More on dreams

First off - why write about dreams on a blog that discusses the Law of Attraction?

Part of the art of engaging the universe through the Law of Attraction is to pay attention to the subtle signs, signals, and whispers that are always coming our way. Some of these signals come from our unconscious mind through our sleeping dreams.

Why are dreams important?

Well, as noted in the post just below, they are trying to tell you something. They are symbolic messages from your unconscious mind (the powerhouse part of your being -- see my post below about The Game of Life) that have very important information for you.

If you ask a clear question before going to sleep, your unconscious mind will respond through your dreams.

How to interpret dreams?

In my experience, not everything in a dream is relevant for waking life. Sometimes you have to find the really important elements.

I seem to remember reading that Carl Jung said that some dream elements will try to get your attention after you wake up. In my mind, it's like some of the elements fade (I know that something was there, but I can't remember what it was) while others will persist. The ones that persist are the ones that are important (see how easy that is?).

The trick is to remember that each element is a symbol of something about you or your experience. Dreams are rarely about anyone other than you, even though they may involve other people.

When I was a teenager, I repeatedly had dreams of sitting at the dinner table with my family and getting into an argument. We had a glass dining table. In the dream, I would somehow pull the table top of its pedestal and it would break. No one ever was physically hurt. When I would wake up from these dreams, I would feel a mixture of guilt and relief.

The dream elements were:

1. My parents
2. The table
3. The table being overturned
4. Guilt and relief

The way I interpreted these dreams initially is that I was looking for some way to get my parents' attention. And something dramatic like breaking a big glass table would definitely do that.

After learning more about dream symbols and experimenting with them for years, I realized that I wasn't dreaming about my physical parents, I was dreaming about my symbolic parents.

In the dream, the person most affected by the table crashing was my stepmother. I now know that her presence in the dream was about my mother archetype: the part of me that is nurturing, comforting, present to my needs, and encourages in quiet ways (that's my mother archetype; yours may be different). Well, I wasn't doing any of those things for myself during the years I would have these dreams.

In the dream, I was definitely getting the attention I wanted (hence the relief afterward). But I was not actually engaging with the part of myself that was capable of nurturing. So the action had no affect (no one was hurt -- and this brought up guilt).

Now -- does this interpretation make sense to you? You may be able to follow the logic (however twisted) and you may get the connections that I'm making. But my guess is that you are probably scratching your head a bit. Good!

Each of us dream in a highly personal and unique way. No two people dream the same. That's because no two people share the exact same mind.

We are, however, joined through the collective unconscious, and so some of our dream symbols may be similar.

For example, for most Americans a dollar bill means money in some form or fashion. Most Americans probably don't dream about pound notes. I assume that most Brits don't dream about Japanese yen, and so on.

But how I interpret a one dollar bill in my dream will probably be very different than my next-door neighbor.

Like I've written in many different ways, there is an art to all of this. As you practice and pay attention, you will begin to understand how to interpret your own dreams. The important thing is to do it.