|
Chapter 11
Personal Symbols
Mention ‘pear tree’ to me and my
mind immediately flits back to my final year at university when I lived in the basement of
a beautiful, stately, Victorian stone house in Scotland. Peering through the barred cellar
windows, amidst the smell of damp and mildew, I watched the pear tree and the collared
doves which sang there. My professor, who owned the house, told me the pear tree featured
in a well-known, but not well-written, Victorian novel. Strangely, it was while browsing
through a second-hand bookshop in Bangalow, New South Wales, Australia, that I saw that
book for the first time, one of a limited edition published in Glasgow. I bought it, but I
must have lost it since. Which reminds me of that old edition of Treasure Island I
had as a child. Now, what happened to that? And the four-leaf clovers (yes, genuine!) that
I found by the school library and pressed between its pages. Just like the rose petals
from Granny’s garden ... oh, I’ve just remembered her dog, running between the
roses, almost bigger than me as a child of four. ‘Gypsy’, that’s right. We
used to have gypsies (tinkers) knocking at our door in those days, and tramps who chalked
crosses on the walls of the houses which gave food ...
What’s all this got to do with dreams? Just
about everything!
We’ve all played word association games at
some stage. The popular idea of a psychiatrist used to be someone who sat beside your
reclined body, bouncing words to and fro, hurriedly scribbling down your responses for
deeper analysis. I might have wandered along my own track, starting with ‘pear’
and ending with ‘gypsy’. I wonder how many other people would link pears to
gypsies?
We tend to do this in dreams too. A dream
interpreter might look at my dream of, for example, my grandmother looking for four-leaf
clovers on Treasure Island, and not know where to begin. It would be very helpful if I
explained how these very personal symbols were related to each other inside my head.
Stretching back over all those years though, it’s just as likely that I might have
completely forgotten all of that, and the symbols might have popped up out of my misty
unconscious, shaking their heads and rubbing their eyes after their long hibernation.
‘Ah’, you might think, ‘that just
goes to show that dreams can be mish-mashed jumbles of old memories randomly surfacing and
mixed into a dream cocktail!’
My experience as a dream researcher and dream
therapist has convinced me that this is rarely, if ever, the case. If I had dreamed of my
grandmother on Treasure Island, I may have been able to put these symbols together and
relate them to the days previous to my dream. Perhaps I had been contemplating how
unfortunate it is that my children’s grandparents live on the other side of the
world, and this had triggered treasured memories of my grandmother. Perhaps
I needed to be reminded of how lucky I am to have known her. Or maybe there are personal
treasures or hereditary talents that have become buried in the past that
I need to uncover, and which will bring me the luck I need. Who can tell? In fact this
particular ‘dream’ was totally fabricated to entertain you and illustrate a
point, although the pear tree and gypsy story was real!
The point is, associations stemming from the
dreamer’s life, history, thoughts and philosophies will appear in dreams, and these
personal symbols will always be more important than universal or shared symbols.
Difficulties in interpretation arise when the
dreamer is not consciously aware of his unconscious associations or ‘lost’
memories. The fact that the dream has recently surfaced does imply that these forgotten
details are no longer beyond retrieval. It may simply be a matter of the dreamer
re-entering a ‘unconscious’ frame of mind to get back in touch with the meanings
behind his personal symbols.
Apart from clinical hypnosis or regression, there
are several tried and trusted practical techniques to achieve this.
Word Association Game
Just sit back, relax and play the old game. You
know how it goes. Or write it all down. Start with one word from your dream and let word
associations pour out. The secret to success is to do this quickly. Try not to think or to
produce a calculated response. Let your associations flow because that’s how you do
it in your dreams. Once you have produced a long list, look back and highlight the words
which seem to jump off the page at you. Many of these will have some bearing on your
dream. Sit back and treat these words like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. You don’t have
all the pieces, but try to fit together the ones you do have and see what you get.
Time and Place Association
Take the personal symbols from your dream and try
to get a time or place frame. If you keep dreaming of hearing collared doves sing, try to
recall when you first heard this song or where you were. Rebuild a picture of what was
happening in your life at that time, or what your associations with that place were. Try
to fit some of the other dream symbols into the picture. Ask yourself what is happening in
your dream life now that might be causing you to refer back to those times. What was
happening for you then?
Seeker spent some time contemplating the
‘gramophone needle’ symbol which appeared in a worrying dream. In this dream he
had found himself in a clinic where:
Inside it was pretty dark and I told the men to
leave me alone, but they wouldn’t. The older one held me down while the fat one stuck
acupuncture needles in me: mainly in my face and top lip. The needles hurt and it turned
out they weren’t acupuncture needles at all, but old-fashioned gramophone needles
made from steel. They shoved a lot in my lip.
(Seeker, astrologer)
He associated the gramophone to a time, place and
event as he relates:
Old gramophones to me represent cheating. I used
to have an old gram my dad gave me for a birthday present when I was little. Years later
he sold it to an Aboriginal stockman on the place and trousered the money. I felt very
cheated.
(Seeker, astrologer)
This dream occurred when Seeker was concerned
about a friend who, he feared, was being influenced by a man who was leading her in a
dangerous direction, ‘cheating’ her.
The pins in my lip, I felt, were designed to shut
me up, to stop me speaking my truth to her about this man.
(Seeker, astrologer)
Seeker’s feeling was that he couldn’t
say anything to stop this ‘cheating’ process.
Painting, Drawing, Sand Play, Art
Select your best loved art medium and play. Start
with a symbol or two from your dream and watch what you create. A feeling, an emotion, a
memory, thought or an idea is likely to hit you as you relax and create.
Meditation
Meditate on a symbol from your dream. Focus on
the symbol for a while before you let it change and show you what you need to know.
Talking to Your Symbols
Get yourself out of earshot and relaxed and have
a conversation with one of your dream symbols. At first you will feel absolutely crazy and
may also think ‘This is silly, I’m just making all this up’, but bear with
it because this is often the most successful way of finding out why a certain symbol is in
your dream.
One way is to ask your questions out loud and
‘imagine’ you hear the answers. For example:
You: Four-leaf clover, why are you in my
dream?
Clover: I’m a symbol of luck, you know
that!
You: There’s more to it than that, I
know. I had one once.
Clover: I remember when you picked me, it was
a sunny day.
You: So why have you come into my dream?
Clover: Don’t you remember that boy
(what’s his name?), he pushed
you over and tried to steal me?
You: Vaguely. What happened next? Did I keep
you?
Clover: I wish you did. He gave you a black
eye and soon forgot about me. Why didn’t you stand up for yourself?
You: Is that why you’re in my dream, to
tell me I should stand up for myself?
Clover: That’s it. I brought you a piece
of good luck in the end, didn’t I? Even if it took me twenty years and I had to do it
in a dream!
Or you may decide to take the role of the
symbol and tell your own story. For example:
Clover: I always wanted to bring someone good
luck, but I felt like a needle in a haystack until the day this beautiful little girl came
and plucked me up. She smiled at me, but her sunshine was overshadowed by the bully ...
(etc).
I urge you to try this out, because it really
works well. A less bizarre alternative is to type the ‘conversation’ straight
onto paper, as I have just done in my imaginary scene! At least you feel a little more
academic about the exercise! Again, the important thing is to do it fast, maintaining a
flow, letting the heart speak, not the head.
Looking at Previous Dreams
Your dreaming self may make associations to
previous dreams, as in this quaint example:
The other night I dreamed of a bread man, like
you sometimes see specially baked in a hot bread shop. The figure was already sliced ready
for eating. Was this a continuation of my other dreams about fields of wheat, now ripened,
baked and ready for eating?
(John, town planner)
Keeping a Personal Symbol Dictionary
Buy a notebook or alphabet-indexed journal to use
as a personal symbol dictionary. Note the major recurring personal symbols that appear in
your dreams, whether or not you understand them. You might, for example, frequently dream
of using an old-fashioned silver hairbrush, or of eating jellybeans. Enter
‘hairbrush’ under ‘h’, and ‘jellybean’ under ‘j’,
and write the dates of your dreams by their entries.
After a few months, look back through your
dictionary and see how many times you dreamed of a ‘hairbrush’ and when. Look
over your waking life diary and try to see a connection between your life or your thoughts
in the day or two preceding your ‘hairbrush’ dream. Over a period of time, some
of your personal symbols will start to mean something to you. In some cases, you may never
work out why you have a connection about a silver hairbrush, because the original
association may be too far forgotten, but the symbol still emerges. For example:
Eating raw meat, for me, foretells deceit and
trickery from others, whereas eating cooked meat foretells good times and happy company.
(John, town planner)
Occasionally I dream of a small room which is
bright and clean. A single bed stands to one side of the room and above it is a closed
window. The room itself is very peaceful. I have a strong feeling that someone has passed
away, and some days later will hear about a relative or someone I know that has taken ill,
or passed away.
(Lainey, home maker)
If I dream about being near a fire, the next day,
I usually have a fight or an argument, generally with my husband.
(Stella, home maker)
In this last case, fire can be a shared symbol of
anger and burning feelings as well as enthusiasm or fiery energy. Stella’s dreams may
reflect mounting anger which she expresses shortly afterwards. Whether the symbol is more
personal or universal is not as important here as the fact that she has worked out what
she regards as a personal symbol, by herself, through personal observation.
Dreaming in personal symbols can be very
effective and concise as recently experienced by Eloise:
My precognitive dreams have become more refined
since joining the survey. They are now effectively reduced to several symbols or images
which I can interpret easily. A recent example of this is my Eryl Mai dream.
Eryl Mai Jones was a nine year old girl who died
in the Aberfan disaster in 1966. She had what must have been one of the most tragic
precognitive dreams ever recorded. On the morning of her death she told her mother that
she dreamed a black cloud covered her school, and she wasn’t afraid to die as she
would be with her friends.
I read this story about five years ago, and
thought nothing more of it, until a dream I had a few months ago. I dreamed of Eryl
Mai’s face appearing twice, quite clearly, then fading away. When I woke up I
immediately made the connection between Eryl Mai and her death: ‘avalanche’.
There were two avalanches the next day, one in Turkey and one in Norway, and both were
newsworthy.
I felt that this dream was clear and to the
point, and effectively got the message across, whereas another person would have made no
sense of Aberfan at all.
(Eloise, unemployed receptionist)
Like Eloise, you may find that getting to
understand your personal symbols may provide you with some great dream interpretation
short-cut tools. Please remember, as with universal symbols or any other method of dream
interpretation, that the best results are achieved through combining several different
techniques. As you continue to discover the Magician’s secrets you will see that
understanding how to interpret a dream by looking at the emotions, or by considering how
you act in a dream, for example, will supply many of your missing jigsaw puzzle pieces and
help to build the overall picture of the meaning behind your dreams.
|
