Many of us will experience a dream that repeats over a period of time in our lives. It might be for only a short while, or for the duration of a life time. The story, characters and setting may be exactly the same each time, or there might be a common theme or plot, with various elements changing each time the dream is experienced.

So why do we have these re-runs during the night? Recurring dreams happen every time a recurring situation or issue comes up in our life. The key to unraveling the mystery of what is causing the dream is to do a little dream detective work. Here are some investigative questions to guide you on the right path:

1. When was the first time you had this dream?
2. When was the last, most recent time you had it?
3. How often does it occur?
4. How do you feel during the dream?
5. How do you feel when you wake up?

Look at the time span from when you first and last had the dream, and consider what was (or is) going on in your life at that time. For example, if the dream started 3 years ago and is still occurring, ask yourself what changed in your life 3 years ago and is still going on today? If it happened between ages 25-30, think about what was going on during those years. Did you start a new job, move, change relationship status or go back to school? Those are major life events, but it could be anything that is significant to you, even something that is on your mind.

The next step is to look at how often the dream occurs. Is it once a week, once a year, or somewhere in between? Tracking down the pattern of the timing may take some more investigative work, but will pay off and is another clue that will point to the source of what is causing this dream for you. For example, if you said you had the dream once a week, and we figured out it was on Tuesday nights, I would ask what you do on Tuesday nights. If you said you go to a book club, we might look at what goes on with the interpersonal dynamics of the group, or your interactions with one person in particular, or possibly even the topic of the book being read. We would then work further to uncover the metaphors and symbolism of the dream, and see how they connect to the recurring waking life event or concern.

Another step is to look at the feelings you had during the dream, which is always an important part of dream work. How you felt during the dream is usually more relevant than how you felt after waking. Upon waking we tend to judge the dream from our rational, logical mind, which is not the language of the dreaming mind. Upon waking we might feel like ‘that was weird’ or ‘I would never do that’ or ‘I’m not attracted to that person in waking life!’ However, we felt differently in the dream. The dream has cast those characters and scripted those actions for a reason, and investigating the symbolism and metaphors behind them, as well as our feelings, will lead to more clues that help us understand what the dream is really trying to tell us.

The messages of our dreams are always in our highest and best interest. They are in alignment with our higher selves, our true life path, and they want us to have the best relationships possible. They will go to great length to get our attention, including bizarre story lines and characters, and repeating a theme until we get the message. Once you have ‘gotten’ the message of a recurring dream, it usually stops! It’s like someone who keeps knocking at your door until you open it. Knock knock…are you ready to listen?

For information on private consultations with Mimi for dream work, coaching, and more, visit the consultation page.

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Kathleen O’Keefe-Kanavos is a 3-time breast cancer survivor whose dreams saved her life by providing early detection when no doctors or medical tests could. We talk about her books ‘Surviving Cancerland: Intuitive Aspects of Healing’ and ‘Dreams That Can Save Your Life: Early Warning Signs of Cancer and Other Diseases’ with co-author Dr. Larry Burk. We explore how dreams can provide both literal and symbolic warnings, and look at some of the common symbols in dreams of cancer patients. We also discuss dream visitations from deceased loved ones (aka after death visitation dreams), and how they can play a significant role in delivering message to warn us of health concerns. By listening to her dreams and her waking life intuition, Kat was guided on the path to healing, despite resistance from medical professionals. Join us to hear her fascinating story. You can visit her website here.

For a full directory of The Dream Detective Podcast episodes, click here.

If you are ever in need of a creative idea, or find yourself trying to solve a seemingly irresolvable problem, seek no more…you have an unlimited source for inspiration and guidance in the form of your own dreams! Many famous invention, discoveries, literary and musical works have been sourced from the dream world.

One of my all-time favorites is the story of Madame C. J. Walker (1867 – 1919). She was the daughter of former slaves, orphaned at the age of 7, and started working at the age of 10…yet she went on to become the first female self-made millionaire in America! I absolutely love her. She worked as a laundress for many years, earning barely more than a dollar a day, and was a singer in her church where she met some affluent, well-educated African American’s who inspired her to fulfill more of her own potential. Around this time, she also noticed that her hair was falling out and experienced problems with dandruff, which was common with the African American community in those days due in part to the lack of proper hair care products. She tried what was available at the time, but nothing worked. Then one night she had a dream. She later told a reporter that God had answered her prayer, “for one night I had a dream, and in that dream a big black man appeared to me and told me what to mix up for my hair. Some of the remedy was grown in Africa, but I sent for it, mixed it, put it on my scalp, and in a few weeks my hair was coming in faster than it had ever fallen out. I tried it on my friends; it helped them. I made up my mind I would begin to sell it.”

With $1.05 in the bank and working part time as a laundress, she began selling her products door to door. She married a man who helped her with the advertising, however “When we began to make $10 a day, he thought that was enough, thought I ought to be satisfied. But I was convinced that my hair preparation would fill a long-felt want. And when we found it impossible to agree, due to his narrowness of vision, I embarked on business for myself.” By 1908 she had established a training college for her system of hair care and had a national sales force including women who had previously worked as laundry washers, cooks, teachers, and housewives. By 1910 she had 5,000 agents all around the United States, and her business was making $7000 per week.

In 1913, one of her agents wrote: “You opened up a trade for hundreds of colored women to make an honest and profitable living where they make as much in one week as a month’s salary would bring from any other position that a colored woman can secure.” When she crossed over, her obituary said “It is given to few persons to transform a people in a generation. Yet this was done by the late Madam C. J. Walker…[She] made and deserved a fortune and gave much of it away generously.”

Her dream – and the fact that she followed it and took it’s information seriously – affected not only the course of her own life, but empowered and enriched the lives of countless others as well.

If you decide to access the power of your dreams you will be in good company. Einstein, Aristotle, Decartes, Thomas Edison, and Salvador Dali all regularly turned to the dream realm for ideas and answers to problems. Thomas Edison would sit in a chair with a steel ball in his hand, with the intention of drifting off to the twilight dream zone known as the hypnogogic state. He kept the ball in his hand so that when he sank deep enough into sleep his hand would relax and the ball would hit the floor, waking him up so that he could remember and record whatever information he received. Similarly, Salvador Dali held a key in his hand and a kept plate on the ground so that when he drifted off deeply enough the key would clang as it hit the plate, waking him up and giving him conscious remembrance of what he had accessed in the dream world.

In 1865 German chemist Friedrich August Kekulé dreamed of a snake biting it’s tail, revealing to him the true structure of the benzene ring. In 1845 Elias Howe was trying to invent a machine that could sew, but he could not figure out how to get the needle to pick up the thread on the other side of the cloth. Then he had a dream that cannibals were chasing him with spears, and at the head of each spear was a hole. He had been using the traditional model of a needle with a hole in the end, but he had been placing the hole at the heel of the needle, not the head! This dream image gave him the idea to place the hole at the head of the needle, and thus the sewing machine was born.

Songs like Satisfaction by Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, and Yesterday by Paul McCartney both were inspired by dreams. The stories for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and the book and movie series Twilight, all came from dreams.

So next time you think sleep is a waste of time, think again about what you might be missing if you don’t get enough of it! If you’d like to access information in the dream state about a specific topic, see my article about dream incubation and try this before you go to sleep.

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!

Artwork by Punny Pixels

Dreams love the use of puns and plays on words, as well as visually depicting both puns and verbal expressions. When listening to a dream I always have my radar up for any type of pun or imagery that might indicate another layer of meaning. Following are some examples.
A woman dreamed she was kissing a man, and much as she wanted it to be a good kiss his upper was sticking out in such a strange way that it just would not move. This image had her stumped and took some time to decipher. Eventually she said “why would his upper lip be so stiff?” and that’s when the light bulb went off! If you asked this dreamer what it meant to have a ‘stiff upper lip’, she might not have been able to tell you with her conscious mind as this was not a saying she used. However, when we explored the standard meanings of the phrase, it clicked. It turns out the person she was attempting to connect with was experiencing hurt feelings, yet trying to hide them. In this case it was not a romantic partnership, as kissing can be a symbol for connection of any kind. This was an employee she was interacting with on a work project, and her subconscious mind had clearly picked up that he was trying very hard not to show his hurt feelings regarding constructive feedback she had recently given him on how to improve his work. Even though consciously she was not sure she knew what the expression ‘stiff upper lip’ meant, her subconscious mind knew very well and found a visual way to illustrate this verbal saying. She was then able to show some compassion for her colleague and give him as much positive feedback as possible, in addition to ways to improve when necessary. The dream revealed emotional dynamics that were going on under the surface, in a way that allowed her to repair and improve their professional relationship going forward.
A man applied to a job for which he was exceptionally well qualified. He later found out that a friend of the boss – who was not as well qualified – was hired instead. That night the man had a dream that his friend Rob got the job instead of him. Since his friend Rob did not actually apply for the job or work in the same field in waking life, I asked the dreamer if he felt ‘robbed’ because he did not get the job. He said “Absolutely yes!” It’s always interesting to look at the names of people and things to see if they might double as words with another meaning. They don’t have to be spelled the same, as the non-linear mind does not care about logical things like spelling. For example, names of people such as: Mark, Jean, Melody, Bill, Rusty, Crystal, June, Hunter, and Patience can hold double meaning. Names of inanimate objects, and even car models such as Triumph, Fury, Swinger, and Dart can also hold another layer of significance.
A single woman who was looking for love had a dream she was checking the mail. Based on other factors in the dream, I asked her if it was possible she was ‘checking the male’ population around her, as in checking them out. It fit with the rest of the dream and what was relevant for her, and we had a good laugh.
A man found out I work with dreams and casually told me he had a dream that he was peeing on his neighbor. Since this was not a private session I just asked him quickly “Well, are you ‘pissed’ at him?” He laughed and said “YES!”
Now here is some fun for you. Look at the illustrations below…can you decipher the visual puns that are depicted? To find the answers, scroll to the bottom of the article, below my bio.

Artwork by Kathleen Kowal

Artwork by Kathleen Kowal

Artwork by Punny Pixels 

Artwork by Punny Pixels

Artwork by Punny Pixels

Artwork by Punny Pixels

Much thanks to Eunice Ng and Nandini Trivedi of Punny Pixels (check them out on Instagram!), and Kathleen Kowall Design and Illustration (check her out on Facebook!) for giving permission to use their fun and clever artwork to illustrate this article!

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Mimi Pettibone is the creator of the ‘Enchanted Art Oracle Cards’, and offers private consultations in dream interpretation and personal growth work focused on relationships, communication, and authentic life path. She works in person in Seattle, WA as well as by phone. Her background includes psychology, relationships & communication, spirituality, dreams, intuition, and consciousness. Mimi is also a monthly dream columnist for the New Spirit Journal 

Answer Key to Visual Puns:

Snail Mail

Grate (Great) Opportunity

Couch Potato

Brain Storm

Emotional Baggage

Negative Space

Dream: ‘The House Break-In’

A 42 year old man had the following dream:

“I recently had a dream that my house was being broken in to. I was in the kitchen, my wife and kids were in different rooms of the house. I heard a noise and realized someone had broken into our house. I moved toward the invader and started to tackle, when I suddenly realized the intruder was a woman. I woke up very confused.”

Dreaming of a home invasion is a common theme. While houses or homes can represent different things in dreams, within the context of this theme the home is usually a metaphor for our private life. The invasion of the home is symbolic of feeling like our private life is being ‘invaded’ or threatened by an outside force. When we look at who or what is doing the invading, we have a clue in the direction of what energy is violating the work-home boundary. For example, if someone dreamed that their boss broke into their house, it would be very likely that matters related to the person’s job were encroaching upon their personal life. Working too many hours, thoughts of job related stress, or even working at home – yet feeling cut off from the family or a personal life – could all be triggers for this type of dream, resulting in the symbol of a work related character (the boss in this example) becoming the perpetrator.

Typically we think of home invaders as men, so this dreamer was particularly surprised by the fact that the intruder was a woman. By working with the dreamer and asking him some questions about what the symbolism represented to him, he made the connection to the idea that he had been considering having an extra marital affair. Our dreaming mind cares intensely about our personal relationship, love, and our connections with others. His takeaway from the dream was that while the temptation of an affair appealed to his libido, there was a deeper part of his psyche that perceived the threat to his family life that it would create. It was this part of his psyche that created a message to send him in the form of this dream.

We also looked at the symbolism of the dreamer being in the kitchen, and the fact that the rest of his family members were each in different rooms of the house. To him this was symbolic of how he was not only feeling disconnected from his wife and children, but that they were all disconnecting from each other in waking life. This reflection caused him great sadness, as it had not always been that way and he longed for the connection they used to feel together. He contemplated that perhaps this was the reason he was seeking affection elsewhere. By gaining the conscious awareness of what his subconscious mind was showing him via this dream, he decided not to have the affair. He decided instead to devote his energy to reconnecting with his family, and finding ways to bring them together emotionally and physically by spending more time together.

Somehow if a co-worker had given this dreamer the same advice, it likely would not have landed in the same way as when it came from his own psyche. The dreamer was profoundly moved by the message he received from his own mind. Such is the magic of working with dreams.

Shared dreams, also known as mutual dreams, are when two or more people share a dream experience at the same time. The degree to which the dream is shared can vary, from having common elements or events that happen in each person’s dream to the entire dream being the same. The experience is known by different names including mutual dreams, shared dreaming, dream meshing, or linking. Shared dreams can happen spontaneously, or can be incubated and planned, and are most common between people who are emotionally close such as couples, siblings, parent-child, or best friends. Twins may be especially prone to shared dreams, though it may happen between complete strangers as well. We may not hear about this as often, since the strangers would have to later meet and compare their dreams. Following are some of the ways in which this fascinating phenomenon may manifest.

One person is having a dream – already in progress – when another person suddenly pops in, invited or uninvited. The second dreamer (the one making the ‘guest appearance’) may have had the first person strongly on their mind before sleep, and may or may not have any conscious awareness of the dream visitation, let alone remember the encounter the next day upon waking. Similarly, the first person – who was just minding their own dream business – may or may not remember the visit by their guest who popped in.

People often ask when they dream of another person, does it mean that person really came to visit them, or was that person thinking or dreaming of them, too? This is an especially common fascination when the person we dream about is a love interest or former partner with whom we wish to rekindle. While not the norm, nor highly likely, it actually is possible. Often these types of dreams will reflect our feelings about the person in the dream. The dream may outline relationship dynamics, or the person may even represent a part of our own psyche. One distinguishing characteristic that may provide a clue as to the nature of visitor (actual person’s consciousness vs. dream character) is the ‘popping in’ effect, or interrupted quality of a dream that is already happening. This has been a documented phenomenon in psychic dream research, as well as after death visitation dreams, and is one of the markers of a visitation type experience. Intuitive signals are also commonly described as thoughts, feelings, or visions that ‘pop’ into our consciousness in the same manner. One way to verify would be to check in with the other person, which may or may not be possible especially if the other person does not recall any dreams from that night. This still does not rule out the possibility of the occurrence.

MESHING

Meshing refers to the basic level of shared dreams where some of the elements overlap, but the entire dreams of the different people are not exactly the same. The dreams may share common characters, settings, or story lines, which the dreamers may or may not have had actual waking life experience with.  Sometimes sharing a common waking experience can contribute to dream meshing. For example, if two people watched the same movie one night and then both dreamed about some of the characters or settings. Or perhaps they shared an experience, such as going to a museum, and both dreamed about some of the things they saw or experienced at the museum but the entire dreams were not exactly the same. Meshing dreams may be incubated by sharing an experience, then talking about it before sleep, and finally intending to dream about the experience.

MEETING

Meeting dreams are where two or more people interact in the dream world and communicate with each other. This experience is less common than meshing dreams, and it does imply telepathic communication between dreamers. I have experienced this personally, and will share one story to illustrate. My sister and I were on a camping trip, sleeping in the same tent near each other. I woke myself up by talking in my sleep…and then my sister answered me. I thought ‘oh how embarrassing, I fell asleep while we were talking!’, but as I gained wakeful consciousness I looked over and she was actually fast asleep. I tried saying something else to her, curious if she would respond again from her sleeping dream state, but this time she did not. I later learned that being in the same brainwave state may be conducive to facilitating these types of experiences. When we have R.E.M. dreams we are predominantly in the alpha brainwave state, and when we wake up beta brain waves usually take over. This theory fits with my experience that we were able to talk in our sleep (both being in alpha brain waves), but when I woke up I was no longer ‘reaching’ her as I was in a different brain wavelength state.  The next day I asked her if she remembered any dreams. She said yes, and told me the first half of the dream. When it matched exactly what I had dreamed, I stepped in and finished the dream by telling her the rest of it as I had experienced it. She said ‘how did you know?!” I explained to her how I woke up and we were sleep talking together, so I suspected we were sharing a dream and now it was confirmed.

SHARED & PRECOGNITIVE

In the dream my sister and I shared, there were some people and experiences that actually happened the next day! We both dreamed of meeting brothers, and both of us dreamed a specific name of one of them, and the next day we met these people; even the name was confirmed. This is not a common feature of shared dreams but I mention it to show the layers possible with any type of unusual dream phenomena.

GROUP DREAMING

Group dreams are the same as meshing or meeting dreams, but with more than two people partaking in the experience.

SHARING DREAMS WITH ANIMALS

While I have mentioned that shared dream experiences may happen between two people, or even a group of people, it can also happen between people and their animals! Again, one of the facilitating factors of shared dreams, or any type of telepathic sharing, is a close emotional bond. So it makes sense that people who share a close bond with their animals might also share dreams with them. A woman had a dog who she called Leo because to her he looked like a little Lion. One night she dreamed that she was in her living room, and there was a little lion (about the size of her dog!) sitting on her couch, playing with a toy. As she woke up, her dog was making funny sounds and appeared to be also dreaming. He woke up shortly, and proceeded to venture straight out to the living room, jumped up on the couch, and looked as though he were searching for something in the exact spot the woman saw the little lion playing with his toy. While we cannot ask the dog what he was dreaming about, it seems likely they were dreaming of the same thing, each from their own perspective of human and animal. Another man was away on business and left his dog with a friend. The plan was for the dog to stay in the house with her. But one night he dreamed that his dog was in a barn with farm animals. He called his friend the next day, and she told him that his dog had escaped from the house the night before and spent the night in the barn!

INTENDING TO SHARE A DREAM

While any of the above types of shared dreams can occur spontaneously, they can also be intended. As mentioned regarding meshing dreams, sharing an experience, talking about it before sleep, and intended to share a dream can help facilitate mutual dreaming. If people wish to meet in a dream, it’s a good idea to choose the place where you want to meet before going to sleep. It could be somewhere familiar to you, that you know and love, or somewhere you’ve never been. Once you choose the place, you can also pick a code word that you will say to each other. This is not necessary, just a technique if you should chose to use it. As you are each drifting off to sleep, really focus on the meeting place, the other person, your connection with them, what you’d like the interaction to be like, etc. If you find your mind meandering on to another topic, redirect your focus back to the meeting place, the person, the feelings you wish to have, and so on. When you wake up, have each person record their dream independently of the other, either via a recording device or by writing it down. Then you can verbally compare notes, but since the nature of dreams are slippery and they do fade away from us quickly I recommend recording independently first so as not to influence each other’s recounting, but also we may capture details that we may later forget.

Because of the fact that so many people do not remember their dreams, and even vivid dreamers rarely recall every dream from every night, I believe the types of experiences described in here, as well as many other psi dreaming phenomena, may be occurring a lot higher rate than we imagine.

If you have a shared dream experience, or any dream that you would like to consult with Mimi, visit the consultation page for more info.

Tomorrow morning from 9-10am I will be a guest on the Marie Manucheri show, talking about dreams! Call in with your dreams & questions 425-373-5527 and tune in to KKNW 1150AM or listen online:

http://1150kknw.com/show/marie-manuchehri-show/

If you miss the show, you can catch it in the archives:

http://www.energyintuitive.com/radio/podcast/

or on my ‘Media’ page here: https://www.thedreamdetective.com/dream-detective-interviews/

Happy Dreaming!

Sunday, March 6 at East West Seattle

Drawing from the Subconscious

1-5 pm $2

Register Now or sign up at the event

In this workshop we will explore subconscious communication and symbolism through images that we draw in the class. No background or skills in art or drawing are required. We will explore our images through impressions as well as through the principles of drawing interpretation and graphology (handwriting analysis) as these concepts also translate to drawing. You will learn about where your strengths are, where you might be holding back, and how to break through those limitations. Colored pens, pencils, crayons and paper will be provided, or bring your own supplies if you have your favorite.