Each detail is a symbol and a clue. Every feeling and sensation is important,
and the most common themes can turn out to be treasures.
Dreams offer information about things already know on a spiritual and subconscious level, knowledge that needs to come to an understanding on a conscious plane. I have learned to take my dreams seriously and have spent many years interpreting and understanding them from many different perspectives. First of all to understand myself and my reactions to the environment and my past, and to understand my physical body by learning its signals through the subconscious symbols.
If you take time to understand your dreams, you can get very useful and specific advice. Some time ago, when I was in a massivly exhausting situation, I dreamed of something as weird as a pineapple. If it had been in usual pineapple size I had probably missed it, but it wasn’t - was huge and placed right in front of me, leaving no doubt about it’s importance.
”Here I am and you shall not pass”. So, I got it, this was a message. Next morning I googled and found out that pineapple contains an enzyme that counteracts stress, and this enzyme was available to buy. A few days later, I had a can in my hand containing this enzyme. Thankfully amazed at the wisdom of the dream world, I searched backwards my dream journal to see if I perhaps might have received the message earlier but missed it, and yes I certainly had. The dream world had delivered, but I did’nt get it. Not until mrs Pineapple herself blocked my way with urging vibes. This is the dream:
"I’m driving in a roundabout moving in an eight-formation, up - and down again, like a weird merry-go-round. I have to go up to be able to get down, and back to the lowest plane again to an underground shop located at the end of a underground railroad. There I strech out my hand to grab a pack of coffee. When continuing my loop to the checkout, the expedit informs me that the coffee comes in two flavors; chaos and pineapple. I choose pineapple."
So, the dream field already knew I was on my way into a severe stress situation and needed help. Many think they do not dream because they don’t remember their dreams, but everybody does - every night. If you don’t remember your dreams but want to start using your subconscious as a tool, you can as well interpret daily life, special events and memories. It works just as well as interpreting a dream because life is – as you probably have heard before - also kind of a dream, an awake one. The aim is any how to get an understanding of a plane where the intellect isn’t in charge.
If you wanna become a conscious dreamer or just remember your dreams and perhaps have them interpreted by someone else, you can practice a little to soften up your dreaming memory. With a pen and paper beside you bed, you can quickly write down what you remember the moment you wake up, perhaps just some key words if it’s in the middle of the night and you are afraid of not getting back to sleep again. Do it anyhow before you are fully awake, before the intellect takes over and you start thinking logically. You can be sure about that even just remembering a tone or maybe a color, can be as valuable as remembering a whole dream scenario.
When later writing the dream down properly in a dream journal – as many prefer to do (which often means having to interpret one own’s almost incomprehensible night writing off course) – the important thing is not to formulate what you dreamed logically, but to express it as it came and as it felt.
So.. when I work with dreams I interpret them in three levels. The first level is about you, you and only you. Everything in the dream is aspects of the dreamer, who is the observer, in other words the soul having an experience in a body.
This is the most essential level to understand because if you can’t separate your own fears from other peoples reactions life will forever seem unfair and beyond comprehensibility. The forever continuing projection ping pong game.
To get to know yourself from the dreaming perspective not only is the key to identify emotions and reactions. It also gives you a stockpile of important symbols, and it leads to understanding how one attract events, both in positive and negative sense.
On the second level of dream interpretation - events, situations and other people participate and then reflect the dreamer, and besides from being the observer - the soul, you in the dream is you personally. Perhaps it sounds tricky but the difference is only that on this level the dreamer relates to other people and not only aspects of the self.
The third level is about archetypal dreaming and initiation into the common conscious level, archetypal mysteries and the great symbols.
Now, let’s begin.
A client told me about her dream. It scared her a lot and she couldn’t understand why she was dreaming like that. This is how it went. (And of course I have her permission to talk about her dream now.)
”I am watching a terrible movie together with my friend. The film is about a man who is murdering children. We can hardly watch it, it’s just horrible and so scary.”
Concisely. Just like that.
During the interpretation on the first level we quickly came to the conclusion that the dream was about losing innocense. The dreamer, the soul in it’s vehicle and the soul’s passive aspect - as her friend was a woman, innocent aspects (the children) and the male murderer taking things into action as the activ aspect.
The interpretation says that the dreamer has come to the point where she is getting rid of some sides of her self that she thinks being immature or too innocent. One aspect of the dreamer thinks it’s very scary and can barely endure the process.
When coming to that conclusion it’s time for the next step; level two - and my client says:
”I think about the fact that some things happened during my early teens that actually made me loose my innocent way of looking at life.”
And yes, the dream scene cointained a film, something showing things not happening in the present but possibly in the past, and level two is about not only relating to environment or the past - but also to other persons.
She gave it a thought again, thinking about the fact that the filmscene symbolized the tragic events she went through in her early teens. Then she asked:
”How come my friend was watching with me? I didn’t know her when I was that young.”
Yes, why did my client’s subconscious choose precisely that friend? Well, that was probably because her friend also had reasons to grow up very quick. That was a common denominator and one that my client never had seen as important to her before giving the dream some though.
But who was the murderer? I the first case; the interpretation on level one the murderer was an active aspect, a way that the dreamer drastically got rid of aspects of her self she didn’t want any more.
On the second level the murderer was the circomstances and persons who made the girl’s life change.
But - one may ask – is the first level interpretation then wrong about the dreamer getting rid of it’s own innocense? No, because (and this is the making gold out of led when it comes to dream work) when seeing both sides of it the understanding is that because of the brutal loss of innocense the client created a pattern where she felt the necessity to not being naive in any way. If any naivity was detected in her thoughts or behaviour, she made the process short with it.
Trust your subconscious and go with it into the realm of dreams.