Unfinished energy stored in your mind is always trying to release at one level or another. If the release would wake you up from a dream, your mind symbolizes what it’s trying to express.
Instead of dreaming about the car accident that killed your younger brother, your dream that there are birds flying high overhead and an eagle swoops down and takes one of the small birds away. You’re willing to watch that, but you’re not willing to watch a car accident with someone you love dying.
That’s what the symbology of dreams is about. Just as your body is always trying to heal itself, so your mind is always trying to release these impurities which are stuck there.
Michael Singer - paraphrased from Living Untethered.
Over the last few months, I’ve become increasingly interested in Active Dreaming, which Superb Owl defines as any earnest attempt to engage with your dreams.
For me, this all started off with a desire to access more of my subconscious mind. As many major wisdom traditions, philosophies and modern thought leaders draw attention to, our subconscious holds the keys to unlocking our potential.
If you choose to subscribe to this hypothesis, the next natural question is: what tools can we use to come into contact with more of the contents of this subconscious?
Dreams are one of the oldest and most universally recognised symbols of our subconscious. From mythical storytelling to Jungian analysis, the symbology of dreams has inspired the arts and captivated the greatest minds in psychology.
While I always loved the intrigue of an eccentric dream, dreams remained a minor curiosity until I started seeing them as a portal into my subconscious and a tool to be engaged with to increase my self-awareness (consciousness).
If, like me, you are not sure how to begin interpreting your dreams, a dream dictionary (this is my favourite) is a great place to start. Since our human conditioning is broadly similar, the contents of this conditioning creates what’s called the “collective conscious”. In other words, our minds interpret the world in broadly similar ways which creates universal symbols - these are the symbols which appear in our dreams. This gives us a universal way of decoding the meaning of common dream imagery such as water, the underground etc.
While it is preferable to interpret your own dreams, dream dictionaries can be a great way to connect to the intuition of dream interpretation (especially if like myself you do not have a natural artistic instinct). In any case, of the most important elements of our dreams are the emotional states we experience in response to what is happening.
Just like some people do their morning crosswords, my fun morning puzzle became decoding the symbology of my dreams and trying to connect it to the current events of my inner and outer life. So far the main benefits of engaging with my dreams more earnestly has been:
analysing my dreams helps me see more clearly what emotional shifts I’m currently grappling with,
often my dreams contain some valuable reflection points or guidance,
discussing dreams with others can be a “safe” way to gain deeper insights about others (i.e. without the need to share potentially vulnerable details of one’s psyche explicitly),
analysing dreams makes sleep more fun!
To ground this discussion, I’ve briefly shared below some of my most memorable dreams of the last few months, how they related to what was going on in my life at the time and any guidance I drew from analysing the dream.
“The worst is yet to come”
I had the following two dreams during a time that I was intentionally shifting into leading a more surrendered life, as I described here. Curiously, both dreams pointed towards a block I was approaching along this journey. At the time I was unaware of what this block referred to, since I was generally feeling within my comfort zone in life. Within the next month I underwent a series of more testing realisations and corresponding shifts, and in hindsight these dreams make more sense now.
Climbing the cusp
While sightseeing, I come across a Church which has opened its doors to tourists wanting to climb its staircase for good views of the city. The roof of the Church is a cusp (the dream is interlaced with my PhD supervisor drawing the cusp of a hyperbolic manifold for me in his office). I decide I will only go part of the way up to the first viewing platform, because I realise that after that the climb will become too suffocating.
The personal significance I derive from the singularity of the cusp in this dream is the pure state of Unconditional Love1 that one naturally strives to increasingly embody on the Path of Surrender. Interestingly, a cusp has the geometric property that if a point were to travel “upwards” into the cusp, the point can (in some sense) get arbitrarily close to the singularity but will never reach it.
The flood and the toilet paper
I’m driving with friends down an icy road. It is slippery but I manage to keep control of the car. At the bottom of the road we realise we won’t be able to continue, because the road is totally flooded. After some hesitation, I turn around. It is then brought to my attention that the flooded road is actually safe to drive on because under the water there is a solid surface made up of lots of toilet rolls. The dream ends with me becoming aware of a conspiracy theory that underneath the entire surface of the earth is a layer of toilet rolls.
The toilet paper was a gentle reminder for me to continue “letting go” and trusting that even though it’s not always visible, I will always be supported in this endeavour :)
The changing faces of social anxiety
A common theme of the next three dreams is an attempt of mine to escape something. In the dreams this desire to escape always feels like a yearning to “break free” of my inner and outer limitations as well as a subtle underlying sense of fear.
Conference cult
I’m at a conference dinner in a fancy university dining hall. Suddenly a line of men start walking in wearing black and white uniform/robes which give off a cultish, slightly military vibe. They envelop round the perimeter of the room. I stand up to leave the room. They tell me I cannot leave and block my exit.
Ever since I submitted my last paper for publication at the end of last year, I have “come off the treadmill” of paper-chasing and generally committed to a downshift in order to align to my beliefs and connect to a deeper sense of meaning at work. This downshift brought up a lot of anxiety as I was confronted to detach from behaviours which used to support my ego, break cultural norms and realise the ways in which I do not align to the way things work around me. This dream came towards the beginning of this journey, reflecting the social pressures I felt.
Tattooed man in the lido
I’m at an outdoor swimming pool. I am standing on a float (used when you’re learning to swim) at the edge of the pool. I want to jump into the pool but my body is experiencing a strong sense of gravity. After a bit of effort, I muster enough strength to jump in. As I’m travelling through the air, time slows down and I hear a well groomed tattooed man making judgemental commentary about how I’m jumping.
This came during a time that I was changing aspects of my self-expression and ways in which I connected to my inner feminine and masculine energies (yin and yang). Expressing myself more authentically was, in hindsight, evoking some self-consciousness at this time. The tattooed man represented for me the intimidation I experience when I come across a socially confident person who proudly wears their identity.
Push and pull
I am in some kind of secret underground vault. There are other people here, including an unidentified woman who I understand is the boss of this place. She seems a bit fragile and it is my job to hug her. I am scheming to escape this place by jumping into an abyss. I attempt this a few times but am nearly caught, only saved by the fact that I go back to fulfilling my duty at critical moments. Towards the end of my dream, I realise that I have more chance of successfully escaping if I am not quite so erratic in moving between the two states of duty and escape.
Recently, a couple of close friends were going through life changes which had implications on how much we would see each other in the foreseeable future. Concurrently, I was beginning to sense a change in direction for myself which I had not yet committed to. Around the time of this dream, I had realised that I sometimes take on some unnecessary social responsibility and tend to prioritise “keeping up appearances” over applying myself more fully to my interests. This dream reflected this “push and pull”.
I also wondered whether the unidentified woman symbolised part of myself, since this dream came at a transition from a low energy period, which was requiring me to nurse to my needs, to a new phase in which I could recognise and meet my inner capacity for action.
Stormzy and the dodgy printer
I am in an unfamiliar rental apartment within a library which is called the Oracle. I am trying to print out Mandelbrot’s book “Fractal Geometry in Nature” but the printer breaks halfway through printing. I am texting Stormzy who is on his way to meet me. He is bringing something for me which might not be authorised into the building, so I feel a bit stressed about finding each other without drawing attention. Before I leave the apartment I realise I peed in my slipper so I quickly clean it up because I’m embarrassed that Stormzy might see it. I leave the apartment carrying the dodgy printer to find Stormzy, but the dream ends before we find each other.
This dream made no sense when I first woke up, but by the end of decoding it I was creasing about how amusingly creative the mind can be. Stormzy’s deeply moving and spiritual masterpiece This Is What I Mean was a crutch for me during a dark time a couple of years ago. It laid the first pavestones for my spiritual awakening and many of the songs remain rawly emotional for me. I had this dream about a month ago, while I was really challenging myself to throw myself into a social fear I had and was making myself quite vulnerable (maybe too vulnerable, given the pissing in my slipper). The levels of vulnerability I had subjected myself to were making it very difficult to communicate my feelings and needs within the situation. The broken communication device (printer) and the difficulty I faced in bringing it to Stormzy guided me to stop exposing my vulnerabilities unless I could ensure I could meet them with a reasonable level of composure.
Curiously, Oracle is one of the words I didn’t consciously know the definition of until I looked it up the day after the dream!
New beginnings
I am on a hike with a friend through a beautiful narrow gorge. The cliffs of the gorge are black and white in colour. As we walk through, we are painting over the black and white in a neutral tone.
This dream came during a time that I was abandoning the polarised thinking I had about a situation with a friend I’d fallen out with and with whom I’d begun reconnecting with.
Receiving guidance from dreams
Recently, I have started sensing a deeper potential of Active Dreaming. While at a festival this summer, me and my wife Marisa spontaneously decided to join a session of shamanic journeying. This type of practise, which originates from many independent indigenous cultures around the world, is in many ways a practise of conscious dreaming. You enter a ten minute “journey” with an intention (such as: show me what the next step is) and while the guide uses a drum to help you shift into Theta brain waves, you wait in awareness until some imagery emerges. This initiates your journey that you then become an active participant with.
To be honest, I was initially sceptical that anything would happen, but to my surprise some images started spontaneously popping into my head. The first of these was a snail.
I proceeded to have three fairly visual journeys which centred around similar symbols: shells, armour and clothing. In the following months, the personal significance I’d placed around these symbols led me towards pulling at numerous threads to investigate “dorsal shutdown” (a type of nervous system stress response, which I can relate to), embracing nondoing and slow productivity and finally reading The Pathless Path which had been on my reading list for ages.
These turned out to be the necessary steps to embrace a change in direction I’d been subconsciously resisting, which I wrote about here:
I’ve since experimented with setting an intention before sleep to receive guidance about a particular topic. The first time I did this was remarkably insightful, but since it contains sensitive information about others I unfortunately won’t be able to share it here.
Instead I’ll leave you with a different amusing example. One night last week, I asked whether I could have any advice for conquering the social anxiety I feel around taking a new direction at work. I then had a dream in which I was at a train station where a man started calling to me, asking whether I wanted a job. I replied saying, sure, but what would you like me to do for you? And he responded “I just want to hire you to do whatever you want to do”. I woke up to Mariah Carey’s “Hero” stuck in my head. Turns out my subconscious is quite cheesy 🤣
Further reading about Active Dreaming
If you are interested in exploring your dreams further, I highly recommend reading these two articles from Superb Owl:
These articles address common limiting factors such as dream recall as well as a practical approach to lucid dreaming (which if stabilised, creates the potential to ask for guidance directly within the dream state). Superb Owl also discusses how Active Dreaming is a modality which lies naturally between meditation and the therapeutic use of psychedelics, which is accompanied by this awesome graphic:
Thanks so much for reading my latest essay! I love nothing more than synthesising minds, so if you have any thoughts about this, I would love to hear from you.
Some other recommended reading:
Me and Marisa enjoyed watching the latest Scott Britton podcast with Boyd Varty, which explores the similarities between lion tracking and inner work/ aligning to one’s authentic expression. There is also an inspiring discussion about creating the work that brings you alive.
This essay provides a fascinating perspective on how the consciousness contract was shaped in British history, and the importance of applying rigour in our ongoing efforts to rewrite this consciousness contract. This second point felt particularly affirming to me, as someone who can sometimes feel quite self-conscious in being a mathematician who treats the “woo woo” earnestly 😛
Other words which I consider to be interchangeable with Unconditional Love are God, Source, Oneness, Being, Divine Intelligence etc. In fact, the Singularity is another term which I’ve seen used to refer to this common notion.