Dreaming for Positive Change
in the New Millennium
©Jane Teresa Anderson, December 1999
Our dreams highlight personal issues giving us the keys, through self-understanding,
to heal old wounds, change inappropriate attitudes and move forward in
new ways. Global transformation begins with the individual. Will the challenges
of the new millennium be reflected in our dreams? If so, what kind of
dreams might we expect and how can we use such dreams to bring both personal
and global change?
In dreams we meet our greater self, our unconscious self, parading as
a variety of characters acting out bizarre dramas using symbolic props
amidst surrealistic settings. Our dream dramas zip us back into the past
or zap us overseas instantaneously, muddling time and geographic zones
by placing us in our childhood home at our present age or climbing Mt
Everest in London. The unconscious has no sense of time or distance, seeming
to deal simply in "now", "this moment". As we fall
into a dream the perceptions of the last day or two are shuffled and compared
to all that has gone before, as our conscious and unconscious minds work
at agreeing on one unifying "now, this moment" view of our existence
in this world.
Sometimes new patterns emerge, consciousness shifts and we awake to a
slightly altered view, a new wisdom, a changed attitude or a stunning
idea.
Often our dreams battle out conflicting conscious and unconscious thought
patterns over several nights, weeks or recurring cycles until the new
picture sharpens into focus: until a new personal paradigm is born. From
that "now" moment on, the dreamer awakes to see a changed world.
All is in the eye of the beholder, and all will shift again in the blink
of a future dream. As we change, so the world changes too.
But deeper still the potential for change ripples.
As we go about our life we inevitably contribute to other peoples’
experiences. You may influence someone in a crowd through your rousing
revolutionary speech or a passer-by may overhear your whispered comment
to friend. Either way, your life suddenly dream-weaves a thread into the
pattern of another. And so it goes, through loud action to quiet comment,
through silent action to thunderous outburst, through doing to being,
we transform ever more complexly the fabric of which we are both whole
and part. As we are so the world is: through the "I" of the
beholder, through the rippling effect of being and doing and through the
blink of an infinity of dreams.
If we can recall our dreams, and if we can interpret them, we can review
this ever-honing process of sculpting our world. We can look back and
see the issues in our lives that are wrestled into unification in our
dreams. We can recognise, acknowledge and embrace our unconscious attitudes
and identify outmoded behaviour patterns and childhood conditioning that
really isn’t working to our advantage as adults. We can accelerate
positive change by understanding our unconscious self more clearly and
then working to heal the hurts that have been carried unresolved. We can
also identify and remove the obstacles we unconsciously love to place
on our path.
By understanding and acting on our dreams we empower ourselves to see
a world of choice, to change the way we are in the world and to let that
change ripple through to others. We begin to see that we have the Alchemical
power to magic our threads of straw into tapestries of gold.
As we fall asleep and enter the process of sifting our new experiences
and comparing these to the old, we co-create the universal paradigm (the
generally agreed picture of the world). The more we ‘see’ and
experience the same truths, the more we believe them to be true. The more
we agree on how the world is, the more it solidifies into being exactly
so. The more we expect the new Millennium to bring disruption and disaster
the more …. Hey! Stop right there! What have we been conditioned
to believe about the new millennium?
How much have our beliefs and fears about the new millennium been shaping
our dreams and our perceptions of the world? How much has the media’s
bombardment of millennial prophecies, doomsday visions, calamities, global
disasters, revelations and second-comings of Christ fed into our nightly
attempts to re-write the balance sheet? How are the challenges of the
new millennium (real or virtual) being handled by our dreams? How can
we use our dreams to weave the best path through these years? What kind
of solutions are our dreams likely to offer?
From 1999 to 2000
Moving from the 19-somethings to the 20-somethings (or from the 1000’s
to the 2000s) is possibly the longest-running media trick of them all!
Various religions and cultures have their own calendar systems, though
this one — the one based on the birth of Christ — has become
the most globally acceptable. It is well known that the exact year of
Christ’s birth is under question, making the year 2000 possibly 2004
years after the event. The proclamation of the party poopers that the
new Millennium doesn’t start until 1st January 2001 topples
the confidence a little further. All in all, moving from 1999 to 2000
on 31st December seems monumentally arbitrary.
But from an unconscious point of view, I believe, the transition on 31st
carries weight.
Unless you spend most of your days researching history, you have probably
been exposed to writing, typing or reading "19-something" repeatedly
for most of your life since the age of about five. "19" as a
hallmark of your existence is deeply ingrained. Your life has been recorded,
measured and evaluated by Prefix 19. Be flippant consciously if you please,
but your unconscious anchors the concrete stability, the assuredness of
that safe and cozy 19.
In the last ten years of the century the ‘9’ has been underlined
through repetition: the 1990’s. This was reinforced again in the
final 1999. (I am writing this article on 19 December, the last occurrence
of 19 in 1999: this fact had slipped my mind until now. How symbolic do
you want to get?!) Added to this is the observation that from the beginning
of September (1.9.1999) until the end of November (31.11.1999) most dates
were heavy on 1s and 9s.
Our counting system, based on sets of ten, is as arbitrary as the evolutionary
significance of having five fingers on each hand. It features moving from
a beginning of 1 to a completion at 10, before a new beginning of a further
set of ten (starting at 11). The completed 10 is a 1 ‘made whole’
by a nice, round, complete 0. In pre-writing times, 10 was a full handful.
9 is the end of the cycle, the last digit, or last stage before the completeness
of the 10.
In this most basic of ways, we symbolise 1 as beginning and 9 as a final
preparation for completeness. This symbolism frequently reverberates in
dreams. In symbolic terms, 1999 resonates with the unconscious to pose
an urgency of endings, a coming of completeness and a move to a new beginning,
a new cycle.
The right side of the brain (also the side most active in dreaming) is
not brilliantly equipped for basic mathematics. It considers the 1 and
the 9 spatially or symbolically. It tends to see 19 not as the sum of
nineteen ones but as "age 19" or "a 1 and a 9" or,
occasionally, as "10" (the sum of 1 and 9). The unconscious
"thinks" in similar ways. 1 and 9 also build a wholistic symbolic
picture of "the cycle by which beginnings end and lead to new beginnings".
The drumming up of the 9 in recent years has, paradoxically, both reinforced
our unconscious safety with the defining 19 while also hinting at the
coming change.
Unconsciously, I believe, awake and dreaming, a great inner earthquake
is rumbling in readiness for fundamental perceptual change.
Nineteen is also the last year of the teenager. Nearly everyone reading
this article has memories (whether conscious or unconscious) of moving
from being a 19 year old teenager to a terribly old (!) 20 year adult.
As we move from the 19s to the year 2000, our dreams may reflect some
aspects of our individual memories and experiences around our personal
transitions from teenagers to adults. They will also reflect on whatever
beginnings we feel we have completed, and whatever beginnings we have
struggled to complete.
All in all our unconscious, through our dreams, may struggle with the
general concepts of change, completion, cycles and moving on, overlaid
with our individual personal experiences of such times. Fear of change,
fear of moving beyond comfort zone, is likely to feature in dreams leading
up to and during the transition from 1999 to 2000.
And what of the symbolism of the 2?
The unconscious, awake or dreaming, will look at "age 2" and
"age 20", possibly taking you back to revisit unresolved dilemmas
from these times or to re-examine attitudes stemming back to these ages.
Two also symbolises, for most people, a range of possibilities including:
couples, pairs, opposites, balance, harmony, two choices, polarities (Yin/Yang),
the binary system and the "twenties". It is likely that the
unconscious will reflect the transition to 2000 by dreaming issues of
finding balance between opposites and of moving from a consideration of
the individual to togetherness. "Harmony and understanding"
and all of that.
Possible Millennial Dreaming Challenges relating to the date change
1999-2000 :
- Completion of cycles
- Endings for New Beginnings
- Finding balance between opposites or extremes
- Finding harmony beyond a consideration of the individual
- Issues related from age 19/20
- Major basic perceptual changes (loss of the defining 19 rock)
- Issues of Wholeness and Wholistic principles (all those Zeros on 2000!)
Possible dream symbols:
- One year old children
- Nine year old children
- Nineteen year olds
- Teenagers
- Twenty year olds
- Two year old children
- Round shapes, circles and zeroes
- Balances: e.g. set of scales, balancing acts, middle line in the road
- Cycles: bicycles, wheels
- Expression of extreme emotions
- Music (harmony)
- Two people, sets of two, twins
Death of Old/ Birth of New/ Second Comings
Consciously and unconsciously we are being primed with notions of the
death of the old millennium and the birth of the new. This reinforces
our concerns about changing times: the ending of old ways of being, old
lifestyles and old certainties and the "birth" of new technology,
the "birth" of new policies, the emergence of new wars, the
"over-birth" of population growth and so on.
Our inner world, through our dreams, responds to these stirrings by examining
our personal issues of death of the old and birth of the new within our
own lives. In a similar way, proclamations of the biblical second coming
stir up our unconscious thoughts and beliefs on self-judgement.
Endings and new beginnings are most commonly played out dramatically
in our dreams through scenes of death and birth. Stay calm when interpreting
death dreams and remember that they are symbolically role playing the
"killing off" or letting go of old ways. Remember that people
in your dreams generally represent aspects of yourself — even if,
and especially when, they are people you know in waking life. Ask yourself,
"What is the personality of this person?" or, "How do they
approach life?". Your answers will help you to identify a part of
your own personality or an issue in your life. Ask yourself, "Why
is my dream showing an ending to this?"
With all death, grief needs to be expressed before life can truly blossom
again. Memories need to be treasured; gratitude, hurts, regrets, love,
forgiveness and much else needs to be expressed. Sadness needs to be released
along with the letting go of the final farewell. Only then can we move
ahead into the new. Expect to travel through these processes in your dreams
of death of the old and birth of the new. Such dreams smooth transition,
keeping you physically, mentally and spiritually healthy as you re-birth.
The theme of second comings may reflect in your dreams through repetition
of twos, dreams of judgement, re-visiting the past to choose again and
so on. Reflecting on past decisions through dreams can be a healthy way
to review your current decision-making. Consider second coming dreams
akin to death and rebirth, allowing yourself to let go of the past, freeing
yourself for the "now".
Possible Millennial Dreaming Challenges relating to Death of the Old/
Birth of the New:
- Death of old inappropriate attitudes or ways of being (personal before
global, as always)
- Grief for the passing of old ways of being
- Release of old, repressed grief relating to the past
- Issues of letting go
- Summarising and treasuring wisdom gained from the passing of the old
- Respect for the past
- Readiness for re-birth
- Readiness for totally different ways of being
- Readiness for learning through review (symbolism of "second coming")
Possible Dream Symbols:
- Death
- Killing/ Murder
- Sadness, crying in a dream (yourself or another dream character)
- (Waking up crying or sobbing)
- Closing doors (letting past rest in peace)
- Drama of holding on/ letting go (literally)
- Happily breathing underwater (death, letting go and birth)
- Communicating with old wise person
- Reading ancient books (wisdom, knowledge)
- Moving along dark hallway (birth)
- Squeezing through tight space (birth)
- Pregnancy, labour
- Babies (new attitudes, new work, new ways of being)
- Breast-feeding (nurturing new ways)
- Teaching/ Learning drama
- Letting go of things/people/bags (literally ‘letting go’)
World Disaster Scenarios/ Earth Changes
Many people claim to have dreamed or envisioned massive world disasters
and earth changes occurring around the year 2000. Media coverage challenges
the unconscious to look at personal issues of disaster, crisis and change
and at our fear reactions to a possibly dramatically changing world. At
the same time, our dreams are likely to be prompted by the ‘death
of the old, birth of the new theme’ to ponder the enormity of sudden
change in our lives.
It is not only the people in our dreams who represent aspects of ourselves.
Every part of a dream including the scenery, the props, the action or
the inaction can be seen as playing out the issues in our lives, working
towards a new and all-encompassing perception of the world.
World disasters, in our dreams, usually reflect the ‘disasters’
(current, feared or projected) in our personal lives, our upheavals, emotional
releases and transitions. While people can and do dream accurate details
of world crises and earth changes, a deeper insight lays in acknowledging
the inner crises these events are resonating with through our dreams.
In dreams we may liken ourselves to the world. When we feel divided,
hurt, unheard, polluted or in need of nurturing, we may dream of a similarly
endangered world. In caring for ourselves, in getting our inner attitudes
‘right’, we cannot help but extend the same approach to the
world.
Possible Millennial Dreaming Challenges relating to World Disasters/
Earth Changes:
- Challenge of continual reminder that dreams relate to personal issues
- Reminder that the best way to change the world is to change yourself
- Reminder that outer world change is effective once corresponding inner
change has been achieved
Possible Dream Symbols:
- Earthquake: the ground generally symbolises the conscious mind. Dream
earthquakes reflect shifting consciousness. Look at any fears surrounding
the forthcoming personal shift.
- Flood: Water tends to symbolise emotions. Floods may symbolise overwhelming
emotions, tears, or washing away (cleansing).
- Tidal Wave/ Tsunami: a wall of repressed emotion that cannot be held
back any longer.
- Erupting Volcano: a volcano erupts when the pressure of molten lava
becomes too much. Dream Volcanoes may symbolise repressed anger/ fire
and a forthcoming eruption of anger. This brings relief too: such emotions
cannot be held back under pressure forever.
- Tornado: Symbolically the winds of change have built pressure: change
is in the air.
- Fire: Fire can symbolise anger, burn-out, enthusiasm, cleansing (the
phoenix rises from the ashes).
- Changes in Coastal Shape: Land masses (conscious mind) slip into the
sea (unconscious mind) as old firm ways of thinking and being give way
and new conscious boundaries and shapes appear.
- Wars, Bombs, Explosions: These are usually symbols of inner conflict
and possibly expressions of anger or revenge. It may be good to bomb
old ways: to clear the past.
- Famine: Starving yourself, or an aspect of yourself, of emotional
or physical need.
- Pollution: Pollution of the mind or body, or issues of purity.
Y2K & The Bug in the System
What potential havoc a small decision about computer programming can
have! Or was it a case of lack of foresight? Either way, the potential
world crises pivoting on a combination of our reliance on technology and
our determination and ability (or lack of) to upgrade our computerised
systems is staggering! While many nations have seemingly forestalled the
catastrophe — or at least contained it within their home territories
— the effect of the bug in the system in lesser-prepared countries
will be revealed during 2000.
Media coverage, while thankfully alerting and saving many of us from
the bug crisis, has also served to stir up our most basic fears of survival,
of evil (unseen bugs) and havoc. The overall effect of linking a potentially
catastrophic bug with the symbolic death and rebirth of the millennium
compounds our conscious and unconscious reactions. In facing light, a
shadow is revealed. Our darkest hour of fear precedes the dawn of the
new millennium simply because, unconsciously, this is how we have experienced
transformation personally in the past. The darkest hour is just before
dawn, the most difficult trials precede enlightenment, sunlight reveals
shadows and we all carry an unconscious surety of the struggles we endured
to be born into this life. As we contemplate the dawning of a new age
— no matter how arbitrary that new age is — unconsciously we
are rapt in wrestling the fears and trials of transition.
The Y2K bug is the perfect outer world symbol for fear of transition
and survival.
Our dreams during this period may reflect our personal issues of fear
of survival and fear of change, as well as reviewing past personal crises.
Our biggest fears may be enjoying a field day in our dreams. The shadow
sides of our characters (the parts of ourselves we dislike and disown)
may play some fearsome dream roles during this time, being our own cloaked
Y2K bugs which threaten us and hold us back from personal change.
The term "Y2K" has intrigued me with its wildfire acceptance
throughout English speaking countries. It has resonated and caught on
in a big way. Why?
‘Why’ is indeed the answer, I believe. The unconscious, like
the right side of the brain, responds to the sound of words and is as
likely to store "Y" as equal in meaning to "Why".
(This is also the way dreams often work, with similar sounding words frequently
being inter-changeable in meaning.) The unconscious hears "Why 2
K?" just as clearly as "Y2K". I wonder if our liking for
this abbreviation reflects a universal shifting in consciousness further
away from the "How" of science to the "Why" of spiritual
purpose.
Although we say ‘2K’, the new millennium is, of course, the
Third Millennium. In dream symbolism, three often represents the trinity:
the body, mind and soul, or the physical, emotional/mental and spiritual
aspects of our whole being. Ideally the three together are our completion,
our wholeness. With 2K being the 3rd Millennium, are we indeed
making the full transition from two to three, from mind to soul, from
emotional/mental to spiritual .. from the Hows of the mind to the Whys
of the soul?
Is the threat of the Y2K bug indeed the darkest trial paving the road
to the why-revealing enlightened new dawn?
Possible Millennial Dreaming Challenges relating to Bugs in the System:
- Facing our personal fears of change and survival
- Personal issues of adaptation, flexibility, resistance and limitation
- Learning from trials rather than resisting them
- Preparedness for forward planning
- Facing our own dark shadows
- Moving from asking "How?" to "Why?"
Possible Dream Symbols:
- Dark shapes and shadowy figures
- Travelling through dark, confined tunnels
- Difficult or treacherous journeys
- Any fear reaction or feeling
- Obstacles or not being able to move at normal speed
- Breathing difficulties
- "Evil" characters or forces
- Armageddon scenarios
- Twos moving to threes; two levels becoming three
New Paradigms
As we become more comfortable with inhabiting the Third Millenium, as
we progress beyond our fears, our dreams will probably relax into creative
mode. Whether we find ourselves challenged by circumstance to discover
different ways of living, or whether we find ourselves relieved from anxiety
and back in the swim of the old, familiar pre-Millennium lifestyle, our
dreams should find us released from fear and free to create.
Our dreams may enjoy being set free from the threat of a Y2K bug that
was forestalled, having learned the lesson of looking beyond today and
planning for tomorrow. We may find ourselves waking with creative solutions
to living in a challenging and changed world, or waking with more leisurely
plans for improving the quality of life on this planet.
Re-birthed, in whichever way, into the third Millennium, our dreams will
surely take the soft clay of newborn potential and create possible shapes
for a wiser world.
Will you be awake to your dreams?
Millennial Dreaming Challenge relating to New Paradigms:
- To realise the power of inner change: the power of one.
Book Extracts
"The Shape of Things to Come" by Jane Teresa Anderson,
pub Random House Aus.
From Chapter 15, 'Responsibility for the Future'
©Jane Anderson, 1998
Extract One:
"My quest to understand precognition has been an
extraordinary experience, although I no longer know where the journey
first began. As a child living on the south coast of England I was fascinated
by Scotland, a country I had not visited. One year my primary school teachers
were concerned because I always crayoned the same picture in art: a cottage
with Scottish mountains in the background. I wore an enamelled highland
dancer brooch, which I still have tucked away in a little treasure box.
Years later the family moved to Scotland and I felt at home. I spent eleven
years there, married a Scot and gave my children Scottish names. Yet as
a tiny child I also recall digging in a hole in the back garden with an
old dessert spoon, claiming I was tunnelling my way to Australia. I have
lived here for fourteen years and have married an Australian. Were these
childhood notions of the reality of the shape of things to come the true
beginning of this quest for understanding precognition?
Perhaps I ignited the adventure as a child when I discovered
that the best way to fall asleep was to close my eyes and imagine the
beginning of time. I pictured myself floating in space looking at Earth,
then orbiting round and round, backwards, through the years. I encountered
coffins, which seemed to indicate death, yet still I orbited ever backwards.
When I couldn't find the beginning, I'd circle in the opposite direction
to search for time's end, but along the way I'd fall asleep and my dreams
would take over the unresolved business of identifying the nature of time.
Was my inadvertently conscious choice of dream material
the beginning of my journey? Or was it my first precognitive dreams and
visions, or the day I fell from a mountain and thought my end had come
until I had a preview of a future I wanted and vowed to live and accept
it? Or was it the day I walked out of formal scientific research, knowing
I was heading for something more relevant and just trusting that I would
find it? Did acceptance and trust in my future mark the shape of things
to come?
Or was it the day the elm tree in our back garden, which
must have been over a hundred years old and which I admired every morning,
mysteriously uprooted the week my first husband and I separated? Or the
people and situations I subsequently met which reinforced the astounding
clarity of life's symbolism. Was this the beginning of my journey?
Or did the real quest begin the day I made my interests
public and professional, researching dreams, discussing dreams on the
radio, meeting, interviewing and talking with people from all walks of
life, each with their own extraordinary experiences to share? Or was it
the moment I took a deep breath and sat in the hypnotist's chair, instantly
redefining both my quest and the shape this book would take?
We can all look back over our lives and see the strange
circumstances, risks, trusts, insights and links which have led us to
where we stand today. If we are happy with our progress we may look back
in wonder, imagining that each event, each meeting along the way, was
purposefully placed to bring us towards our destiny. If we are unhappy
we may conjure up a picture of negative karma and atonement, of a fixed
destiny based on lack of personal choice. If our life experiences have
included precognitive dreams, precognitive visions or clairvoyant readings
which came true, then it is sometimes hard to believe that life is not
predestined, at least in some aspects.
Yet for all the wonder, all the awe of apparent divine
miraculous intervention to keep us on our predestined paths, my quest
has revealed to me that it is we who are divine, we who are the magicians
of synchronicity, dreams, visions, manifestations, mirrored meaning and,
once we acknowledge the fact, total creation of the illusory world we
each see. It is we who must take the final bow and accept responsibility
for the drama that we, as both part and whole of the divine, have created.
And when we open our eyes and awaken from the dream, we will finally know
why we needed such experience."
Extract Two:
"So it is that we all have the ability to respond
to the challenges of the world according to free will. It may be difficult
sometimes to swim against the current of mass consciousness, but history
lights the way with inspirational stories of pioneering thinkers and doers
who have made the difference by breaking the mould. Just as the Yin and
Yang pendulum eventually swings when we move into extremes of thought,
so history has reflected the same readiness to change at critical points
of overload. We are a part of the whole just as much as we are individuals
and as such we hold responsibility for that whole, but we cannot exercise
that response-ability by denying other individuals the freedom to respond
in their own ways. Instead we must each be responsible for shaping our
own inner worlds according to our wisdom, while allowing others to arrive
at their own understanding.
Put aside your precognitive dreams of world disasters
and concentrate on applying the symbolism to your own life. The way to
change the world is to first change yourself. Take responsibility for
your own emotional tidal waves, floods, earthquakes, wars, fires, droughts
and famines and watch your changed inner thoughts reflect in a changed
outer world. Step by step, everything changes on the road towards waking
from the dream."
Jane Teresa Anderson, December 1999:
"The Shape of Things to Come", by Jane Anderson,
published by Random House Australia, can be read online in full text (free access) HERE or purchased online at the
Dream Network website shop.
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