Clients, friends and family come to me to talk about their dreams. I’ve worked with them extensively for decades and while each dream is unique to the dreamer, I usually can provide some insight that they might not have come to on their own or point them in the right direction to get the most from the message.
The thing is, not all dreams are super duper relevant, important, or even newsworthy. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Remembering dreams comes from going through the body’s waking cycle while still in the dreaming state. Our conscious mind comes online as the dreaming portions slowly shut down. There is a crossing of the streams, as it were, and so you remember a portion of the dream. We dream quite often during sleep, but remember only that small sliver of that dreaming unless we are woken from the dreaming state in order to remember it, which is a rare event.
So with that said, let’s go through some of the various types of dreams out there. Most of our dreams are just us processing what happened during the day, making meaning out of it, incorporating it into our identity and our full system memory banks, emotional strata and letting it go so it doesn’t have to be held in the body as physical memory, which causes physical difficulties. These aren’t usually very memorable, are amazingly random, and fade quickly. Then there are dreams we have as we’re waking with a full bladder. These I call “pee dreams.” They can be amazingly vibrant, detailed, seem relevant because they will usually hold whole trains of thought that we’ve recently had or relate to something important to us in the moment, but have random water elements to them such as the main characters wading through knee deep water or having business meetings while the fire alarm is going off along with the sprinklers, or finding out there is a concert going on under a waterfall. These dreams can be ignored, although they can be a good story to relate to friends, because they are triggered by the ‘hurry up’ wake up cycle related to bladder relief and any message is really about you getting up before something happens that you have to clean up later.
Then there are various types of significant dreams that do talk to you about your life both external and internal. Dreams about houses or rooms in houses are talking about you, your identity, your feelings about your life at the moment. The details of the house or the room may be symbolic, the situation that got you there or is getting you out, or the people associated with the room might be the key. What is usually most important is how you tell the dream. So write it down or tell it to someone. Because the key to its meaning is in how you tell it. The words you use, what you emphasize, what you downplay, all have meaning. Usually you will say the actual meaning as part of the story and not realize it until after you’ve said it.
Then there are the traveling dreams. The where you are going is usually vague, but the how you are going, with whom, when, how fast all of this has symbology and meaning. You may not be traveling in real life, but traveling dreams mean that you are on the road, working towards something, changing something, progressing towards something. Change is happening and you’re trying to give yourself a heads up as to all the ramifications of this even if it’s just about your emotions, intent, needs, and head space around it.
And then there are the dreams about people you know, or people you don’t, but think you should. These can be dreams about them, dreams about your relationship with them, or dreams about them trying to tell you something. These are not always symbolic but they can be and it’s important to talk it out or write it down to see where the message lies. I once had a dream about my workplace that was quite startling, but amazingly insightful. You would think it would be frightening or a nightmare, but it wasn’t. I was very calm and peaceful throughout and yet as I walked through the office I was able to identify the various employees there as vampires, werewolves, and other creatures, the most startling of which was the ‘marshmallow dead person.’ When I woke up I realized that I wasn’t viewing a horror flick, but identifying how these people operated in the world and I should act accordingly. Some were energy/career vampires, taking from others to satisfy their career and personal goes. Others were werewolves who instigated trouble and tried to get others to do the same. And some were not even quite zombies, but just filler, not doing anything but sitting and taking up space. Like marshmallows. No real flavor, no real purpose if not in a smore or in hot chocolate. Just taking up space. This knowledge really helped me to adjust how I worked with people to navigate the workplace more effectively.
So paying attention to your dreams is good, but make sure you don’t over or under emphasize their importance. Because sometimes it’s just better to go “Huh?” and get on with the day. 🙂