Cloud Nine: A Dreamer's Dictionary

by Kevin de Vries

Overview

Dreams — windows into an inner world of hidden emotion and desire. Only by understanding our dreams can we fully know ourselves. And by recognizing the revealing subconscious meanings of our dreams and using that information in our waking lives, we have a greater opportunity for personal growth and change.

Here is the most complete and comprehensive dream dictionary available. An essential resource for, exploring the subconscious mind, it offers thousands of dream symbols and definitions, listed alphabetically. For anyone who wishes to fully realize personal potential, this invaluable guide to dream interpretation provides essential information on how to:

• Keep a dream journal
• Recognize and understand your own personal dream symbology Encourage peaceful sloop and pleasant dreams
• Bring positive dreams to reality
• Banish bad dreams and gain Insight from nightmares
• Invoke healing dreams
• Monitor your personal progress by understanding your dreams a And much, much more!

Including: Illuminating exercises, dreamwork techniques, pointers for improving visualization skills, and tips from some of the world's most respected contemporary dream masters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780380808892
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	12/08/1999
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	592
Sales rank:	132,869
Product dimensions:	5.25(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.33(d)

About the Author

Sandra A. Thomson is a practicing psychologist in California, and a licensed marriage, family and child counselor. She is co-author of The Lovers' Tarot and is on the Board of Directors of the Independent Writers of Southern California.

Read an Excerpt

We are such stuff as dreams
are made of.
— William Shakespeare

Chapter One

Dreams: Mirrors of Growth

"I had the weirdest dream last night. I can't get it out of my mind. I was in my house, but it wasn't exactly my house, and there was this guy who . . . "

Remember that conversation? Perhaps you bad it, or a similar one, just this morning. From the beginnings of recorded history, we have considered dreams fascinating and important. They have figured prominently in our cultural, societal, and religious development.

Dreams were among our first attempts at scientific study and control over our universe. Priests, the scientists of earlier civilizations, believed happenings of nature, triggered by the gods, could, nevertheless, be predicted and organized through dreams.

The first known book on dream interpretation, now called the Chester Beatty papyrus, came from Thebes in Upper Egypt, and is preserved in the British Museum. Recorded around 1250 B.C. by priests of the god Horus, it includes material dating from 2000 B.C. It contains some 200 dreams and distinguishes between good and bad ones. In Babylonia, good dreams were sent by the gods. Bad dreams, sent by demons, often required the enactment of specific protection rituals.

Today we still retain some of that magical feeling about dreams, partly because, for most of us, they are our most unusual, mystifying, and creative productions. Animals speak to us; both we and they possess amazing powers. Surroundings change instantly in ways that defy waking laws of time and space. Within our dreams, we move fluidly betweenpast, present, and future.

Dreams transcend time. Not only are they interwoven with elements of our personal past, present, and future, but, if we are to believe the great dreammaster C. G. Jung, they are interwoven with themes from human experience since the beginning of time, which he called the collective unconscious.

Those of us who work with our dreams regularly, cherish and enjoy them. They are signposts of our inner pilgrimage. We have fun recounting them and playing with them. Those who don't, look upon our wonderful creations as something bordering on hallucination.

In 1992 I was hospitalized for the removal of a tumorous kidney. On my release day I was drowsing while I waited for the doctor. I asked the universe for a dream that would tell me what sense I was to make of my surgical experience, and what I was to do next. (This is a form of incubation dream, which you will learn more about in Chapter 5.)

When the doctor entered my room, I was having the following dream:

Chicken Farmer

I am merging into the body of a chicken fanner in Arkansas. I am aware that once I am a part of him, he will know what I know about nephrectomies [yes, that new word was in my dream awareness] and can apply this to his flock. But I'm puzzled about what I am to learn from him.

I recounted my interrupted dream, which I loved immediately. After all, it was my first creation following a week of relative inaction and medicated sleep. I realized from the look on my doctor's face that she was trying to decide whether to release me or call for a psychiatric consult. Finally she said simply, "You have the most unusual dreams. I don't have dreams like that."

Maybe she does, and doesn't remember them. Maybe she's right; she doesn't. But she could. When we become more involved in our own dreamwork, we recall more dreams. As we have more varied life experiences, so, too, do our dream symbols expand land take on richer meanings.

I, for instance, cannot recall, and cannot find in my dream log, which I have been keeping since 1977, a dream about snakes. Yet when I began reading about Greek incubation dreams for this book-and discovered the healing meaning of snakes related to those dreams — I, too, dreamed about snakes.

It was as if my inner dream director, whom I'm sure is French, said, "Mon Dieu. Mais oui. My, God. Yes, of course. Now that I know what snakes are all about, I certainly don't want you to be left out of this healing experience. Snakes! Can we have snakes on the dream set? Immediatement. Immediately. "'

Whether or not you read that same material, your dream snakes will act differently from mine, as will your cast of characters, depending on your own experiences. So what are you and I to do with our respective snake dreams, then? What sense are we to make of them when we look up "snake" in our dream dictionary?

Most of us have been led to believe that each symbol in our dream represents a thing-or worse, a prediction-but, in fact, that group of symbols comprising a dream tells part of the tale of our inner striving toward self-development and fulfillment. Not only does a single symbol, even a single dream, represent only one aspect of that story, but it also may have several levels of interpretation.

Dreams show us our conflicts and ways to resolve them; they chronicle our inner strivings. This book, or certainly this chapter, might well have been titled "To dream, perchance to awaken," because of the potential for insight or enlightenment that dreams have to offer.

Dreams can nudge us toward a question that needs to be faced or answered in our conscious life, or a growth direction that needs to be respected. Psychologist and dream expert...

Cloud Nine copyright © by Sandra Thomson. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All Rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

Table of Contents

Part 1	Practical Guide to Understanding Your Dreams
1	Dreams: Mirrors of Growth	3
	How to Make the Most of This Book	7
Dreamercise #1	Keeping a Dream Journal	8
Dreamercise #2	Delving Into Your Dream Images	11
	An Inner Cast of Thousands or Merely a Small Pantheon?	14
Dreamercise #3	Giving Your Dream Symbols Their Voice	16
Dreamercise #4	Whose Dream Is It, Anyway?	19
	Endnotes	19
	Annotated References	21
2	Last Night I Had the Craziest Dream	22
	Dreams as a Second Language	23
	Pioneer Dreamworkers	24
Dreamercise #5	By Their Associations Shall Ye Know Them	26
Dreamercise #6	Traversing the Royal Road	28
Dreamercise #7	The Play's the Thing	30
Dreamercise #8	Bigger Than Life	33
Dreamercise #9	Image Amplification	36
	Historic Dreamworkers	38
Dreamercise #10	We Need to Talk More	39
Dreamercise #11	And They Lived Happily Ever After	42
	Annotated References	43
3	It Took All Day to Get Ready for This	44
	Our Inner Pacemaker	45
	Why We Sleep	45
	Sleep's Signature	46
	Why We Dream	47
	The Dreaming Eye	49
Dreamercise #12	The Envelope, Please	50
	America's Mounting Sleep Deficit	54
	Dietary Lullaby	54
Dreamercise #13	Remembering Ritual	57
	Annotated References	58
4	Make That Dream Count	59
	Men's Dreams	60
	Women's Dreams	60
	Children's Dreams	63
	Personal Dream Vocabulary	64
Dreamercise #14	It Means What I Say It Means	65
	Series Dreams	67
Dreamercise #15	Dream Flow	69
	Turning-Point Dreams	71
Dreamercise #16	Polishing a Dream's Facets	72
	Dream Groups	73
Dreamercise #17	United, We Dream	74
	Tonight, Tonight, I'll Dream My Theme Tonight	76
Dreamercise #18	Enough Already	77
	Annotated References	78
5	Midnight Messages	80
	Join the Crowd	80
	National Nightmares	81
Dreamercise #19	Banishing Bad Dreams	83
	Problem-Solving and Healing Dreams	85
Dreamercise #20	Put a Dream Under My Pillow	86
	Shamanistic Dreaming	90
	Lucid Dreaming	91
Dreamercise #21	Look, Ma, I'm Dreaming	93
	Psychic or Psi Dreaming	95
Dreamercise #22	Precognitive Dreaming	97
	Annotated References	99
6	The Dream Quest	101
	Ageless Inspirations	102
	Actualizing Your Dreams	104
Dreamercise #23	Say It Your Way	105
Dreamercise #24	Dream Treasures	107
	The Ever-Expanding Image	109
Dreamercise #25	Journey to the Center	110
	Home	111
Part 2	A Dreamer's Dictionary
	How to Use This Dictionary	115
	Symbology from A to Z	118
	Bibliography	562
	Index	573
	Oneirophiliac Card	577