The Baby

  Dreams have a certain way about them.  They often start off with an appearance much like our normal every day life.  We’re in our house cooking a meal, at work doing our job, even driving around town running errands.  Sometimes even taking care of a baby.

  As the dream progresses, odd things begin to happen.  People, places and things take on characteristics that are not natural or normal to how they behave in our daily waking life.  The dream takes on a certain mystery and baffles our logic-driven mind.

  So I came across this interesting dream the other day that does just that.  Someone told the dream on a podcast I’ve begun listening to. It goes on pretty normally, as dreams go, and then has this bizarre twist at the end.

Here’s the dream:

  I’m in my aunt and uncle’s house where my family vacations.  It’s nighttime.  Things are very still, but I know there’s lots of people around and they are all hiding from something.  I quickly try and find a place to hide myself, because I don’t want to encounter what everyone’s hiding from.  When I finally find a place to hide I see a baby crawling across the yard.  I quickly go into “baby mode” and get out of my hiding place to save the baby, only to discover that the baby is what everyone is hiding from.  As soon as I pick up the baby it looks at me and in an adult voice says “What are you doing?”  The baby then proceeds to yell profanity at me so I run away.

End of dream

  Wow!  What a twist this dream has at the end!  This dreamer’s family is hiding from a baby that seems innocent at first, but speaks profanity in an adult voice.  It’s tempting to focus on this one bizarre symbol of the dream and try to gain understanding of the dream’s mystery by first attempting to decipher the baby symbol and move our from there.  This, unfortunately, won’t cause the dream to give up its full mystery.  It will simply cause the mystery to be more deeply hidden.

  The first place to begin extracting meaning from this dream is the setting, the aunt and uncle’s house where the dreamer’s family vacations.  This setting is key to the dream’s meaning.  The dreamer is in a place where family gathers.  It is nighttime and there are lots of people around who are hiding.  The dreamer doesn’t say that the people who are hiding are her family, but it seems to infer it based on the dream’s setting.  The  dreamer also hides, and that’s when she sees the baby.  She goes into “baby mode” and reveals herself in order to rescue the baby from what every one is hiding from.

  Then everything changes.

  The baby is not what it appears.

  Before I break down the meaning of the baby, it’s important to note that people, the dreamer’s family, is hiding from something that appears innocent and helpless, at least physically.  But as the dreamer finds out, the baby speaks profanities in an adult voice.  In other words, there is the power of destruction in the voice of something that looks innocent and helpless.  Apparently, those who are hiding from the baby are familiar with this destruction.

  The rest of this interpretation belongs to the dreamer.  What I mean by that is that as I describe the above paragraph to the dreamer they’d most likely know what it all means.  Very often I will pause and have the dreamer finish the interpretation that typically begins “Oh my gosh, I know what that means.”

  For this dream and this dreamer, the interpretation of this dream ends on a personal note that I’m not allowed to share fully.

  As for you, dear dreamer, just remember that not everything that looks innocent and helpless in a dream is actually innocent and helpless.

EB

Photo by roger4336 on Foter.com / CC BY-SA