Ja-lene Clark:
What Are My Dreams Teaching Me?

My dreams are rich and very vivid.  Because of this I have always been curious about the hidden meaning of dreams. What is the purpose?

Even though some people don’t remember their dreams and others see dream interpretation or research as psycho-babble, I am not the only one who is curious about the subject. People have dedicated their lives to provide us with formulas to interpret or better understand our dreams. Because of my own personal interest, I sought information on the subject to seek understanding of my own nature.  I wanted to use the information I receive through my dreams in a more practical way.  Now, when I have a dream that I find evocative, haunting, weird or significant I use that dream as fuel for contemplation and then find out what I am trying to teach me. Here is an example:

I Dreamt I Was a Mermaid
Once I dreamt I was a mermaid living deep in the ocean and part of a pristinely beautiful community. Each of the mermaids and mermen were exceptionally lovely. In the dream it felt like we mer-people were living in the perfect society. Everyone was happy, healthy, beautiful and got along perfectly. The mer-people had no laws because we did not need them. (Now I can see this was my subconscious vision of Utopia—or at least the Garden of Eden for mermaids and mermen!)  In this world all was good. All was right. While swimming with my mermaid family, we swam to the end of the ocean. We didn’t know what would happen if we swam past that point. This edge was the boundary that separated our perfect existence from the unknown. I wanted to go. And told my family I was going. They pleaded with me to stay but I knew I had to go and told my family good-bye. I swam past the boundary and soon as I did I started to sink. It was like my body weighed 10,000 pounds. As I tumbled, I lost my tail and began to morph into something very different, an unrecognizable dark blob, that landed on the bottom in absolute darkness.

Mermaid Dream Contemplation
When I fell to the very bottom in the darkness, I was so startled that I immediately woke up. Whenever a dream wakes me up like that, I pay special attention to it. I know there is something hidden for me to discover. For me it is like going on a treasure hunt!

That time I noticed that when I woke, I was not afraid. Some might have found this dream frightening, but to me “the fallen mermaid losing her fin” dream was about courage, not fear.  In the dream I had the courage to go into the unknown even though everyone was trying to talk me out of it.  I had the courage to follow through with what I knew I needed to do even though it would mean leaving that absolutely perfect place.  So the dream was teaching me to follow my urges to venture into the unknown beyond perfection. Then I had the “ah-ha” moment…I began to contemplate…what is beyond perfection?

Do you know what is beyond perfection? (Good question, huh?)
It’s tricky…if I were to write a “perfect” novel or a short story, the two most important things to include are the protagonist and antagonist. Without the contrast that is created by the interactions between those two characters, there is no story to tell. No thing to learn. No experience to retell for others to share. Plus we do love to boo at those bad guys and tell the good guys to watch out! Without the contrast that surfaces from the tension between those two characters, the story would be ho-hum.  Our lives are no different. Without contrast life is ho-hum and dreary. Contrast is required so we can tell good from evil, right from wrong, love from hate.
Imagine…
Would we still love the Wizard of Oz if Dorothy didn’t have a wicked witch taunting her? What if Batman had no Joker to save humanity from?  What would Robin Hood have to do if the cruel taxmen did not exist? If we lived in a perfect world, what would we do? How would we learn right from wrong if wrong did not exist?  Could we possibly learn to be peaceful beings in the absence of conflict?

Those are big questions and I most certainly have yet to answer them all. I am still contemplating. I know though if I had stayed a mermaid swimming in that perfect place with all the perfect mer-people, life would have been boring. I have come to realize that the things in life that are identified as antagonistic are also serve a purpose. Contrast, though it can sometimes appear as ugly, can open up opportunities for me to have a vivid, rich and full life.  That is what my mermaid dream taught me…don’t be afraid of contrast.


Next time you have a wild dream, instead of looking for the symbolic meaning, try contemplation and see what YOU are teaching you!

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