Chapter 13

Magical Cliches, Puns and Words

I’m with my ex-husband and the water is lapping around my home and feet. There is a flood. I call my parents and family and they experience this too. The world is in a flood situation: the ‘end of the world’.
(Frances, actor)

Was this a precognitive dream about the end of the world, or did Frances feel that this was the end of her (personal) world? At the time of her dream, she was still flooded with emotional issues (water) which were affecting both her position (feet) in life, and her mental attitudes (house). Her family and friends shared her feelings. The use of this old cliche ‘the end of the world’ summarised exactly how Frances felt.

I’m in a pitch black room unable to find my way out. I wake up screaming or trying to find my way through a wall. I feel like I’m still dreaming until the light is put on. I don’t have these dreams often now, but a few years ago I had them nearly every night for months. This was during a marriage break up.
(Annie, home maker)

In cliche-land we ‘try to find my way through a brick wall’, ‘bang my head against a brick wall’, climb the walls’, get ‘driven up the wall’ and so on. I suppose clichés exist because we all tend to experience similar situations at some stage in our lives. It becomes easier to describe your state as ‘being driven up the wall’ than to go into a long explanation of the frustration of an unyielding daily life. Those few words deliver the feeling as it is.

Acting Out a Cliche

Many people have found themselves, in dreams, in the passenger seat of a car, being ‘driven up a wall’ by someone, or perhaps being ‘driven round the bend’.

Have a closer look at the actions in your dreams. Have you ever found yourself in dreamland ‘bending over backwards’ to fit in with someone, or ‘letting your hair down’, or ‘going round in circles’, ‘keeping your head above water’, ‘walking on ice’ or even ‘slipping up’? What would these literal cliched dramas in your dreams say about your unconscious feelings or your waking life?

You may act out a host of cliches in your dreams, making their meaning quite clear as Paula discovered:

Mainly in my dreams I am unable to find my way out of strange buildings. Corridors and stairways always bring me back to the same starting place, but in a recent dream every corner I turned led to a dead end and every door I opened had a brick wall behind it. I am confused and frustrated.

These two dreams started after Paula’s retirement three years ago.

Alternatively, you may find that when you describe your dream to someone else, or, better still, when you write it down, you choose cliches to describe the action or feelings, or you choose words that speak loud and clear.

Millions of things like ants were marching towards me, coming right up to my face, right in front of my nose, almost pushing me into the pillow. It’s like they create a barrier right in front of my face, closing me in. I can’t get past this barrier.
(Claire, child care provider)

Whatever was clearly annoying (insects) Claire at this time, and forming a barrier to hinder her progress, was, in her own words, ‘right under her nose’. She needed to look close to home to identify the source of her frustration.

Revealing Words and Puns

Our choice of words when talking about our dreams in general, or when summing up their basic content can be revealing too.

I have often commented to my wife that if I could remember my dreams they would make great movies. They usually started at a reasonable pace with reasonable actions, but as the dream progressed I would get more and more into situations that I could not get out of.
(David, surveyor)

David’s business life and the decisions he made in waking life always seemed reasonable at the time, but as he took on more and more responsibilities, he got himself into situations that he couldn’t get out of. When David joined the survey, he felt he was on a treadmill with no way out.

To get the most out of this angle on dream interpretation, write your dreams down then take a highlighter pen and mark any cliches, puns or turns of phrase that seem suggestive. Then stand back and string them all together. If you do not have time to write, try telling your dream to someone, or recording it, and listen to the words you use.

The dream we receive, from whatever source, is translated into ‘hard copy’ by our brain, so that we have some kind of record in everyday language or picture form that we can refer back to. If you are a word-orientated person, you may find a predilection for using telling words or acting out cliches in your dreams. I love puns, and tend to notice these in my dreams.

My husband is with his nephew, Jay, who throws something onto the railway line, then jumps down to pick it up. We both gasp at the danger involved, because the train tracks carry live electricity in this dream. Jay gets back onto the platform safely.
(Jane Anderson)

At this time my husband was taking risks with his career (‘training’) and experimenting with new ideas. He would wander down this or that track to see what it had to offer. This was risky to our financial situation, but necessary to find alternatives. The dream showed this ‘Jay walking’, while apparently dangerous, would probably give us a few scares but would ultimately result in our safety. At the same time, the dream reflected my own conflicts about risk.

Look for the spoken words in a dream. Often simply highlighting the conversation in a dream brings instant understanding, as in Brigid’s account:

I was in the waiting room of a hospital with Craig, my four year old son. There were other people with children there and someone was organising individual baby-sitters for them, so that they could go and be with their relatives. I went through to the labour ward where Carl, my husband, was in labour. My thoughts were ‘I must be with him as he was with me’. He was on a bed and a middle-aged lady was helping him deliver. The baby’s head was visible, very blonde, and although Carl was in labour, he didn’t seem in that much pain, although he was perspiring. I remembered wondering about a womb and birth canal and his tummy was very flat. I was wondering if it was a boy or a girl, then I thought, ‘He will get what he wants.’ It was a girl.
(Brigid, personal assistant)

Brigid’s husband was working (labour) at something new in his life and needed her help and support. She reflected on the fact that he has stood by her in the past, but also notes her feeling that he always gets what he wants (perhaps implying that she feels that she doesn’t). What this dream does is to set out the situation as it is, so that Brigid can make a decision based on a better understanding of all the factors involved.

Time for a pun:

I saw dad suspended over a spit roast thing but there was no fire. I told Mum she had killed Dad with all the stress she puts on him.
(Isabelle, legal secretary)

Dad got a real ‘roasting’ from all Mum’s ‘spit’ (spite?) and the stress she ladled onto him. Isabelle sensed this had killed something in her father. Her dream would probably have reflected a similar inner conflict within herself at the time.

And another:

My husband, Glen, put in a quote to design an unusual Christmas display for a centre which included the word ‘mirage’ in its name. A few weeks later, I had a dream which included:

Kirstie is pregnant and is worried about the labour. I put my arm around her to comfort her. Just as we are on the threshold of a coffee shop where Glen is giving a quote for a Christmas display I look up into the sky and see a very realistic Santa’s sleigh disappearing into the distance. The reindeer look like dappled pink horses and I can see the detail on their thigh muscles as they weave through the sky. It’s stunning to watch, but I turn to Kirstie and say, ‘It’s a pity it’s an illusion’, at which point it disappeared in a puff of mist.
(Jane Anderson)

Kirstie sounds like ‘Christmas’, which was obviously the theme of the dream, and the pregnancy and worry about the labour reflected Glen’s concerns (and mine) over who would win the job. Illusion for me was a dream pun on mirage, and because it was a pity and it disappeared, I knew the contract would go to someone else. It did.

Try this one. Look at Joe’s dream and, remembering that a car tends to symbolise motivation or direction in life, focus on his use of words to deduce the meaning of his dream:

I am being driven in my four-wheel drive. I am in the back of the car. Later we stop and all get out and I go looking for the driver. I see the interior of the car glowing as if it is on fire. Someone has lit a kerosene pressure lamp on the back seat and the heat from this is causing the leather upholstery to blister and sag. I shout for help but everyone is too busy. I am angry thinking that this is going to be a big repair job, then ask myself, ‘When did my car have leather upholstery? It has cloth upholstery.’ I wake up, still very angry.
(Joe, catering attendant)

Joe did not feel in control of his direction in life, and was not able to follow his own basic drives and motivations since he perceived someone else as being in control, in the driver’s seat. As a result, he was feeling under pressure (in the back seat) and the heat of his anger and frustration was burning him (car) up. In the dream he is beginning to acknowledge the source of his frustration and even begins to look for the driver (to find the part of himself who needs to be in control). He also realises that rebuilding his motivation and taking back control of his drive and direction in life is going to be a long process: ‘a big repair job’.

I once had a long dream, full of key words for interpretation, during which:

Glen (my husband) and I are in a plane and we see a huge tidal wave below. Although we are safe I suddenly see and feel the panic through the eyes of Glen’s son, who is on the beach. I start to speak in his voice, crying for his mother and suffocating. Then Glen and I are suddenly in a long, dark corridor, where Glen is sitting cross-legged halfway along the passage and I am standing. There is a knock at the door and I can see a peaked cap through the frosted glass panel. I think it is a policeman and I close the backroom door to keep our daughters safe. I open the front door to see a Salvation Army lady who points at Glen. He goes outside.
(Jane Anderson)

I saw the symbolism in this dream as a birth, and it was only on closer reflection that I realised how accurate this dream account of Glen’s actual birth had been. The key word here was Salvation. Glen was born by caesarean section (’saved’) after a protracted attempt at a breech birth. The breech birth is symbolised by his cross-legged sitting position (not moving) in the birth passage. The tidal wave symbolised the overwhelming emotions he must have felt, and which I experienced in the dream through his son, who must have represented Glen’s inner child. The suffocating and the cries for his mother added to the stuck birth feeling. Closing the backroom door to protect the girls may have been symbolic of putting his mother under anaesthetic, because once this was done, the Salvation Army lady led Glen outside. (He was saved and born.) As with most dreams that border on the lives of others, personal overlap with the dreamer’s inner life is usually the case. At the time of this dream I was looking at my personal progress with what I was ‘giving birth to’ at the time.

So, place another tool now in your magic box of dream interpretation methods, and journey on to discover further secrets of the astral plane, locked in the actions of your dreams.