“Only the dreamer can say with any certainty what meanings his or her dream may have. This certainty usually comes in the form of a wordless "aha!" of recognition. ~Reverend Jeremy Taylor
A couple of days ago we looked at the presence of food in our dreams. Now let’s turn our attention to something less concrete but more charged – feelings. As you go about logging your dreams for this study (which I really appreciate you doing) there are probably instances where you’re wondering “what does that mean? What is that darn dream trying to tell me, if anything?” Unfortunately, in this experiment, interpretation of dream content is not the primary focus. There are both too many of you and too many dreams to be able to delve into this very important aspect of dreaming in depth. Some of you I know are experienced dream interpreters and for others it’s relatively virgin territory. So for those of you who are less familiar with unpacking your dreams, I just wanted to offer you a technique that has worked well for me over the years, that is relatively easy to perform and yet yields insightful results…so that you don’t have to go through your day in a state of frustration, scratching your head because you experienced a dream that left you confounded and confused…
By now you may have noticed that one of the first things I ask you to do on the Dream Entry Form (DEF) is to identify the feelings in your dream and there’s a long list to choose from. Identifying the feelings in our dreams is one of the easiest and most direct paths to unpacking the meaning/significance of a dream. This is especially true when the imagery is bizarre and the dream narrative seems mind-bogglingly complex. By simply identifying the key feelings in a dream and then asking oneself the question, “Where are these very same feelings showing up in my waking life?” and then connecting the dots between their context in waking life and their context in the dream, insights can rise to the surface like champagne bubbles…
Here’s an example to illustrate the process…Dream:
Was outside but it was part of a school. And I was bonding with the other students but it was also the end of the term and so everyone was leaving and I was sad that these bonds that were just forming would soon be dissolved.
So, first I begin by identifying the feelings in the dream just like I have you do on the DEF. In this case they were primarily sadness mixed in with a bit of disappointment. Then I ask myself where are these feelings showing up in my waking life? I right away realized that I was feeling sad that both my neighbors on either side of my office were leaving. In waking life I felt like I was just getting to know them on a deeper level and now they’d be out of the picture. I was both saddened and disappointed by this development. An important symbol or “dot” in the dream is that the scene takes place at a school. It just so happens that the office where I work is a converted middle school. So, two of the dots, from internal and external reality, were connecting here. Now, reverend Jeremy Taylor, an amazing dream interpreter and one of my teachers always says, “Dreams never come to tell us what we already know.” So I asked myself this question because I already knew that my neighbors were taking off so what is that I don’t know about this situation, that the Dream Maker is trying to open my eyes to? I sat with this question for a while. No immediate answer arose. So I waited patiently in a receptive mode to see what emerges and all of a sudden it dawned on me that as a child having attended twelve schools in twelve years (no my parents were not diplomats) my connections with others were constantly getting severed. Now I understood this was an old wound being revisited. I immediately got a sense of “ahah.” That is what the Dream Maker wanted me to acknowledge and additionally to take some time to really feel my sadness around this issue instead of just tucking it under the rug and making myself busy.
So this is one simple way to approach dreamwork. Like any skill it takes practice. The key is to identify the feelings first. It can also help to pretend it’s not your dream. I sometimes trick myself and tell myself I’m watching a movie dream or a soap opera and that none of the characters are me. This allows me to get a little distance from the dream, a little objectivity, and I am more likely to catch my blind spots.
Resources:
An emotional dream dictionary:
http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamthemes/feelings.htm
Further reading:
Can we dream emotional pain away?
http://sciencenetlinks.com/science-news/science-updates/dreams-emotions/
A couple of days ago we looked at the presence of food in our dreams. Now let’s turn our attention to something less concrete but more charged – feelings. As you go about logging your dreams for this study (which I really appreciate you doing) there are probably instances where you’re wondering “what does that mean? What is that darn dream trying to tell me, if anything?” Unfortunately, in this experiment, interpretation of dream content is not the primary focus. There are both too many of you and too many dreams to be able to delve into this very important aspect of dreaming in depth. Some of you I know are experienced dream interpreters and for others it’s relatively virgin territory. So for those of you who are less familiar with unpacking your dreams, I just wanted to offer you a technique that has worked well for me over the years, that is relatively easy to perform and yet yields insightful results…so that you don’t have to go through your day in a state of frustration, scratching your head because you experienced a dream that left you confounded and confused…
By now you may have noticed that one of the first things I ask you to do on the Dream Entry Form (DEF) is to identify the feelings in your dream and there’s a long list to choose from. Identifying the feelings in our dreams is one of the easiest and most direct paths to unpacking the meaning/significance of a dream. This is especially true when the imagery is bizarre and the dream narrative seems mind-bogglingly complex. By simply identifying the key feelings in a dream and then asking oneself the question, “Where are these very same feelings showing up in my waking life?” and then connecting the dots between their context in waking life and their context in the dream, insights can rise to the surface like champagne bubbles…
Here’s an example to illustrate the process…Dream:
Was outside but it was part of a school. And I was bonding with the other students but it was also the end of the term and so everyone was leaving and I was sad that these bonds that were just forming would soon be dissolved.
So, first I begin by identifying the feelings in the dream just like I have you do on the DEF. In this case they were primarily sadness mixed in with a bit of disappointment. Then I ask myself where are these feelings showing up in my waking life? I right away realized that I was feeling sad that both my neighbors on either side of my office were leaving. In waking life I felt like I was just getting to know them on a deeper level and now they’d be out of the picture. I was both saddened and disappointed by this development. An important symbol or “dot” in the dream is that the scene takes place at a school. It just so happens that the office where I work is a converted middle school. So, two of the dots, from internal and external reality, were connecting here. Now, reverend Jeremy Taylor, an amazing dream interpreter and one of my teachers always says, “Dreams never come to tell us what we already know.” So I asked myself this question because I already knew that my neighbors were taking off so what is that I don’t know about this situation, that the Dream Maker is trying to open my eyes to? I sat with this question for a while. No immediate answer arose. So I waited patiently in a receptive mode to see what emerges and all of a sudden it dawned on me that as a child having attended twelve schools in twelve years (no my parents were not diplomats) my connections with others were constantly getting severed. Now I understood this was an old wound being revisited. I immediately got a sense of “ahah.” That is what the Dream Maker wanted me to acknowledge and additionally to take some time to really feel my sadness around this issue instead of just tucking it under the rug and making myself busy.
So this is one simple way to approach dreamwork. Like any skill it takes practice. The key is to identify the feelings first. It can also help to pretend it’s not your dream. I sometimes trick myself and tell myself I’m watching a movie dream or a soap opera and that none of the characters are me. This allows me to get a little distance from the dream, a little objectivity, and I am more likely to catch my blind spots.
Resources:
An emotional dream dictionary:
http://www.dreammoods.com/dreamthemes/feelings.htm
Further reading:
Can we dream emotional pain away?
http://sciencenetlinks.com/science-news/science-updates/dreams-emotions/