Messages from Your Dream Maker

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Surreal door in the clouds dreamscape

Bill was strapped into a high-performance fighter jet, one hand on the stick, the other grasping the throttle. His eyes blinked through beads of sweat as they hopscotched over the high-tech controls and displays crammed into the claustrophobic cockpit.

Everybody thought he could fly this thing—his wingman, the squawking voice from the tower, the squadron commander—but they were mistaken. He had never flown except in his imagination.

As the plane accelerated down the runway, Bill flailed at the controls, hoping he could somehow fake his way through, and live to tell the tale. When the wheels lifted, he yanked back too hard on the stick and found himself in a steep climb. In horror, he felt his body slam into the seat under the crushing G-forces.

Bill struggled to regain control, but it seemed certain he would stall and crash. Then everyone would discover the truth. He was not a fighter pilot. Just a fake.

Fear and Self-Doubt

That’s when Bill woke bolt upright in his bed, soaked in sweat, gasping for air, relieved to be back in waking consciousness but deeply shaken. His usual It was just a dream rationalization couldn’t erase the psychological aftershocks in his person. Later, well into the day, he still felt the reverberations.

At some point, all of us have twisted and turned inside the mental vortexes of such dreams, pursued by fears, demons, self-doubt and other subconscious tormentors. Often, we have trouble making sense of these puzzling nocturnal episodes and often don’t try, either because they seem too opaque or too frightening.

It is easier to dismiss them as “weird dreams” and seek forgetfulness in the day’s frenetic activity. After all, we reason, dreams are just filaments of reality, mere apparitions of the imagination, not a form of consciousness in their own right. Forget them.

Mysterious Messages

But they don’t forget us. In each psyche there is a dream maker that keeps sending our conscious minds riddle-like messages and mysterious parables, despite our disinterest, hoping eventually we will take heed. But heed of what? 

The messages in our dreams vary from obvious replays of the day’s events (called “day residue dreams”) to powerful revelations about our unconscious fears, secret desires and hidden truths. Their meanings may appear glaringly apparent or bafflingly obscure.   

In interpreting Bill’s dream, we concluded it spoke to his recent promotion to CEO of a rapidly growing entrepreneurial company, and his deep-seated fear that he didn’t have the right stuff to succeed. While he’d felt the distant rumblings of this fear before, his dream jammed it squarely into his awareness where it could be faced and, in time, possibly overcome.

Heartfelt Truths

Dreams do that. Some of them tell us about the shadowy forces and presences in our emotional and spiritual lives and do so with a from-the-gut perspective we frequently ignore in favor of the intellect’s rationalized view. Often, when we insist on living in our thoughts, our dreams strive to tug us back into our souls, emotions and heartfelt truths.

Even when they seem our enemies, as in nightmares, dreams are, in fact, usually our friends. The exceptions are the terrifying dreams that replay traumatic memories in a kind of flashback scenario, one that can retraumatize the dreamer.

However, for most of us, the dream makers in our minds tell us things no one else will or can. They know who we are in a way even our closest friends may not. They tell us stories intended to help us learn, remember, heal, grow and understand.

So, consider tuning in. Keep a dream journal. Meditate on your dreams. If you’re an artist, give them form in paintings, music, sculpture, poetry or whatever your genre. As Vincent van Gogh said, “I dream my painting and I paint my dream.”

Because to ignore your dreams is to ignore your deepest self.

For more, visit philipchard.com.