Chapter 31 Dream Interpretation — from my book Changes
Chapter 31
Dream Interpretation
Tom taught us about dream interpretation. He said that no one else can interpret your dreams for you. If someone says they can interpret your dreams for you, run the other way!
Tom said that the spirit world speaks to us in dreams, visions, signs, symbols, emotions, and feelings. The spirit world uses these communicators to hammer through messages to us. Our subconscious does the same thing.
The reason no one else can interpret our dreams is because we all have filters based on our own personal experiences. Consider the image of a black snake, coiled up, sleeping on a rock in the sun. To one person that image might bring up feelings of relaxation and peace and be interpreted as such. To another person that image feels like a warning of danger and be interpreted that way. We each see the world through our own filters based on our own experiences. The spirit world and your subconscious knows our filters and will speak to us using them.
Here is the way Tom taught us to interpret our own dreams.
Write down the elements from your dream. I find that sometimes I will get the message of the dream simply by writing down the elements of my dream like that. If not, then, off to the side of each element, write down what each of those elements could be a symbol of. For example, if there is a road block in your dream, it could mean a block on your path, or a block in your progression. A vehicle of some kind could mean a way you are moving through life. When you hit of the correct meaning of the element; in other words, what that element symbolizes for you, you will feel a release in your gut, like a release of tension.
Tom used one of his dreams as an example for us. He dreamed of a tired, beat up, old coyote walking along. The old coyote went into a river and swam over to a rock in the middle of the river, climbed up on it and went to sleep in the sun. Then the coyote woke up and swam back to shore and was young again, fresh, and full of energy.
The elements in the dream were: and old tired coyote, swim through the water, rested on a rock in the middle of the water, swam back, and was young again.
Those elements, to Tom, symbolized this. Tom was the old, tired, beat up coyote. Tom would feel young and rested after he goes to an island, or somewhere separate from his usual routine, and takes a vacation. Tom needed a vacation!
After learning how to interpret my own dreams, I started trying it. Most of the time the interpretations were pretty easy to figure out quickly. By simply writing the dream elements down, I would get the message.
But there was one dream had me really wondering if every dream has a message. It seemed so ridiculous. So I went through the long form interpretation where I wrote the elements down and also wrote down what the elements could symbolize for me.
This was the dream, which I actually had the night after my first vision quest.
I dreamed I was walking down the hallway of an apartment building. When I got to a door I knocked. An older teenaged girl answered the door wearing only a towel around her body and a towel wrapping up her hair, like she had just taken a bath of a shower. She was on her way out the door to go to the laundry room of the apartments, and she took off running down the hallway. Then the girl’s mother came to the door and asked me what I wanted. She was smoking a cigarette and was in her bathrobe. Her hair was a mess. I could see in the apartment and there were a bunch of children, of all ages, sitting on the floor around a coffee table in the living room, playing penny ante poker. There were other people smoking in the apartment which seemed overall rather smokey, there were open bottles of alcohol around, plus the place was a dirty mess. I was shocked at the conditions of the place and the behavior of the mother, who obviously didn’t care that her teenaged daughter just ran through the apartment building practically naked, or that her children were living in squalor while gambling in a smoke filled room. I started scolding the mother for the way she runs her home. She started talking back to me and telling me to mind my own business. I was appalled. I woke up.
That dream seemed so crazy and unlike my life, I had a hard time believing there would be a message for me in it. So I tested it by interpreting it.
Here are the elements:
Someone coming to another person’s house.
Being shocked by someone’s behavior.
Seeing inside and not liking what is seen.
Feeling judgmental about the mother and what goes on in the house.
Trying to get the mother to listen to me and realize how bad it is.
The mother gets defensive and talks back.
—- It didn’t take more than that to understand the message of the dream. When I understood, I had a release in my gut, telling me I was right.
So here is what it told me:
The woman walking down the hall and knocking on the door is my mother in law. She doesn’t like what she is seeing in my home, and tries to tell me how I need to change. I get defensive and talk back to her.
When my mother in law sees the way I live and run my household, it is upsetting to her because is not what she would do… For example: I homeschool my children, if they want, instead of sending them to school. I have more children than she thinks I should have. I go to trackerschool and practice primitive skills. I teach things to my children that are not what she values. I spin wool while watching TV which she thinks is a wast of time. My house is not as she would have it. My children do not behave the way she wants them to behave. I use too much toilet paper when I wipe. I am killing her son because he works so hard. I should do this, I should do that, etc.
I had to laugh at myself when I figured out what the dream was showing me. But the part that I value most by interpreting the dream is being able to feel what she may be feeling when she is trying to correct me. She is genuinely concerned, though she is highly judgmental. After that interpretation, even though I didn’t change my life to suit her, I did have more compassion for her.
