Des Moines Renaissance Faire
Volumes of books have been written on the subject of dreams and dream analysis. Those who are seeking answers are confronted with a plethora of theories, a cornucopia of symbols, and conflicting spiritual ideologies.
But dream analysis isn't very difficult. All you need are a few simple guidelines. And of course unflinching self honesty.
Most dreams are little more than the brain doing some needed housekeeping.
Our brains hate having bits and pieces floating around unassigned and uncategorized . All images, all scents and sounds, every touch and taste, needs to be classified and filed away.
As an example, imagine one day you're walking through your home, and out of the corner of your eye you see a pink elephant. It almost registers in the brain, but you're in a hurry and don't quite notice the image is an advertisement for Pepto-Bismal.
So that night your brain has this little thing that is floating there, not fitting any category, not filed away as a proper memory. To put this image of a pink elephant neatly away your brain constructs a dream. You have a dream of a pink elephant named Terry making a campaign speech while wearing a tutu and carrying a purple umbrella.
That doesn't seem to make much sense in the cold logic of the morning. However, it was enough for your brain to find a place to file away the image, "pink elephant = recycled politician."
The Discovery Channel show Mythbusters once did an episode on "cartoon myths". One of the myths was that a finger stuffed down the barrel of a gun will cause the gun to explode while the finger is unscathed.
To test this myth they built a fake hand, wearing a white glove, stuffed it down the barrel of a gun, and fired the weapon. Of course this was filmed in high speed to show the carnage of the gun exploding, if the myth was true.
While watching the show I was momentarily distracted, and didn't see the moment when the hand flew away in pieces. Part of me noted, "darn, I didn't get to see the hand fly away." That night I had a dream with a white gloved hand taking off from an aircraft carrier like a fighter jet and fly away.
But what about the other dreams? The dreams where we dance with our kindergarten teacher on a heart shaped chocolate floating down a river of champagne?
The thing to keep in mind is that every person in your dreams is either representative of you, or of your relationship to another person.
In the first case when you have a dream of Yul Brynner riding a Segway down the side of Mount Rushmore don't panic. The dream may simply be an expression of your own fear of heights, or a fear of Segways. You may have a dream of your sister bringing you medicine, but it's an expression of your own self-healer easing your pains.
In the case of dreams that involve your relationships be careful not to fall into the "identity trap." The person in your dreams may not be the person who you are dreaming about. The strange dream you had about your father may really be about your relationship with your husband. Seen in that context it's not creepy, it all makes sense.
In the end the most important thing to remember is this: Without complete self honesty your dreams can't tell you anything, and with it your dreams can't tell you anything you don't already know.
Sweet dreams.
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