COFFEE AND COFFEE BEANS

Before we continue with the next chapter on dream incubation, I think it is time to transmit another lesson to help you interpret your own dreams.  Today we will see how to interpret an object.

A particular frame of mind

As I have already mentioned (April 14^th 2011), before starting, you must put yourself in a certain frame of mind :

You must put aside all previous knowledge and all pre-conceived ideas.  The use of symbols’ esoteric dictionaries, and other related compilations are to be banned, as well as tarot cards and such.

You must remember that  YOU WILL FIND BY YOURSELF, with a little research, reflection and patience.

 You must express the ideas that come to mind.  You will learn to keep the pertinent ones and drop the others.

Example

Here is a fairly common image that I will decipher by going through the famous interview technique’s  5  steps.

Here is Sabina, she studies her dreams. The day before she has just worked hard to interpret one of them and at night she dreams :

I drink a coffee, it’s very good.

Now, pretend that you are Sabina and here is how you are going to proceed to analyze the image of the object “coffee”:

1- First step

Question #1:   WHAT IS IT ?

You ask the question : What is a coffee?

Your answer as Sabina :  it is a drink obtained from coffee beans.

You can’t find the meaning of the drink without understanding the meaning of its basic ingredient.  So you find yourself at the outset of an exciting investigation and ask question #1 again.

Question #1:  What are coffee beans?

Answer: they are beans growing on coffee trees, which have been roasted.

2- Second step

Question#2:  HOW IS IT ?

How are coffee beans?

Answer : they’re small and hard.  You can’t use them as is. It doesn’t taste good.  They have to be put through a whole process of transformation before you can get a coffee from them.

Advice : gather only a few answers, that is usually sufficient.

3- Third step

RECAPITULATE

Go over the associations given in step 1 and 2 and choose the most abstract ones : 

“ coffee beans cannot be used as is, they must first go through a process of transformation.

4- Fourth step

ESTABLISHING THE LINK WITH THE EVERYDAY LIFE

You are going to look for what the meaning of the coffee beans corresponds to in your everyday life. 

For this:

- You repeat the recapitulation sentence,

- And you add the essential question which will always be the same :

“ In relation to yesterday, when I put so much effort looking for the meaning of my dream, what does it remind me of, either inside or outside myself, something that cannot be used as is but must first go through a process of transformation ?”

 At this point you search, you reflect on your own, you pick at your brain :

To help with your concentration you repeat the question to yourself :

- Something that can’t be used as is…

- which must first go through a process of transformation…

- at this time in my life, when I’ve just been working to try and interpret my dream…

- what is that ?

...on the inside ?

...or on the outside ?

- …Outside myself?  I can’t see…

- …Or inside myself, …when I interpret my dream?...What goes through a transformation process ?...

…Ah ! Those darn coffee beans wouldn’t they represent the symbols in dreams ?

5- Fifth step

MAKING VERIFICATIONS

Let’s see if coffee beans can represent dream symbols.

To do this, you have to verify that everything you have said about coffee beans can also be said about symbols.

So you must proceed meticulously and go over all the associations one after the other to check if they also adequately fit to the dream symbols.

You said : 

Coffee beans are small and hard. 

You can’t use them as is, it’s not good.  They must be put through a process of transformation.

You verify by asking and answering :

- Is a symbol small?

-Yes in a whole dream, it is a small element.

- Is it hard?

- Yes ! It’s hard to work on.

          - Can they be consumed as is?

           - Oh no ! They’re not consumable, you can’t do anything with them.

- And for you, what is the meaning of this whole process of transformation to make them consumable?

- Well, it’s all the work I put into the dream yesterday !  All the interpretation work, which allowed me to transform an incomprehensible symbol into something I can assimilate !

Meaning of the symbol “coffee beans”

Here in this dream the coffee beans are symbolizing the dream symbols themselves.

Thanks to her work, Sabina has put them through a process of transformation which made them comprehensible.

Advice

This step called verification is indispensable.  When the links are rigorous and coherent, you can be sure that you have not made a mistake, and that the found meaning is adequate.

Meaning of the dream

I drink a coffee.  It’s very good.

With this ending, the dream is giving Sabina a wink underlining the quality of her interpretation work.  It’s very good !

PUTTING INTO APPLICATION

Following the compliments given by the dream, Sabina will no doubt continue the conscientious work.

A comment

Foods are  frequent dream images. If you are working with your dreams, it can happen that you dream for example of a hot chocolate, wine, champagne, pancakes.

The basi ingredients such as chocolate beans, grapes, grains, composing these foods, can symbolize the dream symbols themselves ; fish can also symbolize the dream symbol.

And all the culinary preparations requiring a lot of work often represent in dreams the dream interpretation work.

With much attention and love, you are transforming something, that cannot be assimilated as is, in a tasteful food. It is the same with the dream interpretation : your careful work transforms the symbols so that you can understand and integrate the fortifying message of the dream.  

Illustrations 

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

Thinking woman :nexity-investissement.immobilier.com

Thinking man : sprlmajor.com

Cup of coffee : derekberry.wordpress.com

Coffee beans : colombia-travel

Roasting : cafevrac.com

                mon-café.fr

Searching : leblogdanais.over-blog.com

Searching : photographie-g.jimbo.com

Coffee beans : coffeebeans.ic

Roasted beans : inetgiant.com

Roasted beans : fantom-xp.com

Coffee beans :cshisher.com

Coffee cup and beans : navi-mag.com

Coffee drinking : blog.thecoffeebump.com

Chocolate :chocolate-source-co-uk

Wine : terranova.fr

Champagne : madecoamoi.fr

Cacao beans : choco-club.com

Grapes : ardenne-photo.com

Wheat grains : fr.123rf.com

Corn grains : fr.wikipedia.org

In the kitchen : tribugourmande.com

Last time we saw how my dream brought me to understand how flippant I was with my repeated incubations.  I realized that the unconscious is a friend that one should not inconvenience.  It gives us the information that it deems necessary and then it’s up to us to make our decisions. 

God gave us conscious faculties, the intelligence with the capacity to reflect, analyze and judge and the feelings.  Using them, we can make a choice. So it is lazy to prefer to incubate a dream.  Help is provided by a dream only when our conscious means are no longer sufficiant to help us because the solution is beyond the conscious’ reach.

Here today is a beautiful dream that illustrates this.

This dream came to Anna at a time in her life when she faced a particularly difficult career decision, a perplexing choice between two completely opposite positions :

Dream

I am with the Virgin Mary, whom I know to be my close friend.

Mary asks about what is going on in my life. When I tell her of my pending career decision, Mary insists that we go to see a psychic named Ruth. I am reluctant to see a psychic.

But Mary assures me that this one is so good that years earlier she has predicted the immaculate conception, Mary’s marriage to Joseph, and the resurrection of Jesus.That makes me feel more comfortable.

When we meet Ruth, I am very impressed – Ruth is everything an enlightened being should be.

I pose my career-choice question to the psychic, only to get this response :

- What a wonderful opportunity you have, and I know you’ll make the right decision !

The dream does not give any answer, but it exerts a stimulating effect on the dreamer, who by then has understood that the decision belongs to her. Even the best psychic cannot help her. And why would she do it, since Anna has within her the capacity to make her own decision ?

What a wonderful opportunity to trust one self and take the decision without incubation !

Bibliography

Dreams, Tonight’s Answers for Tomorrow’s Questions, Mark Thurston, Harper and Row, Publishers, San Francisco, p.99

Illustrations

I thank the artists for their illustrations listed in order of their presentation :

Perplexed woman : befully.com

Mary : Sonia Rolland, Miss France, actualite-portail.free.fr

A psychic : love-whoami.blogspot.com

Announce to Mary by the English painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rosetti, 1828-1882

Resurrection by the German painter and engineer Mathias Grünewald

The psychic Ameline: lesmeilleursvoyants.fr

Castle on River, 1820, by the German painter and architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel