Cultural Influence of Dreams
Making sense out of dreams is hard enough without the influence of your culture. Cultural Influence can make understanding your dreams much more difficult than it needs to be.
I met a woman recently who was from a foreign culture. She was telling me about a dream she had where she found a one dollar bill on the ground. When she awoke she started looking for ways that money could be taken away from her. Why? Because her culture dictates that the opposite of what is seen in dreams.
Your culture may not go to the extreme of declaring opposites as this woman’s culture did, but your culture has influence on your dreams that you may not have considered before.
For example, my American culture dictates that if one cannot experience something with all five senses than it is not worth paying attention to. Therefore, dreams, my culture says, are valueless because they are out of the realm of all five senses. Dreams don’t fall into the confining box that American culture says is important. Your culture may dictate something similar. Recognizing the influence of your culture is only one of several steps you can take to help you understand your dreams. But it is a very important one.
You may be wondering exactly how you can identify the influence your individual culture has on your perception of dreams. In order to do that you will need to know what makes up the essence of dreams.
The first thing you need to know about dreams is that most times they originate from a place outside of you. I’ve heard my whole life that dreams are simply my mind working out the details and the problems of the day. It’s a cultural dictate. We dream of such common things that, in a way, that explanation makes sense. That is until you have a dream about traveling back in time where we see cigar shaped UFOs flying overhead and then three huge alien creatures walking in front of you. This is hardly a scene any of us encounter on a daily basis. In fact, dream imagery can be so out of the ordinary and bizarre that it can cause you to ponder the meaning of it all through the next day and beyond.
Second, you need to know that the dreams you are given are intentional. This means there is an originator of dreams who I call the Dreamgiver. Another of my cultural dictates is that what happens in dreams appears to be nonsensical and random, therefore what shows up in dreams is random and unintentional. It took me awhile to disprove this accepted culturally accepted norm, but once I began to understand this idea of intentionality in dreams it all came together for me. Unfortunately, this is a process that takes some time and study of dreams (something else that goes against the cultural dictates in America that everything needs to be instant), but if you learn to develop patience you will begin to overcome what culture dictates you should think about your dreams.
If you dare to go against the flow and pull of culture and look at your dreams with an eye of meaning and purpose you’ll be well on your way of discovering what incredible treasure you’ve been missing in your dreams.
What does your culture say about dreams? Post in the comments and let’s start a discussion that will help people of all cultures begin to understand their dreams.
EB
Photo credit: culture.culte via Foter.com / CC BY