I am one of those who dream often and can recall the substance of my dreams when I wake up.My dreams are usually a jumble of events from my past, present and future life thrown together to entertain me while I sleep.
Mostly, the things I dream about don't make sense. In my dreams, events that happened in the past are interwoven with future aspirations with some surprising, and sometimes humorous twists. Throw in the occasional scare of a mislaid nightmare and you have the full terrain of the subject of my dreams.
I don't only dream gibberish, often I dream about events in a natural progression that seems so real that when I wake up I’m surprised it was just a dream.
And of course, every once in a while I get a dream that seems to be more than just a dose of entertainment while I sleep. Some dreams appear to have a deeper message that requires action and that was the kind of dream I had a couple of nights ago.
Dreamleaks
Coming from a family of dreamers whose vivid dreams reveal the hidden present and give glimpses of what will happen in future, I had reason to read deeper meaning into my dream. When one of my kin dreams, the dream usually turns out to be an accurate revelation of real events. The good thing about these prophetic dreams is that they keep me in check, since I worry that any mischief I might be up to will be revealed to one of us in a dream.
Since family secrets should not be divulged to all and sundry, I will desist from leaking some true revelations that came through the dreams of my kin. But I can say that when providence was endowing my family the gift of revealing dreams, I probably received the smallest share.
Dream interpretation is as old as the ages. In the Bible and in some ancient civilisations like Egypt dreams were seen as a means through which supernatural messages were conveyed to the dreamer, but the catch was that only those with special powers could unravel their meanings. Sigmund Freud - the psychoanalyst- in his book on the interpretation of dreams, also wrote that dreams were an expression of the dreamer’s unfulfilled wishes.
The desire to read deeper meanings in dreams did not fade out with the ancients. Even today people wonder about the depth of meaning in dreams. That is why there are dream interpreters and dream dictionaries to help you interpret the meaning of the movies that play in your head while you sleep.
There are numerous dream symbols that can be interpreted to mean all sorts of things. For instance one dream dictionary explained that a dream with clothespins in it could mean that “you are trying to get a firmer grasp on your public self". But commonplace images like pegs do not worry me. It is a dream like the one I had recently that bothers me.
In fact it is not the whole dream that perturbs but rather the part with a snake in it, and a cobra for that matter. The beginning of the dream was filled with petty disagreements among friends. The middle displayed some friends doing laundry in my backyard and finally the part that jolted me: I was at the backyard and sitting on a manhole near me was a cobra poised to attack. I felt powerless to move and knew that I would be the snake’s victim.
If I escaped it would be with a cobra bite to nurse. I tried to strategise on how I would escape but deep inside I knew I couldn’t. I do not know what happened next; but when I woke up I remember wondering whether the dream had a deeper message to convey, because I hardly ever dream about snakes.
If I had sought the advise of a psychoanalyst on the meaning of my dream, he or she would probably have told me there were some fears or unresolved concerns that the dream was calling my attention to.
Flipping through online dream dictionaries has not given me a satisfactory explanation as to why I had this dream. But my instincts tell me there are some subconscious fears I need to deal with.
In the meantime, I’ll dream on and in so doing my subconscious fears, perceptions and aspirations will be laid bare before me.
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