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Interpreting
Lucid Dreams: Letting the Symbols Speak
© Robert Waggoner In the last LDE, Edith raised a thought-provoking question, when she asked if, "...customary kinds of dream analysis are appropriate or useful when applied to lucid experiences?" So lucid dreamers, are lucid dreams open to normal dream analysis? Or do they fall in a special category? If so, how so? One of my early joys in lucid dreaming was asking the dream characters what they or some dream object represented. Twenty years ago, I became lucid as I stood in a sunny snow covered yard: As I turned, I saw dozens of gems on the steps of the porch where my friend Andrea stood looking down at me. Recalling my waking curiosity about dream symbolism, I picked up one gem and called to Andrea, "What does this represent?" She looked back at me and said with conviction, "Hope. And consciousness." I decided to wake up and write down this response. Upon waking, it seemed like such a wonderful concept - to become lucid and have the dream characters explain the symbolism! No more Jungian this or Freudian that - when lucid, you could get the symbolism straight from the dream! Yet, for every insight that lucid dreaming seems to bring, a dozen questions seem to follow. A few years later, I was part of a lucid dream correspondence group headed by Linda Magallon, and one of our monthly lucid dream goals was to become lucid and find out what the characters represent. So one night, I became lucid walking across the parking lot at night in a dream: I recalled the goal and followed a woman into a building. Once inside, I saw a reception area with a receptionist, another woman seated in a chair and a rather avuncular man in a three piece suit standing there, smiling. I mentally debated whom to ask and decided on the man. I walked up to him and said firmly, "What do you represent?" Suddenly, a voice boomed out of the space above him, "The unrecognized characteristics!!" I thought about that for a moment, somewhat shocked, and managed a retort, "The unrecognized characteristics of what?!!" Again, the energetic voice boomed from above, "The unrecognized characteristics of the Happy Giver!!" With that, I told myself to wake up and write this down. Two things stunned me. First, the "Voice" from above was a new development. Instead of a dream character responding in an expected manner, something completely unexpected had happened. Was the "Voice" my Superego? My Higher Self? The subliminal dream producer/narrator behind the dream? And what about all of the booming vocal energy? Moreover, what did that response mean, "The unrecognized characteristics of the Happy Giver!" ? How was that response associated with the portly, avuncular, smiling man in the three piece suit with the gold watch chain? The next day, it hit me - I understood the Voice's response, the connection with the dream's symbolism and how it was related to this waking event from the day before: Earlier that afternoon, I happened to meet a woman who was involved in a charity. As we talked, I was shocked by the woman's mean spirited insinuations about her donors' lack of generosity and dubious motives for giving. When I walked away, I mentally mused to myself a bit sardonically, "The lord loves a Happy Giver." - as a wry comment on this woman who seemed such an un-happy receiver. The waking event of talking with this woman had been the emotional highpoint of a so-so business day. So, in some incredible way, my dream/lucid dream seemed to be making comment on the day's "significant emotions" and was using a portly avuncular man in a three piece suit with a gold chained watch, as the epitome of the "Happy Giver". Yet I wondered, what might have happened had I asked each dream character what they represented? What about the receptionist? Would she have displayed some symbolic aspect of "receiving" from others? And what about the woman seated in the chair? Was she the anima, the "female aspect" of the Happy Giver? Or did they play other roles? And what if I had ignored them all and walked past the receptionist into the rest of the office? What then? Would the emotional value of the Happy Giver symbolism recast itself in these new environments, under new forms? A wonderful aspect of lucid dreaming is that when lucid, you can simply stop and marvel at the beauty, verisimilitude and procession of the dreaming world around you. If curious, you can simply stop and marvel at the process. When I have done this, I have become aware of the beautiful associational parade of symbols around me. Lucid, I pick up that the old green car (reminiscent of one from my childhood) should "naturally" be parked under that type of tree and is "obviously" followed by a boy on that old style of bicycle, which is related to that new symbol entering the dream (a battered skateboard) and on and on, in a wondrous, interlocking chain of associations - some expected and some not expected, some deep and some shallow - but all seeming to make a type of associational sense that only I, the dreamer, could ever follow or relate or explain. Lest one leave this article thinking that "dreaming" is simply a parade of emotionally associated symbols and that "lucid dreaming" means gaining control over this simplistic process, then please consider this lucid dream: I had become lucid and was having a blast taking some people through a university setting and flying about. At one point we came upon an open green campus space with a lovely bell tower in the distance. Lucid, I turned to my small group and told them, "Look! At the count of three, we will all make that bell ring! Okay?" Then, I counted "one", but as I turned back towards the bell tower, I saw off to the right a small group assemble. And as I counted "two", that small group suddenly seemed to have musical instruments! And as I yelled, "Three!" expecting the bell tower to ring wildly due to our collective willing, instead, this small group began to play their instruments at that exact moment. In some odd way, I had made "noise" in the lucid dream, but not in the way my lucid intent was intending. How was it that my lucid intent was subverted? Did some unconscious associational process come into play, whereby a "band" is more likely to make noise than a bell tower? Did I use an emotionally or associationally charged word in the creation of my intentional statement, perhaps telling my group we will make "music", and that initiated the creation of a band of music makers on the side? Whatever the reason, this incident expressed to me that even in lucid dreams we are largely riding the power and purpose of dreaming. When lucid, our freedom within the dreaming has grown considerably; nevertheless, we remain within the dreaming. So Edith, in answer to your question, yes, "customary kinds of dream analysis" may be valid for "some" lucid dreaming. Yet lucid dreaming has the inherent capacity to trump "customary kinds of dream analysis" when the lucid dreamer gets the analysis from the dream itself. Moreover, experiments and natural experiences in lucid dreaming may more clearly show the actual processes of symbol creation, association and meaning than any theoretical model of dream analysis, heretofore considered. In some ways, it is amazing that lucid dreaming and lucid dreamers have not already developed new theories of dream symbol process and meaning, because of their unique capacity for in situ observation and experimentation. An excellent research opportunity for some graduate student would be an analysis of lucid dream symbolism, immediately prior to becoming lucid and immediately preceding the loss of lucid awareness and the return to normal dreaming (this is fairly common in beginning lucid dreamers). In my own lucid dreams, I finally began to notice that the dream symbolism before lucidity and the dream post-lucidity bore symbolic commonalities, as if the inertial direction of the dream interrupted by lucidity maintained its course, once the lucidity had disappeared. In larger terms, however, lucid dreaming is simply a better and more probing tool from which to understand and comprehend the true immensity of the dreaming process. Given the resources, lucid dreaming would show that dreaming involves even more than symbolic restatements of inner issues, wish fulfillments and emotional conflicts, etc. Given the resources, I feel lucid dreaming would show actual mental processes in the unconscious and aspects of the deeper identity upon which our puny awareness rides. Given the resources, I feel lucid dreaming would rework our understanding of the psyche and the collective aspects of the unconscious with which it communicates. Disclaimer: All material in The Lucid Dream Exchange is the copyright of the respective contributor, unless otherwise indicated. No portion of The Lucid Dream Exchange may be reproduced or used in any way without the expressed written permission of the individual author, or editors. Views and opinions expressed are those of the contributing authors and are not necessarily those of the editors of The Lucid Dream Exchange. ©The Lucid Dream Exchange - www.dreaminglucid.com This page was last updated:
January 27, 2009
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