Dream Visions

More on Dreaming Phantom Bells | Blog Your Blessings

In the original post on being awakened by phantom doorbell sounds, I mentioned that I have also experienced being awakened by the sound of a telephone ringing, but not for some years. I was surprised to hear from comments on this blog that lots of you have had the same phantom doorbell experience.

I think there are at least a couple of reasons why people are not awakened by phantom telephone ringing these days. One is that in the past 20 years or so we have become used to answering machines and voice mail, so we are not the slaves to the telephone that we used to be. Instead, we rush to answer the door.

Also, with the prevalence of ringtone options on mobile phones, the sound of a ringing phone is no longer distinctive. The sound a mobile phone makes can be anything from a baby’s giggle to a hiphop hit. Phones no longer literally ring. In fact, some make no sound at all to announce a call; they just vibrate.

Recently, in a book called Magical Uses of Thought Forms, by Dolores Ashcroft-Nowicki and J.H. Brennan, I ran across the statement that people often hear a bell or ringing sound that is their own inner self trying to get their attention. It is a call to listen to their own inner voice and to pay more attention to spiritual messages.

Wow! Just like our dreams, which are our inner self trying to communicate with us through sensations, stories, images, and sounds. The phantom doorbell may be spiritual wake-up call, a message from the inner us (our spirit) to the outer us (our conscious mind) to wake up to our own inner life.

In other words a helpful message from us to ourselves, a dream that calls attention to what is really important: our spiritual life, “waking up”. I would call that a blessing. How about you?

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

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Dream Interpretation Books | BYB

I have never much liked dream interpretation books. You know the kind: “If you see black dog, it means…”

Experts and personal experience both say that the same symbols mean different things to different people. They even mean different things to the same person at different times.

Dream symbols are culturally based. So the same symbol may mean a lot to people in one culture, and nothing in another.

Some of the dream books I’ve seen are clearly old and out of date, featuring objects that modern people would never dream about, because they are not part of our lives. Maybe our grandparents (or theirs) would have dreamed about gaslights, or ice delivery men, but we would not.

Most of the old books are quite sexist, and many contain racial stereotyping that is just unacceptable today. So they are not only useless but also unpleasant.

As I have written here before, the dream studies and research done over the last few decades by psychologists and other clinical researchers have shown that whatever symbol system you feed to your subconscious mind—whether consciously studied or absorbed from your culture—will be used to communicate with you in dreams.

So another way to look at dream interpretation books (and people, courses, and web sites) is this: Are these the symbols and meanings that you want to store in the deepest part of your psyche and use to communicate with your inner self? In some cases, the answer would clearly be, “No!”

On the other hand, I’ve been thinking lately that if you do find a set of symbols that you like, a dream interpretation scheme that you are happy with, why not deliberately study and absorb it?

Why not chose a set of symbols that will be beautiful, meaningful, and uplifting for you? Why not choose a set of symbols that are relevant to your own life? And then study them till you make them your own?

Giving your inner self a large vocabulary of meaningful, relevant, and beautiful symbols with which to construct your dreams might make your dreams not only easier to interpret but more pleasant, too.

Sounds like it could be a real blessing, a blessing that you can give yourself. What do you think? Please share your thoughts.

Meanwhile, I hope you are blessed with beautiful dreams that are meaningful and helpful for you.

Here’s Something to Dream On | BYB

Recently I got an email message about a special “Dreaming” issue of a wonderful art zine called Astarte’s Mega-Zine. You may not have heard of it. It’s fairly new and probably not on the newsstands. But the writers include well-known artists and authors such as Lucia Cappaccione.

In looking at past issues I have recognized most of them from their bylines in national magazines. I’ve even taken workshops from some of them.

I’m very excited that this innovative visual and written arts publication is devoting a whole issue to dreaming. If you go to the website and see what the issue includes, I think you will be, too.

Just as studying symbol systems helps your subconscious mind communicate with you, viewing and reading vivid imagery—visual and written—can also enrich your dreams.

Following is the entire message, links and all. I didn’t want to wait till I got my copy of the magazine to tell you about it.

We all need dreaming in our lives.

When I set the theme for issue 5 of Astarte’s Mega-Zine as
“Dreaming”, I never expected the enthusiastic response I got
from the Go-Make-Art Panel of Experts and other contributors.
Wow. Have we ever got some inspiring reading and projects
for you!

http://www.Go-Make-Art.com

Also new on our site this month:

- Jacqueline Sullivan audio interview
- Hanna Andersson art in The Spotlight
- New Panel of Experts members: Seena Frost & Clare Goodwin

… and the Dreaming issue, of course.

Check it out:

http://www.go-make-art.com/products/astarte.html

If you aren’t a subscriber yet, perhaps it is time.

Go-Make-Art. It’s good for you!

Stacey
Go-Make-Art.com

PO Box 801
Marshfield, Wisconsin
54449
US

I hope you will take a look at the Astarte’s Mega-Zine website, order the “Dreaming” issue (or subscribe), and share your experiences after reading it and absorbing the imagery.

When the email arrived, announcing this “Dreaming” ezine, I considered it a blessing. I hope you do, too.

Let us know how (or if) it affects your dreams.

Dream Symbols and Living Spirits

Dreams and symbols are both vast and interesting topics. There is a lot to think about, and both subjects touch on many disciplines: psychology, anthropology, mythology, and so on.

Cyber Celt wrote an interesting comment Sunday on my post about dream symbolism. This comment made me stop and think:

As you study symbols, do you notice how many are similar across different cultures. The raven, the wolf, the whale, the sun . . .

Well, I consider Raven, Wolf, and Whale to be spirits, not symbols, so cultures that actually interact with them both as real animals in nature and as spirits might have similar impressions of them.

The Sun, another spirit, shows very different faces to different cultures. She was the harsh and fearsome lioness to the predynastic Egyptians, a lovely female spirit to the ancient Japanese, and a dazzling young man to late pre-Christian Mediterranean cultures.

In modern cultures it appears that the spirits get turned into symbols, and the symbols often stray far from actual experience. Sadly, modern people don’t seem to realize that—or even miss having actual experiences, as opposed to making assumptions based on abstract ideas or commonly accepted symbolism.

Also, one symbol set is often derived from another, as symbols are passed from one culture to another, and as the needs of cultures gradually evolve.

So, yes, I do see similarities among some sets of symbols, but I try to accept each symbol set as a whole system, on its own merits, and not assume that the meanings that appear similar to me are universal—or even related to each other—if that makes any sense.

Archaeologist Mariya Gimbutas wrote some interesting things about the difference between living spirits and symbols (though not specifically about dreams) in her final book, The Living Goddesses.

It seems to me that most books and most of what is taught in school are too oversimplified. They make so many assumptions of universality (conveniently skipping the many facts that do not fit), that they are very misleading. The simplest cure for that, I guess, is to read the authentic teaching stories and mythologies of many cultures from every part of the world.

But if you read anthologies, you are often reading stories that were chosen (perhaps unconsciously) for how well they fit into the belief system of the author. So naturally they seem similar. And often the stories are also “retold” to make them fit even better.

I recommend reading books and papers by anthropologists and folklorists who go out and interview actual members of each culture and translate the stories as accurately as they can, without “retelling” to suit themselves.

A recent favorite book is Singing Story, Healing Drum, by Kyra Van Duesen, a folklorist who spent years interviewing shamans and storytellers in several different cultures and language groups in Siberia, letting the people speak for themselves. Siberia is a vast region of Asia that includes quite a few countries, some of which come from entirely unrelated language groups, so the cultures are different as well.

Van Duesen seems to have done a good job, as both the essentials of shamanism, shared by many cultures, and the specifics of the different cultural groups shine through. I love that book and highly recommend it.

Another great book on symbolism and spirits is The Spell of the Sensuous. One of the essays is on how becoming literate completely changes the way cultures think. The author shows how the thinking and the language changed rapidly even between the time of Socrates, who taught orally, and his own student Plato, who was a writer.

The author points out that preliterate cultures think concretely, based on actual experience of the senses, while literate cultures become more and more abstract, farther and farther from actual experience. That makes sense to me.

It is very hard to enter into the worldview of another culture. In many cases, you would have to learn a very difficult language and actually live with the people for years, participating in their culture, to begin to understand their reality. Without doing that, there is no way to know for sure if what appears to be the same dream symbol actually means the same thing.

For example, to some cultures the spider is a male trickster, called Iktomi by the Lakota and Anansi by some African peoples. Does that mean he has all the same characteristics? Not necessarily.

The nomadic peoples of the Great Plains observed the trap door spider, which tricks its prey into falling into a hole. I don’t know what kind of spider the Africans had observed, or how what they saw fit into their way of thinking.

To cultures that weave cloth, the spider is often female and benevolent. For example, to the Pueblo peoples, the Navajo, and ancient Greeks, spider is the weaver of the world (Grandmother Spider) and the patroness of weavers (Ariadne).

But there again, we are talking about spirits, not just symbols. The people believed that the spirits actually spoke to them in dreams and visions. They didn’t consider them to be symbols, though they often used symbols to represent the individual spirits.

Wow, this stuff is complicated to discuss…but it is the kind of stuff I think about much of the time. I love it!

Thanks, CyberCelt for your thought-provoking comment. I originally replied in another comment, but I ended up writing so much that it was too hard to read (because I can’t format comments properly with this blog theme). So it seemed best to just make it into a post.

I love it when blogging becomes a conversation, and I hope there will be more of that here. Dreams and dreaming should be discussed from many perspectives.

Symbols to Feed Your Dreams | Blog Your Blessings

The subconscious mind speaks to us largely through symbols. Because our dreams serve partly as a way for our subconscious mind to communicate with us, if you feed your subconscious mind more symbols, it can communicate with you more clearly.

You can add to the ability of your subconscious mind to reach you by studying vivid, complete systems of symbolism that add to the vocabulary of your mind, and your dreams, in a coherent way. That makes it easier to interpret your dreams.

Religions have their own symbol systems. So do certain mystical or esoteric groups inside and outside of religions. There are other symbol systems, some quite elaborate, that are more culturally based.

Some symbol systems will speak to you personally more than others. They will fire your imagination and give you feeling of understanding. Those are the ones to look for.

Back in the 1980s there was a fad for studying the Norse or Germanic runes. You may recall that there were a lot of popular books and oracle systems based on them. Some became mainstream best-sellers.

Some people studied the Celtic ogham system. But the ogham marks are quite linear and were only used for inscriptions on monuments, so that was less productive.

Still, the ogham were supposedly based on a Celtic symbol system that assigned meanings to various trees and other plants, and many people found that the so-called tree calendar spoke to them intuitively.

Over the centuries many people in the West have studied the tarot. While its origins are mysterious, the tarot is still in use because the symbolism speaks deeply to people of European heritage–and to many others.

The tarot has developed into a complex and useful symbol system that only reached full flowering in the Rider-Waite tarot deck about 100 years ago. It continues to flourish because it helps the subconscious mind communicate.

Tibet, India, Japan, China, and other Eastern countries have immensely old, complex and effective symbolism that still speaks to dreamers today. People in the East developed Buddhist iconography, Hindu and Buddhist mandalas and other intricate symbol systems that have been perfected and proven valuable over thousands of years.

The even older shamanic symbols of the huge Siberian region have spread throughout much of the world. They have become part of the symbol systems of many cultures.

Nowadays shamanic symbolism is making a huge recovery since the fall of the Soviet Union. In a region with many cultures, nationalities, and languages completely unrelated to each other, the shamanic dream practices and symbols are amazingly widespread and similar.

The symbol systems of the Americas are widely diverse, including the Mayan calendar, the mysterious Olmec heads, thousands of Native American teaching stories representing hundreds of different languages and belief systems, medicine wheels, animal spirits, and many other sets of symbols.

Africa offers infinitely deep, rich and complex symbolism. Just a few examples are the hundreds of beautiful and meaningful adinkra symbols of Ghana and surrounding areas, the hieroglyphics and religious symbols of ancient Egypt, and the intricately beautiful Tuareg symbols representing each of the main oases on the caravan routes. And there are many more.

All over the Pacific Ocean area there is a wealth of symbolism: from the intricate totem poles of the far north to the giant Easter Island statues to the paintings and songs of the Australian Aborigine peoples and the intricate tatoos of the Maori of New Zealand.

Did I mention the Kabbala? And the beautiful carvings and temples of Southeast Asia, Malaysia, and Indonesia? What about the music of Madagascar, Africa, and the Near East?

With a little web surfing or a trip to the library, you can find as many more examples as there are cultures in the world. Many of those cultures have quite sophisticated and precise methods for working with dreams.

Ancient peoples throughout the world mastered many kinds of dreamwork-–including dream incubation, dream interpretation, active dreaming, lucid dreaming, and out of body dream travel. Today you can feed your dreams with the intuitive wisdom and subconscious knowledge of the ages.

The whole dreaming world is blessed with an immense store of evocative symbol systems. May they enrich your dreams, too.

Dream Information for All | Blog Your Blessings

In the last two generations there has been a huge amount of scientific research into dreaming. Researchers have studied both the physiology and the subjective experience of dreaming. Therapists have kept careful notes and published their findings from thousands (millions?) of patients.

One of the interesting findings is that the kinds of dreams we have (the metaphors and meanings of symbols) are shaped by our culture, our beliefs, and the school of therapy that the therapist believes in. One psychologist documented how her dreams used Freudian metaphors when she was in Freudian analysis, Jungian symbolism when studied by a Jungian therapist, and so on.

The point of this is that there is now so much good information about dreaming that you can find a wealth of good books, CDs, tapes, DVDs, and such on line and in local bookstores and public libraries. You can find information on modern dream research. You can also find formerly secret traditional dream lore from many cultures around the world, ancient and modern, indigenous and mixed.

We are indeed blessed to live in a time when so much scientific, traditional, and esoteric dream knowledge is easily available to us. May we use it wisely!