What's in a Dream?

 

What’s in a dream? I have a hard time believing all the hoopla surrounding dream interpretation. The truth is that scientists don’t know why we dream what we dream or even why we dream at all. Their best guess is that our nightly REM cycle is a filing system for all the data we’ve absorbed, sorting it into different areas of our brain and tagging it with some sort of reference that makes it easier to retrieve when we need it, much like sorting files into folders. And when the files are all mixed up, our brains read all the references and try to make some sort of sense of it…thus the crazy stories (dreams) that we remember when we wake up.

If that’s all it is, then why are we so obsessed with our dreams? How do we explain dreaming (in detail) about places we’ve never seen or things we’ve never done? What about people who have prophetic dreams? Is it just a coincidence? I don’t want to accuse anyone of making those things up…especially since I’m actually one of them.

Yesterday, on the podcast, we talked about some of our most memorable dreams. Some of them were recurring dreams about doing the same repetitive tasks, which I’ve often dismissed as my subconscious trying to deal with mundane issues like feeling disorganized or coping with unwanted interruptions. But what about dreams with more substance? I mentioned that I’ve had several dreams in my life that were oddly prophetic, not in a straight-up, literal sense, but there were definite similarities that made me stop and wonder about it. The same is true of so-called “visitation” dreams, where the dreamer interacts with someone who has died. I suppose those dreams could be a way for us to deal with the loss, but if that was the case, why wouldn’t we dream those dreams more often, especially in the case of a very close relationship.

When I dream about my husband, Mark, he is “alive” in my dream, and his presence in my dream is no different than it was before he died.  He just is. I don’t think of him as dead or being back from the dead. In my dreams, he is just as alive as he ever was. But in the one “visitation” dream I mentioned in the podcast, I knew my husband was gone, and I knew that his presence there was an anomaly that I had to embrace while I could. In the eight months that have passed since then, I have not experienced any other dream like that one, and in every dream in which he appears, he is exactly as he always was in my dreams before his death…not dead. He is always either alive in my dream, and carrying on exactly as he did before, or else he’s not in my dream at all.

Another thing that puzzles me about dreams is how so many different sources claim to have interpretations, but the interpretations are all either copied verbatim from each other, or they are completely different. For instance, in Llewellyn’s Complete Dictionary of Dreams, the author, Dr. Michael Lennox, explains that every person that appears in your dreams is a representation of you and that to interpret the significance, you have to examine your relationship to that person and what they symbolize in yourself. Yet other dream interpretations explain that the other people in your dreams are exactly what they appear to be and that your interaction with them in the dream state is giving you important clues about your relationship with them or about yourself. 

I like that explanation better. It makes more sense, especially when I take it in context with my own dreams. I have had plenty of dreams about my husband after which I woke up spitting mad at him for some reason or another. In the dream, he was always doing something that got on my nerves. It was usually something he also did in real life, but he was taking it to the extreme in the dream or the consequences of his actions were more significant in some way. I could take Dr. Lennox’s advice and assume it was a reflection of the masculine side of myself and that I was harming myself with negative thoughts or actions or maybe even disparaging the masculine side of myself (an easy possibility, of course), or I could take it at face value and understand that my husband is going to do what he’s going to do. But the lesson to be learned is that I can change how I deal with it. Either I can accept it and not let it bother me, or I could speak up about it – sit down and have a heart-to-heart and find a good compromise. The key takeaway is to not just sit and stew over it until it gets so bad that I’m spitting mad. So which one of these is right? 

I’m not sure any interpretation of dreams is right. There are just too many variables, like the meaning of certain objects or people – it all depends on the individual and what significance those people or things have in that person’s life. A dog might be a happy companion or a viscous terror depending on whether you love dogs or were once frightened or attacked by one. Your mother might be a symbol of nurturing, home, and love, or she might be a representation of your own self-love or self-loathing. Only you can be the judge.

My advice for working with dream interpretation is to log them faithfully and with as much detail as you can recall.  Watch for patterns, relationships, and symbols that are meaningful to you. A good dream dictionary can be helpful, but you can often figure things out on your own. Let your conscience be your guide. Like any other kind of shadow work, it can teach you a lot about yourself.