Dreams are wild, dreams are wacky it’s ever a wonder that with so many aberrations, we often don’t realize we are dreaming when we are dreaming. But then they doubly confound us when we awaken in the morning, as we scratch our heads and say, “Wow, what was that all about?” as we confront the puzzles from our night. What gives? Why aren’t dreams just more straight forward? Why don’t they just give us their meaning and their gifts? This is what I want to explore in this article.
Its my belief and understanding, through my 40+ years as a lucid dreamer, that dreaming itself is very intricate and represents so much in the human experience. Often when reading clinical dream books, scientists will usually start with the question, “What is dreaming or why do we dream?” It often ends with a few guesses and the admission that nobody really knows, and they leave it at that. I believe this is a cop out; anyone who works with dreams and specifically with lucid dreaming over time will understand the benefits and through their experience, provide the answer they seek. Dreams are multi-dimensional, they cover the full human experience from healing to future thinking to daily integration and on and on - they are not just one thing.
But why the strangeness? If they are trying to heal us or give us a message, why not be straight forward about it? Well, I believe dreams are actually quite straight forward, they are not meant to be confusing, or to trick us, they are on our side. Part of the problem exists in us and our ego., and what I like to call the Dear Abby effect. I’m sure everyone here knows someone who is great on extolling advise to others but find their own lives a mess. Or just think of a family member or friend who has a problem that everyone is so completely aware of, and yet the person themselves is completely oblivious to - many times to the extent that you could walk up to them and tell them and still they would not see it and be in complete denial. You become too close to the problem itself and are blind to even obvious answers and start to see the world through that problem. (Like they fondly say, if you’re a hammer, all you see around you are nails.)
I feel the same mechanism occurs in dreams. We seek answers but many times it’s just we can’t handle the truth directly. So a part of ourself (our larger self) will bundle the answer in a metaphor. This way, when we wake up, rather than the answer flying over our heads we say, “Man, that was a strange dream, I wonder what that meant?” We begin by writing out our dream, and because of its strangeness we begin to think about it, the symbols, the drama that took place. We begin to unpack it and contemplate it. And over time the meaning emerges, often in fun and exciting ways. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable. In other words, you’re trying to describe something using an indirect example. So in this vein, dreams can be seen as living metaphors, full of indirect answers, just waiting to be unleashed.
This is very important to understand because if you say, “That dream was so strange, it could never apply to my life,” you might find yourself leaving a lot of money on the table. Not that you won’t get any benefit from these dreams even if you ignore them, but we do have free will and if we exercise it by glazing over confusing dreams, we may just miss their gems. And in this time in history, where everything is accelerating at such a rapid pace, we can all use all the help we can get as we evolve ourselves and as dreams are more and more crossing over into the physical and into our daily lives. I’ll give a recent example of how this process has occurred in my life with a dream I had last year but wrote about in the last issue of LDE.
In the “In Your Dreams!” section of the Dec 2018 issue of LDE I wrote about a dream I had, entitled “Adventure into Infinity.” I won’t recount the whole dream here - you can go back to the issue and read it yourself - but I will reprint part of the dream that to me represents the unfolding metaphor.
Adventure into Infinity
I find this unusual so I leave. I start thinking about Robert Monroe. He often talked about there being different levels to the phase when you shift out, so I start looking for a portal, and as I turn the corner one appears in the form of an open doorway. There are stairs leading downward so I head down. I decided to go down at least two levels.
I now enter a large room and start observing my surroundings. There are people standing in line so I join them and next to me is a slightly taller black woman. She tells me she wants to get married to me. I say, “Alright,” and I’m trying to follow her line of thought as we walk together. Because she’s slightly taller, I try to grow a bit to see her eye to eye. “I need to bring a man to will,” she says. I’m sort of going along with it as we walk and talk, trying to understand what she’s about.
After a while, we are joined by another black man. “Are you alive in the real? I mean, in the illusion?” I ask him, trying to figure out if either of them are asleep somewhere and dreaming this with me right now. I’m really marveling at how clear and stable everything feels. I’ve been here for quite awhile and it feels like I can be here for as long as I want. It also feels as though I had uncovered some “inner” city which was almost objective in nature.
I eventually get to the head of the line, which is a dead end. As I turn to go back, it seems like the people are trying to trap me. I want to leave but they’re blocking me and I’m starting to struggle. Eventually I wake up.”
Much of what occurred in that dream, even though it was lucid, was puzzling to say the least, but I did not discount it, I wrote about it and I thought about it, explored it until eventually the meaning becomes clear. From my Journal:
In Dec 2018 I decide to fly to Eastern Europe from Canada to see a holy site I’ve always wanted to experience and to consider some changes I want to make in my life. On the return trip I fly to Miami to pick up a hybrid car I just bought through a dealer at a great price, which I intend to drive back to Canada. When I arrive in Miami, I just know I will be getting some resistance because of the nature and indirect trajectory of my flight. As I exit the plane we are corralled into a number of lines that lead up to the custom officials and as I slowly make my way to the glass partition, there she is, the black woman from my dream (or someone who looks incredibly identical to her). Our conversation starts off pleasant but the questions become unusual. I try to follow her line of reasoning as the questions become more personal and inquisitive in nature. Well, somehow my answers just don’t cut it because she motions me to go to the 2nd level of screening, down a line and into another room, the one with the rubber gloves. As I come to the end of that line I am now front and center with the black guy from my dream. I’m not sure this is going to end well, and although I don’t generally have panic attacks, I feel something coming on. But I take a deep breath and consciously decide to keep my cool, turn things around and just have a friendly conversation with the guy. We talk and eventually we seem to have a moment, and he begins to turn and to my delight, in a fairly short period of time, he motions me towards the exit with a smile. Ok great, so this time I made it. And this time I did so without the struggle or the resistance.
PS for those really wondering, the Infinity Dream was not just about how to get through airport security more easily using your energy and reframing your focus. To me, the entire dream was multidimensional and bought together different aspects of my life and my life purpose, helping me understand my skills and how to apply them and where my future was heading, but most importantly, t finally brought my inner man to will. 😊
This article was released in issue from
March 2019
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