As you have seen in the preceding text, seeking advice from one’s dreams has been a universal practice. With Irina’s dreams I have given you examples of answers given by dreams. However it happens sometimes that the answer is ambiguous or that the dream gives no answer at all.

This is what happened to Helena. Here is the dream she received last week. Helena will soon be turning forty, she is a mother and since a few days she knows she is pregnant. She is wondering whether she’ll keep the baby or not. She wants to and she doesn’t want to.

On the one hand she feels a motherly desire, she loves children and family.

But on the other hand she feels like a woman who, arriving at mid-life, would like to realize another type of project in view of self-realization. She feels like going out, living for herself a bit, finding new, pleasant activities and meeting friends.

She is torn between accepting this pregnancy or not.

Once it is yes, and then it is no.

 She is tormented and decides to ask her dream if she should keep the baby or not.

 A very serious question, an oppressive task for the interpreter…….courageous. Let us see the dream.

Sarkozy’s son   

I have a son, his father is Sarkozy, the president of France. My son is a young man, strong and sturdy, very interesting and very reasonable.

Between us there is a great understanding and a respectful complicity.

He asks me if I have accomplished what I wanted in my life.

I answer :

- No, it’s not easy. I add that it’s never too late and that maybe I…

He smiles at me and tells me that I can share my thoughts with him.

I feel great strength, a real support emanating from him.  I wake up feeling happy.

Interpretation

Here are Helena’s answers during the interview.

I have a strong, sturdy, interesting and reasonable son. 

Helena doesn’t have such a son in reality, so this one represents a strength, a way to assert oneself that she has developed over the years.  She possesses the qualities underlined by the dream.

He is Sarkozy’s son      

It would be ridiculous, absurd to think that Helena fantasizes about the President, no, the dream indicates that this inner strength was the result of adopting the same values as him, as a way of living.

About Sarkozy

We are talking about Helena’s Sarkozy, of the personal image that she has of this man. This is not political, it concerns an interior dynamism of hers. So we must ask her the “interview” question :

- Helena, what is Sarkozy for you, what is he like?                                                      

- I love what Sarkozy says, we share the same values : order, work. I appreciate the fact he wants to sanction the trouble makers. I love his strength and his humanity, he has the courage to say out loud what others think but never express.

So this description defines an aspect of Helena’s nature which has common points with Sarkozy, as she sees him.

He asks me if I have accomplished what I wanted in my life.

Crucial question ! By this the dream asks the young woman to question herself on the meaning of her life and to take stock of it. Following this she could look inside and decide whether or not she will keep the baby.

I answer no, it’s not easy.  I add that it’s never too late and that maybe I…

Helena doesn’t complete her sentence, she keeps the rest to herself. This attitude shows that there are aspects in her that she doesn’t want to admit to herself, that she doesn’t want to look at.

 My son smiles at me and tells me that I can share my thoughts with him.

This strength which is part of her and also larger than her invites her to be authentic, to do like his father Sarkozy, to “have the courage to say out loud what others think but don’t express.”

What is the dream doing?  It’s asking her to dare to be truly herself.                    

Is that a direct answer to her question? 

No, the dream doesn’t answer, it leaves Helena with her own decision, it allows her the freedom of choice.  The answer concerning the decision of keeping the baby or not will spring up when she dares to be herself.

I feel great strength, a real support emanating from him.

The dream shows that, whatever the solution, Helena will have the needed strength to face up to it.

I wake up feeling happy.

She feels happy because now she knows that she is free, that whatever the outcome she will live as she wants because she knows that this inner strength will not fail her.

Conclusion

So this dream is an example of the limits of incubation.  Yes, the unconscious is benevolent but we must not expect everything from it.  We must exercise our own judgment, our will power and our freedom. If we asked the unconscious to dictate our behavior, we would be like machines. To expect all the answers from our dreams would be infantile abdication of our responsibility for our own life.  The unconscious guides us toward our independence, it encourages us to exercise our freedom of choice and to live the experiences that our choices have brought forth. Practicing incubation profusely won’t lead to maturity, on the contrary.

Illustrations

I thank the  French artist Mrs Anne Marie Volodos who permits me to illustrate our blog with her paintings.

http://mapage.noos.fr/anne-marie.volodos

Clotho :

Lachesis

Penelope

Jason Lewis : Tecmix.aufeminin. com

Sarkozy : backchich.info

Jason Lewis : instyle.com

Jason Lewis : people.plurielles.fr

Le grand Bleu by Mme Anne Marie Volodos

Who is the “other”?

How to decipher the meaning of a person in a dream ?

Dreams have the surprising habit of telling you what no one knows, what no one dares to tell you, and also what you don’t necessarily want to hear.  Throughout your nights, with patience and benevolence they show you the different facets that exist within you, all your different ways of being.

To make you aware of that, dreams will tell you: “Look inside yourself, you are LIKE Mr.X or Mrs.Y, whom you know in the exterior world.  You have the qualities or faults that you attribute to them”.

Only you don’t know it.  But your interior world knows and wants to make you aware of it. 

Indeed it is in your best interest to get to know these unrecognized aspects of yourself to harmonize them and to realize your full potential as well as your life realization.

 So, when you study a dream you must first know that most often, the persons in the dream are facets of yourself.  While in most cases they are describing you, it occasionally happens that these persons represent the corresponding person in the exterior world.

In another coming lesson, I will explain how to know if the image of your dream is personifying an interior aspect of yourself or an exterior person.                                                   

I emphasize that every time, for every  person in the dream, you will have to study the image with the interview technique in order to know exactly what the dream is talking about.

That is the way to proceed regarding the image in your dream.  A more thorough and comprehensive explanation of this method can be found in Gail Delaney’s books featured on my blog.

A certain state of mind

It is important to approach a dream with a certain state of mind :

- accepting that you have the solution and that with a bit of attention you’ll  find it.

- accepting that you will make the required extra effort rather than consulting a readymade dream analysis book or a catalogue of symbols. 

- accepting to refrain from reverting to astrology or tarot cards etc. to interpret your dream.  Indeed the dream itself gives you messages that are much more precise, personal and adequate if one deciphers it.

Interpreting a dream is not a matter of divination, or pseudo intuition, it is a scientific research, requiring rigorous and honest reflection and logical analysis. Only by working in this manner can you be sure of the result.

The Dream Interview Method 

Here, I propose to you a practice of this method. You will be the interpreter and the dreamer, both asking the questions and answering them. And it works ! Of course it is much more pleasant if somebody else is leading the interview.

Dream example : Rita, a 45 year old woman, a mother, sees a woman in her dream, Mrs. X.

1) We must proceed with the interview and ask questions

Question 1: WHO is Mrs. X?

Answer: She is my neighbor.  She lives across the street.

Advice: Don’t let yourself get caught up in endless descriptions. Take the first three associations which came to the dreamer’s mind,  three sentences are sufficient.

Question 2 : HOW is Mrs. X ?

Answer : She’s a very active, intelligent woman, who takes good care of her children, but she’s an awful neighbor.  I always have the impression that she’s watching everyone, she has a tendency to be nosy and to get involved in other people’s business.

Advice :You must note the associations and descriptions given, with great care leaving nothing aside.Here again, being a beginner at interpretation, limit yourself to a maximum of 3 or 4 sentences.

2) Do the recapitulation

Take the answers given to questions 1 and 2.  Give preference to the abstract answers.  Limit yourself to 3 sentences. Use only the dreamer' own words.

Example of a recapitulation : Mrs. X is an intelligent woman, but is inclined to be nosy and get involved in other people’s business.

3) Establishing the link with everyday life

Ask the following question : looking inside or outside yourself what does following description remind you of : “an intelligent woman who is inclined to be nosy and get involved in other people’s business” ?

 The dreamer will think about it.

She says : On the outside it is Mrs. X.

How about inside the dreamer ?  I ask Rita if Mrs. X could represent a particular behavior, an aspect of her own personality that she is not really aware of ?

4) The dreamer answers this question and finds the meaning of the image.

When I asked that last question, Rita remembered that, the day before that dream, she had rummaged through her teenage son’s pockets and read a letter that was addressed to him. 

She had done that self righteously, thinking that her behavior was that of a responsible mother concerned with her son’s welfare.

But her interior world doesn’t see the situation in the same manner and comes to express its opinion in the night. Rita understood why the dream showed her the image of the nosy neighbor.  Indeed she had behaved like Mrs. X, and the dream showed her that that was detestable.

5) Proceed to verifications, this is imperative.                                                                            

We don’t end our investigation at the fourth step of the method. It is not sufficient to have found the interpretation  made by the dreamer. Only by making verifications can you be sure that the meaning found is adequate. The verifications give proof of the validity of the interpretation.

I reiterate that I firmly oppose “esoteric” ways of interpreting dreams which can lead to so many errors and abuses, that Napoleon in the 19th century had even passed a law forbidding dream interpretation and fortune telling, in order to protect the public from trickery.

Getting back to our dream, it is still indispensable to check if all that has been said about the neighbor can also be said about the dreamer.

For this, one must go over every sentence covering the different points of the description and ask:

- Are you also an intelligent woman ? 

- Active ? 

- Do you take good care of your children ? 

- On occasion are you too curious ? 

- Do you have a tendency to watch everybody ?

If one of these points isn’t suitable, then the meaning found for the symbol " Mrs. X " is wrong.  In that case one must redo the whole interview and the dreamer must be very honest with herself.

If the different elements of the description suit both the dreamer and Mrs. X, then you have found the signification of the symbol.

6) Apply the message in our everyday life                                                           

It is useless to decipher a dream if one is not willing to accept and apply its indications.

Rita quickly understood the reproach of her dream and from then on abstained from giving in to her “nosy inclination”.  Her son appreciated the respect she showed towards him.

Illustrations

I thank all the artists and photographers whose works permit me to illustrate my blog.

Symbols catalog : dreams : luckymojo.com

Tarot dream interpretation : ravenmoonlight.com

Woman at work : natureacive.fr

Nude woman in a veil, by the French artist Enjolras, 1857-1945, interencheres.com

Stressed woman : papillesetpupilles.fr

Woman playing violoncello by the French artist Jacqueline Hubert : http:// www.jacqueline-hubert.com

The neighbor : Harriet Samson Harris, purepeople.com

The nosy neighbor : Felicia Tilman, tvqc.com

Harriet Samson Harris, desperate housewife, episode39.fr

Lettre d’amour :blog.fille.com

Harriet Samson Harris, sharetv.org

Jean Baptiste Maunier in the film “ The Choristers”

Jean Baptiste Maunier : teemix.aufeminin.com