Dreamer's Response: Dream #7

Here's what struck me about this dream...

It's employee discount day, so people are getting something for less, getting rewarded for hard work, getting special treatment because of their dedication. So there's some reason I'm being rewarded for working hard.

There's a festive mood, almost like a party, so something in my psyche is telling me there's reason to celebrate or at least be happy. All the employees are happy to see each other, so all those hard-working parts of myself are happy to be united and sharing in the joy of being rewarded for the hard work.

My external self, my ego self, gets to take advantage of the reward as well, since in the dream customers get the employee discount too. It seems all of my selves are being rewarded.

I find the store name interesting: Orchard Supply. It makes me think of an orchard, specifically an apple orchard, which then ties into knowledge. I'm there to gather some kind of knowledge, perhaps.

Also, I just discovered an inner curiosity about and desire to use power tools, so maybe this dream was hinting at that. I do enjoy shopping at hardware stores.

We're buying a heater, so that means I'm looking for something in my life to sustain an inner fire. Perhaps my fire for knowledge, or my passion for power tools, or, even better, a passion for taking my knowledge and building or creating something with it.

In the dream I burn my leg. I use my legs to move forward on my path and they are also what support me. In my quest for knowledge and to create things, I might get a little burned by my inner fire, but it won't be too bad, although I might try to act like it's bad, hence my whining and moaning in the dream.

This makes a lot of sense now that I worked through it this way, because I feel like I might get burned a bit by putting myself out there with my art and other pursuits, but these little dings are part of the territory, and rather than spending a lot of time complaining about the dings, I can learn from them and move on.

That's my take on the dream!

Dream #7 -- I Burn My Leg

This is a dream from yours truly...have fun interpreting!

Lance (my husband) and I are at Orchard Supply Hardware. It's employee discount day and we're there. We get to use the discount. Old employees have come back to the store to say hello to those working there and the mood is festive. We're looking into a new heater. I go over to try it out and somehow I burn my leg. It's a tiny burn, but I make a big fuss until Lance comes over and consoles me. He hugs me and I carry on until he calls me on being dramatic.

Dreamer's Response -- Dream #6

I was enchanted by Toni's dream and found it to be quite powerful. It's a dream that one could work with for years and continue to get new meaning from.

If it were my dream, it would have been about about change, and Toni writes that not long after she had the dream, she had the "big breakup" of her 20s. The dream features seven waterfalls, and seven is the number of luck, as well as spirit and intuition/introspection. If it were my dream, I would see that I was going through a time of thinking "what is it all for" and trying to make a decision that would benefit me.

Because the dream was located in Toni's mind in the Pacific Northwest, which she says was her ideal place to live at the time, perhaps she was seeing a scene of better things to come, of being able to flow over life's obstacles to arrive at something better. In the dream she had a loyal friend with her; if it were my dream this would signal to me that my psyche was saying I was supported in the decisions I was going to make.

The inclusion of the "voice-over," which Toni "was convinced at the time was God or a higher power or whatever you want to call it" shows to me that not only the psyche, but also the universe/higher power supported the decision as well.

Thanks for this amazing dream, Toni!

A new dream will be posted shortly...if you would like it to be yours, email me!

The Importance of Dreams

"Dreams are the creative store that is true wealth. They reside at the human edge of the holy. From the unknown, from eternity, into the restless minds of sleepers, their light is given off. In the human body, worlds are charted, wounds healed, illnesses reversed. In our vulnerable sleep, those hours when anything could happen. Like dark matter in the universe, dreams have mass and presence, even when not remembered." -- Linda Hogan

I treasure my dreams. Although I don't religiously write them down every morning as I used to (I've recorded more than 1,000 dreams in the last year!), I do write down the ones that make a big impact on me. Like the dream I had this summer that led me to release my inner artist once and for all.

You can read about this experience here. It was powerful, amazing, life-transforming. Listen to your dreams. They are trying to tell you something.

Dream #6 -- Seven Waters Fall

Here is another dream from Toni. Follow the guidelines and have fun interpreting this dream!

I was walking somewhere very lush and green--not tropical, but more like the Pacific Northwest, and there was the sound of water running nearby. My best friend at the time was with me, and I could see waterfalls. A voice spoke from somewhere above us, like a voiceover in a documentary or something. It said, "This is your heaven, the place where the Seven Waters Fall." I realized there were seven waterfalls there, and there was a woman with light brown skin and long, black hair carrying a basket and walking toward a nearby valley, and I started to follow her.

Toni also added this: "I have never, ever felt such peace as I did in that dream. It's been at least 15 years since it happened and it still stays with me. I even checked maps and Googled to see if such a place really existed, it was that powerful."

Dreamer's Response: Dream #5

It was great to see the different perspectives on this dream! Toni has responded to Sarah's and my comments on her dream, and this is what she had to say:

"I've been feeling stagnant and burned out in my 'day job' as a writer for about a year now. Earlier this year, not one, but two ideas for novels literally fell into my head and I started writing. And writing. And haven't stopped. I wonder if this is about that yearning--fiction is certainly more creative and vibrant than banging out copy for commercial markets or trade pubs (even though I'm very good at it and it's too lucrative and family-friendly to walk away from now).

"I've also been struggling a great deal with body image issues. Not sure if it's connected here, but the whole unconscious thing makes me think, perhaps so. Or maybe it's related more to the work stuff, going with the KC=work thing. Finally, we live on a hill and our upstairs windows are a good 3 stories up and I've ALWAYS worried about the boys pushing through one of the screens upstairs."

Thank you for your comments, Toni. I will just add in here that this dream could definitely be about body issues since a house often represents the body in a dream. I think you could explore this dream for a while to come.

Dream #5: House On the Water

This dream was submitted by Toni. Kindly remember the guidelines to the right and have fun with this dream!

Last night, I dreamed my husband, three sons and I were visiting a friend of mine named Dean from law school in Kansas City (I have no idea if Dean lives in KC, but we just got back from a trip there and I'd been discussing Dean one night over dinner while we were there). His house was on the water, and the setting looked nothing like Kansas City, more like northern Michigan. The house was brightly painted, with the outside done in a mustard yellow with dark greens and browns, kind of like those "painted lady" Victorian homes, only this one was more of a Bavarian style. Rooms inside the house were equally colorful, though I can't remember anything specific any more, and the rooms were funky and configured in interesting ways, with sculpture and artwork on display. I remember saying to my husband, "Our next house will have bright colors like this!" and he laughed, remembering how we'd fought while painting our current home (he wanted beige, I wanted BOLD.)

There were other men in the house, all rooming together like college friends, and at one point my youngest son was on a stairway looking out a window down at the front entry, which was paved with that whitish-gray flagstone. I saw there wasn't a screen and suddenly, Aaron fell to the ground and lay unconscious. I could see his little body there, on his back, eyes closed, and I screamed for my husband. I remember running and running down, down, down, as if I was in a turret or lighthouse, until I FINALLY made it down to where he was. There were paramedics, and they were showing my husband a hole in the back Aaron's head, but saying that he was lucky and was going to be ok, even though he was unconscious.