Hi, dear Blog friends,

what a joy for me to get back in touch with you after my long absence since 2013!

After the 2013 summer holidays, I was coming back to my normal activities when in October I received a dream that shook me.

Dream: "That's enough! You need time for your book!"

In my dream, I'm cooking food. It is crowded, and I work a lot in the kitchen and at the table to feed people. My father arrives. He is my father and even better. He has huge shoulders. He says to me in an imperative and almost unhappy tone:
- That's enough! Enough of preparing food for the others! Enough of your feeding others! You need time for your book!

I woke up stunned, happy, grateful. I decided to stop all my activities where "I fed others", to have time to write a book. For this book had been waiting for a long time. The publisher of the Piktos house had asked me in 2007 to write a book whose title could be: "The Therapeutic Dream". It took me 7 years of work to accumulate the material and reach the maturity necessary to write it and explain with dreams the highly therapeutic process of alchemy.

This book, Ces rêves qui vous protègent et vous guérissent (These dreams that protect and heal you), was written in 2013 and 2014 and was published in 2015.

Today, seven years later, I come back to you enriched by years of experience with dreams, consultations, non-stop workshops and training seminars, blog, conferences, newspaper articles, interviews in the media... And also...

A great joy...

... Marianne, one of my students, who speaks not only German but also English, has agreed to revive the English blog and to take over the translations of my articles.

I am talking about the very charming Marianne, here she is!

Hi everyone!

I am Marianne Schertenleib, a German teacher here in France. I teach students who attend the two-year highly selective classes to prepare for the competitive exams to the "Grandes Ecoles". I have earned a Master of Arts in German Studies and a Master of Education, both from the Ecole Normale Superieure (Lyon).

I have been interested in dreams since childhood, because I am a sleepwalker, which led to many funny situations! Although I have always been very impressed by the power of dreams, I only discovered recently (in 2015) that dreams have a meaning and a message.

In March 2020, I started studying dream interpretation with Christiane Riedel after reading her book Ces rêves qui vous protègent et vous guérissent (These dreams that protect and heal you). I realised that this approach would allow me to bring together many of my passions: text analysis, translation (but this time not from German to French, but from dream symbols to words), my interest in psychology, my desire to help others who confide in me and my search for the Divine.

I am now very happy to translate Christiane's blog articles into English, because I think that her meticulous work can be useful to many people around the world!

Let me tell you how helpful it has been for me!

When I met Christiane, I suffered from depression. As soon as I started studying my dreams, they embarked me on an incredible alchemical process of transformation: in the course of this process, the dreams advised me for instance to work less, to make love more often, to do more sport, to stop meditating and doing yoga, to defend myself instead of always being the nice girl and to accept the bitter experiences of life because they are fortifying.

After three months, I had recovered my smile and laughter, my joie de vivre, I was devouring life to the full, and I immediately agreed to translate the articles of Christiane's French blog for her English blog.

It is a great joy for me to present my translations to you. I will deliver the first one to you very soon and look forward to getting back to you.

In the passion of dreams I am friendly yours,

Marianne

Illustration

"Rêverie" ("Dreaming") by the Czech painter Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939), who lived in Paris during the Art Nouveau period, in the early twentieth century: https://www.pinterest.fr/pin/660199626598174579/

In the preceding studies about premonitory dreams, we have seen two dreams warning two women, Francis and  Patricia, of cancer.

Let’s review the dreams.

1)

Francis’ : (Refer to the text of “Premonitory dreams”, ch.1, of 04 19 2012)

 “ One evening, I got home after a routine check-up with my gynecologist.

Everything was fine.  Three days later I left on vacation.

During the night I woke up in a sweat.

I had just dreamt that I had cancer in my left breast, in a very precise spot.

It was impossible to fall back to sleep.

At 9 the next morning I immediately requested a mammography.

Verdict : breast cancer, undetectable through palpation.

Three days later I was operated on.

This dream saved my life.”

Francis’ dream prooved to be a true premonitory dream. She did have a breast tumor.

2 )

Patricia’s : (Refer to the text “ Patricia’s brain tumor, ch.3, of 05 29 2012)

Last night I dreamt I had a brain tumor. 

Patricia dreamt of a brain tumor and the warning was symbolic.

The day before Patricia had been overwhelmed by hate for her husband. She understood that all her resentment, her negative thoughts were the equivalent of malevolent cells, which like a brain tumor were threatening her.

As she said, she was invaded, devoured by destructive thoughts, which were undermining her, ruining her life.”

What is it that allows me to establish the distinction and say whether the warning of Patricia’s dream has a concrete or a symbolic meaning ?

I am able to draw the conclusion thanks to the methodical analysis of the dream.

Working with the dreamer I looked at her dream,

and I established carefully the link between the dream’s image and the previous day’s events.

I would give the following advice in working with this type of dream and say :

"We can consider the dream at face value in the external life and say :

Your dream seems to be clear and would not need any interpretation, as in Francis’ case. It may really be a premonitory dream. In this case you would have to react accordingly.

But we must not exclude the possibility that your dream has a symbolic interior meaning and we have to verify this hypothesis.

In Patricia’s case the dream said :

“Be careful, your situation is alarming, it’s AS IF you had a brain tumor”.

Finally :

After a careful analysis of the dream, if the symbolic interpretation doesn’t make any sense, come back to the first consideration and take the dream at face value in the external life and choose what you want to do.

It happens most of the time that working seriously with the dreamer, making the link with her interior life permits to establish that the dream has a symbolic meaning.

Conclusion

I think it is important to compare the two preceding dreams using 3 keys :

-1) Ask the question  : What happened the day before ?

The day before her dream Francis had just seen her gynecologist who after palpation didn’t notice any anomaly, or tumor.  As for Patricia, she did not have any medical examinations.

2 ) Examine the precision of the details given in the dream :

Francis’ premonitory dream establishes an in depth diagnosis and indicates with great precision the location of the tumor that the gynecologist could not detect.  There’s no such thing in Patricia’s case where the dream gives only a general indication, without details.

3) Take into consideration the emotional state during and after the dream

The third key is the all important element, which permits us to establish the difference between a premonitory dream and a non premonitory one.

- In Francis’ case the dreamer was overwhelmed by her dream, she awakened in a sweat and could not get back to sleep.  She was so tormented that she immediately set up an appointment for a mammography.

- Patricia’s reactions were less intense. The dream intrigued her without causing real anguish. But she nonetheless took her dream very seriously and immediately called me. In such a case, searching for help from a dream interpreter is indispensable. Thanks to the analysis we made, Patricia understood that her dream was talking about her harmful attitude and state of mind.

Summary

So 3 characteristics seem to allow us to say that the dream warns us of concrete danger in the exterior world :

1) Nothing in our life on the preceding day justifies the image of the dream.

2)In the case of a premonitory dream the details given are usually very precise.

3) Physical and emotional reactions are intense : sweat, insomnia, anguish and feeling upset.

We must keep these indications in mind because in due time they are the ones that will allow us to say whether the dream is a warning pertaining to the physical world or whether the dream has a symbolic signification pertaining to the psychic world.

But in any case, the seriousness of the situation remains the same.

Illustrations

I thank the artist for their paintings.

Crab : conseilslucbodin.com

Cancer, by Salvador Dali

Cancer illness by Salvator Dali

Forgotten sunglasses by Vladimir Kush

3 keys : ?

Brain : Vladimir Kush: islands of memory

Face : Vladimir Kush

Dream catcher by Vladimir Kush