Home

Dream Sight News

Back issues

Subscribe

Buy Now

Issue 135, November 2009

Gentle disguise

copyright Jane Teresa Anderson, November 2009

My grandfather died when I was thirteen. I didn’t really know him very well, and most memories I have of him are second hand, borrowed from stories told by others, a person and a life fabricated from tall tales, hearsay, and conjecture. He was well into his 60s when I, his first grandchild, was born. When he died, they found his heart pills tucked one-by-one under the mattress of his sick bed. He must have slipped them under his tongue then slipped them out again when no-one was looking.

I have three pictures of him.

One is the last photo taken of him, relaxing in a garden chair. My grandmother kept that photo in a frame by her armchair, until she died many years later. I have that picture in my mind’s eye, in my photographic memory, you might say.

One is his wedding photo, a grand affair in Budapest, Hungary. He is in his late 20s or early 30s, an English sailor; my grandmother is about 16, a Budapest child. Read their faces.

One is the picture I have of him sitting on his motorbike, a couple of nights after he died, when he surprised me in a dream. And that’s the picture that stays with me, though I don’t remember him having a motorbike in waking life, and I don’t remember anything he ever said to me when he was alive. At the tender age of thirteen, that dream was life-changing. And at the tender age of thirteen, of course, I believed that Philip Augustus Newton had actually visited me from the afterlife in a dream.

I’ve had vivid, colourful, full-on textural dream recall for almost as long as I can remember being alive. I have always been fascinated by my dreams, but this was perhaps the first one that got my serious attention.

The dream was short. I was standing outside my school waiting for my young brother to walk up from primary school so we could walk home together. While I was waiting, a motorbike came up the road and stopped in front of me. After exchanging a few words, the driver lifted his dark visor, slowly revealing his face. I was surprised to see it was my grandfather.

“But you’re dead!” I reminded him.

“I didn’t want to frighten you, so I came in a dream,” he said.

That made sense, and I was thankful. I was surprised, my breath was momentarily taken away, but I was not frightened.

“I’m here to answer any questions. Is there anything you’d like to know before I go?” he asked.

“I only had one question,” I said. “Is there life after death? But I don’t need to ask that now.”

He smiled, lowered his visor, and rode away.

If this story sounds familiar to you, it’s because I’ve referred to this dream in another Dream Sight article, Issue 26, ‘Relativity’, which I wrote nine years ago, in October 2000. That article explores the question of communicating with the recently departed in dreams and looks at the symbolism of death dreams. You can read it here. Today, I am exploring a different theme.

What that dream did for me, as a teenager, was to assure me that dreaming was a safe space where I could face fears and find answers to questions as large as the meaning of life. I had no idea where to begin, and it would be many years before I would be able to interpret dreams, but I developed a profound respect for my dreams from that point forward.

Today, as a dream analyst and alchemist, my task, like my grandfather’s in my dream, is to help people safely face and understand the fears that limit and shape their lives, and to gently ask and answer questions that help them to clarify their vision and touch a deeper sense of meaning.

I’m often asked why dreams are so bizarre, so masked in symbolic language. I’m glad that they are. They allow us to gently prise them open, to give our eyes and hearts time to softly accustom to the light.

You may not know your deepest fears, but they show up, somewhat disguised, in your dreams.

“I didn’t want to frighten you,” a buried fear might say, “so I came in a dream. I’m here to answer any questions. Is there anything you’d like to know before I go?”

When you bury a fear, deep in your unconscious, it exerts a powerful influence on your life. It may be out of sight and out of your conscious mind, but that only gives it more power. Your unconscious fears limit and shape the way you respond in the world – and you have no idea that this is happening! You bury fears you do not want to face, yet the saving grace within gently reveals these to you in your dreams, asking, “Is there anything you’d like to know …?”

Knowledge is power. When you know about your fears – what they are, where they originated, why you have buried them, how they are influencing your life – you can set them, and yourself, free.

Jane Teresa Anderson

And now for this month's news:

We launched TWO blogs this month! Do look, enjoy, leave your comments, subscribe to the RSS feeds, and please pass on the links!

JaneTeresa.com – Reflections of a dream analyst & alchemist

The Dream Show podcast blog

And there's more:

NEW! October episodes - The Dream Show

A free weekly podcast

Listen here
Or subscribe/download to your iPod

Episode 25: Dreamvolution
When it comes to dealing with change, are you a dinosaur, a giraffe or a kangaroo? Challenging times can bring our basic instincts to the fore, and these often appear as animals in our dreams.
Episode 25

Today’s episode, Dreamvolution, helps you to understand your dreams in times of change, and introduces a dream alchemy practice you can do to get a better grasp of your personal survival instincts so you can make good, informed decisions about how to respond when challenged by change.

Episode 26: What if?
How real are your dreams? They feel real while you’re in them, don’t they? How real is your waking life? What if nothing is as it seems? This podcast gets you questioning your reality – a bit of philosophy – and then introduces a game, ‘What if?’, that you can apply to any dream to gain new insight and clever, practical solutions. A bit of fun and lots of dream interpretation tips packed in along the way too!
Episode 26

Episode 27: Lottery & cheating dreams
If you dreamed of winning $275,000 on the lottery, would you buy a ticket? If you dreamed your partner was cheating on you, would you confront him or her? Dreams that feel real can be very persuasive, and what’s the harm in buying a lottery ticket or … hang on a minute. Dreams are symbolic, and isn’t it a relief to know that? So why would a dream come up with such a precise winning figure, and what’s the real, honest truth behind the very common cheating dream?
Episode 27

Episode 28: Dream alchemy practices
A special episode about dream alchemy practices, what they are, and how to do them. I begin with a story about a powerful dream alchemy practice I did, years ago, that had a profound effect on my life, and end with a fun dialogue exercise for you to do that will have you laughing while you learn. Insights galore, as you will discover!
Episode 28

Episode 29: Guest dreamer: Ann
Ann dreamed of diving deep into a pool then rising up to skate gracefully on its frozen surface. A few days later she dreamed of splashing around in too-shallow pools. Listen as Ann and I get to the bottom - and the top - of her dreams. Lots of insights, twists and turns as we unravel the meaning. Make sure you stay to the very end for the big Aha's!
Episode 29

Listen to all podcasts

NEW! October TV gig - watch video

Regular segment - The Morning Show, Channel 7

watch video

9 October: Interpreting peoples’ dreams: Includes the woman who has dreamed, for 40 years, of being driven over a cliff, and a woman who dreams she's on a train and can't get off. Then there was the gorgeous man who met the love of his life in his dream but - was she married? And the student who keeps dreaming he's at school with his whole family. What do these dreams mean? Watch, listen and discover!

Next TV appearance

Regular segment - The Morning Show, Network Seven

Friday 4 December. I’ll post the video of the segment to the website that night.
Details: Current media schedule

Next radio