MORE THOUGHTS

November 30, 2011

Dear Dreamers:

Last night the dreams came fast and furious but I don’t remember enough of them to write about, so here’s more info and thoughts from A Dictionary of Dream Symbols, with intro by Eric Ackroyd.

“Often the part of a dream that is remembered first and therefore recorded first is the last part of the dream.  In fact, the tendency is to remember and write down all the sections of a dream in reverse order.  This should be borne in mind when getting down to the business of interpreting your dreams:  sometimes, for instance, the last part of a dream gives a solution to a problem posed in the first part of the dream.”

Does this make sense to you?  Sound familiar?  I’m not sure.  It seems to me that I record my dreams in the order that I experience them.  However, the ones I remember most are the ones that occur closest to waking.  

According to Mr. Ackroyd, “not all dreams have profound psychological significance.  Some are mere repetitions of the day’s events.  Nearly all the dreams that young children tell us about are of this kind: after a day at the seaside or at the fair a three-year-old will often relive its delights and excitements in dreams; similarly a bedtime story may retell itself in a young child’s dream.

“Some dreams may have straightforward physical explanations.  A full bladder may cause you to have a frighteningly embarrassing dream about wetting your pants, for example.

“So do not assume that every dream has a deep meaning.  Not every dream will contain a life-transforming revelation -- but any dream might!  Even the apparently most trifling dream story may be trying to tell you something important about your life.  If, for example, you told me you had dreamed of an earthquake, I would generally suppose that it was an indication either that your personal world was in danger of falling apart or at least that you were deeply - perhaps unconsciously - fearful that it might fall apart.  I would therefore want to ask you about your marriage or other domestic relationships and about your work situation.  However, I would also ask if you had recently been reading something or watching something on television that might have prompted that sort of dream.  If you had just been reading a vivid account of an actual earthquake, your dream might have been simply going over the story - a chewing-the-end sort of dream.  On the other hand, it is likely that even dreams which take their symbols from very recent experience are using those symbols to represent something that is going on inside you.  

“On the whole, the truth would seem to be that if you are only trifling with your dreams, their content will tend to be trivial; if you take your dreams seriously, their content will tend to be serious and significant.  If what you want from your dreams is a fuller understanding of yourself and, eventually, fuller control over your life and the attainment of your proper ‘destiny’, your dreams will not let you down.  They will give you all you need.”

‘Til next time...

Happy dreaming!

Bev