Dream Interpretation And The Art Of Unlocking Metaphors

We can't deny the fact: we spend about one-third of our lives sleeping. No matter how busy we say we are and no matter how we would like to extend the 24 hours in the clock just for us to finish everything--we still, and we just have to succumb to sleep. Obviously, our body and mind need to rest. And after a hard day's work, we owe ourselves just that.

Of course, we know that we don't just let ourselves fall dead-asleep every night. We dream. Our minds are at their most awake and freest when we are dreaming, and we dream for the best of reasons.

Oneirology, the science that investigates the very subjective and flimsy realm of dreams considers dreams generally in three ways: Physiologically, they are responses to neural processes while we are asleep; psychologically, they are projections of our Unconscious; and spiritually, as believed in olden times and up to now, dreams are messages from God or predictions of the future.

Or if we want a simpler explanation of dreams, the Charaka Samhita of India says dreams are “what we have seen, heard, experienced, wish to experience, forced to experience, imagined, and by the inherent nature of the body".

It has been said that much of what we experience as déjà vu is simply our minds recalling something we have dreamed before. Perhaps, more importantly than remembering, dreams are what we want to happen. Or dreams are what we would carry out in real life if we were only braver, less shy.

This is, basically, the finding of psychologist Joe Griffin, who for 12 years intensively researched and studied scientific evidences on the topic of dreams. His unified theory of dreams explains that dreams are metaphorical translations of what we expect during our waking state. Our expectations and desires, of course, are not always met in the real world (either because of circumstances beyond our control or because our ego prohibits it (that is, we are too shy or too scared to act upon them).

Whatever it is, our brain has to finish the cycle of arousal triggered by those expectations. These frustrated expectations are thus carried over to our dreaming world. Dreams then, needless to say, reveal a lot about the dreamer. Dreams are the portals into our Unconscious. Indeed, we are such stuff as dreams are made of. And considering that our dreams are almost always metaphorical in content, we can rightfully say that we are poets in our dreams.

But unlike real poets with pen, we don’t usually know the meaning behind our own metaphors. For this, humanity is deeply indebted to psychics and dream interpreters. In a world that becomes increasingly jaded when it comes to spiritual matters, psychics and oneiromancers unlock those metaphors. By helping us understand our dreams, they coax us back into life from a state of “wandering death.” Consider Joseph, the most famous dream interpreter in the Bible. He advised the Pharaoh on political issues based on his dreams, which inevitably helped him rule his people wisely.

We need that too. Now more than ever we need to take charge of ourselves, and only through acknowledging what we really want in life can we do that. We need to look deep into ourselves and stare at our dreams in the eye. If we have to ask for help from others, from the gifted people who can guide us in the dreamworld, from the psychics who make plain for us what we embellish in our dreams, then let’s ask for help. The important thing is we are now aware. And we will no longer be dead-asleep.