Part II – The Physics of Dreams – Using Basic Dream Symbols
“Dreams say what they mean. They just don’t say it in daytime language”
- Gail Godwin
“Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakes.”
- Carl G Jung
Gravity, Time and Space
The dream dimension, also known as the spiritual 4th dimension, or astral realm, doesn’t play by the same rules of physics as our physical 3rd dimension, which has made it difficult for people to embrace its validity. One reason for this difficulty is the spiritual dream dimension is not married to gravity as is the earth’s physical dimension is. We clever human beings well know what would happen if we jumped out of a flying airplane without a parachute…
Yet, in our dreams, we know how it feels to fly freely. Upon waking, we can rationalize that it was meaningless because it had no substance in physical reality since we obviously can’t fly. During our adventures in the astral dream realm, our spiritual bodies do fly and manifest anywhere instantly.
To make matters more conflicted for our materially focused intellect, the dream realm doesn’t utilize time as we create and categorize it here in 3rd dimensional earth, where we use calendars to track our days and history, where we’ve been very creative in concisely tracking our hours and minutes by clock time. We’re completely organized and that’s mostly a good thing, living the way we live in this physical world. But the past, present, and future collapse into each other and are readily accessible in the dream dimension as living in the present moment is to us now – as easily as turning the page of a book either back several pages or forward a few.
Our spiritual selves are truly time travelers. Aren’t we brilliant! Our spiritual selves or our super-conscious minds don’t need to be convinced of this. Those broader aspects of ourselves know inclusively who we are. It’s our conscious ego minds that have been trained to limit what we perceive as important in life – what we include and what we exclude.
Outer Senses vs. Inner Senses
Another essential reason the dream dimension seems so illusory to many people is the expansion and use of all our senses – not just the five human senses of touch, smell, hearing, visual sight, and taste, but our inner senses and inner vision. Those inner resources are our intuition, inner knowing or knowledge, and telepathic communication and inner sight – psychic intuitive senses are a permanent part of us as spiritual beings.
Many people haven’t developed their intuitive muscles in our modern society. Instead, we learned to concentrate only on our outer physical senses as human beings and excluded our inner spiritual part that go along with the territory of who we are, whose knowledge and intelligence expand beyond the 3rd dimension. So, having a dream about talking to a deceased loved one where we didn’t actually see them can tend to make an uneducated dreamer feel like it could not have occurred. To speak to someone we believe, one has to be face-to-face or at least via a piece of technology, like a cell phone!
The language of Dream Symbols
One of the most perplexing factors that create another roadblock to the validity of dreams is the language of the spiritual dream realm. We don’t directly communicate everything in words as much as we communicate in symbols. Words can be very limiting where symbols speak volumes.
Our dream symbol language is a language we simply need to get reacquainted with. The ancient wisdom teachers were very adept with dream symbology. They taught people the basic landscape of dream symbols, and each individual learned to use those tools to work with and interpret their own dreams, creating their personal dream symbol library. People commonly practiced the art of deciphering and reading the messages of the soul.
The art of dream interpretation has returned because we’re remembering we are spiritual beings first and live a physical world. We’re re-learning to blend our spiritual selves into a higher state of balance and harmony within the physical realm. Working with our dreams is a key contributor in helping us to live as enlightened humans, empowering us to consciously navigate through the ups and downs of our life’s journey.
Salvador Dali, one of our greatest surrealist painters of the 20th century, was a master at expressing his spiritual dream excursions and interpreting his personal dream symbol language onto canvas. It can be a lot of fun to peruse through some surrealist painter’s works on the Internet or art museum to develop symbol perspective.
A Few Basic Dream Symbols
Here are a few basic dream symbols to become familiar with. Notice how a symbol can expand and enrich the well of deeper meaning!
Water
The unconscious; emotions or emotional energy; fertility; the living essence of the psyche; the flow of life energy
Color
Rate of vibration, harmony within your energy field; colors have different vibrations and light properties, and represent different levels of awareness; colors can symbolize different moods or emotions; the forces of light and darkness (Specific colors have specific meaning)
People
Different aspects of the self; known people can represent a specific aspect or attribute of your relationship with them, or may be the spiritual presence of the individual; unknown people can represent unrecognized/unknown aspects of self
Vehicle
Your body; your passage/progress through life; your mode of self-expression and operation
House
Self; where you are in the house and what is going on provides insight into the many facets of your life; dark or unknown rooms represent unknown or un-explored parts of the self (different rooms such as kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, living room have different meanings)
Animal
Instinctual/biological part of self attuned to survival and nature; the type of animal determines feminine or masculine aspects; physical, sexual nature; symbolize different stages of psychic growth and development; spiritual presence of the animal
Number
Archetypal symbols representing the self, the dynamics of the psyche in the stages of growth and development; each number has a spiritual meaning, a special vibration, a special message according to its meaning (Each number has a specific meaning)
Here’s an actual dream clip using the vehicle symbol:
Body Needs A Tune Up
I was in the driver’s seat of my car. The car involuntarily inched backwards. I was disturbed by this and tried to remedy it by driving it forward, yet the car would again slowly move backward a few inches. This continual forward and backward movement really concerned me. I drove the car up an automotive ramp in the repair section of an auto shop for someone to look at.
Analysis/Result:
The dream told me that something was out of balance with my body and needed looking into. It also confirmed my recent concern about a particular hormone adjustment. There were actually two things that my Lyme Specialist helped me resolve. One was getting that hormone level back into balance and the other was an herbal supplement that helped increase and balance out my blood circulation. My body is running much more smoothly now. Woohoo!
The dream symbols listed above are just a few bones from the library of symbology and archetypal information available. We’re so fortunate to have many dream books to choose from to assist us in becoming dream weavers who unlock the messages and gifts from the soul.
Working with dreams is as exciting as hunting for treasure, as interesting as a great mystery or adventure movie, and as profoundly helpful as a therapist and spiritual guide, because our dreams are truly all of that! There’s no going back once we’ve begun to unlock the messages of our dreams.
It’s important to collect at least two dream dictionaries because no one book on dreams can contain all the information that’s available. Here are a few resources to get started:
Resources:
Books
Cloud Nine – A Dreamer’s Dictionary – Sandra A. Thomson
The Dream Book – Symbols For Self Understanding – Betty Bethards
Dream Dictionary – An A-Z Guide To Understand Your Unconscious Mind – Tony Crisp
Magazine and Internet
Dream Network Journal – http://dreamnetwork.net/ - quarterly magazine/on-line services
http://www.dreammoods.com/ – On-line dream dictionary and forum
Next Month: Part III – Dream Stories – Going Deeper
Live in Beauty and be well – Triza Schultz
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