‘Ask The Dream Detective’ – from Mimi’s Dream Column for the New Spirit Journal

A 37-year-old woman had the following dream:

“I had a dream that Ryan Gosling (I have the hots for him) and I went to see one of his films together. I think it was directed by Quentin Tarantino. It didn’t get very good reviews.”

Sometimes people say they don’t remember much of a dream, and therefore it must not be worth interpreting. This is so not true!  Even a fragment of a dream can hold jewels of information. And while this dream is relatively short in recounting, there is a lot to it. The story starts off very promising with the dreamer seemingly on a date with her celebrity crush. However, when we delved into it, the deeper meaning revealed itself to offer some sound relationship guidance.

The dreamer described actor Ryan Gosling as someone she had a big crush on. She found him incredibly attractive and he embodied a lot of traits she thought she was looking for. We searched for a parallel feeling in her waking life, and sure enough she had been dating a guy who at first seemed like her dream man. And just like with Ryan Gosling, she was quite smitten with him when they started dating.

We then explored the setting of the dream: here she was with a person, watching a big screen, featuring that same person! This caused the dreamer to reflect “it seems like it’s all about him!” At this point she had a ‘click’ as she connected another similarity to the man she was currently dating. Though she started off with stars in her eyes for this man, she slowly started to realize that he was behaving rather selfishly, especially when it came to his time and how much (a.k.a. how little!) he was willing to spend with her. He would also make comments such as that he didn’t want her to be needy regarding his time for her, yet when he left town for a business trip and neglected to contact her, he said that he felt like he had abandoned her. Which he did! Making comments that he didn’t want her to act needy was a bit of a manipulative ploy, an attempt to deflect her from placing any requests upon him or even from expressing any wish she might have for quality time together. Unfortunately, she bought into it by quelling her feelings and her instinct to communicate her desires with him.

The dreamer had another awareness; her boyfriend from the previous year also displayed selfish behavior, to the point that it caused her to break up with him. The dream not only showed her the current relationship dynamic, but a long-standing relationship pattern. The dreamer reached some insights about her accommodating nature, and how she often did not speak up and get her needs met in relationships. This kept her in unbalanced relationships longer than necessary, but the message was finally getting through and this dream was one way in which the message was delivered.

We also looked at the part of the dream where she states that the movie “didn’t get very good reviews”. I asked what she thought of Quentin Tarantino, or his work in general, and she said she was not a fan and thought he was a bit immature. Once she realized her current love interest’s selfish and immature nature, she did not give the relationship very good reviews either – despite the initial attraction! It’s funny that we use the word ‘attraction’ to describe movies as well as our feelings toward love interests.

Finally, the dreamer described Ryan Gosling in waking life as “somewhat unobtainable”. She realized that though she had been dating the current man for several months, he was showing himself to be emotionally unavailable, a.k.a. ‘unobtainable’ for a long term committed relationship.

While the bursting of any relationship bubble can be disappointing to say the least, it is by pulling back the curtain of illusion and being willing to face the truth that we can reach authentic levels of relating. This can also save us from immeasurable and ongoing emotional pain. And while it’s easy to blame another person, as in ‘he’s not available’, it is most valuable to look at our own part in the relationship dynamic. In this case the dreamer had the wonderful insight that while she thought she was being nice by behaving in an accommodating way towards her partners, she realized that she was actually depriving herself of expressing her truths, and in the process denying her partner the chance to get to know her authentic self.

Having awareness of our relationship patterns is the first step in transforming their energies. Owning our part in the dance allows us to take our power back and focus on the only side of things we have any dominion over, which is our own. Changing our patterns allows us to transform our own energies and make room for more balanced relationships, not only with other people, but within ourselves. Our dreams are always a reliable compass in this process.

‘Ask The Dream Detective’ – from Mimi’s Dream Column for the New Spirit Journal

A 57 year old woman had the following dream:

“My boyfriend’s soon to be ex-wife was running after me with a machine gun. I could hear the bullets whizzing by me and I was so scared. I thought to myself ‘I have to zig zag’, as if I’d heard somewhere that this was a good way to avoid getting shot. Then I ran into a hospital to get safety. I was trying to catch my breath but I knew she was still after me. I went into a patient’s private room, and I got into bed with the patient. I said to him ‘Protect me, protect me, somebody is trying to kill me!’ I was fraught with fear and emotion and I pulled the covers over my head. I could tell he was a sick man, but I kept thinking ‘I’m going to be protected here’. After I laid there for a while I felt safe, so I finally got out of the bed and I noticed some purple nail polish. I said to the man ‘So what is your name?’ and he answered in a very deep, masculine voice ‘Jacqueline’. I asked ‘Oh, so do people just call you Jack?’ I was challenging him as I could see he was a man. He said ‘No, it’s Jacqueline’. It was then I realized he was gay and wanted to be feminine, so I decided that rather than challenge him I would honor him. I said ‘Let’s paint our nails’. We started painting our nails and doing girly things. Then I felt safe and was able to leave the hospital.”

This dream starts with the dreamer being chased, which is one of the most common dream themes of all times. The perpetrator usually represents something or someone that feels like a threat to us. Whether or not they actually pose a threat, it is the feeling that matters. In this dreamer’s waking life, she did not feel physically threatened by her partner’s ‘soon to be ex-wife’, but the fact that they were not yet fully divorced felt like an emotional threat to the dreamer’s own relationship with this man. Stress triggers the fight or flight response, which then gets spun into a dream story. In this case rather than fight, the dreamer took flight by running in a zig zag pattern and dodging bullets. Dreams also love puns and plays on words, and every time the topic of the divorce came up, this dreamer felt like she was ‘dodging bullets’ as it was a sensitive topic with her partner.

In the dream, she took shelter in a hospital and climbed into bed with a patient. This turned out to be symbolic of her ability to find sanctuary from the perceived threat by retreating into a healing place within herself. This is a very good sign of self-care. The sick man represented an aspect of herself that needed healing, but that also could facilitate healing by providing a safe space.

When she asked the man his name and he told her it was Jacqueline, she wanted to challenge him by drawing attention to the fact that he was really a man, not a woman as the name implied. This is reflected in her response of “Oh, so do people just call you Jack?” When he asserted that his name was, in fact, Jaqueline instead of Jack, she realized he was gay and had a change of heart. Instead of fighting him regarding his orientation she decided to not only embrace it, but support it, by painting their nails together and ‘doing girly things’.

The dreamer shared that she had been doing personal growth work around becoming less masculine in her primary relationship with a man, and allowing herself to be more feminine. She had traditionally asserted a lot of masculine energy in a way that had created imbalance in relationships for her. She wanted to try a new way of being by embracing more of her feminine energy. The dream so poignantly put this into visual and verbal representation in the character of Jacqueline, the feminine man! Just like in the dream, at first the dreamer had a hard time accepting that her familiar masculine characteristics could become more feminine. However, she eventually not only connected with, but embraced, her own feminine energy in a loving and supportive way, just like in the dream.

The dreamer had some waking life ‘aha’ moments after we worked with the dream. She said that shortly after the dream she went to a store to browse around and came across some nail polish. She found a bottle she liked in a purple color. Only after she picked it out and decided to purchase it did she remember the purple nail polish from the dream! Though she did not consciously pick out the polish based on the dream, it was at this point that she realized the connection. That afternoon she was meeting with a friend for his birthday, and this friend happened to be a gay man. She had learned a new technique for applying nail polish that she wanted to share with him, so she decided to give him the polish as a present and show him the new technique. When they got together she gave him the polish and painted his nails for him.

The dreamer was not consciously paying tribute to the dream by doing this, in fact she said that at the time she wasn’t really thinking about it at all. Only later when we worked with the dream did it click as she put all the pieces together. She said she felt very comforted by the fact that her waking life was mirroring her dream life (or vice versa). She described the feeling it created as giving her a sense of connection to another world.

Was the dream a premonition, or did the dreamer subconsciously re-enact some of the dream? That is subject to speculation, but either way this connection between worlds provided the dreamer with a great sense of comfort, both by bridging her waking and dreaming life and by the meaning the dream provided her with. Now purple nail polish has become a symbol and reminder for her to embrace her feminine energy, and allow Jacqueline to be her true self.

‘Ask The Dream Detective’ – from Mimi’s Dream Column for the New Spirit Journal

A 35 year old woman had the following dream

 “I dreamed that I was in my house when I realized there was an extra room that I never noticed before. It was easy to miss because there wasn’t a regular door, but the whole wall was able to lift up, more like a garage door. I went in the room and it was full of things that whomever lived there before must have left. I was thrilled at the idea of going through everything, assuming it belonged to me now, to see what I might find. I thought I might be able to sell some of the things and make some money, or even rent out the room for additional income. The idea of this was very exciting to me and gave me some hope and relief from the financial pressures I have been feeling lately.”

The discovery of new rooms is a common theme in dreams, and is usually symbolic of discovering new aspects of our self. There will always be some variation from dreamer to dreamer, so we look at the unique traits of the dream to uncover more of what it represents to that person specifically.

What stood out in this dream was that the room did not have a regular interior door, but the whole wall lifted up and opened up into the room. Dreams love puns and plays on words, as well as depicting visual representations of words. In this case the dreamer was between jobs, and experiencing a lot of stress about how she was going to produce enough income to get by. The night of this dream she did some meditation in an attempt to relieve stress and visualize her ideal career in the form of her own business. She had always wanted to have her own business, but felt like there was some kind of ‘wall’ between herself and her dream career. Thus, the symbolism of a wall rather than a regular door. The meditation and visualization may have helped to lift the ‘wall’ between the dreamer and her ideal career, as depicted visually by the wall lifting up in the dream. She was then able to access what was on the other side of the wall, which held many objects of interest to her, as well as potential income.

The things in the room were left by those who had been there before her. She made the connection to the fact that she had been a long-time student with many teachers, and now some of them were role models who provided a template for how she wanted to structure her own business. The symbolism translated: those who were ‘there’ before her in her ideal career had ‘left’ many things for her in the form of knowledge they passed down that now belonged to her. Now it was time for her to ‘move in’ to her own power and ‘own’ what she had acquired. The idea that the material things in the bonus room were now her own was symbolic of the fact that she now owned these resources within herself.

In the dream story, she contemplated how she might be able to use the new room and the things within it to bring in some income. This represented her realization that not only did she have these talents and resources within her, but that they could actually be a source of income if she chose to use them!

In waking life the idea that she had the ability to make this work – and that her subconscious mind verified this ability via the dream – provided a huge sense of relief to the dreamer. Sometimes we just need to be given permission or acknowledgement that we can do something. The fact that this came from deep within her own psyche was very reassuring to the dreamer, and gave her the confidence to take her first action steps towards her goal.

‘Ask The Dream Detective’ – from Mimi’s Dream Column for the New Spirit Journal

A 37 year old woman had the following dream:

“I love the TV show ‘Property Brothers’, and have a huge crush on Jonathan Scott. In my dream his younger brother took me over next to a car, and then he leaned over and just started kissing me. I resisted at first because I really like Jonathan, not this guy. But his brother wanted me to give it a chance, so I kissed him back. He didn’t know I liked Jonathan better. I woke up feeling bad because I didn’t really want to kiss him! I want Jonathan.”

The dreamer clarified that brother in the dream was not Jonathan’s twin, Drew, who co-stars with him on her favorite TV show ‘Property Brothers’, but that this was their ‘other brother’. She described the third brother as someone she was not as familiar with since she had seen him on an episode or two of ‘Property Brothers’ but he was not a regular part of the show.

It was interesting that the brother pulled the dreamer over to a car to kiss her. Why did he bring her next to a car, rather than by a tree, or find a little cozy spot somewhere? Cars in dreams are often a symbol of how we get from point A to point B in life. They can represent how we go about reaching our goals, and are often symbolic of careers. The word ‘car’ is even contained in ‘career’, and dreams love word play. While there is no single cut and dry meaning for any given symbol, it can be an interesting exploration to see if a universal meaning fits. In this case it did, as we shall see.

The dreamer described Jonathan as creative, artistic, original, and stylish. I asked her if that description fit any part of herself and she said ‘Yes!’. This dreamer was a clothing designer who longed to create her own clothing line. She had the skills and she had worked in the industry for many years as a technical designer for large companies that paid well, but this type of work did not fulfill her creativity and originality. Now she was between jobs and was getting asked by people she knew to do their mending and alteration projects. Though the projects were not up to her level of skill and talent, people loved her work and pursued her with a lot of ‘interest’, just like the man in her dream pursued her. And just like in the dream, she did not reciprocate the interest, though she conceded and ‘connected’ with them because they wanted her. Kissing can be a metaphor for connection.

The dreamer described this brother as ‘younger and shorter than Jonathan’. Later she did a little internet search to learn more about him and found out he is actually older than the twins Jonathan and Drew! But the dreamer didn’t know that, so her unconscious mind cast him in the role of younger for a reason. In dreams when someone is young it can be an indication of something new that we are starting, or that is newer in our life. Working with private clients was a newer endeavor for her.  When we explored her description of the brother as ‘shorter’ than Jonathan, she said that what she was currently doing for work didn’t ‘measure up’ to what she would love to be doing. The pun fit, and pointed out to her that even though she was being acknowledged and pursued for her talents, what was pursuing her at the time was not what she really wanted. This dream showed the dreamer how she was falling into a role of passivity by of going along with what other people want, rather than exploring what she really wanted.

So why did the dream cast Jonathan’s brother in the role he played in her dream, rather than someone else? She said that the projects she was taking on were ‘related’ to her desired line of work, just not in the form she was really passionate about.

At the end of the dream she said “He doesn’t know I like Jonathan better”. This is symbolic of a lack of communication on her part, and she saw the correlation to the fact that her clients didn’t know that she liked designing better than what she was currently offering them. Through the dream work she came up with the idea that she could let her existing clients know about her designing talents, and possibly have a built in clientele for what she really wanted to do! She could now use the imagery from the dream as a symbol for connecting with what she really wants in life.

Dreams are amazing teachers. They want us to live true to our life purpose. A dream like this is a compass, showing a way to the path of right livelihood, and how to live with authenticity and meaning.

Episode 27 – Update and Dreams

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In this episode Mimi shares some of her own recent dreams, along with how she decodes them and uses their messages to help guide her in her life. Featured dreams include: ‘Forgot to Feed the Puppy’, ‘Marianne Williamson and Maria Schriver House Party’, ‘Fighting Demons’, ‘3 Best Friends’, and ‘Baby Polar Bear and Skunk’.

Ask The Dream Detective: from Mimi’s Dream Column for the New Spirit Journal

HEART SURGERY DREAM

A 26-year-old woman had the following dream:

“I was awake and having heart surgery. The man performing the heart surgery had longish hair and I didn’t know him but I know that the heart surgery wasn’t what I wanted and that he was a bad man taking advantage of me. I didn’t want what he was doing to me but I had no choice because he literally had my heart in his hand and now I needed him to replace it or put it back. He replaced it with I think another heart or the same one I’m not sure and attached it into my chest. He attached it on my right side not my left. When it was over I was walking through hallways. The heart was beating very strong. As I looked down the heart (on the right side of my chest) was protruding. It was still under my skin but it was pumping out of my chest. I had to hold it in my hands, kind of covering it in order to protect it.”

For this dream we are going to take a special look at how language can play a role in understanding the meaning of our dreams. As always, dreams are usually more symbolic than literal, and it is when we get caught up in the literal that we get stuck in a limited view of the dream. Language is a reflection of our experience, and in this case it will help us to access the dream’s symbolism and meaning.

In the dream a bad man is doing something to the dreamer that she doesn’t want him to, and he’s doing it to her heart. Does this sound like anything familiar, outside of actual heart surgery? I don’t need to go very far before you can connect the meaning yourself, and realize that this dream was not about the physical act of heart surgery, but symbolic of her emotional experience in a past relationship. When looking at the dream through this lens, we can re-examine the language she uses:

• “(It) wasn’t what I wanted”
• “He was a bad man taking advantage of me”
• “I didn’t want what he was doing to me”
• “I had no choice because he literally had my heart in his hand”
• “Now I needed him to…put it back”
• “I had to hold (my heart) in my hands, kind of covering it in order to protect it.”

In waking life the dreamer had been in an abusive marriage, and though she had left him some time ago she recently made it official by filing for divorce. She was in the process of taking back control of her life and described herself as the happiest she has ever been.  At the time of this dream she was in a new, much healthier relationship, and studying for a career that she feels passionate about. So why then, when things are going so well, would she have a dream like this?

Even though filing for divorce was a very empowering maneuver, it caused some of the old painful feelings she experienced during the marriage to resurface. And though she had done a lot of healing, she was still in the process of fully reclaiming her heart. In the dream she states that she needs the man to “put it back” – ’it’ being her heart. She was still reclaiming the final pieces of her own heart after being wounded in the painful marriage. When she described the heart protruding from her chest and her need to protect it, though she found the imagery a little disturbing she also marveled at her ability to protect herself despite what had happened! It also gave her a new level of awareness as to how she might navigate the new relationship in a way that didn’t cause her to block her heart from the love that was now available to her.

The fact that she was awake during the surgery may be symbolic of her realization that she was awake, i.e. aware, of what was happening in the bad marriage as it was taking place. A dreamwork technique known as re-scripting can be very helpful here. This involves re-writing the dream story to have a more favorable outcome for the dreamer. If she were to imagine a new story line for this dream she might consider the fact that since she was awake she could stop the man entirely from performing the surgery in the first place. This could then become a great personal symbol and example for how to stop negative situations and relationship patterns from happening, by not putting her heart into the hands of people who do not hold her best interest. In this way she would be protecting her heart in an even more effective manner than at the end of the dream, so that the damage to her heart does not occur in the first place. Examining who she shares her heart with, and connecting with her ability to exercise personal power and say ‘No’, can play a huge role in solidifying her new ability to bring healthier and happier people and relationships into her life, and keep the toxic ones out.

As always, our dreams love us and want the best for us in all areas of life, especially when it comes to love and relationships. Pay attention to the messages from your dreams, they are one of the best inner guidance systems we have.

Ask The Dream Detective: from Mimi’s Dream Column for the New Spirit Journal

Have you ever dreamed that someone was breaking into your house? This is quite a common dream theme and can be very scary since most people fear that their dreams are literal. The good news is that usually they not literal, but symbolic. That said, even though the dream might not mean an imminent home invasion, it still contains a very important message and paying attention to it will benefit the dreamer greatly. To illustrate this universal theme and its meaning, here is a specific example in the form of a dream sent to me by a 27-year-old woman in Malaysia:

“I am in a house – my house in the dream but different than my real home – and I discover that the roof has a hole in it. Two men come in through the hole, and I tell them ‘Don’t do that!’ They don’t listen to me and come in anyway. Eventually they go outside to meet their friends, and some of them are wearing security uniforms. They don’t seem to want to hurt me, they just seem to want to have fun with their friends. They didn’t steal anything from me, so frustratingly I let them go.

Then I look up at the roof of the house and realize it is made of bag material, like from a school backpack, instead of roof tiles. I can see the sky through the hole in the roof. I also discover that I have an attic and there are men dwelling inside it! I ask my mom what they are doing in my house but she ignores me and just keeps doing her thing. I also remember walking through the house and noticing that some of the walls were cracked. The house was overall not in good condition and in need of some fixing.”

Through working with the dream, it became very clear to the dreamer that she was having boundary issues, especially with men. The dream outlines how men are invading her energetic field, symbolized by the house, and how she feels powerless to do anything about it. Her cries of ‘don’t do that!’ are ignored. When the men go outside she says they don’t seem to want to hurt her, and they didn’t steal anything, so in frustration she just lets them go and they get away with the invasion. As if breaking and entering weren’t enough!! In waking life this mirrored a relationship pattern with men where they would violate her boundaries and she would find ways to minimize, justify, and discount the impact of their actions – thereby minimizing and discounting her own power and violating her own boundaries in the process. Doing this was a natural repeat of what had been modelled for her growing up, as her family dynamics were a world-class training program in ‘how to get your boundaries violated’.

In the dream, some of the men were wearing security uniforms. While security guards are normally associated with protection and safety, these ones were more concerned with having fun with their friends. The dreamer’s association to this was that she did not feel emotionally or physically safe with unknown men. It seems also that the security guards slacking off could have to do with a lack of sense of safety and protection from the men in her life, as well as her own lack of self-protection in terms of setting and enforcing clear boundaries.

Even the dreamer’s mother is of no use when it comes to support or protection. In the dream, the mother just ignores her daughter’s concern over the invasion. The dreamer shared that her father was very volatile and abusive while she was growing up. When he wasn’t lashing out with his explosive temper, he was ignoring her and the rest of the family. She said she never felt safe at home. Is it any wonder that someone who never felt safe at home would have a dream that their home was being broken into? Not everyone who has this dream theme has this history, but in her case it was a relevant reference to how she literally felt at home.

And with parents who ignored her in waking life, her dream objections to the invasion being ignored are also very telling. It’s no leap that her current relationships with men are suffering as this is the relationship template she was provided by her family. At the end of the dream she describes the house having some cracked walls and needing some overall repairs. Walls can be symbols for barriers or boundaries, and this was another layer of symbolism reflecting the need to ‘fix and repair’ her boundaries as well as invest more in her self-care.

The dreamer really ‘got it’ when working with this dream. She said that she had always felt guilty when setting boundaries with her family and with men, and this dream helped her to see that it is a healthy and loving thing to do for herself. She felt a sense of relief at the idea that it was not only OK, but necessary, to have these boundaries for her personal growth, self-love, and sense of safety in the world, as well as in order to create a healthy romantic relationship in the future. Our psyche always knows where we need repairs, and will show us through the mysterious world of dream stories.

If you have a dream you’d like to share, contact me about private consultations  or the podcast.

Ask The Dream Detective: from Mimi’s Dream Column for the New Spirit Journal

CHEATING DREAMS

A 36 year old woman had the following recurring dream:

“I’ve been having dreams over the last 5 years that my husband is cheating on me. He is a really good guy and gives me no reason to suspect that he actually is, but when I wake up the dreams feel so real it scares me and I don’t know what to do.”

Dreams of being cheating on are quite common, and like with this dreamer they can make us feel very scared when we wake up, or very mad at our partner even though they didn’t actually do anything! Since the dream had been recurring for 5 years, I asked this dreamer if anything had changed 5 years prior, since recurring dreams are usually linked to something in our waking life. She said that was around the time he took a job requiring a lot of travel. By doing some more detective work we sleuthed that the dreams did indeed correlate with his business trips, either while he was away or about to leave. Dreams of cheating usually indicate that we are feeling cheating out of time with our partner. His travels became ‘the other woman’ in her dream world. Working with and understanding these recurring dreams, and sharing them with her husband, prompted them to plan special ‘date nights’ and carve out more time together while he was in town. This both reassured her psyche and fortified their relationship. After this awareness, and the consequent action they took to remedy the situation, she no longer had the recurring dreams even when he left town.

In another version of the ‘cheating dream’ sometimes we are the ones doing the cheating! For example, a different woman had a dream that she was cheating on her boyfriend. She had recently taken up a new hobby and was spending a lot of time in classes and practice groups for her new interest. Her boyfriend was not only fine with it, he was very actually very supportive of her pursing a passion and he enjoyed her newfound enthusiasm. However, she had some old programming that said it wasn’t OK to take care of her own needs while in a relationship. These old messages triggered feelings of guilt, which then created the dream story of her cheating on her boyfriend. We are all living unconscious stories that can be very strong drivers for how we run our lives. When we break the script of our story, even though it may be in a very healthy way, it can feel like we are doing something ‘wrong’ even though it is very right in the sense of enhancing our quality of life and our sense of connection to self and other. This dream brought to light her old programming and caused her to re-evaluate it, while at the same time it prompted her, like the previous dreamer, to add more quality time with her boyfriend to her busy schedule.

While these dreams may cause us to wonder ‘is my partner really cheating?’, or ‘am I a bad person for dreaming that I cheated?’, usually this dream is a metaphor. If you have reasons to believe your partner is actually having an affair, then do your homework to find out the truth so you can either put your mind at ease or make the necessary decisions to address the situation and take care of yourself. However, in the majority of cases this dream is a symbol of feeling like something is interfering with the relationship, but that something is not necessarily another person.

Whether it is our self or our partner who is the ‘cheater’, anything that feels like it takes away from our relationship can translate to the symbol of cheating. Factors such as working a lot of hours, caring for a family member, excess time spent on electronic devices, even physical or mental health issues such as chronic illness or depression can feel like they are taking away from our relationship. Our dreaming mind cares deeply about our relationships, and will show us when we need to tend to them to fulfill our spirit’s longing for connection. If you have this dream theme, consider it a message to explore the ways in which connection may have been compromised, and use it as a catalyst to repair and spend more time with the person you love.

Ask The Dream Detective: from Mimi’s Dream Column for the New Spirit Journal

THE JESTER, PRINCE, AND KING DREAM

A 17 year old woman had the following dream:

“I dreamed I was dating a jester and he loved me, but I didn’t like him at all. Then I dated a prince and he loved me and I loved him back. But then a king came along from another kingdom, and I left the prince for the king. The king loved me but only when I did what he wanted. Once I didn’t do what he wanted, I had to earn his love back but the prince was still hoping for my return and still loved me.”

This dream reminds me of the story of the three bears. When Goldilocks tries their porridge one is too hot and one is too cold, but the other is just right! On one level, the story in this dream is a reflection of a young woman finding her way when it comes to selecting an appropriate romantic partner. When discussing the dream, she described her ex-boyfriend as looking like the jester! According to her, he was somewhat immature and a bit of a class clown who seemed more concerned with what other people thought than with standing up for his own values and beliefs – or for those of his girlfriend. He would spend his energy trying to please outside people, even if he didn’t know them, rather than pleasing her or making her a priority. When we side with the waiter, for example, over our partner, when the waiter brings the wrong order, we are discounting the person we supposedly care about the most and placing a complete stranger above them. This is a recipe for relationship sabotage. According to top relationship expert Stan Tatkin, one of the keys to making a relationship work is to put each other first before any outside parties, and – get this – to treat each other like king and queen! No wonder a jester didn’t make the grade for her.

In the next part of the dream she dated a prince and the love was reciprocal. How nice! Finally, a good match. But then she left him for the king, who’s love was unfortunately very conditional. He only loved her when she did what he wanted. When we explored this dynamic, she had not actually had a boyfriend like this…yet; though her programming would likely lead her to one as this conditional approach to love was very reminiscent of her father. When she got good grades, and met with his approval she felt loved. But when she didn’t live up to his expectations he could be very disapproving and she felt like she had to earn his love back, just like she did with the king in the dream. She never felt loved or OK for just being herself, and always felt like she had to ‘perform’ to get his acceptance. Is it any wonder then, that she found a boyfriend who himself was a performer (symbolized by the jester in the dream) in the form of the ultimate people-pleaser?

This brings another layer of meaning to the dream, as we are very holographic creatures. If we look at the dream from an intra-psychic perspective (i.e. within her own psyche) we can see the jester not only as her ex-boyfriend, but as an energy within her own self that she was embodying. By jumping through every hoop her father expected her to, attempting to constantly please him rather than living true to her authentic self, she was embracing the energy of the people-pleasing-performance-oriented jester. In the dream, she eventually rejected the jester, as she did in waking life when she broke up with the jester-like boyfriend. To continue on the intra-psychic layer, the relationship with the prince very likely represents her connection with her true self, finding what she loves, and loving herself. She had glimpses of this feeling when involved in an extra-curricular school activity that she loved. She found that when she was enjoying her natural talents and interests and being true to herself she was able to connect with others on a very authentic level. She was able to make some great friends and get a taste of being liked for just being herself. However, the old patterning soon took over and she ditched the activity she loved to pursue an interest of her father’s, after much pressure from him. This is depicted symbolically in the dream when she leaves the prince for the king. Meanwhile, the friends that she made while participating in the activity she loved were beckoning her to come back, as was her soul! This is shown in the dream by the prince still hoping for her return, as well as his continued love for her.

What an intense dream. What seems like a short little fairy tale on the surface has so much to say not only about the dreamer’s romantic relationships, but about her connection to her true self. And when we shift the energies within our self, the energies of the outside world, including our relationships, shift as well. All her life, this dreamer had felt afraid of losing her father’s approval, and sacrificed her own desires to please him. The few times she did pursue her own interests were met not only with the external disapproval of her father, but an internal sense of guilt that she was doing something wrong because of his reactions. Working with this dream helped the dreamer to see these dynamics and gave her the validation, confirmation, and permission she needed to pursue that connection with her authentic self without guilt, which would then allow her to have a balanced romantic relationship and friendships as well. Long live the prince!

Ask The Dream Detective: from Mimi’s Dream Column for the New Spirit Journal

UNHEALTHY EATING

A 14 year old girl had the following dream:

 “I have recently been having recurring dreams that I am eating unhealthy food in very large portions.”

When I asked the dreamer if she had any ideas of what this dream might mean to her, she stated that she had been on a strict diet and was not consuming very much food at all. She said that she often felt hungry in waking life, and was especially pre-occupied with not eating anything that might be considered unhealthy. In the dream she felt anxious, and she reported sweating a lot in her sleep.

So, what do we make of this dream? Is it occurring because she has been depriving herself of food in waking life, or is it symbolic of something else? The only way to know is to check with the dreamer, since any dream can have a variety of possible interpretations. And, in this case, we actually do have a little bit of dream research to back us up as well. Studies have been conducted in which people were deprived of food, then monitored in a sleep lab to see what they were dreaming about. Can you guess? Yes, they dreamed about food. This very much fits with the above dreamer’s waking life experience. However, why did she dream of eating unhealthy food, rather than a sumptuous, nutritious feast? A different person under similar circumstances might dream of eating all of their favorite foods and experience pleasure, rather than anxiety, around it.

This young woman was putting a great deal of energy into not only eating sparsely, but into eating only healthy foods. She developed almost a fear of eating something unhealthy and ‘falling off the wagon’ so to speak. This theme can also show up in the dreams of recovered alcoholics, addicts, and former cigarette smokers. It is a reflection of the fear of going back to the old ‘unhealthy’ ways, and a reminder not to. What a relief to wake up from that dream. So, in this sense, the dreams are reflective our young dreamer’s fears as well.

What about the night sweats? The anxiety? It is very plausible that sweating in her sleep and the feeling of anxiety in the dream could have been physically triggered by low blood sugar from simply not eating enough before going to sleep. Whatever the body experiences physically can be incorporated into our dreams.

Aside from any biological basis, it is always important to look at emotional connections as well. I have seen many dreams about eating unhealthy food that have more to do with unhealthy relationships, or participating in things – not necessarily food related – that are ‘unhealthy’ for us in other ways. The food in these instances is a metaphor for something else. We explored this angle and the dreamer could not connect anything to her current waking life, so we came to the conclusion that in this case it was the hunger factor that caused the dreams, and the desire for health combined with low blood sugar that created the story of eating unhealthy food and feeling anxious about it.

Working with this recurring dream theme proved to be an eye-opening experience for the dreamer. She came to her own awareness that, while healthy eating was very important to her, perhaps she was taking the food deprivation part to a bit of an extreme in a way that was actually not healthy for her. Our dreams will show us where we are off-balance, and give us clues about how to restore balance. My belief is that we all have this knowledge within us, and our dreams are an amazing portal to access this information. I love to facilitate the process, but the dreamer comes to their own awareness by connection with their deepest and true self, and it is an honor to be part of the experience.