SelfhelpMagazine

by Richard Wilkerson, Dream Educator

Only the dreamer can know the final meaning of a dream, but if this were my dream there are some useful questions I could ask myself:

1. How likely is this to be literally true in the real world? Do I have any other evidence to support my suspicion?

If it is possible that my lover is sleeping with my friend, I would confront my lover, not by saying I had caught him in a dream, but that I had a dream about such an event. I would then tell me lover my fears and see what develops.

2. If its *not* likely, I would see the people in the dreams as parts of myself and ask:

What are a few characteristics of my lover (dishonest, commanding willful, self-centered, cheater etc.)? and similarly, a few characteristics of my friend (self-involved, commanding, treacherous, sneaky, sleazy etc.) that might be worth exploring as aspects of myself that need examination? Can I find these characteristic in myself? Are they all negative or are some worth keeping?

When I "go on a trip", what does that mean?

Let's say that this dream signals to me that I usually keep certain personality characteristics apart in myself, but when I do something that doesn't require these characteristics, when I go on a trip, they come together - they join.

In waking life, this joining of personality characteristics may not be something I want to happen. However, in my inner world, I have a choice of combining two or more personality characteristics that I don't usually allow to come together. What would happen if I were more self-involved and willful? more commanding and sleazy?

Are these new personality combinations something I want or don't want to explore in my waking life?

Now your dream has become a very useful tool for me to combine and play with new values in myself. Thanks, and hope you get as much from it as I did!

About the Author:

Richard Wilkerson is general editor for The Internet Dream E-zine, Electric Dreams, and director of DreamGate, the Internet Communications and Dream Education Center. He writes the Cyberphile column for the Association for the Study of Dreams Newsletter.