Dream Interpretation

Dreamwork offers a path of evolution for humankind

I have been a professional dreamworker for over 20 years and have never heard a dream that didn’t excite me.  Dream work is always a path of personal growth and will stimulate creativity for all members of the dream group. At the Love and Power Institute our dream groups use a method of group work sometimes called the “if it were my dream” approach.  Participants are taught to preface all commentary with this statement and to keep  the observations in the first person. Doing so allows each person to take responsibility for their own observation based on their experience and does not require any special training or knowledge.  The benefit of this approach gives permission to every group member to fully participate in interpreting the dream thus benefitting as much as the dreamer themselves from the emerging meanings.  Each member thus has an opportunity to personally reflect on the themes presented by each dream in light of their own lived experience. For example, in a recent dream group, a dreamer –let’s call her Sarah–presented a dream that had the image of a fish: “I am with a few friends, and I am helping the local people dress the fish they caught for eating.  Apparently, I am quite knowledgeable on the subject and they come to me for advice,” she recounted. Using the preface “if this were my dream,” group members offered comments based in their personal reaction to the fish image.  One said the fish brought to mind  the idea that a fish does not know it is living in water, just as we rarely notice that we breathe air.  Another said the use of the expression, “dress the fish” reinforced the dream’s statement that the dreamer was “knowledgeable, as though she were a chef or an experienced cook, especially of fish.   Another said he associated the image of fish with Jesus’ loaves and fishes miracle in the sermon on the mount and thus the dream might be about communal nurturance.  Sarah herself confessed that she had been recently troubled by doubting her competence in her work and the dream was telling her that she need not be so troubled  and so on.  This work, which may take up an hour or more on this one dream, brings three gifts to the group participants:  First, every member of the group, whether they contributed directly to the work or not, has an opportunity to reflect on how the comments are true in their case which can lead to individual “ah-hahs.” This can be life changing.  Second, the work itself stimulates creativity which a musician once likened to the experience of a group jam session.  And third, the experience itself generates community among the participants which is deepened the longer the group stays together to work their dreams. There are many, and I am among them, who believe that dreams are not just the royal road to the unconscious, as Freud said, but is also the path to the evolution of humankind.  We are, after all, part of nature and share an instinctual base as members of the same species.  At the end of work on a dream I will ask the group members to apply the wisdom of the dream to the whole of humankind as though the dream carries a message for us all.  The image of the fish, therefore, may be telling us and all of humankind that we need to nurture all of humanity in order to survive.

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Water Over Bridge: Dream Interpretation

Dreamer: I am in late middle age, and born as the middle of 5 children. All of my life I had a dream that I am on one side of a bridge but water is fast flooding over it. My family is on the other side and I can’t get over to them. Just this past year I have stopped having the nightmare. Interpreter: It would help if you could point out particular times when you had that nightmare and connect them to what was happening in your life. It could also help if you could suggest a few things about your life that have changed in the last year. Dreamer: I have had the dream on a regular basis since I was very young. I can’t say anything in particular brought it on or stopped it. Interpreter: Okay. I’ll tell you what the symbolism of your dream might mean: If there are no details about the bridge, I’d guess that the bridge represents an unconscious separation between you and the rest of your family, with the ground of your existence or your sources of meaning and value different from those of your family. The water flowing over, it represents the emotional possibility of being swept away if you try to cross over to rejoin your family. It’s a well-known observation of middle children that some of them don’t feel like they have a particular niche or meaningful belonging to their family. In your case you might have continued yearning for easier closeness until last year, and you might have yearned for this ever since you were a child. Middle children are often better at getting along with others, especially when they don’t feel included among their siblings in their family of origin in the same way most of the others seem to be. These others typically include first borns, last-borns, oldest girl and oldest boy, and any child in any birth order whose role is well-known—such as smart one, funny one, cute/pretty one etc.  Interpreter Question: Does some of this normal unconscious emotional meaning fit for you?  Interpreter: If so, you might instinctively expect that trying to be re-welcomed into your family of origin would set off a tremendous flood of emotional distress in you, which might be more than you could cope with. Therefore you might actually never take the risk of trying to get the respect, meaning and signs of  love you want from the others in your family who all seem to have an easier time fitting in with the family than you do. Interpreter Conclusion: Dreams come to deliver a higher wisdom perspective on your life. So reviewing your thoughts and feelings about yourself vis-a-vis the others in your family might open up new possibilities for acting differently towards the siblings and parents that you may have felt more estranged from than you’ve realized. It might also suggest that you could begin to build individual bridges to one sibling at a time, instead of imagining that your whole family is different from you and you’re the only one that doesn’t fit in as well as the others. A similar sense of alienation might be present for some of the other siblings in your family, especially if there were certain ways of thinking, feeling and acting that seemed to be favored by the dominant people and other ways were considered outliers. Those siblings with “outlier attitudes” would be the first ones who could be delighted to receive an invitation to develop an individual relationship with you. That flooding water on the bridge between you and the other family members symbolizes a psychoactive event such as a flood of emotions that could begin to occur when you start to make a more stable connection with any of your family members. For the sense of safety and belonging, and its opposite, the alienation and longing for communal life, exist in many families to some degree. But you might be the one in your family who’s been most aware of it. Interpreter Question: What do you think about this perspective? Dreamer: Thank you. Your answer very much makes sense!

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Lactating But Single: Dream Interpretation

Lactating but single: dream interpretation Dreamer: I had a dream that I was secretly expressing milk from my breast because my breast just started lactating. They were squirting milk! I’m single, not married and don’t have a baby… What does this mean???? Interpreter: The purpose of mother’s milk is to keep a baby alive and growing. A baby represents either a new creative project in your life or a new aspect or branch or part of yourself that’s just beginning to appear in your world & your self-awareness.  Yet in this dream the baby is not present, but your milk to feed it is. So either in your inner or outer environment, you have generated the conditions to birth and grow a new creative project, or a new creative extension of yourself—and when you’re single, it’s likely that “creativity” means both creative productivity and a new dimension or growth for yourself.  So the possible guidance contained in this dream is that your personality development can make a dramatic (for you) growth spurt if you take the risk of committing yourself to whatever new creative, entrepreneurial, relationship, or self-development possibility you may be aware of. Perhaps you aren’t aware of anything, which could be the significance of the fact that—unusually for this type of dream—there’s no baby of any kind (not even a kitten) in the dream. Interpreter Conclusion: If you’re unaware of new growth options, then you could incubate another dream to point the way by spending 10-15 minutes in meditative self-reflection each night before drifting off to sleep. Think about possible creative projects, or career, relationship and self-development possibilities that might get emotional juices flowing– for your life-milk needs a new aspect of personal growth to feed!

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Every Man I’m Attracted To Dies

Every Man I’m Attracted To Dies Every Man I’m attracted to dies in my dreams. Questioner: I’ve been having dreams about any man I’m very interested in dying right in front of me. It happens every time I realize how much I like someone and it’s weirding me out. It’s always very traumatic and I watch them die and it’s affecting my waking life. They’re always murdered in a shocking way from an outside force I don’t know. I never see who does it. I’m always hyper fixed on them. Dr. Sleeveheart: The first thought that pops up for me from my years of studying romantic relationships for the textbook I published in 2000 is that women who lost their fathers through death are likely to fear the death of any man they ever love. For the first man they completely trusted and naturally loved DID die. Did this happen to you? If it did not happen, then we’ll look further to find out if something else happened in your earlier life that might also translate into unconscious imagery of the man you love dying in front of you. In addition, there was a very good interview research project conducted over 40 years ago that found significant differences in attitudes toward love between college age women whose fathers had died and those whose fathers had left them through divorce, and both of these in comparison to those whose fathers were still married to their mothers. And furthermore my now deceased wife’s father died suddenly at work when she was 11 and my present fiancee’s father died at the breakfast table in front of her when she was 11. But it’s still possible that something different happened in your life history, so what happened in your relationship with your father that might be out of the ordinary? Questioner responds: My father is a drug addict who was in and out of prison throughout my life. He left us and divorced my mother when I was 11 and has been in and out of my life since then. I don’t currently have a relationship with him or communicate with him regularly. I do resent him for choosing drugs above his family. Dr. Sleeveheart: I didn’t see the part about the man being murdered by an outside force before I wrote my response. The outside force that’s murdering your father is the drugs he takes. You keep getting retraumatized when he comes into your life and then goes again, with NO chance on your part to get him to prefer your relationship to the drugs he takes. So this suggests to me that the most self-preserving road for you to take with every man you are attracted to would be to suspect yourself of being attracted to men who are attracted to the soul-curdling effects of powerful drugs, including also alcohol. So you would help yourself by making sure you’ve talked with the man enough to find out if he does any drugs or alcohol or has a history of doing them that suggests he could still be attracted to them. And don’t form your love relationships online, because it’s far too easy to cloak one’s lifestyle in online conversation. Do you have any more questions? Questioner: The man I am involved with does have a history of drug abuse and currently drinks more than normal. That makes a lot of sense to me. Dr.Sleeveheart: Your experience actually fits both types of daughters in the interview research who had lost their fathers. For those whose fathers divorced and visited occasionally had had exciting, somewhat eroticized relations with their fathers, and those whose fathers had died expected any man they would love to traumatically die. If you’re worried about who might be murdering each man you begin to love, it’s your unconscious mind, because that part of you knows that every man you love will traumatize your heart sooner or later. But believe it or not, there are many lovable men who aren’t attracted to drugs, though they might not be similar enough to your father’s personality to attract you beyond your conscious understanding. I’d guess you’re still fairly young (early 30s or less), so it’s not too late for you to take more steps to change your patterns. And of course you’re going to give your present relationship everything you’ve got unless and until the curdling of his soul gets too smelly for your intuition. We’re not helpless, and we can learn from both conscious and unconscious minds.

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