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Folks, a week ago I told you about Dreamer Guy and the dream he had. If you haven’t checked that out, do so now, because otherwise none of what you’re reading or listening to now is going to make sense.
First, what I found interesting is that when I asked some people what they thought of the dream, they were dismissive that the dream had any meaning at all. There seems to be this lingering belief in some people’s minds that dreams are kind of like the brain wandering through the forest at night when it isn’t given something to do. Maybe it comes across a talking hamburger, maybe it comes across the co-worker you quarreled with that day, but the pictures are randomly thrown together from our memories. Now, folks, that’s just stupid. Billions of years of evolution, and you think dreams serve no purpose? Now, I know why you might think that way, and why a lot of supposedly smart people have made that claim, because the actual purpose for dreams is a little bit inconvenient for some.
You see, dreams are the one guaranteed place where we will be told the truth. That is, of course, other than listening to Dr. Matt. But, unlike when we’re awake, our conscious minds aren’t mucking about, giving us doubts, thinking our way out of it, numbing us out, finding distractions, etc. The problem with dreams is that, because our conscious minds have taken a back seat, the images and events do not always resemble our everyday reality. That’s why you have a whole genre of dream interpretation books which tell you what means what, but folks, those books aren’t going to give you a lick of help if you don’t trust yourself.
So, the real reason why many think dreams are meaningless is that we don’t know how to listen to ourselves. Our dreams are sometimes like a blasting stereo, and we wake up and say, “Oh well, that was strange.” That’s just willful ignorance, people, and look, you can be that way if you want to, I’m just pointing out to you that it’s stupid.
Maybe you’re saying, “But Dr. Matt, what good is it if my dreams are telling me the truth if I don’t know what it means?” I can understand that; it can be a tricky language to learn, but much easier than learning another spoken language. I’d say first, write down your dreams. Not just what happened, but how you felt about it. And, well, ask yourself what it means. You’d be surprised how well that works.
Sometimes it’s a lot more straightforward than you think. One dream that Dreamer Guy had was during when his girlfriend was away, in which he kept sending her messages which were clear when transmitted but ended up garbled and indecipherable when she received them. In the dream, he realized that the messages were garbled because she wasn’t making the connection back. He had another dream in the same time period where he sent messages, but they were intercepted by some guy, a guy which then took the messages and re-published them himself to the girlfriend. Dreamer Guy was concerned but didn’t really understand until his girlfriend returned, said she had concerns about the relationship but did not want his input on finding a solution. Then, the meaning of the first dream became clear. A few weeks later, he discovered the meaning of the second dream, when he learned that some guy had indeed been putting moves on his girlfriend during her trip. (Oh, and by the way, fuck that guy.)
Anyway, you’re saying: “Big deal, Dr. Matt. The dreams didn’t help him at the time, because he didn’t understand their meaning until he found out first-hand what the dreams were trying to tell him.” Well, maybe, except his dreams provided him a way to know what was true and wasn’t true from what she told him. Trusting yourself is a lot more reliable than trusting what other people tell you.
So, let’s get back to that cool dream that Dreamer Guy had that I wrote about last week. I’ve already talked a lot about dreams in general, so I don’t want to spend too much time on it. For one, I haven’t really had coffee yet this morning, nor one of those tasty breakfast wraps at Jugo Juice.
I told Dreamer Guy that his dream was essentially about intimacy. First, in his dream, he was willing to have a relationship with someone who was closed off emotionally. He thought it was accepting someone for who they were on their terms, but the dream demonstrated how that just made a relationship meaningless for him. Also, by accepting those terms and not addressing the lack of intimacy, he didn’t realize that the person he was with was actually capable of that expression of her feelings. The dream even showed where he learned to accept those terms, by his mother showing up, a woman who carefully controlled her expression of emotion and did not let her needs be easily known. Eventually, the dream demonstrated the gift of relationship and the gift of intimacy, a gift that isn’t destroyed even if two people part ways. What we learn, people, cannot be unlearned.
Or, perhaps, like a fan said, the dream was simply a silly random firing of his neurons based on the fact that he liked art.
Just My Thoughts,
Dr. Matt*
