I just submitted a comment on a dream about a running into a tidal wave and forgot to include something:

In-between the times I ran into the wave and was in the forest with people I stepped in one of the murky puddles and was stung by something that I guessed was a jellyfish but did not look like one, it did not look like any sea creature I had ever seen

thank you again

I have put a link on my site http://dreamhawk.com/links/links/

I have not made it very colourful yet but hope to do so at some time.

Tony

First it would be nice to have an email address so I can write a fuller letter, as i don’t know how many characters I’m allowed here? I am a cynical person, and you really have to prove things to me before I believe. Because of all my dreams, and my ability to remember almost all in complete detail, my wife bought me the Dream Dictionary. I’m only up to “B” and quite bluntly, it’s just so much crap. To me it looks like Horoscopes, just so much pretend science to suck in the gullible. It is so oversimplified and silly that it does terrible injustice to the vast complexity of dreams. Dreams are so complex and detailed (at least mine) to suggest we can interpret word by word is both impractical and just plain silly. My dreams can last 20 minutes of contiguous logically connected story lines. I once had what I refer to as an Indiana Jones movie, that was so involved and detail and fantastically imaginative that it could be the 1st 20 minutes of a movie, taken verbatim. I have controlled my dream, dream that I am controlling my dreams (you think you are controlling the dream, but aren’t), have dreams with parts of previous dreams in them. I dreamt a song, not one I heard, but one I created in my dream! Lyrics, music, musical arrangements… and I don’t play any musical instruments?? I dream in Technicolor, surround sound stereo, feel pain, sexual orgasims, the touch, feel and smell of a woman, cry, fear, and even force a dream to end and wake myself up on purpose. I’d like to talk to you further about my dreams, in fact would be willing to volunteer subject for you next book, because believe me, I have the depth and complexity for a full volume. And while I don’t disbelieve that dreams are trying to tell you things, I believe your book does a disservice to dream interpretation by over simplifying it, as well as magnifying it so that every dream is telling you something. I believe that dreams with meaning are the exception to the rule, not the norm. Dreams are a collection of topics, images, incidents and issues they are recent, from a few hours to maybe a week at most. One of my favorite things to do is to wake and try and figure out where each component or action of a dream came from. Maybe that’s how I conditioned myself to remember dreams so well. My ex was so ticked listening to my dreams, and not being able to remember hers, that she starting trying to remember hers, and soon got. People that can remember dreams aren’t pleased by the Gods, they are just people that take the time to try and remember them. Seriously, I’m worth a whole volume, so please follow up with me. Personally I don’t think you’re a fake, I just think you book is over simplified!

-Tony Crisp 2012-03-02 9:30:01

Paul – I sent you a hurried answer via email last night. To repeat some of that: Of course it is oversimplified, that’s why I have backed it up with the Dream Encylopedia. Also I think you must have missed the introduction which explains how to explore – although it depends which edition you have. As I have said recently, it is all so much crap unless you actually explore your dreams. The dream images are simply like icons on a computer screen – dead and lifeless unless you click on them. But then there is not just a world to find.

But here is the piece I mentioned that I wrote to someone else: “A dream is a product of that other miracle we do not understand – LIFE. As such each dream image is alive with intelligence and information, and links not simply with ideas we read in a book or website, but with the workings and wonders of our body, the depths of our mind and even beyond. My poor attempts to communicate this in words as a dictionary are pitiful – unless they read the whole introduction to the book and how to work on/explore your dreams. See http://dreamhawk.com/dream-dictionary/practical-techniques-for-exploring-your-dreams/

If you actually dig under the surface and not simply collect images from what you recall you will enter another world – the unconscious. To trace the dream images back to “a collection of topics, images, incidents and issues they are recent, from a few hours to maybe a week at most” is totally missing what dreams are about. And it needs one to learn tools that go beyond thinking. I haven’t found a dream that doesn’t have meaning once we enter the unconscious and can discover the often passionate and life filled sources of the dream.

But it sounds as if you are a thinker, and dreams are not about thinking.

Tony