Where Am I?

I recently had a friend tell me a dream in which her and her husband observed the action of the dream.  They both watched as a very large snake went past them and violently attacked their stock broker.  He kept saying the words “Everything’s alright.  Everything’s fine.”

After she told me the dream she immediately said she knew what it meant.  Then she described how she thought it referred to the recent nosedive in the stock market, and they were being told not to worry about what’s happening that everything would be alright.

Mmmm.  That’s not quite what that dream was saying.  That may be what she wanted the dream to say, but it was more about the stock broker than about the dreamer and her husband.

You see, in order to understand a dream you must first understand the focus of the dream.  Simply stated, the focus of a dream is the person the action of the dream is centered around.  In other words, if you were to take the stock broker out of this dream the dream would fall apart.  The dreamer and her husband are still there, but then the only action of the dream is a snake milling about.  Nothing happens.  All you have left are a couple of observers with no action to observe.

So there you have the number one key in determining a dream’s focus:    Where is the action and who is it directed to?  If you find yourself observing something happening to someone else the dream is most likely not about you.

 Then again, you may find yourself participating in the action of the dream .  If you and a team of people are completing some kind of task, the dream is most likely  a participation dream.

I often have dreams about large jet aircraft that can hold several hundred people.  I’m traveling with many hundreds of people in one direction which suggests influence, but it also describes an action (travel) that I’m doing with others.  So in addition to speaking about the influence I will have with others, the dream says I will have company on the journey.  Even though I;m working all alone writing the dream blog, for example, others like you, dear reader, are making the journey with me.

The third and most common position we can find ourselves at in a dream is the center of the action, or the focus of the dream.  It seems obvious when dream action is happening to us — we’re being chased, or we’re driving, or flying around somewhere.  But there are times when its not so obvious that we’re the center of attention in the dream, especially when the action of the dream seems to shift to others in long saga dreams.

Even when the action moves around to others, we only have to ask ourselves a few simple questions.  Am I observing something happening to someone else?  Am I participating with others to accomplish some sort of goal?  Am I being carried along through the dream by a series of actions?  These are really the only three places we can find ourselves within a dream.  And taking a few minutes to follow the steps I’ve outlined in this blog can help you find where you fit into the latest night parable.

EB

Photo credit: Bas Kers (NL) via Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA