💭 FIELD GUIDE 19: Bring me a dream

Today’s guest was such a pleasure to contact. We shared a great connection even through Zoom.

The craziest dream I ever had was when I was pregnant. I dreamt that all my teeth were falling out. But I was totally okay with it.

Come to find out its a pretty common dream pregnant women have.

What’s the craziest dream you’ve ever had?

—Skyler

Name

Carol Cummings

Profession

Dream Analyst

Habitat

USA

Soundtrack

I’m writing in the spirit of raising an awareness, and piquing interest in the field of dreams.

Who am I to encourage this?

It all started during a section on dreaming in my high school psych 101 class. I began feeling as if I was remembering what was being taught. Even though I had never heard the words of the teacher before and had never read a book about the meaning of dreams I felt I was having déjà vu. How could I understand so easily without prior knowledge? That eerie sensation ended as soon as the class did.

That experience was long forgotten 20 years later as I found myself signing up for a 2 day weekend workshop on interpreting dreams given by a local university professor. By noon the first day the teacher took me aside and shared that she felt I had a gift in understanding the meaning of dreams. She invited me to field participants’ questions after the lunch break.

Again came that weird sensation I had so many years ago as I listened and understood the meaning of their dreams. Surprisingly what I said made sense to them. As I continued to use my gift to help others I started getting a reputation first within a small circle of friends then with their friends. One day, what seems like destiny now, I received a voice mail from a local radio station asking me to be on the air doing live dream interpretations.

That event began a 28 year odyssey that included many speaking engagements, invitations to be a guest on over 340 radio stations both in the United States and in four other countries, a book deal and a subliminal self help CD.

What makes dreams so interesting?

Why do we want to tell others? Are they prophetic messages? What causes us to awaken so scared we don’t want to go back to sleep? Was it just a dream or were we actually visited by our dead loved one?

The answers to these and other questions keep us fascinated. Dreams are interesting because we can visit other worlds without the physical constraints. The urge to understand and utilize the power of the unconscious has been sought after since ancient Egyptian and Greek dream temples were built. Even today you can incubate a dream by simply writing a note to yourself before bed, asking for a particular answer, reading it out loud to yourself and then putting it under your pillow as you fall asleep thinking about the note you wrote. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t get the answer immediately. It may take a few days. I’ve tried it. It works!

Understanding our dreams is important. Ninety-nine percent of all our dreams are about ourselves. If we understand our dreams we understand ourselves.

• The first sentence of your dream tells you why you are having the dream.

• The second part of the dream is the introduction of the characters. Everyone in the dream represents an aspect of ourselves that we are not emotionally ready to accept so we make them be someone else. Immediately ask yourself when I think of that person what are their three main characteristics? Don’t think about it too much. Quickly write down what you think of when you think of who they are. Not what they do for a living but what kind of a person they are. Are they kind, uncaring, mean, vengeful, shy, going through a divorce, gossiping too much, lazy, etc. then ask yourself how am I like that?

• The third section of the dream is the crisis. Pay attention to where you are. Men frequently dream of being outdoors and women in a house. If you are in a room, understand each has a different meaning.

• Notice significant colors. Each color has a particular meaning. Feel free to check out my website for the meanings of each room and each color.

• The fourth and final section of the dream is the resolution. Not all dreams include a resolution. You may wake up feeling like you are left in crisis. These types of dreams are usually resolved in a series of four separate dreams.

Some dreams are messages from your higher self attempting to guide you. You wake up feeling like you need to do something different than normal or you need to change your habits or take a different route to work. Maybe you have lucid dreams. You feel awake in the dream and are able to control what's happening.

Other dreams may be prophetic, but if they are there is an urgency about them. You feel compelled to tell someone about the dream. The circumstances are out of the ordinary, The colors are strong. You will not know it is prophetic until it happens. Sometimes it takes weeks for you to find out. Only three percent of all the dreams we have in a lifetime are prophetic.

There are also sorting out dreams that are basically just misfiled information that makes no sense. There are healing dreams in which the body issues will make themselves known. When women are pregnant they have lots of dreams that are about the body but they also have some of the strangest dreams they've ever had or will ever have again.

The main thing to keep in mind when seeking answers to the meaning of your dreams is only you know the meaning of your dream. As a dream analyst my job is to ask you the right questions until you have that “felt sense” in your body of “that’s it.” It’s in that moment you feel complete.

I feel the main thing most people get wrong about dreams is over-thinking the meaning. Your dream is about something that has happened or you have thought of in the past 2 days or so. Something was triggered in the unconscious through an ad, a movie, something someone said or did, or something you remembered, etc.

Dreams are not difficult to understand if you think about the meaning of the symbols.

A 16 year old teenager recently got her first job. She dreamed that she was at the park (a place she likes to be). So it represents where she’s at right now in her life. There were two rides. A short one and a tall one (two decisions about what she wants to experience. A job that may be short lived or another that may be long (tall) term. She was in line for the short one (the job she just got). The other was super tall and exciting but a co-worker she knows (that represents slow, calm & successful) was riding it and went flying off and landed on the ground. The teen ran over and asked if she was ok and was told she was fine, got up and walked away. The tall ride represents going bigger and doing something more exciting. The coworker's fall represents her own fear of failure. The resolution is if she remains calm and goes slow and takes even being thrown for a loop she will be just fine.

You do not need a dream dictionary. I have found some of them to be ridiculous and in some cases harmful and misleading. Write your dream down as soon as you have it. Details get lost so quickly. Stick with the words you originally used. Don’t rewrite your dream later to make sense of it logically. Ask yourself simple questions about what an item in the dream is used for.

An example would be a hallway. What is a hallway used for? To get from one place to another. Simple. It’s a transition. After a while you’ll begin to have a list of frequent characters in your dreams so make a list of their three main characteristics and save it for later use.

My hope is you will use these tools and suggestions to interpret your own dreams.

After all, only you know the true meaning of your dream.

Learn more

Any book by Patricia Garfield.

The Dream Book by Betty Bethards. This book will help you with ways to remember your dreams and explain a multitude of symbols we come across in our dreams.

You can also check out Carol’s website for happenings and resources for colors and meanings of things you may come across in your dreams.

---