You tell me yours, but I won’t tell you mine . . .

And so we dream. Every night you have your dreams and every night I have mine.

We joke about them and often our first words at the office the next day are,   ” My gosh, I had the craziest, (weirdest, saddest, wildest, sexiest, puzzling, etc.) dream last night’ and then we go and tell about them.

Once you begin in understanding the meaning of your dreams, however, you stop broadcasting them to the world, for it’s much the same as disrobing in public.  Indeed, you learn to share them only with someone you trust implicitly, or you save them in your dream notebook so you can later ponder them in the silence of your own heart.

Because our dreams . . . the experts tell . . . are of the unconscious part of a person, trying its best to communicate with the conscious part of the person. My dreams are the wiser part of Me, talking to the more foolish part of me. Your dreams are the wiser part of YOU talking to the more foolish part of you. And not to be taken lightly.

The Native Americans say, “Cherish your dreams for they are the children of your Soul, the blueprint of both your achievements and you deepest hopes.” They (the dreams) are trying to tell us what is missing or out of balance, in our daily lives. Dreams seek to put balance and harmony into our lives.

If my life . . . I am taught . . . is too free, undisciplined and unstructured, then my dreams will be structured, disciplined and with restrictions. And vice-versa.

If my life is restricted and hemmed in by laws and customs. then in my dreams, I will be free. Free and untrammeled as any bird and I will fly and dance far and wide. See, our dreams seek balance.

Our dreams also reflect the culture and thinking of the era we happen to live in. Freud dipped deeply into the dream’s life and came up with the theory that almost all (95%) of dreams were concerned with sex.

And he was right . . . for his day and  age . . . for you see, when he did his exploration of dreams, the world was an inhibited place to be.   Sex was not spoken of.  It was a no-no. restricted, Unmentionable, and most certainly ‘not nice.’ So. quite naturally, his clients, in such a locked-in- atmosphere, had dreams of freedom, sexuality and sensuality.

But along about the 1960’s, the era of the Baby Boomers, therapists tell us, our dreams again began to change. Dramatically. The world as a whole, was living with a lack of discipline never before experienced in the modern world. And our dreams???

Yes, yes, yes. They told of balance, balance, balance And even today, our dreams are, as a whole, becoming more and more disciplined.

Home, picket fence, garden, man and wife, children at play. The old idea of family and cottage with no divorce or retinue of lovers. No drugs, no partying. Structure is what the basic dream of today points toward. Balance, for when the pendulum swings too far our dreams tell us it’s time to pull it back.

The experts tell us to look at our dreams carefully, for they are all in symbols, and have no printed  sub-titles.  They are to be pondered and thought through deeply. silently and privately..

Keep a notebook by your bedside and in the moment of waking from a dream,  quickly make note of the important parts, and in the morning, the details will fall into place.

And if you have a partner you can share   your life journey with, take turns being the sleeper (dreamer) and the one charting the course. The waking one watches the sleeper’s eyes, and when the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) period occurs,  the sleeper is immediately wakened and the dream related.  It’s a sure-fire way to catch your dream but a trusted person must be found. REM is the clue to when a sleeper is dreaming. Always

But remember, your dream’s symbols are explicit. Terribly explicit. Surprisingly explicit. Horribly explicit. So when you decide to figure out what you are trying to tell yourself, don’t hide half the dream as being not ‘nice’. Don’t laugh about it and say,  “I’d never do that”. Look closely, because some part of you would do exactly what your dream is trying to show   you,

Get yourself a good dream book and begin to listen to yourself.  It’s doing the best that part of  you  can do,  to bring balance into your life. It’s sorta fun as well as one great big eye opener. And a helper, too.   I rely upon “The Dream Book” by Betty Bethards. You’ll get a good bargain at AMAZON on the Internet,  Get a copy and find out what the wiser part of YOU is trying  to tell the   ‘other’ part  of YOU.    Give it half a chance.