Empty Voices

There are plenty of resources available for dream interpretations, and many of them eventually point to the obvious.  Some of the most baffling dreams do have the most obvious meanings, but it can take a few side roads to find the one that makes the most sense.  This is definitely the case with recurring dreams.

In general, recurring dreams usually point to something that the unconscious is desperately trying to make conscious.  By continually pointing to the same elusive symbols and signs, there is an urgent message to the waking mind.  Most dreamers go through a lot of searching and doubt to uncover the meaning, and it’s almost always a mistake to assume that the meaning can be expressed in simple phrases.  The symbols recur because there is an emotional response as well as an intellectual one, and the answer is somewhere in between.

For example, if someone is considering a move to an appartement, Montreal being the city of choice, there may be a stream of recurring dreams about places.  The dreamer might have a series of dreams of being in unfamiliar spaces.  This is a very common recurring dream, and it can have lots of possible meanings.  Its obvious source, of course, comes from concerns and preoccupations with the impending move.  The mind is working overtime, trying to imagine the new place during the day, and these thoughts continue inside the dreaming mind.

Dreams about living spaces can also have other meanings.  The living space, whether a house or an apartment or any other kind of dwelling, is often a representation of the self.  Finding oneself in an unfamiliar part of their own home can mean that there are hidden parts of the psyche that are ready to come to light.  They can also hint that the dreamer is starting to live on a more profound level, in a place where the inner self is starting to open itself up and talk to the waking mind.  Hidden memories, unfocused desires, and unacknowledged influences are starting to come to light.

But it could also be much simpler.  It could very well be that the dreamer is thinking about a new apartment, because it is time to find apartments and make a move.  Sometimes the unconscious is simple, and sends simple messages to simply underscore that things are already going in the right direction.  A dream about an apartment can sometimes mean that it’s time to get a new apartment.

The unconscious is a rich reservoir of potential, offering clues to the deepest parts of who we are.  In the ways that a good therapist can help on change their ideas of dreams into realities, the raw material of daydreams, or even fleeting desires, can also become hot spots for potential in shifting realities.  This can refer just as much to dreams about being naked in public as to dreams about breaking down on the side of the road.

We shift from waking life to daydream all the time.  Most people, on an average workday, will slip into dreamlike states without even realizing it.  This means that the lines between conscious states are not only tenuous, but rather thin.  One can, for example, be reading a honda repair manual online, and fall into a kind of small trance.  It’s not the same as a dream in deep sleep, but it can perhaps amount to the same thing.  In a waking or a sleepy state one might be plagued with low-level anxiety related to breaking down on the side of the road.  A full-on dream, with hazy memories or with extremely lucid details, about a car breaking down can wake one up with the same emotional response.  Waking anxiety, daydreams about being stranded, or a dream about a breakdown can all amount to the same basic fears.

A breakdown dream is usually interpreted as a sign that one’s life is out of control.  Something about the way one has laid down their plans is essentially broken.  There is a need to stop and pay some attention to the way one has decided to do things.  It’s a sign of re-evaluation.  Daydream and anxiety can also reveal the same basic notion, and they are simply ways that the unconscious self has of sending important messages to the waking self.

There are, of course, lots of other possibilities.  In any kind of dream interpretation, culture and context are much more involved than most systems of dream analysis will admit.  There are very few universal symbols, and even fewer universal meanings.  What is death for one culture is rebirth for another culture.  Then, of course, there are also literal interpretations.  One might be thinking about these things because their car, literally, needs work, and the mind is just alerting itself to the fact that it’s time to pick up a manual on engine repair and nothing more than that.

The things that haunt people in their dreams can be very revealing about the deeper layers of the unconscious.  There are some symbols that can stand for deeply buried notions, forgotten ideas, and untriggered memories.  At times these can be the keys that unlock the door to a major breakthrough in dynamic psychological transformations.  And sometimes, as Freud supposedly has said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.”

This can absolutely apply to some dreams where there seems to be a very literal interpretation at hand.  If someone is sick, and dreaming about doing the chores they usually do but are unable, then there may be no hidden meaning here at all.  At least, none that needs immediate psychic attention.  It could very well be that the dream is just the mind wanting to do the tasks it usually does, and since it’s unable to do them during the day, it happens at night.  Habit is a very big part of the unconscious, because that particular image machine seems to like repetition, just as much as the waking consciousness does.

This is always a good place to start when wondering about repetitive and obsessive dreams about money.  Recurring dreams do speak of a preoccupation of some kind, and sometimes they are trying to get one’s attention.  Sometimes the hidden message is right on the surface, however.  If one is dreaming over and over about money concerns, and about going to websites like www.MoneyMutualTV.com, then the message here can be quite literal.  There is worry about money, and the mind is offering its own solution.

Dreams about money or banks can definitely have more obscure meanings.  But they are usually related to the same kinds of issues that can be resolved in a very literal way.  If they play out every night as if it were a list of the same complaints one is telling oneself during the waking hours, then it’s simply a matter of taking an action of some kind.  Doing something proactive during the waking hours to take financial pressure off will eventually make the dreams go away.  Even in the most difficult of circumstances, small actions are the key to making a situation better.  Helplessness is always a way of making the obsessive part of the persona come to life.

What is particularly interesting about money dreams, however, is that there is a symbolism that plays very well into the language of the unconscious.  Money is already a symbol for something else.  The dollar bill is a note that used to represent gold, and now the gold it represents is symbolic.  So there is a rich and complex language being spoken in dreams about money.  They are quite ethereal, and while they certainly can be references to issues of security and social status, chances are also very high that these meanings are also there in the waking mind.