QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:
Dreams Department

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Question

I've had a dream where I was being smothered by someone or something...when I tried to wake myself up, it felt like my bed was pulling me down through the mattress and that the room or atmosphere was "wavering"...it was a very surreal experience, frightening. I tried to go back to sleep, but felt myself going back into the same dream. I had to turn the light on in my room to reenact the "white light protection" of "unsafe" dreams. What does this mean? Was I involved in some other-worldly experience?

Answer

Traveling in other-worlds via dreams has been recorded in the journeys of many a shaman and there is a tradition of contact with other realms via dreams recorded in all major religions. But while shamanism is making a return in the popular esoteric culture, real shamans must be highly trained and deeply interwoven into the culture they are working in. Transplanting the theories of one culture into another has proven to be very difficult, to say the least, despite the claims of people like Carlos Castaneda. In other words, there are no experts yet that could answer your question as it is asked, and like the meaning of dreams in general, you are the final authority on just what world or other-world the encounter involved. However, if this were my dream I would treat it like a nightmare, allowing for the possibility that the dream may be from dreamland or from somewhere else.

If this were my dream...In my dream I find the experience very frightening. I see fear as a sign to back off if the fear is reasonable, but a sign I have backed off too far if it is not reasonable. Demands by dreams, be they monsters or moods or elemental attacks, have been found to be neutralized and even turned into insights by those willing to *confront* the aggressor. It is interesting that this technique was brought to the West by Kilton Stewart, who claimed to have learned it from the Senoi tribe, whom he described as a people who shared dreams every morning. The Senoi legends have never been verified, but the techniques have become widely used.

Here's a variation of them:

1. Recognize that it *is* a dream. This is not to dismiss the dream experience, it is simply to ground in the reality of the medium I am conscious, in this case, dream reality. The rules in dreamland are different than waking life. I can fly and crash without physical harm, but someone calling me stupid or frightening me is a no-no and hurts emotionally.

 

2. Confront the Aggressor. This can be a hungry wolf, a 10th level sub-demon or the whole world collapsing around me. Usually saying "Stop!" and moving forward is enough. Aggressive beings in dreamland are usually so wrapped up in their roles, they can't adjust to having someone confront them.

 

3. Reparation. Like children who are misbehaving, beings from other worlds need to make up for the mischief they cause. Sometimes I even demand to be given a gift. The Old Testament says Jacob wrestled with an angel all night before it would give up its name. But then he got a kingdom in return.

2/20/98

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.