See the light

“What do you dream about?” asked a recent client. “If you’re on top of your recurring and scary dreams, what comes next?”

She had contacted me because she had a frustrating recurring dream theme that had been going on for years. She had the dream several times a week. It was interfering with her sleep, and she was feeling increasingly exhausted and anxious about the situation.

I was able to help her understand her dream and why she was having it, and work with her to address the underlying issues and stop the dream. She was excited to see what new dreams might fill the void, and how they might help her.

A scary dream, or a long-term recurring, draining, frustrating dream, is the reason many people book a session with me for the first time. Recurring dream themes point to recurring waking life issues that are limiting or holding us back in some way, so they are an excellent first port of call. Working with these dreams gives fresh perspective and new ways to move forward. Likewise, our scary dreams reflect our fears, so working with these dreams helps us to identify, face, and transform our fears, releasing us from their hold.

Once that job is done, clients are often amazed by the dreams that follow, and choose to explore those dreams with me on a regular basis. Which brings me back to the opening question in this blog:

What do I dream about?

I have been working professionally with clients’ dreams for over thirty years, and with my own for a little longer, so my personal recurring dream themes were put to rest a long time ago. Sometimes a new theme might evolve and alert my attention, and from time to time I might have a scary dream when I am processing a new and fearful situation. Fortunately, I can work with such dreams to my benefit before they have a chance to escalate in intensity.

So I have plenty of room for other dreams!

I’d love to share this little dream snippet that I had last week.

It was part of a much longer dream, but I think it will delight you.

We all dream to process our conscious and unconscious experiences of the last 1-2 days, comparing these to similar past experiences, and, ideally, evolving our mindset as a result.

In my dream, I took a photographer friend (someone I know in waking life) into the back garden (backyard). I wanted to show him a tiny speck of light. “I saw it yesterday,” I told him, “I think I can find it again. We just need to look.”

I took him to the centre of the garden and stared deep into the crisp invisible air. “It’s like when you suddenly notice a spider’s silken thread floating in the air, made visible by a shaft of sunlight,” I told him. “Or like a mote of dust hanging mid-air.”

Suddenly, there it was. A tiny, bright red jewel, a slither of ruby perhaps, but the size of a tiny dust mote. As we watched, it turned and danced in the breeze, intermittently catching the light, sparkling. My photographer friend took a photo.

A synchronicity followed the next day, but I’ll come to that.

Exploring my dream, I began by thinking about the photographer friend. His specialities are photographing tiny details of nature up close and huge night skies spread with distant stars. In my dream he photographed the tiniest speck up close, and that speck was suspended in air, like a star in the heavens, and it carried a sense of the mysteries of the universe, all wonder, and awe. The ruby red felt like a grounded colour, perhaps like a faraway mysterious star almost grounded in my back garden.

This reminded me of my work, where I am very practised at identifying tiny details in dreams that throw sudden, magnificent light on the dreamer’s situation. No matter how many times I do this, and no matter how tightly I follow the tools and techniques that enable this, I still experience a sense of wonder at the process, and a sense of awe for exploring life’s mysteries and the grounded perspectives they can offer.

Such a dream might follow any day of consultations, so why this dream, on this specific night?

The previous day, I had been working with a dreamer who was intently exploring his devout religious beliefs through his dreams, and he had asked me for my personal thoughts about certain aspects of religion and spirituality. I told him that my spiritual life is a high priority for me, but that I don’t follow any specific religion. I told him that I am open-minded, and happily embrace life’s mysteries.

To some extent, as you can see, my dream had picked up on this theme, and was processing it, but here’s where it gets more interesting:

As I thought about my dream of a photographer friend in my back garden, photographing a speck of light that I had seen before, I was reminded of a story I tell in my book, Bird of Paradise. It’s the (true) story of another photographer friend who was taking new profile photos of me in my back garden, years ago. When she looked at the photos afterwards, there was a beam of light – or an ‘orb’ as she saw it – that she hadn’t seen down the lens when she took the picture. I open that story, in Bird of Paradise, saying:

“It’s lens flare,” says the scientist. “It’s synchronicity,” says the mystic. “It’s divine,” says the shaman. “It’s alchemy,” says the dream alchemist. “It belongs in the fifth chapter,” says the author.

“Let’s see what my dreams make of this,” says the dream analyst.

That’s me: scientist, mystic, shaman, dream alchemist, author, and dream analyst, though probably not in that order. And that’s me in the picture, taken by a Samsung smartphone, under the lemon tree in our Brisbane garden back in 2016. But what is the light that found its way into the shot?

It’s the backstory that sends tingles up the spine, whatever the source of the light. That’s why the photographer, Karyn MacDonald, leapt back in shock when she looked at the image moments after taking the picture.

The story goes on to reveal the backstory, and why Karyn and I were so surprised about the positioning of the light in the photograph. (You’ll need to read the book for the rest of this story!)

My recent dream was referencing the older story. It was comparing the recent experience with the similar past experience, seeing whether or not to update my mindset on this matter. The matter was where I stand in that field where science and mystery meet.

There’s far more to this, and I won’t bore you with the details of the larger dream within which this snippet appeared, but I include it here to illustrate the rich potential of exploring the smallest fragment of a dream.

Now, for the synchronicity and the deepening mystery:

The day after my dream, I sat at my desk as usual. I was swivelling my office chair slightly from side to side as I contemplated the working day ahead. I looked down and saw the tiniest flash of red, sparkly light emanating from the seat of my chair, just beside my thigh. Twinkling, it was there, it was gone, there, gone. The size of a dust mote, but the brilliance of a ruby bathed in sunlight. I slowed my swivelling to catch the exact point, put my finger where the red flash was, got off my chair, knelt on the floor, and peered into the seat cushion. It looks like there’s a piece of red glitter underneath the seat fabric, which shows through the fabric weave when the overhead light picks it out!

How did it get there? I don’t remember doing anything with red glitter. It’s possible that I may have opened a parcel or card with red glitter, but I don’t recall it. I bought the chair about nine months ago: the glitter might have got trapped in the fabric when it was being made. It’s a mystery: I guess I’ll never know!

Neither will I know whether, the day before my dream, I unconsciously noticed the flashing red glitter in my chair, leading to my dream processing the experience. Or whether I unconsciously noticed the glitter when I was in deep thoughtful conversation with my client and the two themes became linked.

I could look deeper, exploring the ‘seat’ of my work as finding the tiniest details in dreams and bringing them to light, and teaching you to do the same.

So what do I dream? I dream, as you dream, and the more we move through resolving the issues behind our recurring and scary dreams, the more we clear space and time to delve into the magic and mystery of what lies beyond.

 

You might also enjoy