brings enjoyment and fulfilment into his waking life.

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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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Episode 128 The Dream Show: When redundancy threatens and nightmares begin

Posted on July 25, 2012 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 2 Comments

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Around 20,000 public servants with permanent or long term contracts in Brisbane are expected to lose their jobs over the coming weeks. Some already know their fate, while others turn up to work each day not knowing whether their job will be axed or retained. What kind of dreams are they experiencing as they go through the mix of fear, despair, and perhaps even, for some, a little excitement as they contemplate new opportunities ahead?

My guest this episode is Belinda Reed, founder of The Day Brightener and Servant Hearts. As a Brisbane public servant going through this experience herself, Belinda created a new blog, www.servanthearts.wordpress.com and an associated Facebook page to help provide support, advice, inspiration, hope and heart for her colleagues and co-workers, many of whom are sleeping badly and experiencing nightmares and unsettling dreams.

Belinda Reed established the Servant Hearts blog to help Brisbane public servants facing around 20,000 job losses.

I invited Belinda onto The Dream Show to discuss the kinds of dreams her colleagues are experiencing, to help people worldwide who feel anxious about the security of their jobs, or who are in the process of being let go.

Belinda brings specific dreams to the show. There’s one from a woman who dreamed of chopping off her hair, and one from a man who dreamed of being on a bus of unsure destination. Other dreams included one about a hotel eviction and one about a rainy, flood-threatening day. And while you may read these short summaries and feel that their interpretations are obvious, the value in understanding these dreams at a deep level is that each dreamer gains specific insight into the aspects of their mindset that determine the way they view, experience, and respond to their situation. This leads to new awareness and the choice – aided by dream alchemy exercises – to experience the same situation in a less stressful, more constructive, and potentially richly rewarding way.

Whether you have job worries or not, there’s plenty to learn in this episode about dreams, why we have them, how they relate to waking life, and how we can use them to transform our waking life experiences for the better.

Listen, enjoy, and please share.

(Our next show, episode 129, will be released in four weeks, on 24 August 2012.)

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Painful emotions in dreams

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 6 Comments

“I dreamed that my wife married another man. It was such a vivid dream and I felt very devastated, felt the pain of losing her in that way. What does it mean?”

This plea for help arrived on my desk this week, and as it is such a common and worrying dream theme, I decided to share some guidelines for those of you who know the deep emotional pain this kind of dream can deliver in the middle of the night, and the anxiety its imprint can leave over the next few days.

What makes a dream vivid? Think about the last really vivid dream you had. We may describe a dream as being vivid if it was particularly colourful, or unusually clear, or intensely numinous, or if it offered spiritual comfort, or spiritual discomfort, or if taste, smell, touch and hearing senses were heightened. We may regard a dream as vivid because it was unusually surreal, or because it was totally believable, as if it really happened.

Different people will have different opinions on what makes a dream vivid, but they usually have one thing in common – heightened emotion. That emotion may be uplifting, such as intense love, awe, surprise, joy, elation. Or it may be painful, such as intense devastation, loss, betrayal, fear, guilt, horror, shock.

We feel intense emotions in our dreams when those same emotions have been triggered at some level in our waking life.

We feel intense emotions in our dreams when those same emotions have been triggered at some level in our waking life. Remember, dreams reflect our conscious and unconscious experiences of the last 24-48 hours, and it’s the nature of dreams to be dramatic. The man who felt the pain of loss in his dream about his wife marrying another man, was processing feelings of loss triggered by events during the two days before his dream.

It’s most likely that this man felt a prickle of loss in some area of his life, whether that was in his public or private life, whether it was around his work, his personal life, his spiritual life, his sense of pride, his creativity, his finances, his hopes for the future, his physical health, his long-term goals. The list is endless, but the full details of his dream, once interpreted, would reveal the story and the deeper issues underlying his feelings of loss.

The prickle of loss he felt would have been the tip of the iceberg, the full extent of the emotion remaining unconscious.

The prickle of loss he felt would have been the tip of the iceberg, the full extent of the emotion remaining unconscious. (The intensity of the emotion in the dream informs us that it registered deep in his unconscious.) You might think that feeling it lightly (just a prickle) is a good thing, but it’s not. When we push intense emotions down into our unconscious mind, they grow in power. Our unconscious emotions (and beliefs, and experiences) drive the way we live our lives, though we are oblivious to this unless we pay attention to our dreams.

This man was clearly shocked by his dream. The fidelity of his relationship is not in question. This dream is not about his relationship with his wife. It is about an area of his life that he had regarded as committed, settled, secure (like his marriage), but that felt shaky around the time of his dream. His dreaming mind pictured his feeling of painful loss and devastation as being like losing a treasured commitment, a foundation stone of his life – his wife.

This kind of dream can come up when you feel threatened by a change in your life. That change might be good, such as deciding to give up a commitment to a previous plan (perhaps a career or business) to commit to a new and better option, or it might be more challenging, such as losing a job due to your employer’s changed commitments.

When change requires us to give up something of our old way, or our old beliefs or attitudes, we often need to process a deep sense of loss (or we push it into our unconscious to try to avoid the pain). When we choose the change ourselves, the old self can feel abandoned or betrayed by the new self. When change is forced upon us, that sense of abandonment or betrayal may feel closer to the surface, and we may find ourselves blaming outside sources – the employer, the economy, the system – rather than taking the healing route of processing the pain and letting it go.

It is about an area of his life that he had regarded as committed, settled, secure (like his marriage), but that felt shaky around the time of his dream.

This man dreamed his wife married another man. Somewhere in his life, during the 24-48 hours before his dream, he experienced a shift in commitment which triggered feelings of loss and devastation. His best way forward is to acknowledge these feelings, explore them and understand them so that the choices he makes from now on come from a place of growth rather than from a place of loss.

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Best excuses

Posted on September 16, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

“Sorry I’m late, Miss. The budgie died.”

That’s the second best excuse I remember a student giving me when I was a high school teacher many years ago. I taught biology and general science for two years, which makes the best excuse I ever received quite interesting:

“Please excuse Mark for missing his lesson this week. He sprained his tendril.”

It was hard to keep a straight face when I read Mark’s Mum’s note, but I did. Mark hobbled a bit getting to his seat, whether for real or for show, so I’m guessing his Achilles tendon was the tendril in question.

I didn’t receive a note when another student missed classes for a few weeks because he was in court, accused of shooting his mate in the neck. Fortunately for his mate, the bullet just grazed the surface, destroying a butterfly tattoo but leaving the spinal cord and windpipe intact. The mate had wronged my student’s girlfriend in some way. “I went home and got my Dad’s gun and aimed at his heart,” my student reportedly said in court.

So much for my biology lessons then.

So much for my biology lessons then. Though no doubt my student felt his heart was very much in his throat that day.

This all came to mind when a dream client alerted me to The great Aussie sickie rort, a segment on A Current Affair (Australian television, Channel 9) this week. A sickie is Australian (Aussie) for a sick day off work, for which you sometimes need a medical certificate from a doctor stating that you are indeed sick and not fit for work that day. The segment claimed that Australians take more sick days off work than any other country in the world, and that people who are not genuinely sick – who just want a day off – often get certificates from doctors who sidestep their professional ethics in these circumstances.

Is “I had a bad dream last night” a valid excuse to take a day off work?

The segment showed journalists fitted out with hidden cameras fronting up to a number of doctors, asking for a medical certificate for a sickie. In some cases they said they were perfectly healthy and just wanted a day off. In other cases they gave what they regarded as lame excuses. One was, “I had a bad dream last night”. (Apart from one doctor who said it was unethical and that his practice would be at risk, the others all gave certificates.)

I’m not saying that having a bad dream is a valid excuse to take a sickie the next day, although a bad dream can be extremely distressing until you understand why you had it and how this insight can help you.

Dreams, once understood, help us to see beneath the surface excuses we often rely on to save us from facing our fears or accepting life’s invitations to evolve.

What excuses do you hear yourself give, either in speaking aloud to others, or in that tiny voice at the back of your mind?

What excuses do you hear yourself give, either in speaking aloud to others, or in that tiny voice at the back of your mind that says, “I can’t do that because ….”?

Make a list of your excuses – those you know about and those you notice over the next few days.

Then look to your dreams for deeper insight.

What lies beneath your excuses?

How can this deeper insight free you to move forward – with no excuses?

PS Kindle news

Kindle! I’ve launched my first Kindle ebook today! For all of you who have been asking for Kindle. More to come.

I’m delighted to announced my launch into Kindle.

So for those of you who have been asking for kindle editions of my ebooks, we started today with How to stop bad dreams and nightmares which you can purchase from Amazon here.

The rest will follow!

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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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Gentle disguise: dreams of the departed

Posted on November 18, 2010 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 2 Comments

My grandfather died when I was thirteen. I didn’t really know him very well, and most memories I have of him are second hand, borrowed from stories told by others, a person and a life fabricated from tall tales, hearsay, and conjecture. He was well into his 60s when I, his first grandchild, was born. When he died, they found his heart pills tucked one-by-one under the mattress of his sick bed. He must have slipped them under his tongue then slipped them out again when no-one was looking.

I have three pictures of him.

My grandfather’s wedding: a grand affair in Budapest, Hungary. My grandmother is sixteen.

One is the last photo taken of him, relaxing in a garden chair. My grandmother kept that photo in a frame by her armchair, until she died many years later. I have that picture in my mind’s eye, in my photographic memory, you might say.

One is his wedding photo, a grand affair in Budapest, Hungary. He is in his late 20s or early 30s, an English sailor; my grandmother is about 16, a Budapest child. Read their faces.

One is the picture I have of him sitting on his motorbike, a couple of nights after he died, when he surprised me in a dream. And that’s the picture that stays with me, though I don’t remember him having a motorbike in waking life, and I don’t remember anything he ever said to me when he was alive. At the tender age of thirteen, that dream was life-changing. And at the tender age of thirteen, of course, I believed that Philip Augustus Newton had actually visited me from the afterlife in a dream.

I’ve had vivid, colourful, full-on textural dream recall for almost as long as I can remember being alive. I have always been fascinated by my dreams, but this was perhaps the first one that got my serious attention.

The dream was short. I was standing outside my school waiting for my young brother to walk up from primary school so we could walk home together. While I was waiting, a motorbike came up the road and stopped in front of me. After exchanging a few words, the driver lifted his dark visor, slowly revealing his face. I was surprised to see it was my grandfather.

“But you’re dead!” I reminded him.

“I didn’t want to frighten you, so I came in a dream,” he said.

That made sense, and I was thankful. I was surprised, my breath was momentarily taken away, but I was not frightened.

“I’m here to answer any questions. Is there anything you’d like to know before I go?” he asked.

“I only had one question,” I said. “Is there life after death? But I don’t need to ask that now.”

He smiled, lowered his visor, and rode away.

If this story sounds familiar to you, it’s because I’ve referred to this dream in another Dream Sight article, ‘Relativity’, which I wrote nine years ago, in October 2000. That article explores the question of communicating with the recently departed in dreams and looks at the symbolism of death dreams. Today, I am exploring a different theme.

“I didn’t want to frighten you, so I came in a dream,” he said, sitting astride a motorbike.

What that dream did for me, as a teenager, was to assure me that dreaming was a safe space where I could face fears and find answers to questions as large as the meaning of life. I had no idea where to begin, and it would be many years before I would be able to interpret dreams, but I developed a profound respect for my dreams from that point forward.

Today, as a dream analyst and alchemist, my task, like my grandfather’s in my dream, is to help people safely face and understand the fears that limit and shape their lives, and to gently ask and answer questions that help them to clarify their vision and touch a deeper sense of meaning.

I’m often asked why dreams are so bizarre, so masked in symbolic language. I’m glad that they are. They allow us to gently prise them open, to give our eyes and hearts time to softly accustom to the light.

You may not know your deepest fears, but they show up, somewhat disguised, in your dreams.

“I didn’t want to frighten you,” a buried fear might say, “so I came in a dream. I’m here to answer any questions. Is there anything you’d like to know before I go?”

When you bury a fear, deep in your unconscious, it exerts a powerful influence on your life. It may be out of sight and out of your conscious mind, but that only gives it more power. Your unconscious fears limit and shape the way you respond in the world – and you have no idea that this is happening! You bury fears you do not want to face, yet the saving grace within gently reveals these to you in your dreams, asking, “Is there anything you’d like to know …?”

Knowledge is power. When you know about your fears – what they are, where they originated, why you have buried them, how they are influencing your life – you can set them, and yourself, free.

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

More on dreams about death, dying and the departed.

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Radio 2GB: Once upon a time

Posted on December 28, 2009 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 1 Comment

Kim dreamed of three snakes entwined on fresh, clean sheets

Once upon a time, four months ago, to be precise, there were three venomous snakes – a red-bellied black, a brown, and a tiger snake. The three snakes appeared to Kim in a dream.

The next day, Kim asked someone the meaning of her dream, and was told to beware three dangers coming her way.

If you were Kim, how would you feel, and what would you do?

Kim worried. Naturally.

And then, during the Christmas week, she called me when I was interpreting dreams on Glenn Wheeler’s evening show on Radio 2GB, to ask my opinion.

In her dream, she had changed the sheets on her bed, and then saw the three dangerous snakes, all entwined, on the fresh, clean sheets. She calmly lifted them onto a stick and removed them from the bedroom. She felt safe. She then went to the children’s bedroom where there were also three snakes and did the same. Again, she knew they were all safe.

How would you interpret this dream?

The feelings in a dream are a major interpretation key. In her dream, Kim defused a potentially dangerous situation by remaining calm and taking practical, empowered action. The danger was gone. All was safe.

Dreams process the last 24-48 hours, so at the time of her dream, Kim faced three related (entwined) fears or situations she regarded as potentially dangerous, and, by remaining calm, dealt with them by taking appropriate action. If Kim had been asked, the morning after her dream, about which fears or dangers had come up for her, she would have recognised them and noticed that she had faced them with relative calm. Noting this, she would have felt more confident about facing other fears by remaining calm and taking appropriate practical action.

But Kim had missed this opportunity because her fears had been fuelled, rather than quelled, when she was told that the dream was a warning of three dangers coming her way.

Night by night, our dreams update our picture of life. At the time of her dream, Kim had made a change (represented by the change of sheets), a clean, fresh start, most probably a change in attitude. This change enabled her to see her fears more clearly and approach them with calm, practical resolve. What a win!

What an insight! What an encouraging formula to follow, to reinforce in the days that followed!

The dreaming mind often chooses snakes to represent fear – most people are fearful of snakes. And when we face our fears, we heal the pain that lies behind the fear. Such is the power of a dream to reveal the way to ‘live happily ever after’.

Clean, fresh sheets anyone? There’s a whole new decade beginning in a few days time, so how about it?

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And the winner is …

Posted on November 16, 2009 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 1 Comment

Phyllis A Travis, singer-songwriter nomination. Started with a dream …

“My song has been nominated for an ISSA (Independent Singer Songwriter Association) award, open to public vote!” ran the excited email I received over the weekend from Phyllis A Travis, a Texas-based attorney and insurance adjustor, who has been applying dream alchemy to overcome her fear of going public in several areas of her life.

A fear she has clearly overcome and she has invited me to share some details with you.

Now in her fifties, Phyllis has been writing songs and music all her life, but shied from public performance for fear of judgment. When she was a young adult her church informed her, “you can’t be gay and serve god.” Add the deep trauma she experienced at the age of six, when a bomb was thrown into her school playground, killing many of her classmates, leaving her searching through the wreckage for her brother, and you’ll have some feel for the challenges Phyllis has faced. There were more. And that is all in the past now.

So here’s Phyllis, three years into her dream alchemy, having written 50 songs, 300 poems, and 2 books in that time, and, with four recent stage performances under her belt, now enjoying being a confident performing singer-songwriter. She is about to launch a new website - www.PhyllisATravis.com – taking her music, books, faith and dream analyst skills public in a big way.

Phyllis says the key was to let go of fearing other people’s judgment, and the realization that it was her own fear that was keeping her from going forward.

Once she knew that, the dream alchemy practices I set for her opened the way.

Thanks Phyllis, for sharing your story, and congratulations on your nomination!

Listen to Phyllis’s nomination-winning song, Sawdust Sunlight. (Click ‘audio’ tab to see the playlist.)

And cast your vote for Phyllis here.

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A tale of two snakes

Posted on November 5, 2009 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 1 Comment

A tale of two snakes

I’ve just had coffee with a beautiful soul who is creating something quite exquisite to celebrate dreams. You’ll hear about it here first, when it’s ready to unveil.

“What is that pendant you always wear? Some kind of totem?” she asked, leaning forward to examine the fine detail of the chain that I wear day and night.

“Two snakes, from a dream,” I smiled, settling back to tell my story. “It all began in the year 2001. Oh, and it also began more than 2,000 years ago …”

I had a powerful dream in 2001. A huge golden snake opened its mouth and swallowed a huge silver snake, leaving only its tail protruding from its mouth, still very much alive. I watched, horrified, expecting the golden snake to snap shut its mouth and consume its prize. Then I realised that the golden snake was in an equally vulnerable position, because the silver snake could start eating the golden snake from the inside.

Then came the greater realisation. This was not a dog-eat-dog or snake-eat-snake situation. This was a situation of trust. This dream was about trusting the process of facing fear. As I watched, I noticed I was covered in cobwebs, which I pushed away, emerging into sunlight, like a butterfly – I thought in my dream – from a chrysalis.

So yes, snakes are a totem for me. They’re a personal symbol for transformation through trusting the process of facing fears at the deepest level.

Now, let’s go back some 2,400 years, to the healing temples in ancient Greece. If you were sick of mind or body in those days, you went to a healing temple to spend the night sleeping in a room filled with (harmless) snakes. In the morning, you told your dream to your healer, whose job was to interpret your dream to diagnose your situation and prescribe a cure.

Shades of my approach: first interpret the dream then prescribe a dream alchemy practice to create the desired result (healing).

One of these dream interpreters was Hippocrates, the very same Hippocrates immortalised in the Hippocratic Oath sworn by western medical practitioners. That’s why the caduceus, that symbol of modern medicine, is a snake entwined staff.

Michael surprised me, back in 2001, by taking my dream to a jeweller, immortalising it in white and yellow gold. Pure dream alchemy.

What’s your totem? Where can a little extra trust take you?

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