Posts Tagged ‘symbols are feelings not thoughts’

Dream Meanings

Albert Einstein admitted that the earliest intimations of his Theory of Relativity occurred to him in a dream he experienced during adolescence. In his dream he was riding on a sledge. As the sledge accelerated faster and faster it approached the speed of light and the stars began to distort. They changed their pattern and colours, dazzling him with the beauty and power of their transformation. He said that in many ways his entire scientific career was an extended meditation on that dream.

The meaning Einstein extracted from his dream has helped shape the quality of our life today. But Einstein is not alone in having meaningful dreams. Each dream you have enshrines some facet of yourself or life. But if you fail to ‘meditate’ upon its truth, the creative impulse of your dream-genius may be lost. See – Techniques for Exploring your Dreams

True, some dreams hardly need much thought to be understood. Mary, who suffered a chronic vaginal yeast infection following the use of antibiotics, had been advised to try folic acid (one of the B vitamins). As the prescribed medical treatment had not helped she followed the advice. After a few days she experienced unusual cramping and dreamt she was in her kitchen wondering what to do with bowls and bowls of acid. A raggedy kitten came to her and she fed it brown bread with yeast and strawberries. The kitten gobbled it up.

She looked to her dreams

She habitually looked to her dreams for helpful information and considered the bowls as referring to the folic acid. Because the kitten (her pussy) looked a bit poorly, she felt it represented her physical health. So she stopped taking the folic acid and added yeast tablets and more vitamin C (the strawberries) to her diet. The cramps disappeared and within a few days the infection was on its way out too.

In most cases, however, our dreams are more obscure. We might unwrap them from their enigma if we ignore the symbols for a while and consider what feelings are experienced. Neal, for instance, was in his early forties and worked as a builder/decorator, a job he disliked. His real love was writing, but he had never made enough money from this to support himself and family, and felt depressed as he saw his fifties approaching. He was- considering moving to where he might find less demanding work, and dreamt he was in a bicycle rally. Each participant started from their home. In the dream Neal lived near the bottom of a huge hill. It took him till midday to cycle to the top. Then the way was flat, and he realised he would cover much more ground in the afternoon and evening.

Stripping away the symbols, the first feeling is of a long uphill struggle. This was exactly how Neal felt about his life. It had been a long struggle, and even though he hadn’t given up, he didn’t feel he was getting anywhere. The second half of the dream felt satisfying though, and this led Neal to see the dream as saying the first half of his life – the morning – had been an up hill struggle, but he would cover a lot more ground in the ‘afternoon’. He gave up his plans to move, and within three months was offered work with a newspaper.

The Theme Is …

When the connections between the feelings experienced or suggested in the dream, and our everyday life are found, it can help understand the dream further if we consider its theme, or setting. Neal’s cycle rally, for example, has the theme of trying to get somewhere in relationship with other people. It is interesting that Neal is not in a race but a rally. This shows he does not feel in competition with the rest of the world.

This technique helps us understand the dream of a woman whose thirteen year old son was sneaking out when he thought his parents were asleep, to meet the girl next door. “I dreamt my son is assembling a new bike in his bedroom. His dad is very proud of his workmanship, but I unintentionally carry the handlebars downstairs. His older brother carries them back though.”

The overall theme is about how the family relates to the younger son’s independent creativity. The bedroom suggests his private sexuality, and the mother realised she was not helping him guide – the handlebars – his new sexual drive.

These two techniques – finding the underlying feeling, and defining the theme – will help understand most dreams. We must not forget, however, that some of our dreams express a sense of humour and a love of playing with words. Dr. Hadfield tells the story of an amorous young woman who had spent all day serving ice cream at a fete. That night while dreaming, she talked in her sleep, ‘No, I have no more cornets,’ she said, ‘but I can let you have a trombone!’ The in and out movement of the instrument suggests what may have been on her mind.

One woman on holiday dreamt a baby pig in a dress ran to her as she sat at a table. She recognised it as her pet, and wanted to take it home. But she realised it would grow into a big fat pig if kept. Her comment on the dream was that while one can safely be a ‘little piggy’ on holiday, if continued at home it could develop into a big fat problem.

10,000 Dreams Defined

Calvin Hall, who studied the content of. 10,000 dreams, is certain they reveal a truer image of ourselves than we can usually admit consciously. They also show us which habits or attitudes stand in the way of fuller relationships and creativity. If we give our dreams a small measure of the attention we lavish on television entertainment, undoubtedly our own life would be enriched. Perhaps, like Einstein, we might also enrich the lives of others from our dreams. See Dream Journal

Test of Analysis

From all that has been said, a whole collection of methods present themselves suggesting how we can understand a dream. I suppose one could use all these methods on a single dream, and arrive at a whole spectrum of information. But the question now arises as to whether the interpretation is correct. After all the effort, is it right? It is not just a question of whether the answer satisfies us; it must also enlighten us. It must do even more than that. What we arrive at must fit the events and symbols of the dream, and unveil the characters of our inner life that have clothed themselves in the forms and events of the dream. The interpretation should make sense to other people also, so that if explained, they too can easily see the connection between dream and interpretation. The interpretation should be able to stand the test of time as well.

One of the biggest temptations in analysing our dreams, the thing that most often leads to a false interpretation, is to attempt a purely arbitrary translation of the symbols. By this is meant that because one dreams of a bag, a large key and a snake, one should not therefore immediately denominate these as ‘sexual symbols’. They may be; and we have to keep this possibility in mind. But the dreamer may be a locksmith who is having difficulty opening an important bag. In which case the symbols represent a problem and not sexual intercourse. And he may have a friend who keeps snakes, by one of which he was nearly bitten. So the snake might mean fear of death. This is why one has to be careful to find one’s own associations with the symbols. Only when we cannot find a personal association; or the dream setting does not point to the possible meaning, should we try a general interpretation. Jung has said that if the dreamer finds difficulty in arriving at an association, he would ask him to describe the symbol in his own words, as if Jung knew nothing about it. Therefore, if one dreamt of a table, one would say, ‘It is a thing usually made of wood and having four supports. Upon these a flat surface is fixed, so that one can place objects, food, books, etc., on it at a level nearer one’s hands or mouth.’ Or at least, one would describe it as one saw it.

As for how we can test the interpretation, dissatisfaction is the biggest clue to our inadequate understanding of the dream. If there are factors in the dream which we have not explained, or if the interpretation does not bring to light the inner feelings that shaped the dream, then one will always have a feeling of dissatisfaction. It is as if two parts of a puzzle have not been properly fitted together, or, although the pieces fit, the colours do not quite match. Thus arises the feeling of not having found the right solution.

On the other hand, when the right understanding is arrived at, a very profound thing happens. There is usually a feeling of thrill, a sudden pleasure of exaltation, a feeling of being on the track. This is usually accompanied by a sense of seeing deeply into yourself, sometimes into parts of your being never bared to view before. In all, there is a feeling of pleasure and achievement, of certainty. One is usually somewhat amazed at the wisdom of dreams, despite having felt the same many times before.

Another test of the interpretation’s accuracy, and a guard against arbitrariness, is to see whether it fits everyday experience. A dream nearly always deals with things one has experienced in one way or another. Therefore, if an interpretation does not fit or explain our actual experience, then it should be placed to one side. We must beware of using words we do not understand. For instance, we may read that Jung has said a dark-haired woman can represent a man’s anima, or female nature, while a dominant man in a woman’s dreams represents her animus. Or that Freud suggests that some cutting or scissors dreams might symbolise a fear of castration. But do we really, in our own experience, know what these mean? Can we see them in our own life? It is certainly not sufficient to label our dream symbols this, that or the other. If these ideas are true, then we shall see them in our own experience. We may not give them the same name even; but one that describes them to us! This is not to say that a knowledge of these ideas is not extremely helpful. It may even help us to see these things in our own experience. But we must beware of using such ideas without seeing them in ourselves. Therefore we have to look at ourselves and ask, ‘What part of me does this dream symbol represent? What experience is it dealing with?’ And when the word experience is used this does not simply mean events in the outer world. It means emotions, attitudes, ideas, response to people and events, relationships with others, with self, and with Life.

Sometimes, however, the dream deals with things that have not yet happened, but are about to happen. I am not here dealing with prophetic dreams. When a woman has a tummy ache and says, ‘Ah, my period is beginning’, she is not prophesying. She is speaking from past experience. In a similar way, the dream often sees that things are about to begin that are not outwardly obvious to us. For instance, a man dreamt that a bull broke loose and rushed into a field of cows. Shortly afterwards he was almost carried away by a release of sexual desires he had kept ‘chained up’. His inward feelings had warned of this in the dream. Yet outwardly he could see no sign of it. So with some dreams we have to see if ‘time’ reveals their meaning. Or to put it another way, we may interpret the dream satisfactorily but find no signs of it in our experience. Then it is for time to bring it into the realm of the real.

An example of arbitrary interpretation can be seen in this dream. ‘An unconventional looking postman delivered a registered package. But I didn’t open it.’ This was taken to mean that due to an Unconventional experience, the dreamer had realised something. Something had ‘registered’ on his consciousness, but he had not explored the possibilities of it. Although this seemed to fit the symbols, and no other ideas were forthcoming yet the dreamer could not, despite a lot of searching within, discover an experience of something registering that he had not explored. The registered package is a double symbol, because it also suggests something valuable contained in it. Therefore, despite a seemingly good interpretation, when it came down to testing it, no satisfaction was forthcoming. Which makes us realise that proper interpretation lies not only in reading the symbols, but in seeing the understanding applied to our life.