My significant other has been suggesting that I write a article on understanding dreams for the last month or so. Interestingly enough several people have presented me with dreams they have found particularly disturbing over the last few weeks.

One of the problems I see is that people take their dreams literally. Therefore, it can be very upsetting when they have a dream that is shocking to them, for example, having an affair, killing a dolphin, or countless other disturbing scenarios.

From my experience, dreams are not literal. Instead they are stories from our subconscious mind that are encoded with messages for us. Often people are not able to get the messages because they are looking at them too literally.

In my philosophy human beings are continuously working towards bringing themselves back to wholeness or oneness. We are even trying to do this while we sleep.

This is where dreams come in. We all have places that are hurt, unhealed, or not integrated within us. Often un-knowingly these are places we have resistance to seeing or connecting with inside of us. I call these places “blind spots.”

Our subconscious mind provides us with these beautifully told stories and even sometimes nightmares to provide us with the opportunity to integrate, heal and move toward wholeness.

How to get the encoded messages from your dreams

The first step is to see your dream as many aspects of you. Regardless of the characters or the scenarios of how the characters interact with you in the dream, they are all you. In addition, everything in the dream is you, the floor, the mop, the sky, the plant, the wall, the ground, etc. In essence everything is you interacting with you. Often what may seem a terrible thing, such as killing someone or something, can be a metaphor for how you are killing an aspect of your self. For example, if you killed a dolphin in your dream, it could be that you have been working really hard at your job and pushing away the creative or spiritual side of yourself. In the dream this aspect of yourself is saying, “you are killing me.” Please notice that the creative and spiritual side of you needs to be expressed too. You could take this as an invitation to grant more time in your waking life to the spiritual or creative side of yourself.

The next step to decoding a dream is to write down all the parts in the dream or as many as possible, including the floor, ceiling, walls, closets, etc.

In the beginning this step is probably easiest to do with a skilled practioner or friend. Simply start telling your dream in the present tense as if it is happening now. For example, “I am walking in a room.” I am now picking up a coffee cup. I am talking with Kristen about the life of bumblebees in space.”

I usually recommend taking the dream through at least three different parts. First start as the character that is you in your dream. Next choose whatever part seems to stand out to you. You can pick any from the list you have made of parts in your dream. Each time you become a new character begin by describing yourself, how big are you, what color are you, what is your purpose in the dream, etc.

This is an example of a character from one of my dreams. I am a shark, although more like a cartoon shark than a real shark. I have rough scaly skin. I am bluish grey. I have a long nose, blue eyes, and sharp teeth. I am about 6 feet long and weigh about 300 pounds. I like swimming in cold dark water. Most of the people are afraid of me. My purpose in this dream is to teach that what looks scary is often just our own imagination and nothing to fear at all.

The idea here is to embody the shark or whichever character you are playing. Once you have become the character now take us in the present moment through the dream from this character’s perspective, again, using “I statements” in the present tense. For example, if I am the shark, I would say, “I am swimming in the ocean. I notice light is coming in from above. I am now seeing a man falling in the water and I feel strongly compelled to bite him. I am swimming up to him and biting him. I shake him a few times and hear the words ‘wake up, wake up’ come out of my mouth. I am now noticing that this man is dressed like a priest. I want him to stop acting so spiritual and uptight. I want me to stop acting so spiritual and uptight.”

Side note: In the above dream I realized eventually that the shark was my spiritual teacher in the dream and he was trying to wake me up from thinking that spirituality was so serious. His message was that it was possible for a life of spiritual growth to be fun and creative, that meditating 2 hours a day was not nearly as important as I once thought. What was important was to allow more flow, creativity and spontaneity to enter into my life.

Lastly, after you have embodied and taken us through your dream with at least three characters, you can now start having the characters enter into dialogue with each other. I have often found that the different characters in my dreams have things they would like to express to each other and sometimes they have conflicts to work out. It might be that you want to excel in your career while another aspect of you wants to spend a week in the woods camping and slowing down. Often when you discover inner tensions and conflicts in you, it is then possible to work them out in a way that helps to better integrate the life you would like to live as a whole being.

When doing this process I have found that the deeper messages encoded in my dreams just naturally start to reveal themselves as I go through the process. I frequently get these “ah ha” moments.

This work can be done by yourself, although it is easiest to first do with some outside help.

Note: Please don’t get stuck in the story of your dream and feel badly about yourself. I have seen many people cause themselves unnecessary pain and shame by doing this. From my experience when you take the time to find the encoded messages in the dream, it rarely has anything to do with what the original literal meaning would suggest.

Thank you for reading my article!
 For more information on my work (Hugo Elfinstone) please visit:
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