Dreams... What Are They Telling Us?

James and Lisa look at dreams meaning and what they are telling us. They look at how dreams play into consciousness and practical and simple ways we can learn so much valuable insights from them to move forward with greater clarity.

Transcript

Welcome to the Practical Consciousness podcast with James and Lisa,

Where we help you tap into your highest selves in everyday life.

Hi,

Welcome to Practical Consciousness.

I'm James.

And I'm Lisa.

Today,

We're going to talk about something really kind of fun.

I'm excited to talk about it.

And I know Lisa's a super excited to talk about it.

We're going to talk about our dreams.

We're going to talk about what dreams are,

What they mean,

What they don't mean,

What's the symbol.

And then really the more important part is how do we use our dreams to become more conscious and become more aware and tap into our intuition and our kind of divine guidance.

And just so you guys know,

Lisa has done some training around interpreting dreams.

And she definitely,

It definitely sparks her curiosity and she likes to look into dreams.

And I've been known to share a couple of dreams with her here or there,

And she's helped me interpret them.

So it's fun.

And we found a lot of really good practical guidance from it.

But would you say that's fair?

Absolutely.

Yes.

And sometimes that I've interpreted dreams for you,

It seems like anyway,

You've got something out of it,

Some realization,

Maybe some help and guidance,

Different areas.

Yeah,

Definitely for sure.

At least it gets you looking,

It gets you to look inward for an answer or a solution to something,

Which is always a better way to go than looking outside of yourself.

Yeah.

I mean,

If that's all you get out of looking at your dreams,

That's great.

Just some realization that something's going on,

Something needs to be looked at.

So in your experience so far working,

Doing some of the training you've done and deeper diving into the dreams and what they are,

In your mind and in your kind of now belief system and process,

What are dreams,

What's the significance of dreams?

What are they?

What do they do for us?

So what I've learned and what I believe to be true,

Just from experience and what I've been learning about,

Is that the dreams are the language of our soul.

So it's like your soul or divine guidance,

However you want to look at it,

Communicating with you.

There's an opportunity at night when your conscious mind is sleeping and you can receive these messages.

And it's usually around practical things like your job or your relationships or maybe something spiritually that area where you want to grow.

So does that answer your question?

Yeah,

I think,

Yeah.

And so what I'm hearing you basically say is that the idea is that it's a mechanism of communication from God,

Universe,

Source,

Intuition.

It's a mechanism in which they can come through with messages to us when they're not being misinterpreted or being,

I'm grappling for the word,

They're being misused by our own conscious thoughts,

I guess.

But it is a lot like intuition where we,

In our waking hours,

We receive intuition.

But we normally receive intuition when we are being conscious,

Right?

We're staying out of our head or being more in the present moment.

At least that's when I sense intuition coming in more,

Right?

Because you don't have all the noise from your mind.

So it's very similar,

Right?

The symbolism that you see in your dreams is actually very similar or the same as the symbolism you see in your intuition.

I'm curious about,

I know that you've shared with me many times that,

I always used to think that when you wake up from a dream and whatever kind of emotional feeling you're feeling from that dream is kind of the indication of what that dream was trying to say.

So sometimes dreams felt ominous in that circumstance.

But you shared with,

That's not necessarily the case,

Is that there's like,

You shared with me once that maybe my youngest son is in the dream and I'm thinking,

Okay,

Well,

I need to be worried about my son or something.

And you're like,

No,

Your youngest son actually could symbolize you as a child.

And so,

The symbols and the symbolism in the dream aren't always as obvious as our rational minds think about things,

Right?

Tell me a little bit more about that and what does that mean in a practical sense?

Well most people try to do that,

Try to rationally think about their dreams and it doesn't really work that way.

So you want to really look at like,

What's the overall theme?

What are the symbols?

And we can talk about symbols in a little more detail.

And then what you're talking about,

Like what's the emotional content of the dream?

So usually when you feel an emotion in a dream,

It usually is how you're feeling in your waking life about whatever the dream is about.

So you need,

You know,

You look at your dream to interpret it and find out,

Well,

What's this dream really about?

And you know,

Let's say it's maybe about your job,

But you're not actually dreaming about your job,

But you're having an experience in the dream that's very similar to something you're experiencing at work,

Like some frustration you might be having.

But one thing I would like to point out is our subconscious mind is there during your dreaming,

Right?

Your subconscious mind is there.

And so,

You know,

How we talk about our ego,

How sometimes our ego gets involved and has an opinion about it wants to protect us.

It's all in good.

You know,

It wants to be protecting us and taking care of us.

But it can get involved in your dreams.

So if you have an extreme feeling in a dream like terror,

That's your subconscious mind involved in the dream.

It doesn't like whatever the dream is trying to point out to you.

It's trying to protect you.

It's trying to protect you,

But it doesn't like this subject.

Like,

Ooh,

This is a little too,

You know,

This is too scary for me.

I don't want to deal with this.

Well,

Interesting.

So,

So I could,

You know,

Maybe be dreaming about driving a car or something and I'm terrified of the speed and how reckless everybody is driving.

And in reality,

That might be my subconscious processing the dream itself and being terrified.

But what you're saying is the dream might actually represent my work or might represent a task I'm doing.

And the driving is symbolic of,

You know,

Doing something at work or something in that case.

Right.

But the subconscious mind is aware of the subconscious mind understands the symbols.

Oh,

Because in our subconscious,

We have all of our history,

All of our thoughts,

All of our experiences,

Everything in our life is with held within our subconscious mind.

Right.

It's all there.

All that data is there,

Everything we've experienced.

And so our subconscious mind is the symbology in our dreams.

Our subconscious mind knows how to read it.

Oh,

I see.

So in your example,

Um,

The subconscious mind would,

Would be terrified because it does.

Let's say this dream has to do with you asking for a promotion or something.

Subconscious mind is terrified and doesn't want to do that.

I see.

Okay.

That means more responsibility and what,

You know,

What's going to change and,

You know,

All of the,

All the things that,

That our ego,

Um,

You know,

All the fear that's there.

So it's,

So it's a little different than the way you explained it.

It's more like the subconscious mind sees what the dream is about and is terrified about that subject.

And so in that,

In that level of understanding,

The way that could benefit me is I could become more aware of the fact that there's a fear in me about this activity.

Yes.

And,

You know,

I can make a conscious choice to see it differently or,

Or see,

You know,

See the opportunity or whatever and shift away from that help shift myself away from that fear or,

Or at least go into maybe the task,

Knowing that I'm leaning into whatever that fear is.

Right.

And normally we know what our,

What our fears are,

Right?

We know what they are.

So once you interpret the dream,

I mean,

Many times we do,

Sometimes we're not looking and we're,

We're,

You know,

We're like put the little wall up and I'm not going to look over there,

But many times we do deep down inside.

We know what our fears are.

I would,

I would.

Yeah.

I would agree that there's a part of us that always knows what,

What's going on with a fear,

But I think the less conscious we are about how we're living our life day in,

Day out,

Then consciously,

We're probably not aware that there's a fear.

Yeah.

So you bring up a good point about consciousness.

As we become more conscious and like we do some of these things that we talk about on the podcast,

Like meditating and these exercises to become more conscious,

Be less in our head,

More in the present moment,

That's going to help you with your dreams.

That's going to help you actually take advantage of all this great advice that's coming through your dreams.

What about?

Because you're going to be,

You're going to be able to,

You're going to be able to,

To interpret the symbols and you're going to be more willing to look at the dream.

So one funny thing I'd like to say about dreams is a lot of times people ignore their dreams.

Oh,

That was just something stupid or didn't make any sense.

But not paying attention to your dreams is like not opening a letter from a dear trusted friend.

That's a good way to,

That's a good way to think about it.

Yeah.

Pay attention to,

You know,

Honor those dreams.

You may not be able to understand them,

Right?

You may not.

But at least give it the,

You know,

The,

The,

I guess the,

The effort to at least consider what it's trying to say to you.

I'm curious about one thing that a good friend of mine shared with me here recently.

We were talking about dreams,

Interpreting dreams,

Et cetera.

And they shared with me that they have had a reoccurring dream almost an entire life of the town changes a little bit.

But basically since,

Since he was a child at least once a week,

Sometimes multiple times a week,

He has this dream where he goes into this town and it's like,

Sometimes it's an old Western town.

Sometimes like it's a village,

But it's this town and the people are,

Are,

Are weird or different or whatever.

It's kind of irrelevant actually what the dream was.

But the point is,

Is what about these,

These dreams that are,

Are reoccurring over the course of your life or even over a course of months or weeks or whatever?

Yeah,

They're important.

I mean,

If it's recurring,

You're getting that,

You're getting that letter over and over again,

Or that phone call from that dear trusted friend.

And that they're saying,

Hello,

Would you just listen to me?

Yeah.

And so some of the things that I recommend people do is first of all,

Start a dream journal,

Start paying attention to your dreams by just jotting a few details down.

And I do it.

I wake up half the time,

I can't read what I've,

Cause I type it in on my phone.

I dreamed about this or that.

Sometimes I'm reading it and going,

What?

But it doesn't matter.

Just start doing that because it trains your subconscious mind to know I'm serious about this.

I want to start remembering my dreams.

Cause some people are like,

I don't remember my dreams,

But believe it or not,

If you start having the intention to remember them,

You will start remembering them and then you can start documenting them.

And what I was getting at was you were talking about the recurring dreams.

Pay attention to recurring dreams,

Themes,

Symbols,

Characters,

And you could start to create a dream dictionary and that's your language for your dreams.

Oh,

Interesting.

I was going to ask you about that because I actually did a class where it was part of like some like training your psychic ability to be able to,

To tap into some symbology of the psychic energy.

And so what you're supposed to do is you're supposed to write like fire symbol and you just write it on a piece of paper or like,

Like six pages of it,

Just writing it over and over and over.

Fire,

Fire,

Fire,

Fire,

Fire,

Fire,

Fire,

Fire,

Fire,

The symbol,

Symbol,

Symbol,

Symbol,

Symbol,

Kind of embedded in your subconscious.

And then the idea is when you,

When you try to tap into some of your psychic abilities,

You'll see this symbol and that's your way of the psychic ability to communicate fire to you or something hot.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so I was going to ask you,

Is,

Is that a way to sort of like start building up,

Like you said,

A dictionary with your dreams where you're,

You're partnering kind of with your subconscious to say,

Okay,

If you want to tell me about pain or whatever,

Then this,

This is the symbol for pain.

So if you have a symbol in your dream,

Let's say a dog,

The first thing you look at is how,

What does this mean to me personally?

What does a dog mean to me?

To some people it's going to mean,

Um,

Man's best friend.

I have a dog.

It means unconditional.

No,

It means unconditional love.

Let's say unconditional love.

My dogs love me.

Um,

Having a companion in life,

Whatever.

So that's the personal level.

But if you're someone who says,

I don't have a dog,

I don't have any,

Um,

I don't have any,

Um,

Personal relationship with the word dog or the symbol dog.

So you could,

Then you go to the cultural level.

So in my culture,

What is the symbology of a dog and our culture,

At least in Seattle,

It's man's best friend.

You know,

There's so many people that live here that have dogs.

It's that kind of thing.

Got it.

And,

But if you find,

Well,

If it's some symbology where it's like,

Well,

There's not really anything culturally that really resonates,

It wouldn't be a dog,

But something else.

Um,

Then you go to universal,

You go to a higher,

You go to a higher,

Like all cross all time.

What's the symbology of this.

So that's how you interpret symbols.

Like if you have an apple in your dream,

Go to yourself first,

Or let's say Jesus,

You know,

Like,

What does Jesus mean to me?

Maybe I'm not religious.

Maybe Jesus means absolutely nothing.

You know,

Then you go to the next level,

Which would be cultural and then maybe universal over over time.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Are you,

Are you saying,

Um,

Cause,

Cause that was a question I actually was curious about.

I know you have a book and there's plenty of websites and stuff that talk about the symbolism of things in your dreams.

Are you basically saying that you can train yourself to understand the symbols in your dreams?

Like you can look at,

Like I can go pull a book up and I can,

We were playing cards in our in my dream and I can pull a book up and I can look at the symbology of cards and it means this or it could mean this or it could mean this.

But I,

I think what I'm hearing you say is,

Is that what a cards mean to me,

What,

What it was,

That's where you start as a symbol,

What a cards mean to me.

And if they mean fun or they mean,

Um,

Competition or whatever,

Then,

Then that could be a potential clue in my dream as to why cards were in my dream.

Right.

Okay.

That's,

That's really,

I think that's great to,

To know that because I've never,

I never thought about it that way before.

Yeah.

Because there could be something where you're like,

Well,

What does that mean?

You know,

That doesn't mean anything to me.

Like somebody who,

Who,

Um,

You know,

Like the statue of Liberty is going to mean one thing to somebody who works at the statue of Liberty or for somebody else who can see the statue of Liberty from their house or someone who lives in,

Um,

A country that doesn't really get along with the United States that sees it as something more confrontational.

Right.

Yeah.

Does that make sense?

It does.

It makes complete sense.

I think that's really,

I think that's actually a really valuable insight tool for the listeners is,

Is that,

You know,

Start thinking about,

Like you said,

Start looking at your dreams and then,

And then start thinking about the symbology that you're seeing your dreams.

And then what does that mean to you in your context of your life and your path?

And then that's,

That's where I probably,

There's some,

Like you just said,

There's some really valuable information,

Some,

Some communication that's happening that really could benefit your life in a lot of ways.

Yeah.

Validate some things you're doing sometimes,

Um,

Warn you of certain activities you might be doing.

Um,

That's really cool.

I think that's really cool.

Yeah.

Because they could be health related.

A lot of times when I think it's cars,

I don't have my book in front of me.

I am a beginner at this,

But I think it's when it's,

When it's a car,

It's your body.

So it depends on what's happening with the car,

Whether the hood is open or you know what I mean?

Yeah.

So,

So it could be health related.

It could be telling you about something about your health.

It could be food related.

It could be,

You know,

That you're eating something that's not good for you or you need to clean your diet up,

Whatever.

It could be some specific food or just food in general.

Um,

You know,

A lot of times that a lot of times they're about our jobs.

Yeah.

You know,

Cause we all,

You know,

Most people are at their job many hours out of the day and that's where a lot of,

You know,

It's not,

It's a lot of conflict can come from that area of your life or struggle.

Especially if you live in the United States.

I mean,

Let's face it.

Yeah.

I know a lot of listeners outside of the United States,

So maybe the job isn't,

It's quite involved in your life like Americans are,

But yeah.

Um,

Definitely in our country,

You know,

The jobs become such a,

A dominating aspect of our,

Of,

Of who we are.

Yep.

It makes sense that that would be the case.

So um,

If you were to,

If you were to tell our listeners,

Okay,

The,

You know,

The,

The deep journal is,

Is definitely something very,

Very practical.

Yep.

How would you,

What would you,

What would be the call to action to our listeners to say,

Look,

There's a lot of value that comes from dreams and when it comes to your consciousness,

Living it,

Living a conscious life,

Uh,

Uh,

You know,

And,

Uh,

An enlightened and where a life then this,

The,

The dreams are an element of it that shouldn't be ignored.

What would be the call to action to,

To start utilizing dreams in a practical way in their lives?

Yeah,

I think for sure the dream journal starting to have an intention to remember your dreams.

Yeah.

I was going to document,

Document.

Oh,

Go ahead.

Well,

I was just going to ask you real quick because you just brought up something I was going to ask you anyway.

Um,

I used to,

I journal,

I do kind of a reflection at night before I go to bed.

It's also helped me really sleep because I've really struggled with sleep.

And um,

One of the things I do is I set an intention for my dreams.

I actually,

I'll actually like ask a question and say,

Um,

You know,

Tonight I'd like to dream about blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

And learn about something.

Is that,

Is that okay to do?

I mean,

Is that,

Is that like,

Is that something that we could do?

It's a great thing to do.

I was gonna,

That was one of the things that I was going to mention.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

Ask a question,

Ask a question and you can do,

You can do that with your intuition to ask a question.

Close your eyes,

Take,

You know,

Take a deep breath,

Get kind of in that meditative sort of state.

Ask a question and see what comes to you.

Like imagine yourself in a place like in a room or a house or in a very specific place.

And then imagine someone coming to you,

A person or an animal or something.

And then,

Um,

Have that person give you something,

Have something be presented to you and then write all three of those down because they're all symbols,

Those are symbols.

Okay.

And your intuition comes through just like your dreams come through.

Oh,

Interesting.

Yeah.

So you can do it both ways.

So wake up the night.

Now in your case,

Like you're saying before you go to bed,

Have the intention to dream about answering a question.

What should I do about talking to my boss about all these meetings that I have to go to that I feel like are a waste of time?

You know,

This is my intention for my dream.

And then the next morning,

Write down everything you can remember about your dreams.

And these details are important.

The symbols,

You'll start to get comfortable with what's,

What's meaningful and what's not.

Yeah.

It's so interesting.

This is a bit off topic,

But when you brought up the idea of that,

Um,

Visualization with your intention,

I do one,

I actually love this one and it works quite well for me.

I'll get in a kind of meditative state and I'll picture myself.

I got a question,

Right?

I start with a question,

But then I picture myself walking the beach and a bottle floats up on the,

On the,

On the beach.

And I pick up the bottle and inside as a message and I pull the message out and whatever the message is,

Is my intuition telling me the answer to my question.

I love that.

That's great.

I know it works.

It works super well.

Um,

Yeah.

Okay.

But that was a,

That was a tangent.

Sorry about that.

All right.

Um,

This was really,

This was really informative.

Um,

I really,

I'm really glad our listeners voted to have this be our next topic.

Um,

And,

And just as a reminder to everybody,

We have,

We have a Facebook,

A practical consciousness Facebook page group.

Um,

I encourage you if you're a listener to join that.

Um,

The conversation is starting to happen.

Lisa and I pop in on video here and there.

You did that today even,

And,

Um,

We ask our listeners to,

To,

To start,

Um,

Asking us to topics to talk about.

And this was one of them.

They wanted to hear about dreams.

So here we are.

So and I think this would be a topic we could cover again.

We can go,

It's like you said,

I'm very excited about this topic.

So we could go in deeper on this one and you know,

Maybe some listeners have specific questions.

Yeah.

Or specific questions.

Yeah.

And if we don't have the answers,

Which we probably often won't,

Um,

We've,

We've got a kind of a wealth of resources to tap into and we can do that and,

And help wherever we can.

Um,

Also,

I wanted to let everybody know,

Um,

More,

Some real good information is coming real soon about an event that Lisa and I are going to host together online event.

Uh,

We're calling it the practical consciousness experience.

Um,

It's going to be a kind of a week long event where Lisa and I really go deeper into some of the stuff we talk about in this podcast.

Um,

We may have a guest,

We may have people that pop in and,

Um,

We just,

We just want to kind of make the experience a little richer and,

Um,

Kind of help people start establishing a community and a tribe that,

Um,

A bunch of left brain people that,

That are getting more woo woo and more higher consciousness and help them,

Um,

Kind of support them on that journey that they're on.

Just like we were and are,

And still are actually.

And um,

You know,

You might,

You might even see crystal,

Who knows,

But,

Um,

Anyway,

Anyway,

More,

More coming in the,

In the following weeks on that.

Um,

You'll certainly get a lot more information if you join that,

Uh,

Practical consciousness,

Um,

Facebook page.

Um,

We love for you to come out there and be part of that experience.

Um,

With that,

Lisa,

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you for offering this very,

Very valuable information today.

I think it's super helpful and fun and fun.

And um,

With that,

We'll say goodbye and we'll,

We'll talk next week.

Bye bye.

Bye bye everyone.