Tag: deciphering dreams

Dream musings #dreams #symbolism

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Reflections2 Comments
Image by Comfreak from Pixabay

There are dreams that you wish you never woke from and those that leave you grateful for the exit from a nightmarish realm. I’m not sure one is more valuable than the other if you seek to learn from their teachings.

Our hidden, or not so hidden, terrors often take the form of nightmares. They can adopt fantastical and gruesome visages, leaving us breathless for want of air when we wake. Sometimes our voices scream us out of their grasp, and sometimes our words strangle our voice into silence. The voice, then, becomes our key to opening their mysteries.

Although it can be equally terrifying to journey through the dream realm, as it is to unravel its symbolism, it’s well-worth the effort. Even the seemingly nonsensical dreams can make sense if we are willing to look into why our minds chose to play their forms.

If you don’t tend to remember your dreams, there are techniques you can use to train your brain to recover them. One of which is simply telling yourself before you wander into sleep to remember what you have dreamt. When you do this, you may find you start to wake up after each dream. I tend to do that a lot, which can be both an inconvenience and a blessing.

Instead of transcribing my dreams after I wake from them, I’ll often spend some time mulling over a dream I have woken from before my mind succumbs to a new one. Although perhaps not has valuable in some ways as having a written log of the dream, this allows me to observe patterns, themes and symbols, as well as gage my emotional response.

Symbols in our dreams often reoccur over and over again. For example I quite often dream about water and stones, both of which hold a lot of interest for me in the literal sense, but also quite often teach me about where I am residing on an emotional level. I also dream quite often about bathrooms, and going to the bathroom, which inevitably leads me down the exploration of what I am holding onto or seeking to release, as well as personal struggles with exposure and privacy.

Themes, patterns, and symbols in dreams are important to notice if you want to learn from them. Equally important, I believe, is how you feel during and after you wake from your dreams. As well as how you felt before you fell into the dream. For example, I can go to bed feeling pretty good about the day I have experienced, only to find myself falling into a fitful dream world. When I wake, I feel significantly more unsettled than when I fell asleep. Unpleasant, yet revealing. When I examine the dream I find the clues to why. Although I had thought I was feeling emotionally balanced, there was a hidden aspect of my self that was calling to be revealed. What our dreams unearth for us are often opportunities for self-examination that can lead to both healing and release of the emotion tucked away inside of us.

Some people believe we can dream other people’s dreams and travel to other dimensions and realms. I tend to agree with these theories based upon my own experiences. If this is the case, and we feel we have dreamt a dream that is a bit “outside” of us, what does it mean? Perhaps we have traveled into a past of future life memory to retrieve valuable insight. Perhaps we have dreamt another person’s dream because our energies are too intimately intertwined. Or, perhaps we have traveled to another realm to learn something about “Life” on a larger scale.

Entire books, poems, inventions, and scientific discoveries have been gleamed from the realm of dreams. I find it nothing short of remarkable how our minds can form such complex and vivid scenes in the dream world which always, I believe, point to a deeper truth that begs to be explored.

Each dream, when examined, becomes a puzzle of the hidden, or not so hidden, self. Some, I admit, are so crazy at first glance that I cast them aside for later, hoping that their cryptic nature will reveal themselves overtime. For those of us who enjoy a good mystery, there’s no better place to explore than the world of our dreams.

At the moment, I’m still mulling over last night’s dreams, and dreams that I dreamt many nights ago. Through them I thread the lines that join symbols and take note of the patterns that are formed from them. Sometimes I chuckle at themes captured from TV shows or lines I have recently read, wondering why until the emotional symbolism is revealed. I marvel at fantastic forms and how far the mind can stretch reality until I realize that the limits are always self-imposed. Anything, absolutely anything, is possible in our dreams.

Running Alone in the Fields of Heaven #dreams #freesoul #dreamhealing #dreamsymbolism #dreaminterpretation

On By Alethea KehasIn Dreams, Reflections1 Comment
Photo by Belvair Nash from Prexels

It was pure euphoria. I can only liken it to the ideal of heaven. In the dream I was in England, running in a field of white flowers. They were puffed out like dandelions gone to seed, each step lifted their tufted wishes into the wind. It felt like freedom, unbounded. The wild, untethered soul roaming in the landscape of home.

There were other dreams nestled around it. Equally vivd, and all weaving together in the complex mysterious way that dreams do. The crowded bus with black seats and no bathroom. “Wilder’s Barn” beside an earthen mound filled with rubble. The black bride in the white wedding dress who wove in and out of each scene. A perfect marriage of yin and yang without a groom. And there was me, again, now flying over Earth’s power lines. The return of euphoria as I followed the dragon of stones in my helicopter. Strange vivid dreams that seem in many ways impossible to decipher, but their imprint strikingly clear.

I imagine there are as many definitions of “heaven” as there are people, and I have no doubt I found mine in this network of dreams. When I left the field and the dragon lines, I lost it. The mundane and all its clutter surrounded me with its burden of worry and obligation. Other’s needs to be met and mine left not quite filled or released.

But, this is life, isn’t it? One can hardly escape the realm of “needs and obligations.” “Wilder’s Barn” is never quite open to the magic of the wild soul. It may open briefly, but the doors eventually close around us and we must, inevitably, return to the mundane.

It is said that true freedom in an inside job, but how many of us can say we really live inside of it? To be unaffected by life is not the norm. We may feel love and experience, in moments, euphoric joy, but we also feel fear, pain, suffering, angst and the entire spectrum of human emotions. That’s part of being human.

Yet what a gift it was to run in that simple field of flowers, alone and unencumbered by life. How exhilerating it was to fly above the land and trace the pattern of Earth’s power lines through the body of rocks. To be reminded that magic is always there, waiting to be felt, waiting to be freed. Waiting to be born. Even if just in the land of dreams.

Why Did I Dream That Dream #propheticdreams #dreams

On By Alethea KehasIn DreamsLeave a comment

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Photo credit: Pixabay

It was probably about a week or so ago. I don’t know the exact date, because I didn’t record it. Nor do I recall all the details. What lingers, though, is the feeling along with image of the oven top. Burners lit when they should not be. Gas leaking into the air…

In case you haven’t guessed from previous posts, I am fascinated (and perhaps a bit obsessed) by dreams. I always have been. I didn’t record much in my journals as a child and teen, but for a time I recorded my dreams. They held a deep intrigue for me. Some nights they brought escapes into wondrous fairylands. Others, the haunting terror of reoccurring nightmares. And, there were the ones that came true.

Even though I was raised in a very scientific-minded household where anything that the physical eyes could not see was deemed as fanciful and untrue, I knew dreams offered a wisdom into the more hidden realms of  our being and the universe that seemed like truth even to my obedient mind.

The more I study my own dreams, the more I learn. Some of us go into deep meditative states for understanding, some of us channel the inner guide through automatic writing., or consult cards, astrologers of psychics. Or maybe we simply walk in the woods. I find each one helpful, but perhaps not so constantly helpful, as dreams.

Dreams are effortless. We close our eyes and fall into slumber, and dreams come to us without beckoning. Although we may claim we do not dream, we all do. And there are many ways to train our brains to recall our dreams if we have trouble remembering them. It’s worth looking into if you tend to wake without recollection.

When we dream, our minds unearth our deepest fears, as well as our heart’s yearnings. Through their strange language of metaphor, we can decipher a vast library of wisdom. Their code, unique to each individual.

When I dreamt the oven lit and leaking gas several nights ago, I awoke with the feeling of foreboding. I knew fear was at play, but it didn’t feel like a metaphor. It felt real.

I checked the stove throughout the day, and occasionally during the next few days when I’d recall the dream. Then, I largely forgot about it. Until today.

You could say there was nothing too unusual about this morning. My son and I left for an appointment as scheduled, and I reminded my daughter of when to leave for hers. We arrived at the office seven minutes early, and I half-noted the feeling of emptiness on our way in.

The receptionist flushed when she saw us. Stumbling over apologies, she informed us that my children’s appointments had been canceled last minute due to illness. No big deal. We rescheduled and left. For a moment, I thought about running an errand or two, but instead followed the familiar road home.

We were back at the house about a half an hour after we had left. Entering through the garage, I found myself puzzled by a strange smell. My daughter was on the couch eating her breakfast and watching a cooking show. Nothing unusual for a weekend. I greeted her, told her about the appointment reschedule, and we talked about other things as I continued to sniff the air periodically.

I decided it smelled like gas. Not the gas from engine exhaust, but it seemed to be more concentrated near the garage, so I lingered around there for a moment, then walked towards the oven. There was a small frying pan on one of the burners, leftover from my daughter’s breakfast. Again, nothing out of the ordinary. She often makes herself elaborate meals on weekends. Except there was the smell. Slightly sulfurous and overwhelming the air. My eyes left the pan and looked beneath it. No flame. They caught upon the knob below, turned a quarter to the right.

I recalled the dream nights before as I turned the knob to “off,” pushed the button overhead to fan the air outside, and opened a door and window to aid the ventilation. I sent a million silent “thank you”s to fate that the morning’s appointments had been canceled, then began a firm, but kind lecture to my daughter about minding the stove and not using that particular burner to simmer because the fame dies when it is down to low, but the gas still releases.