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Welcome to Dream Sight News, a monthly newsletter sharing tips on how to interpret your dreams through Jane Teresa's personal stories, plus updates of news and events. Subscribe to this free newsletter. SEPTEMBER 2008 What do you see for yourself this month? Is it true that what you see is what you get, and what you foresee is what you ... no, that little bit of word play doesn't work! What you foresee is often what you get too. Better not forget that. While word play is fun, it can confuse, so we're delighted to announce something a little more visual. We've added a bit more sight to dream sight - the video - for you to watch online. Details follow after today's article. Fooled again©Jane Teresa Anderson, September 2008
One of the most enlightening dreams I have ever experienced delivered the reverse message – I woke up realising that my waking life had fooled me again and again and again. Fooled by a dream, or fooled by waking life? You be the judge: In my dream I was a student attending a lecture. The clock showed nearly 7pm. I remembered I had a plane to catch at 8pm. I was short of time. I began to think through my options. I could go home to change my shoes and maybe catch the plane in time, but I would miss the end of the lecture. I could buy some new shoes from the shop next door and not miss so much of the lecture. I could borrow some shoes from another student, but asking around would interrupt the lecture. I could phone the airport and ask them to get some shoes ready for me, but I’d have to miss the end of the lecture to make the call if I was to get to the airport on time. It doesn’t sound like an enlightening dream, does it? Frankly, it’s a pretty boring dream so far. It’s what happened next that blew me away. The lecturer stopped speaking. The lights went up in the room. We heard a voice from the back of the room and we all turned round to see who was speaking. At first we couldn’t see her, but then she emerged from the projection box where the movie projector was housed. (The dream lecture theatre was pre PowerPoint days, and all visuals were screened from the projector at the back of the room.) “What have the shoes got to do with catching the plane?” she asked. We opened our mouths to explain, but words failed us. Clearly I wasn’t the only student planning to catch that 8pm plane, and clearly the others were equally as concerned with the shoe problem. And why wouldn’t they be? We were all sensible people, and clearly the shoe issue was as essential to catching a plane as getting to the airport and having a ticket and a boarding pass. But if all that was true, why was it that not one of us could answer her question? She stared at each one of us then repeated, slowly and carefully. “What have the shoes got to do with catching the plane?” It was like asking ‘What has breathing got to do with living?’ or ‘What has speaking got to do with talking?’ (Can you answer those questions easily?) We knew, irrevocably, that this shoe issue was an essential part of the process of catching the plane, but it was something that not one of us could put into words. She smiled and walked down the lecture room aisle to join the lecturer at the front of the class. They stood side by side to deliver the final part of the lecture, and, somehow, we were all too curious by now to even think about catching the plane. “You’ve been part of an experiment,” the lecturer began. “All the while you were listening to me, Sandra* here was hypnotising you to believe you need to replace your shoes.” “It’s true,” Sandra added. “I was hidden away at the back of the lecture room, emulating your unconscious, hidden away at the back of your mind, out of sight, out of mind.” “How did you do that? I didn’t hear you,” asked someone nearby. “You were too busy listening to the lecture. Your conscious mind was fully engaged. It was easy to worm that shoe thing in from the back and let it grow and stealthily position itself to project a need for shoes and affect your decision-making.” I was absolutely stunned in the dream. Suddenly I could see how silly the whole shoe thing was, how totally irrelevant to catching the plane, and yet I had only just experienced the full-on absolute necessity of solving the pressing problem of the shoes. I moved from being totally consumed by the belief that I couldn’t catch the plane until I changed my shoes, to shaking my head in disbelief – what has catching a plane got to do with shoes? Absolutely nothing – unless one’s unconscious mind has been hypnotised. That’s when I really ‘got it’, while I was still in the dream. I understood how we can be fooled by our unconscious mind into acting according to beliefs that are not relevant to present-day decision-making. I understood – I really ‘got it’ – that what seems totally real and pressing in our lives can be as irrelevant as a small matter of programming at the back of the mind. I really ‘got it’ that we project our beliefs onto the world just as if we have a projector, running an old film, located in the back of our brain. I say I really ‘got it’, because it was more than suddenly understanding. It was more than intellectual knowledge. It was an emotional knowing. I went through the experience, in the dream, of discovering just how totally I could be fooled by my unconscious mind. It was experiential knowledge, not intellectual knowledge. It was a knowledge born of feeling, of total emotional immersion, not a knowledge born of being informed, second-hand, in a lecture. Isn’t it wonderful that dreams fool you, again and again, into believing that they are real? When you believe they’re real, you are immersed in emotional experience so you have the opportunity to gain experiential knowing, so much more valuable than intellectual knowledge alone. My dream ended with Sandra and the lecturer reminding us that we had a plane to catch. “Oh, so that bit’s real!” we laughed. And what a relief it was to know we had plenty of time to get to the airport now the shoe issue was gone. Though, we thought, as we left the lecture theatre, how certain could we be that there really was a plane to catch? How often would we be fooled again? Well, waking from my dream revealed the truth! There was no plane to catch – or was there? My dream was the result of some reading I had been doing the day before. I had been reading about unconscious beliefs, and about how you can easily identify a belief that’s not serving someone by observing the oddity in their story and asking them about it. In this case, the oddity was the need for the shoes, and the question was ‘What have the shoes got to do with catching the plane?’ Of course, this was my dream, way back, and so the exact symbolism was also relevant to me. I had acted as though certain plans in my life couldn’t take off until other conditions were right. I know so much better now – if you’ve got something you want to put into action, don’t let anything stop you. There’s always a first step, then another, then another, regardless of the shoes you were wearing when you took that first step. Because of my dream, I was able to reverse my unconscious programming. So, in a way, I did have a plane to catch when I woke from this dream. Symbolically I had many planes to catch – all those plans I had hesitated to put into action were now ready for lift-off. And what of the dreams I mentioned at the start of this article when I wrote about what a relief it is to wake up and remember that you have committed no crime, that you’re not required to sit an exam, or that there are no bombs to hide from? Symbolically there may be unconscious judgement of guilt over a real or imagined crime to acknowledge, guilt that is not serving the dreamer well, getting in the way of moving forward. Symbolically there may be an unconscious belief in perfection or fear of not performing well, resulting in a feeling of eternally being tested. Symbolically there may be an unconscious belief in persecution - that everyone’s out to get the dreamer - or perhaps an unconscious self-sabotage belief bombing the dreamer’s progress in favour of a safe place to hide away. Fooled by a dream, or fooled by waking life? Who is the greater fool, the one who believes his dreams, or the one who believes his waking life? * (I can’t remember the woman’s name in the dream. I chose Sandra, short for the mythological Cassandra, for this article.)
Jane Teresa Anderson This month's web highlightNEW: Video
Thanks to Dave, Euan and Michael's combined expertise, you can now watch and listen to Jane Teresa talking about dreams (naturally) and dream alchemy. The 18 minute video is on the front page of our website. You can't miss it. Just press 'play'. We've also placed it - in two parts - on You Tube, so if you'd like to bump up our placement on You Tube or share them with friends, please view them there. Thank you. More News ...
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