Issue 113, January 2008
Snakes and ladders*
©Jane Teresa Anderson, January 2008
* NOTE Snakes & Ladders - this is the name of a board game I played as a young child living in England. It's known as Chutes & Ladders in the US where it was marketed as an "improved new version of ... England's famous indoor sport."
What do you hope for yourself for 2008? Yes, this is all about you. So while you may hope for world peace, for harmonious sustainable living, or for the health and happiness of those you love, focus for the moment on what you hope for you.
Traditionally, this is the time to make New Year resolutions. Sometimes resolutions work, helping to draw a line in the sand, to declare a point of no return, to move forward. Often though, they don’t work, and your dreams show the reasons why.
No matter how much you resolve to make a change, it will not happen unless your unconscious mind is in agreement. Often your unconscious mind is not in agreement and, being stronger than your conscious mind, wins.
It’s your unconscious mind that persuades you that life is sweeter with sugar (when you’ve resolved to cut sweet things from your diet). It’s your unconscious mind that persuades you of the comforts of safety (when you’ve resolved to risk making a change). It’s your unconscious mind that persuades you to see the road ahead as rocky, when, in fact, it’s smooth and straight. It’s your unconscious mind that bases all judgement on your past experiences, not on what might be best for you today. It’s your unconscious mind that tries to ‘protect’ you from change it sees as undesirable – for example, if you were teased for being different when you were a child, your unconscious mind is likely to ‘protect’ you against daring to be different as an adult for fear of the bad feelings that go with being teased. (Consciously you may have no memory of that childhood teasing experience and that makes the unconscious memory even more powerful.)
If there’s an item on your hope list that’s been there for quite a while with little glimmer of success, you can be sure your unconscious mind is unsupportive of it.
Your dreams help you to see what your unconscious mind believes and whether it’s for or against the changes you would like to bring into your life. If it’s for the changes, you’ll achieve them. If it’s against the changes, you won’t, until you reprogram your unconscious mind in alignment with what you want to achieve. The most effective way to reprogram your unconscious mind is to do dream alchemy – simple exercises using symbols from your dreams.
So let’s get practical.
Write out your list of things you hope for yourself for 2008.
Each night before you fall asleep, read through your 2008 hope list. Your dreams process your experiences of the last 48 hours, and often prioritise the things on your mind as you fall asleep, so your dreams are likely to work through your hope list and reveal any unconscious discord.
So what should you be looking for in these dreams?
Most things on your hope list for 2008 will be goals, and the way to achieve a goal is to move towards it. Look for journey dreams that show your progress – or lack of it – towards a destination, as these most likely represent how your unconscious mind responds to your proposed goal. If your journey dreams present you with obstacles or diversions, these represent your obstructive unconscious beliefs.
For example, if your obstacle is lack of a ticket, your unconscious mind may believe you’re not entitled to achieve your goal, perhaps indicating past issues around entitlement in your life.
If your obstacle is a vehicle without brakes, your unconscious mind may believe that you will lose control once things get started, that you won’t know when or how to stop.
If a person you see as opinionated is obstructing you, your unconscious mind may have opinionated beliefs that are obstructing your progress.
If an animal bars your way, ask yourself how you see the animal. If you see it as defensive, then your unconscious mind may have defensive beliefs that are in your way. If you see the animal as cunning, then your own unconscious cunning may be your enemy.
If your obstacle is a ladder, and you were familiar, in childhood, with the superstition about it being unlucky to walk under a ladder, then your unconscious mind may believe in superstition and bad luck.
If your obstacle is a snake, and you were familiar with the board game Snakes & Ladders when you were a child, then your unconscious mind may believe in being at the wrong place at the wrong time, or that five steps forward only result in twenty steps backwards.
Use these examples to decode the obstacles in your dreams according to your personal associations and experiences, to see what they may reveal about unconscious beliefs that are blocking your progress towards manifesting your hopes for 2008 into your life.
Step one is doing this to identify your unconscious beliefs. It’s more than a guessing game – you’ll know when you’ve got it right because it will just feel right. The answer will touch you deeply. You will also be able to verify your insight by searching the rest of your dream for more clues. You will see several symbols all resonating to the same theme.
Step two is to reprogram any unconscious beliefs that are blocking your progress, and you can do this by visualising changing the dream. This is done when you are awake. Awake, you re-envision the dream, overcoming or removing the obstacle.
For example, walk under the ladder and reach your goal, or climb the ladder and reach it even sooner. Let the snake flick its tail and lift you up towards your goal instead of down the slippery slope back to the very beginning. Visualise receiving not just a ticket, but a first class ticket. Visualise driving your car with perfect fine control, knowing when and how to use the brakes, when to speed up and when to slow down to reach your destination in perfect time. Sprinkle some magic empathy powder onto the opinionated person and see him soften and broaden his perspective while you return a similar empathy towards him and he steps aside and wishes you well.
These are all examples of dream alchemy. Be guided by these to create your own dream alchemy practices to suit your dreams. When you do this, you communicate with your unconscious mind using a language it understands – the language of your dreams, a personal language relating to your personal associations and experiences. You show your unconscious mind a new way to be, reprogramming it through symbolism. Effectively, you teach your unconscious mind a new way of operating, by giving it a new and better ending to the old story.
Here’s to your beautiful new 2008 story, the one where all the snakes and ladders speed your hopes into reality. Start today, with your dreams.
Jane Teresa Anderson
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