Tag: metaphor | In your dreams …

The Princess and the Pea

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 2 Comments

What’s the moral of the story of The Princess and the Pea? I’ve been putting people on the spot with this question this week, and received so many different replies. Before reading on, if you remember the story, give yourself a few moments and jot down the moral that you’ve always taken from this tale.

Need a memory jogger? In this Hans Christian Andersen tale, published in 1835, a prince searches the kingdom for a real princess to marry. He meets plenty of princesses, but each has a fault, so he returns to the castle alone. One night, during a storm, a girl knocks at the door. She’s wet and bedraggled, yet claims to be a princess. The Queen decides to test this by giving her a bed for the night, twenty mattresses high, topped with twenty feather beds. Beneath all those mattresses and feathers, the Queen places a pea.

The next morning, when asked how she had slept, the princess replied that she had had a terrible night and had hardly slept because the bed was so uncomfortable due to something hard that left her skin bruised. The Queen rejoiced, because only a real princess would feel the pea through all those mattresses. Of course, the prince and princess married and lived happily ever after.

So, what’s the moral of the story? If you haven’t written one down, do so now. And if you had written one down and you now have a new thought about the moral of this tale, write that down before reading on.

I bought Vashti-Sita Bardsley’s ‘The Princess and the Pea’ brooch.

Last weekend, I went to Vashti-Sita Bardsley’s exhibition of jewellery created around the hero’s journey, and bought The Princess and the Pea – a brooch. Vashti is a dream client, and I was excited to see her work, knowing something about her journey, and now you know why I’ve been asking people all week for their view of the moral of the story of The Princess and the Pea.

As a child, and as a mother reading the story to my children, I thought the princess was very rude to mention her discomfort, yet at the same time I realised that if she had kept her discomfort to herself, she wouldn’t have married the prince and lived happily ever after.

What would Hans Christian Andersen tell us today, about the moral of his 1835 story, The Princess and the Pea?

Responses I collected this week included: that princesses are picky and rude, that it’s not good to be hypersensitive, that one’s true nature always shows through, that we shouldn’t judge a person by appearances. That’s just for starters.

I realised that my view had shifted since early motherhood, and for me the story is about authenticity, and the pea – given the bed and sleep theme – can be likened to dreams that help us to recognise uncomfortable or painful issues that we need to acknowledge and heal to live happily ever after. If we deny uncomfortable issues, turn our backs on our dreams, and pretend that all is well, we never get to experience – and here we slide into another Hans Christian Andersen tale – the joyful transformation from ugly duckling feeling to beautiful swan knowing.

It is said that Hans Christian Andersen, when asked to write his autobiography, replied that it was already written, as The Ugly Duckling. He struggled throughout his life with issues of authenticity and belonging. I wonder what he would tell us today, about the moral of The Princess and the Pea.

And what’s your personal take on the moral of the story?

Vashti’s blog Vashti’s etsy shop

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The Dream Oscars

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

Thank you. I’ve got a piece of paper here somewhere. Oh, the tears! It’s been quite a journey from base metal to Dream Oscar! Now, where was I?

Thank you. I’d like to thank my dreams for the spiritually inspiring alchemist’s stones they delivered that helped me in precipitating the solution that became my awakening. I see it all so clearly now.

In a good night’s sleep you have about five big dreams, usually all concerning the same question. Each one contains a Philosopher’s Stone – an insight previously unknown to you that you can use to transform your waking life from base metal into gold. What treasure! What potential!

After ninety minutes of deep sleep, the first dream is – well, let’s say the first dream is ‘screened’.

Each night as you fall asleep you teeter on the verge of bringing home the gold. After ninety minutes of deep sleep, the first dream is – well, let’s say the first dream is ‘screened’. The first dream of the night is usually the most vivid and surreal. Imagine the excitement down in the basement of your deep unconscious – maybe tonight’s the night! Picture this. Your dream director paces in the dark:

‘Maybe tonight’s the night!’

‘Maybe tonight’s the night to bring home the gold. Maybe tonight we’ll screen the dream of a lifetime. Maybe tonight she’ll finally get the message. Maybe tonight we can pull out all our best stops. Maybe tonight it’s Dream Oscars all round! What’s the theme for the night?’

The dream director taps her microphone. ‘Metaphors department, you in yet?’

‘The theme?’ echoes a rumbling voice from the Script Development Department in the depths of the dark unconscious. ‘We thought we might have another look at the self-esteem question tonight. We laid some good foundations with the power issue last night, so we’re ready to take a fresh look at self-esteem.’

‘Ah, big one,’ replies the dream director, one eye on the clock. ‘We’re ten minutes down and the clock’s ticking. Eighty minutes and we need the first dream up and ready to go. Order up the early life memories please – run a combined search on “power” and “self-esteem”.’

The familiar staccato splutter of modems firing up to download the memory neurons of the brain mingles with start-of-shift coffee.

The dream director taps her microphone. ‘Metaphors department, you in yet?’

‘In and rolling. We’ve got a good round-table blitz group in today. Should come up with some crackers tonight. I hear the Puns and Wordplay Department has a top-class crossword puzzle expert on the job tonight. We might be up for the Dream Oscars with tonight’s screenings.’

The dream director drums her fingers on her desk. ‘Seventy-five minutes and counting. Casting department, you on board? We need a big cast for tonight: the best you can, we’re going for the Dream Oscars. Theme is self-esteem and power. I want people from waking life, people from the past and a couple of characters from fiction. Stick to theme, but think extremes; even go as far as caricatures. Oh, and we’ll need two extras. Make-up are standing by to archetypecast the extras.’

“I hear the Puns and Wordplay Department has a top-class crossword puzzle expert on the job tonight.”

At ninety minutes exactly the first dream is screened and recorded for posterity in the Unconscious Memory Archives Department. At the same time a copy is sent, as always, to the Conscious Recall Database but with no expectation of success as the IT technicians are still chasing the dream deletion virus that entered the system at the same moment in history as the Industrial Revolution.

After the screening, brief congratulations are exchanged and then all heads are down to create the second dream. This time conditions are tighter. The deep sleep interval between dreams decreases as the night goes on and the dreaming periods get longer. With less time for creativity and production and longer stories to shoot, it’s no surprise that dreams closer to morning tend to be a little more mundane.

By morning the film crew are partying and retiring to doze at the Back Burner Inn for the day. You stir, fleetingly in contact with Conscious Recall Database, battling the dream deletion virus to archive the data over to the permanent conscious memory store. Somewhere between dreaming and getting out of bed a partial victory is declared, a dream or two are remembered and the still vigilant dream director wonders, before hitting the sack, if her movies have worked their magic.

Extract, Dream Alchemy, pages 17-19, Jane Teresa Anderson, published Hachette.

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Mama Mia! Flying & falling dreams

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

“Married at 22 to a jackass, I spent 10 years with a cheater, and 10 years dreaming that I was falling. I never hit the ground, and I knew I was dreaming, but there it was: falling. And, it was scary.

After that divorce, I found a gem of a husband who looks after me and treasures our love. Guess what? Now, the dreams are of flying. I am flying, and I’m good at it, and I know it’s a dream and I don’t care because it’s fun.”

Laurie posted this on mamamia.com last week when I was guest blogger talking about recurring dreams. There were over 100 posts as Mia’s readers shared their dreams, and I spent some time replying, interpreting, giving tips. (Read them here.)

There were over 100 posts as Mia’s readers shared their dreams.

I replied to Laurie:

“Isn’t it enlightening when you spot the metaphor in the dream? Often we can only do this in retrospect, as we are so often blind – in denial – to our situation at the time.

Dreams reflect the unconscious, and it seems you had an unconscious belief in falling (in not flying), low self esteem perhaps (and falling ever lower), until something happened to reverse that thinking, and you transformed that negative unconscious belief. You saw the possibility of flying, of having higher self esteem, of reaching a higher potential.

You wouldn’t have stayed in that 10 year marriage unless it matched your unconscious feelings of falling.

Good work, and congratulations!

Here’s something interesting: If I had heard about your falling dream way back then, as well as exploring your dream to understand it, I would have given you a visualisation. I would have asked you to visualise yourself back in your dream, only this time to fly out of the fall, to grow wings and fly up and up and out of the dream, and to summon up a wonderful feeling of high self esteem and limitless possibilities as you did this. It’s what I call a Dream Alchemy practice. It’s a way of working with your dream symbols (e.g. falling) to change them; a way of reprogramming your unconscious beliefs from negative to positive by speaking the language of your unconscious (which we know, from your dream).

What would have happened if you’d done this? You’d have automatically seen the light and broken free earlier. But hey, here you are today, and life is wonderful. Enjoy your wings.”

Read my guest blog and replies to mamamia’s dreamers.

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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

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (24.8MB) | Embed

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.

Listen here (Episode 92) or subscribe to the whole series at iTunes.

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What if?

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

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

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

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

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

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

A man dreamed he was drowning.

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

A woman dreamed she was late for her plane.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It never occurred to Thirsty Lady to serve herself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So here’s the thing:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What if …

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

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Quick, quick, slow

Posted on December 20, 2010 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 4 Comments

Here are some things I know about myself: I think at high speed, I generate ideas and solutions quickly, I talk fast, and I read slowly. Michael can read a whole book in the time it takes me to read a couple of chapters. But that’s nothing compared to Geoff, a friend, who reads books at a rate of about five seconds a page. Imagine that, turning a page every ten seconds through an entire book!

When Geoff was a teenager, his class was taught to speed read as part of an experiment that lasted throughout his high school years. Students regularly sat tests to measure reading speed and comprehension, and those who passed continued in the experimental class.

“Speed reading is like looking at the big picture,” Geoff said, gesturing towards the ocean.

Geoff told me this yesterday, during a three hour breakfast with friends, at a table overlooking the ocean. Was it a slow breakfast because it lasted three hours, or was it a fast breakfast because our conversations covered vast territories?

“Speed reading is like looking at the big picture,” Geoff said, gesturing towards the ocean. “Take one look out to sea, and you see everything: the ocean, the sky, the clouds, the boats, the people swimming, the sand, the trees. You don’t see lots of little bits and then string them together. You see one big picture, and you get it. It’s the same with speed reading.”

“Ah,” I replied, “that’s how I make sense of dreams. I stand a long way back from a dream so I can see the big picture, and I understand it. Then I go in and look at the details. The details always end up confirming my first reading, but they add so much depth, insight, texture and awe.”

But for Geoff there’s no second look, no exploration of the details, no new delight in uncovering something that resonates with the big picture. From what I can understand, Geoff gets all of that in the one and only big picture read. He says he misses nothing.

By my calculations, five seconds a page is about 12-15 times faster than ‘people who enjoy reading’.

How fast or slowly do you read? According to www.freereadingtest.com the average person reads at a rate of 200-300 words per minute, and people who enjoy reading often exceed 400 words per minute. By my calculations, five seconds a page is about 12-15 times faster than ‘people who enjoy reading’. You might like to take the free test here before reading further.

How did you go? I’ll share my results shortly. I asked Geoff whether he felt his school training in seeing the big picture affects the way he sees life and the way he works. He said he feels it’s advantageous in every way, though he does find detail tasks like running a diary challenging. I got the impression that he meant running a diary felt superfluous compared with seeing, comprehending and moving forward with big picture vision.

Stand back a long way from your dream until you see the big picture.

Here’s the dream interpretation tip: Stand back a long way from your dream until you see the big picture (for example I’m running away from something or I keep encountering obstacles). Consider your sentence as a metaphor or analogy of your recent waking life experiences. What do you notice? Can you make a connection? Speed read your dream in this way to gain insight into how your unconscious mind is processing life. Then go in and explore the details of your dream, aided by your big picture clues.

When I did the reading test just now, my score was just over 300 words a minute, which, for someone who enjoys reading (as I do) is indeed slow. But I did learn something interesting. The test read that came up for me was all about the green pigment in leaves, chlorophyll, a subject I recently blogged about under the title Why is grass green? I found the test passage excruciatingly boring, but while I was reading the words I noticed that I was simultaneously thinking about the Why is grass green? blog, and remembering the fun I had writing that article (very speedily) to illustrate how our dreams help us create our big picture views of the world, and noticing the connection with the intent of today’s blog.

Here’s something I didn’t know about myself: I read slowly because I’m thinking and creating on many levels at the same time, simultaneously doing ‘big picture’ and ‘detailed analysis’. Now I know why I’m good at interpreting dreams LOL!

Do the test. What do you learn about yourself from this?

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Hot coffee, warm heart?

Posted on November 25, 2010 by Jane Teresa Anderson • 0 Comments

Can you distinguish a dream from reality? Test yourself on this one:

John is reading resumes, deciding which candidate to employ for a position. He takes one resume, a sheath of pages attached to a heavy clipboard. “Serious,” he concludes. He takes a second resume, the same number of pages but this time attached to a light clipboard. He dismisses the second candidate as being too light.

Dream or reality?

Does a heavy clipboard add weight to a resume?

Dreams are generally metaphors, so surely this is a dream, the weighty resume symbolising a serious candidate, a heavyweight, and the lighter resume symbolising a lightweight candidate.

Add this fact to the picture:

The resumes are identical. The only difference between them is the weight of the clipboard to which they are attached. Dream or reality?

Robert Sapolsky, in a New York Times Opinionator article titled This is your brain on metaphors, reports a study where volunteers were “asked to evaluate the resumes of supposed job applicants where, as the critical variable, the resume was attached to a clipboard of one of two different weights. Subjects who evaluated the candidate while holding the heavier clipboard tended to judge candidates to be more serious, with the weight of the clipboard having no effect on how congenial the applicant was judged.”

Sapolsky cites a number of studies showing how the brain links the literal and the metaphorical, and points out that these are processed in the same region of the brain. We are wired to process some experiences as metaphors, Sapolsky explains, to which I add that it is the metaphor versions of our experiences that we frequently see reflected in our dreams. In analysing our personal metaphors, as seen in our dreams, we gain insight into how we are responding to waking life on a visceral level. Our visceral level (gut) response is also programmed by our past experiences, the beliefs we have built about life, and analysing our dreams provides insight into these.

Is this coffee hot or iced? And how is this related to assessing personality?

You’ll love this one. In another study Sapolsky relates, people are invited to read a description of an individual and assess their personality. The experimenter met each person, his arms full of files and folders, trying to balance his coffee cup, and asked them to briefly hold his coffee while he put the papers down. In half the situations, the coffee was hot, in the other half it was iced. Those who had briefly held the hot coffee before reading the description tended to assess the individual as having a warmer personality, with no change in the ratings of the other attributes.

Interesting but scary stuff, the potential to use metaphor to manipulate outcomes, but nothing new – just think advertising, NLP, fairy tales, movies.

Sapolsky says, “This neural confusion about the literal versus the metaphorical gives symbols enormous power, including the power to make peace.” In the article, he illustrates this with examples of peacemaking in the Middle East and South Africa.

Dream alchemy transforms our personal metaphors of waking life as revealed in our dreams.

The power of manipulating (and changing) our personal dream symbols to resolve inner conflict, find inner peace, and create more meaningful perspectives of waking life is the process I call dream alchemy. It’s about taking those personal metaphors of waking life – as revealed in our dreams – that are not rewarding for us and transforming them into metaphors that deliver more positive life experiences and outcomes.

Since the literal and the metaphoric are linked in the brain, and warm coffee warms our assessment of personality, and heavy resumes influence our assessment of a candidate’s seriousness, is it any surprise that dream alchemy, carefully and professionally applied, changes our experience of waking life?

Read Sapolsky’s article.

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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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