Dreaming

Have you ever been woken up by a noise, partner, or child when you're in the middle of an enjoyable dream?

I have and was so upset at my mom for waking me that I shouted at her when a 'Freddy Krueger' type vampire was about to catch me. My mom asked why I was cross with her for waking me, and I answered, "I wanted to see if it's true that when you die in a dream, you die in real life". Her laughing response, 'Well, you bloody fool, if you had died you wouldn't have known now, would you?'

Loosely put, Sigmund Freud's take on dreaming, was that they are the unconscious mind fulfilling a wish the dreamer desires often related to sex or some type of hidden aggression and Carl Jung saw them as a way for the unconscious mind to use dreams to self-regulate or bring to the fore aspects of a different point of view and even future possibilities. Whatever their differences and conclusions, they both believed that dreams convey messages from the unconscious and were vital parts of our psyche.

Modern thinking leans towards the belief that it's a way for our subconscious mind to process everything in our daily lives to help alleviate mental stress.

Dreams have been analyzed and studied for eons to try and understand their meaning, especially repetitive dreams. Seers and mystics did this as part of their service.

I grew up with a dream interpretation book in my home, and my aunt had several. On Saturday afternoons the books would be carted to her home and cross-checked to identify the most likely meaning. Bookshops still carry a variety of dream books and dictionaries.

Christianity, Islam, and to a lesser extent Judaism, refers to the importance of dreams in the Bible, Quran, and Torah. They have websites dedicated to dreams online.

In fact, there are hundreds of sites offering interpretations. There are Chinese, Indian, and western thoughts on them too. If you look at them, you will likely find an extensive list of meanings, but please note many of them have been copied, word for word, from what others have posted.

These interpretations can be, quite simply, silly. Let me explain why. You'll notice dreams are a big part of my life.

As a child, I would have been under six years old; I remember dreaming of a snake. I don't recall the dream, just the events following.

I told my mother about it and was asked all kinds of questions (just as you would find online, this was pre-internet), and then told my enemies were out to get me and I should be careful. Imagine the impact this had on my six-year-old self.

I believed from then on that if you dreamed of a snake, it was a bad thing unless you killed the snake and got away unscathed. If you check the meanings in this day and age, whether in a book or online, it will still say more-or-less the same thing.

A few years ago, my adult self was thinking back and realized just how ridiculous that was. What enemies could a small child have? I still don't have any I know of, and I dream of snakes – a lot!

A sangoma friend explained that according to African belief, to dream of a snake means that an ancestor or deceased loved one is trying to get your attention. That's a lot less scary and makes more sense to me.

I admit, I still look for interpretations online, but I take it with a pinch of salt.

Many believe that when looking for meaning in your dream, your specifics need to be taken into account and what it means to you personally. I love dogs and to dream about one running toward me might be a good dream for me, but for someone who has a chronic fear of them, it's completely different.

Here are a few questions and some tips to consider when interpreting your dreams:

·         What do you remember? Note it down, especially those that wake you in the middle of the night.

·         What does the focus of the dream mean to you personally? As mentioned in the case of the dog above, this is vital.

·         Were there colors, shapes, numbers, etc.?

·         Did you feel happy, sad, scared, or something else? Note whether there was physical feeling as well as mental and emotional?

·         Were you the person in the dream, were you observing, or perhaps you were someone else, known or unknown?

·         Who else or what else was there?

·         Where did the dream take place? Was it familiar or strange to you? Often we find ourselves in unfamiliar places, but when dreaming, we 'know' where it is.

·         What was unusual in the dream, if anything?

·         How did the dream progress? Sometimes they jump around and are scrambled.

I've had dreams that have come true, but they are very few.

Dreams may be a message from your psyche as the famous gentlemen Freud and Jung concluded.

They may be messages from elsewhere.

On the other hand, they may simply be dreams. 

*Picture by Nadi Lindsay, courtesy of Pexels 3078831