Article: All About Dreams

[Anonymous]

Dreams have a language all their own

This language is unique to the subconscious mind during sleep each night. Dreams express our feelings and emotions through pictures, symbols, puns, expressions, slang, metaphors, etc. Everyone dreams, whether they are remembered or not. All information from our waking experiences is stored in the subconscious mind and used to relay our problems, conflicts, desires, and any other situation that needs to be dealt with, resolved, or at the very least filed away for later perusal. Just as life presents us with situations that we must deal with, (and will keep presenting us with similar situations until we pass the test) dreams also present us with situations that we must face in one way or another. They can be forgotten or even ignored, but the fact of the matter is they have a nagging way of getting to the heart of things whether we want to face them or not. Recurring dreams and recurring themes is the subconscious mind’s way of signaling to us that something needs our attention.
For the most part, dreams are played out in a picture language that is capable of condensing a vast amount of information into a single picture or even a short “movie� that gets dramatized for us during sleep. These complex images can sometimes make perfect sense inside the dream, but once we awaken the information quickly seems jumbled, impossible, and not worth the trouble to give too much thought to. If a conscious effort is not made in remembering and recording, they quickly are forgotten. However, you can learn how to pay attention,learn to have more and have better recall of them, and most importantly learn how to interpret them. Keeping a dream journal and learning dream interpretation techniques will start you on your way to discovering the importance and meanings of your nightly excursions.

Most dreams are packed with significant meaning and are certainly worth the effort of figuring out what those meanings are. Some are certainly pointless and unimportant, but that is up to the individual to decide. But dreams aren’t just categorized into interesting and boring, or meaningful and pointless. In the paranormal realm, they fall into categories such as ESP, psychic, precognitive, conscious, spiritual, lucid, and OBE dreams. Popular dreams that fall under these categories are flying episodes, visits from the deceased, and those that are problem-solving.

Not paying attention to your dreams is equivalent to going to the movies and not paying attention to the screen in front of you, walking out the door once it’s over, and forgetting you were even in the theater at all. Besides missing out on sheer entertainment, you would also be missing out on an opportunity to learn something new. However boring or strange it may seem, every dream can be an opportunity for learning if you pay enough attention to its message. It is also noteworthy to remember that we are our own biggest fans, aren’t we? So, why miss the opportunity to get to know yourself better.

---

Meaning of Dreams

All dreams have some sort of meaning even if not all of them are very important. Obviously, some dreams will carry more meaning than others. To discover the meanings of your dreams, you need to first be able to remember your dreams and second take the time to write them down. In this way you will be able to look at your dreams closely enough to decipher what they are telling you. Keeping a dream journal will enable you to better understand how the dreaming process works and what kinds of things your subconscious mind uses to express meaning.

Dream interpretation is the process of finding out what a dream means. The best way to do this is to learn how you can interpret your own dreams. Dreams are filled with symbols and ideas that tell a story on the surface, but if you learn to interpret what they mean to you, you can discover underlying information encoded within the dream.

Why are dreams filled with hidden meanings? During the time you are awake (the waking state) you pull in every piece of information you experience through all your senses. Of course, not everything gets stored in your conscious mind-it would be an overload. But that information does get stored in the subconscious. Think of it as a sort of warehouse with a never-ending amount of storage space. When we use our conscious minds, we rationalize, we calculate, we think things through. But a much faster, more proficient process is utilized when the subconscious mind takes over during dreams. Information from that warehouse of experience is conveyed through pictures, symbols, puns, etc. to get as much story-telling across in the shortest amount of time. The complexity of this process is not a way of confusing you or hiding information, but rather it is a quick way to express feelings, thoughts, ideas, solutions, etc. in the simplest forms possible. A picture really can paint a thousand words!

By keeping a dream journal, you’ll be able to figure out what your dream symbols mean in your own dreams. Not all symbols will mean the same thing from one person to the next. There are symbols and themes that are universally the same for many people, but everybody also has their own personal dreams signs and symbols that are used in their own unique way.

In the waking world we use shortcuts all the time for communication, not only for cleaver expression but also for saving us the time it takes to express ourselves. We create slang and expressions in order to convey things we might not otherwise know how to express or for things that may take too long to explain, or to make it easier to connect with whomever we are talking to. In e-mails and chat rooms we’ve all seen the use of LOL for instance, or the little smiley faces. The jokes we make with friends or co-workers also use this technique of compressing information and saving time-some jokes get used and transformed to the point where they become “inside jokes” and maybe only part of the joke needs to be said in order to convey its meaning. Our use of language has graduated to a complexity of uses and even extends itself to our body language. It is no wonder that our dreaming minds do the same thing. We live in a world where we want things quickly, so if we need to get or give information we want it done as fast as possible.

It is important to remember that dreaming is a very important reason to get enough sleep each night. If you only get a few hours of sleep, you are depriving yourself of dreaming time.

---

INSTRUCTIONS FOR KEEPING YOUR DREAM JOURNAL:

1. USE A NOTEBOOK DEVOTED ONLY TO KEEPING YOUR DREAM JOURNAL. But if you prefer to keep your journal on your computer, that’s fine too. You can figure out your own system for keeping your dreams organized and in chronological order.

2. EACH ENTRY MUST BE DATED WITH DATE AND DAY.

3. WRITE OUT (OR TYPE) THE DREAM EXACTLY AS YOU REMEMBER IT. As you write out the dream, just write as you normally would talk or think. You don’t have to have perfectly complete sentences or perfect punctuation or grammar. The point is to just write out what you remember and get as much detail as you know. It doesn’t have to be perfect writing. Also, only write what you know—please don’t make assumptions about your dream at this point. All you need to do is write it out verbatim. If you have further thoughts or assumptions about anything in the dream, you may include these in your “Associations� section.

4. PICK OUT KEY WORDS, A THEME, OR DREAM SYMBOLS AND WRITE THEM AT THE TOP NEXT TO THE DATE/DAY OF ENTRY. After several dream journal entries you will be able to flip through your journal and see patterns to your dreams, and your personal dream symbols will stand out. This will also help when you start to work on what your dream signs mean to you. You’ll find that some come in cycles, and some come up in certain times in your life.

5. ASSOCIATIONS: After writing out the dream, skip a couple lines and write “Associations�. Here you will write out anything that associates the dream with what’s happening in your real life, or anything the dream reminds you of or makes you think of. You may not always be able to make associations, so you can just write “none�.

6. EVENTS: Jot down real life events of the previous day. This also helps when trying to figure out what triggered a dream. (Even if yesterday’s events didn’t trigger your last dream, they may trigger a dream later on down the road). This list is only used to record real life events for the purpose of recognizing triggers for your dreams. This list doesn’t have to pertain to the dream. Everyday things aren’t necessary, but do write down things that would make the day stand out. You certainly don’t have to write down every detail, but only things that will jog your memory for these events.

7. CAN’T REMEMBER ANY DREAMS? If you wake up with no memories of any dreams, that’s fine. Please make an entry, writing the day, date, and “No dream� or “Can’t remember�. Please also still write down the previous day’s events.

---

INSTRUCTIONS FOR DREAM INTERPRETATION TECHNIQUES

Dream dialogue techniques help you figure out what the objects and symbols in your dreams mean for you. Choose a dream from your dream journal and try out the following techniques to figure out one or more of your dream symbols.
1. After you have chosen a dream to work on, ask yourself if the dream has any obvious meaning and probably doesn’t need interpretation. If the dream’s meaning is not obvious, then continue.

2. Next, ask yourself if the context of the dream has any direct association to reality. If the answer is no, then continue.

3. Re-write the dream out in the present tense. (Sometimes this technique alone can bring out more meaning that you didn’t realize before).

4. Pick out a main object or symbol in the dream, something that needs clarification.

5. Next, you will be doing some role playing. What you will do is create a conversation with that object, with you being yourself and asking a question of that object. Then, you will answer for that object, fully defending yourself as if you are completely that object. Think of the context of the dream in the present tense, as if the dream were real and in the moment. After asking the question, have the object state what it is and its main function. Then go from there. If from that you can come up with another question, then ask it and let the object answer. In doing this, you should soon be able to see how that object relates to you or your life.

6. Another technique similar to this one is to give an element in your dream a voice. Let it speak for itself. This is similar in that the result should be applied to you and your life.

Here’s my example. I will use the dream I already showed you from the dream journal example, but I am only using the second dream that night. Here it is re-written in the present tense:

Date of Dream: July 7, 2004 Wednesday

I am at my mom’s house and I am house sitting for her. It is night time and very dark outside. In fact, it is dark in the house too. I don’t know why I don’t have the lights on. I don’t think they are on, or maybe they are just very dim. I am alone except for the fact that I have my pets with me, our 2 dogs and 2 cats. They are all vampires and they keep coming towards me, not in a mean way, but they make me run all over the house trying to get away from them. They aren’t really trying to bite me, but they show me their fangs and I’m scared of them. I run into the dining room and I stand on a chair. I am facing away from the table and the dogs and cats are gathering all around my chair. I want to climb up onto the dining room table but I can’t because it is too high. The table is floating in the air behind me halfway up to the ceiling and I can’t reach it. Eli, our big dog, keeps standing right in front of the chair, like he’s on guard. He doesn’t take his eyes off me and I can’t move in either direction. I feel so trapped and don’t know what to do. The cats start to wander around as if they are waiting to see what I will do next. Out of the corner of my eye to my left, I notice it is winter outside, and I see a girl walking through the snow in the back yard.

Okay, there’s my dream re-written in the present tense. This dream has no obvious meaning to me. I know this dream is not something that can happen in real life. The object that I am curious about is the table floating in the air. Here’s my dream dialogue:

ME: Why are you floating in the air? You belong on the floor! Now that you are raised, I can’t use you.

TABLE: You don’t need me. If I were down there you would just get up on me, and you’d only be running away from your problems.

ME: But my pets are vampires! Of course I want to run away from them!

TABLE: But you need to stand up to them, take control. After all, they are your pets and they need to be controlled. Besides, you know they don’t want to hurt you but they can’t help being who they are.

That was pretty easy but its meaning wasn’t obvious to me before I did the dialogue. This dream dialogue makes me realize what my feelings are toward my pets. In reality, they really are out of control. They are constantly trying to get my attention and I feel I can’t get them to fit into my lifestyle. I also feel like they are draining my energy—So this dream makes sense to me in that respect—they are draining me just like vampires would.

The table being raised represented a solution to my problem—standing up to my pets. And I know this is the right answer, since the only other solution would be to get rid of them. But I know in my heart I don’t want to do that. If that were the case, I might have dreamed of giving them away or them getting lost, etc. Instead, my subconscious mind gave me a dream showing me both my problem and the solution.

The next part of the dream that I am curious about is why I am in my parents’ house in the dark. This is one of my recurrent dream themes. Here’s the dialogue:

ME: Why am I always here, alone, in the dark? And why am I always house sitting? This isn’t my house!

HOUSE: You are responsible and I trust you. Besides, you miss me. You wish you could live here, alone—not with your parents. You want to take care of me when they are gone.

ME: Why is it always dark in here?

HOUSE: The idea of you having me hasn’t “come to light� yet. You have to stay “in the dark� until your parents make a decision.

Wow, this is so true. I never realized this before, but in reality I really do wish I could have their house. I grew up there and mom is always saying she wants to sell it because it’s too much work to take care of. I have told them many times that I want to buy the house, and I’d be more than happy to take care of it. But mom gets out of the conversation by simply saying, “Oh you can’t afford this house�. She seems like she really doesn’t want to have that conversation with me. She just brushes it aside. Nothing I say convinces her how important it is to me. She would rather just sell it to strangers. But I would like to keep it in the family and take care of it. I really do feel “in the dark� since I have no idea what they will eventually decide to do.

I have had that recurring dream theme so many times, yet I never realized what it meant until I did the dream dialogue.

GIVING A DREAM ELEMENT A VOICE

Since I have the common element of a trespasser at my mom’s house as a recurrent theme, I am going to give it a voice and see what it has to say.

First I will describe the element, which in this case is a “trespasser�: A trespasser intrudes, takes advantage, and has no respect for what others think.

Now I will give a voice to the concept of a trespasser and speak for it:

“I am a trespasser. I go where I want, when I want, and I don’t care about rules. Besides, I’m not hurting anyone or anything. I just want to be able to do what I want to do. If it is important to me then I feel I should get to do it without feeling hampered by anything.�

Wow, I didn’t even know what exactly I was going to say when all this came out, but in writing it out it made me remember my feelings growing up. Now, since the element of a trespasser always occurs at my mom’s house in my dreams, that tells me that my mom has an association to this element for me. My use of the word “hampered� really rang a bell for me, since that is what I felt my mom did to me—hampered my creativity. This is how I felt at times growing up. I was such a shy and self-conscious child that any bit of suggestion or criticism was unbearable to me. Even though my mom wasn’t trying to hurt my feelings, this is how I felt, and this became embedded in my subconscious mind.

As an adult, I realize that I have this dream every time I am trying something new in my life. Now I am the one hampering myself—what if I fail, what if I goof up, why do I think I’m good enough or creative enough? I don’t give myself the encouragement and validation I need in trying new things or ideas. It is as if I feel like I’m “not allowed to go there� when I want to branch out creatively. Subconsciously, then, my mind produces the trespasser in a dream at these times in my life. It is my subconscious mind’s way of alerting me to a possible danger of getting hurt, but at the same time it is telling me that if I can recognize this pattern in myself then I can realize I’m not doing anything wrong and that I do indeed have a right to be myself. Now that I know this, I can consciously remind myself that I have the right to be myself.

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[Author]

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[Anonymous]

Dreams have a language all their own

This language is unique to the subconscious mind during sleep each night. Dreams express our feelings and emotions through pictures, symbols, puns, expressions, slang, metaphors, etc. Everyone dreams, whether they are remembered or not. All information from our waking experiences is stored in the subconscious mind and used to relay our problems, conflicts, desires, and any other situation that needs to be dealt with, resolved, or at the very least filed away for later perusal. Just as life presents us with situations that we must deal with, (and will keep presenting us with similar situations until we pass the test) dreams also present us with situations that we must face in one way or another. They can be forgotten or even ignored, but the fact of the matter is they have a nagging way of getting to the heart of things whether we want to face them or not. Recurring dreams and recurring themes is the subconscious mind’s way of signaling to us that something needs our attention.
For the most part, dreams are played out in a picture language that is capable of condensing a vast amount of information into a single picture or even a short “movie� that gets dramatized for us during sleep. These complex images can sometimes make perfect sense inside the dream, but once we awaken the information quickly seems jumbled, impossible, and not worth the trouble to give too much thought to. If a conscious effort is not made in remembering and recording, they quickly are forgotten. However, you can learn how to pay attention,learn to have more and have better recall of them, and most importantly learn how to interpret them. Keeping a dream journal and learning dream interpretation techniques will start you on your way to discovering the importance and meanings of your nightly excursions.

Most dreams are packed with significant meaning and are certainly worth the effort of figuring out what those meanings are. Some are certainly pointless and unimportant, but that is up to the individual to decide. But dreams aren’t just categorized into interesting and boring, or meaningful and pointless. In the paranormal realm, they fall into categories such as ESP, psychic, precognitive, conscious, spiritual, lucid, and OBE dreams. Popular dreams that fall under these categories are flying episodes, visits from the deceased, and those that are problem-solving.

Not paying attention to your dreams is equivalent to going to the movies and not paying attention to the screen in front of you, walking out the door once it’s over, and forgetting you were even in the theater at all. Besides missing out on sheer entertainment, you would also be missing out on an opportunity to learn something new. However boring or strange it may seem, every dream can be an opportunity for learning if you pay enough attention to its message. It is also noteworthy to remember that we are our own biggest fans, aren’t we? So, why miss the opportunity to get to know yourself better.

---

Meaning of Dreams

All dreams have some sort of meaning even if not all of them are very important. Obviously, some dreams will carry more meaning than others. To discover the meanings of your dreams, you need to first be able to remember your dreams and second take the time to write them down. In this way you will be able to look at your dreams closely enough to decipher what they are telling you. Keeping a dream journal will enable you to better understand how the dreaming process works and what kinds of things your subconscious mind uses to express meaning.

Dream interpretation is the process of finding out what a dream means. The best way to do this is to learn how you can interpret your own dreams. Dreams are filled with symbols and ideas that tell a story on the surface, but if you learn to interpret what they mean to you, you can discover underlying information encoded within the dream.

Why are dreams filled with hidden meanings? During the time you are awake (the waking state) you pull in every piece of information you experience through all your senses. Of course, not everything gets stored in your conscious mind-it would be an overload. But that information does get stored in the subconscious. Think of it as a sort of warehouse with a never-ending amount of storage space. When we use our conscious minds, we rationalize, we calculate, we think things through. But a much faster, more proficient process is utilized when the subconscious mind takes over during dreams. Information from that warehouse of experience is conveyed through pictures, symbols, puns, etc. to get as much story-telling across in the shortest amount of time. The complexity of this process is not a way of confusing you or hiding information, but rather it is a quick way to express feelings, thoughts, ideas, solutions, etc. in the simplest forms possible. A picture really can paint a thousand words!

By keeping a dream journal, you’ll be able to figure out what your dream symbols mean in your own dreams. Not all symbols will mean the same thing from one person to the next. There are symbols and themes that are universally the same for many people, but everybody also has their own personal dreams signs and symbols that are used in their own unique way.

In the waking world we use shortcuts all the time for communication, not only for cleaver expression but also for saving us the time it takes to express ourselves. We create slang and expressions in order to convey things we might not otherwise know how to express or for things that may take too long to explain, or to make it easier to connect with whomever we are talking to. In e-mails and chat rooms we’ve all seen the use of LOL for instance, or the little smiley faces. The jokes we make with friends or co-workers also use this technique of compressing information and saving time-some jokes get used and transformed to the point where they become “inside jokes” and maybe only part of the joke needs to be said in order to convey its meaning. Our use of language has graduated to a complexity of uses and even extends itself to our body language. It is no wonder that our dreaming minds do the same thing. We live in a world where we want things quickly, so if we need to get or give information we want it done as fast as possible.

It is important to remember that dreaming is a very important reason to get enough sleep each night. If you only get a few hours of sleep, you are depriving yourself of dreaming time.

---

INSTRUCTIONS FOR KEEPING YOUR DREAM JOURNAL:

1. USE A NOTEBOOK DEVOTED ONLY TO KEEPING YOUR DREAM JOURNAL. But if you prefer to keep your journal on your computer, that’s fine too. You can figure out your own system for keeping your dreams organized and in chronological order.

2. EACH ENTRY MUST BE DATED WITH DATE AND DAY.

3. WRITE OUT (OR TYPE) THE DREAM EXACTLY AS YOU REMEMBER IT. As you write out the dream, just write as you normally would talk or think. You don’t have to have perfectly complete sentences or perfect punctuation or grammar. The point is to just write out what you remember and get as much detail as you know. It doesn’t have to be perfect writing. Also, only write what you know—please don’t make assumptions about your dream at this point. All you need to do is write it out verbatim. If you have further thoughts or assumptions about anything in the dream, you may include these in your “Associations� section.

4. PICK OUT KEY WORDS, A THEME, OR DREAM SYMBOLS AND WRITE THEM AT THE TOP NEXT TO THE DATE/DAY OF ENTRY. After several dream journal entries you will be able to flip through your journal and see patterns to your dreams, and your personal dream symbols will stand out. This will also help when you start to work on what your dream signs mean to you. You’ll find that some come in cycles, and some come up in certain times in your life.

5. ASSOCIATIONS: After writing out the dream, skip a couple lines and write “Associations�. Here you will write out anything that associates the dream with what’s happening in your real life, or anything the dream reminds you of or makes you think of. You may not always be able to make associations, so you can just write “none�.

6. EVENTS: Jot down real life events of the previous day. This also helps when trying to figure out what triggered a dream. (Even if yesterday’s events didn’t trigger your last dream, they may trigger a dream later on down the road). This list is only used to record real life events for the purpose of recognizing triggers for your dreams. This list doesn’t have to pertain to the dream. Everyday things aren’t necessary, but do write down things that would make the day stand out. You certainly don’t have to write down every detail, but only things that will jog your memory for these events.

7. CAN’T REMEMBER ANY DREAMS? If you wake up with no memories of any dreams, that’s fine. Please make an entry, writing the day, date, and “No dream� or “Can’t remember�. Please also still write down the previous day’s events.

---

INSTRUCTIONS FOR DREAM INTERPRETATION TECHNIQUES

Dream dialogue techniques help you figure out what the objects and symbols in your dreams mean for you. Choose a dream from your dream journal and try out the following techniques to figure out one or more of your dream symbols.
1. After you have chosen a dream to work on, ask yourself if the dream has any obvious meaning and probably doesn’t need interpretation. If the dream’s meaning is not obvious, then continue.

2. Next, ask yourself if the context of the dream has any direct association to reality. If the answer is no, then continue.

3. Re-write the dream out in the present tense. (Sometimes this technique alone can bring out more meaning that you didn’t realize before).

4. Pick out a main object or symbol in the dream, something that needs clarification.

5. Next, you will be doing some role playing. What you will do is create a conversation with that object, with you being yourself and asking a question of that object. Then, you will answer for that object, fully defending yourself as if you are completely that object. Think of the context of the dream in the present tense, as if the dream were real and in the moment. After asking the question, have the object state what it is and its main function. Then go from there. If from that you can come up with another question, then ask it and let the object answer. In doing this, you should soon be able to see how that object relates to you or your life.

6. Another technique similar to this one is to give an element in your dream a voice. Let it speak for itself. This is similar in that the result should be applied to you and your life.

Here’s my example. I will use the dream I already showed you from the dream journal example, but I am only using the second dream that night. Here it is re-written in the present tense:

Date of Dream: July 7, 2004 Wednesday

I am at my mom’s house and I am house sitting for her. It is night time and very dark outside. In fact, it is dark in the house too. I don’t know why I don’t have the lights on. I don’t think they are on, or maybe they are just very dim. I am alone except for the fact that I have my pets with me, our 2 dogs and 2 cats. They are all vampires and they keep coming towards me, not in a mean way, but they make me run all over the house trying to get away from them. They aren’t really trying to bite me, but they show me their fangs and I’m scared of them. I run into the dining room and I stand on a chair. I am facing away from the table and the dogs and cats are gathering all around my chair. I want to climb up onto the dining room table but I can’t because it is too high. The table is floating in the air behind me halfway up to the ceiling and I can’t reach it. Eli, our big dog, keeps standing right in front of the chair, like he’s on guard. He doesn’t take his eyes off me and I can’t move in either direction. I feel so trapped and don’t know what to do. The cats start to wander around as if they are waiting to see what I will do next. Out of the corner of my eye to my left, I notice it is winter outside, and I see a girl walking through the snow in the back yard.

Okay, there’s my dream re-written in the present tense. This dream has no obvious meaning to me. I know this dream is not something that can happen in real life. The object that I am curious about is the table floating in the air. Here’s my dream dialogue:

ME: Why are you floating in the air? You belong on the floor! Now that you are raised, I can’t use you.

TABLE: You don’t need me. If I were down there you would just get up on me, and you’d only be running away from your problems.

ME: But my pets are vampires! Of course I want to run away from them!

TABLE: But you need to stand up to them, take control. After all, they are your pets and they need to be controlled. Besides, you know they don’t want to hurt you but they can’t help being who they are.

That was pretty easy but its meaning wasn’t obvious to me before I did the dialogue. This dream dialogue makes me realize what my feelings are toward my pets. In reality, they really are out of control. They are constantly trying to get my attention and I feel I can’t get them to fit into my lifestyle. I also feel like they are draining my energy—So this dream makes sense to me in that respect—they are draining me just like vampires would.

The table being raised represented a solution to my problem—standing up to my pets. And I know this is the right answer, since the only other solution would be to get rid of them. But I know in my heart I don’t want to do that. If that were the case, I might have dreamed of giving them away or them getting lost, etc. Instead, my subconscious mind gave me a dream showing me both my problem and the solution.

The next part of the dream that I am curious about is why I am in my parents’ house in the dark. This is one of my recurrent dream themes. Here’s the dialogue:

ME: Why am I always here, alone, in the dark? And why am I always house sitting? This isn’t my house!

HOUSE: You are responsible and I trust you. Besides, you miss me. You wish you could live here, alone—not with your parents. You want to take care of me when they are gone.

ME: Why is it always dark in here?

HOUSE: The idea of you having me hasn’t “come to light� yet. You have to stay “in the dark� until your parents make a decision.

Wow, this is so true. I never realized this before, but in reality I really do wish I could have their house. I grew up there and mom is always saying she wants to sell it because it’s too much work to take care of. I have told them many times that I want to buy the house, and I’d be more than happy to take care of it. But mom gets out of the conversation by simply saying, “Oh you can’t afford this house�. She seems like she really doesn’t want to have that conversation with me. She just brushes it aside. Nothing I say convinces her how important it is to me. She would rather just sell it to strangers. But I would like to keep it in the family and take care of it. I really do feel “in the dark� since I have no idea what they will eventually decide to do.

I have had that recurring dream theme so many times, yet I never realized what it meant until I did the dream dialogue.

GIVING A DREAM ELEMENT A VOICE

Since I have the common element of a trespasser at my mom’s house as a recurrent theme, I am going to give it a voice and see what it has to say.

First I will describe the element, which in this case is a “trespasser�: A trespasser intrudes, takes advantage, and has no respect for what others think.

Now I will give a voice to the concept of a trespasser and speak for it:

“I am a trespasser. I go where I want, when I want, and I don’t care about rules. Besides, I’m not hurting anyone or anything. I just want to be able to do what I want to do. If it is important to me then I feel I should get to do it without feeling hampered by anything.�

Wow, I didn’t even know what exactly I was going to say when all this came out, but in writing it out it made me remember my feelings growing up. Now, since the element of a trespasser always occurs at my mom’s house in my dreams, that tells me that my mom has an association to this element for me. My use of the word “hampered� really rang a bell for me, since that is what I felt my mom did to me—hampered my creativity. This is how I felt at times growing up. I was such a shy and self-conscious child that any bit of suggestion or criticism was unbearable to me. Even though my mom wasn’t trying to hurt my feelings, this is how I felt, and this became embedded in my subconscious mind.

As an adult, I realize that I have this dream every time I am trying something new in my life. Now I am the one hampering myself—what if I fail, what if I goof up, why do I think I’m good enough or creative enough? I don’t give myself the encouragement and validation I need in trying new things or ideas. It is as if I feel like I’m “not allowed to go there� when I want to branch out creatively. Subconsciously, then, my mind produces the trespasser in a dream at these times in my life. It is my subconscious mind’s way of alerting me to a possible danger of getting hurt, but at the same time it is telling me that if I can recognize this pattern in myself then I can realize I’m not doing anything wrong and that I do indeed have a right to be myself. Now that I know this, I can consciously remind myself that I have the right to be myself.

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