One of the trickier parts of recounting your dreams is remembering that, at most points, they're not prophetic or somehow external. Dream a friend will scam you? Your lover will betray you, or that you'll win the lottery? They are mostly just...you.
Of course, there is the occasional prophetic dream that feels to its core a revelation from the collective unconscious, and can be frightening and elating. I call them analyst dreams, as in the kinds of dreams that'd really justify going to an analyst. After all, who wants to go describe a dream about how they were shopping in Lidl? While charged with private meanings of its own, it's seldom the kind of case that makes it to analysts' and psychologists' books. No, you want to juicy ones stuffed with symbolism and things.
But mostly, as I say, it's just you, so then you gotta sit down and ponder why and what it might be saying about your psyche.
I dreamt meeting up with a friend, someone from my past. It had the unsettling effect of leaving me feeling closer to this person than I actually feel. It's an effort not to sit in that. There's always the tendency to say "I dreamed of so-and-so", and feel like being close to so-and-so for an hour, then let the dream be.
What was this person's appearance saying to me, about me? I waved hello. The subconscious waved back.
What did this person signify to me more precisely than friendship?
The past manifesting - three years ago, I was walking this beach. I was taking this picture.
And beyond that, what was the feeling of the dream? I have distinct categories that aren't your traditional good or bad dream. Dreams in which I know how I feel. I didn't feel wrong. I regretted the encounter couldn't go on longer. Strange thing, especially since in the waking world, it was I who halted them. I guess that's always the case, isn't it?
Another important one, what elements of the dream harkened back to my real, present world? A cigar may sometimes just be a cigar, but a coffee is seldom just a coffee. I know my Seinfeld as well as my Freud, you see, only I didn't read it as such, not really. It's an emblem of generosity, of nourishment my soul is reaching for, but ultimately, the meeting is cut short.
Beyond nourishment, it's sharing of the meal that I'm left wishing for, and where in my life are meals absent? Where's the price of coffee too dear? What does it all mean?
It's a maze, a real place to get yourself lost, the dreaming. It's almost never what you think.
And while you can take away that you miss so-and-so and would like to have coffee with them, the subconscious is really quite a terrifying place where ideas and meaning take on mortal coil and discard it just as lightly. Puppets on strings. Emotional muppets, directing your life's purpose.
The reason you don't get simple, straightforward messages is because your deeper consciousness doesn't speak in simple, straightforward terms.
My dream left me a tad uneasy. Vulnerable to other aspects of my recent past. I enjoy it, but it's also uneasy, the way time can pass, and then a dream comes and undoes everything. Options. Possibilities. Parts of you that still require understanding and patience. Healing, but that's a tricky term. Call yourself "on a healing journey", you'll be healing forever.
You gotta learn when to cut your losses and stand up from the table before the train comes. Maybe that was also a symbol from the dream.
