Cinema

Films often portray on the screen elements of our own inner world, with its fantasies, fears, trauma and passions. Looking at the screen is like looking at a mirror in which you see portrayed your own inner life and drama. Therefore the cinema can depict any of these aspects of yourself. A dream is nothing like outer life where things could hurt you, but is an image like on a cinema screen that even if a gun is pointed at you and fired it can do no damage – except if you run in fear.

Example: I’m watching a film or video taken from a helicopter, I suppose, of a city skyscraper all the way up to the roof where a singer – maybe an opera singer – is performing, singing to the sky in an evening dress. The “camera” passes over her and continues, showing the tops of other high buildings. Now I’m in a car on a hill – it’s night, been night all along – and I’m crying because I’m afraid to go up that high. I couldn’t do what the singer was doing. The person I’m with hugs and consoles me. Alta

Here Alta is meeting her own fears and recognises them as factors that limit how ‘high’ she can go in life.

Example: When I looked at the film it was a carnival going on in the street, people with gay clothing and crowds watching. Two girls were going to sit in an old model type car, but someone said it would be better if they sat on the back of the car as they could been seen in the parade. Then I was looking into the crowd to find me and it was like looking at a snapshot, it felt very important that I find me, I saw my green slacks just showing, right at the back of the crowd. H. K.

Here the main feature in the dream is the effort to ‘find me’. So the dreamer is watching the film in order to clarify their own self image, or find out who they are and how they relate to other people – the crowd. She was there, but at the back.

The cinema is sometimes a place of romance, of sexual contact, or fantasies about it.

Films enlarge the area of your experience, just as dreams do, so some dreams might use this image to suggest vicarious experience. Or else the horror films, and these feature in many dreams,having pu the idea of awful fears in people’s mind. But they are a good way to face ones own fears. See Facing Fear and Secrets of Power Dreaming

If we are lonely or depressed, we may read a book, go out with a friend or watch a film, stimulating feelings that displace the loneliness or despair. This ability to produce positive or different feelings is often seen in the dream process. By holding in mind an image connected with hope and love, feelings will be produced that will compensate in some measure for pain or depression we may be feeling. See Depression and Dreams

There are of course documentary films, and films that give you a new perspective on life and the world around young and the universe you live in. This type of film is a way your dream creator brings new experience and new perspectives to your awareness.

The cinema may also be a dream environment in which you can have an objective view of parts of your own personality – as if they were film characters. See: film.

Useful Questions and Hints:

What is the theme or the feelings in the film and how do they relate to me at the moment?

What is happening in the cinema, and can I find reference to that in my waking life?

Am I learning something from this film, and if so what?

See Plot of the Dream – Being the Person or Thing – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams