Dearest Dreamers,
If you take the time to understand them, you
can’t help benefitting from the insights your dreams offer you. So closely tied to our waking lives, and
operating from a perspective neutral to our daily turmoil, dreams provide
insights into our personalities and the paths we travel through life. If we learn the beautiful, metaphorical
language of dreams, we soon know ourselves and are more able to be true to
ourselves. Here is a case in point:
You may recognize the name of Amy Tan, an
Oakland native, and bestselling author of The
Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s
Wife.
In an interview published in Writers Dreaming by Naomi Epel, Ms. Tan
speaks about the value of her dreams in her life:
“Fifteen years ago I realized how important
dreams were in my life. They weren’t
just flotsam and jetsam, I could actually change the way that I felt about
myself through dreams.” She goes on to
relate that her most significant dreams came to her shortly after her friend
Pete died. She tells of a vivid and
emotional dream experience:
“One night I entered into a dream and Pete was
there. He said, ‘I want to take you to
this place where I live…’ It was a
wonderful idyllic setting with a lot of creatures flying around: elephants, camels, people. I said, ‘I’d like to try flying myself.’
“Pete said, ‘Sure, but since you’re not dead,
you have to go over to that booth there and rent some wings. They’re only a quarter.’
“I went and rented the wings. I took off, and I was flying around with all
the other people, having a wonderful time.
All of a sudden, I realized, ‘This is ridiculous. How can I fly with these twenty-five-cent
wings?’
“Immediately I started to fall. I was terrified I was going to die. Then I thought, ‘Wait a minute, I was just
flying a minute ago,’ and I started flying again. I went back and forth with this – falling and
flying, falling and flying – until it finally dawned on me what this was
about. I said to myself: ‘It is not these wings that enable you to
fly, it’s your own confidence.’”
Ms. Tan then shared the epiphany her dream
brought to her: “I realized there were
many things in my life that I was not allowing myself to do because I lacked
the confidence. I needed the props. I could see all the props I’d been using, and
they were just like those twenty-five-cent wings. I could see how ridiculous it was.
“Even though it was a dream, I felt it on a
gut level of experience – the fear of failing, falling, and the elation of
flying…Without the dream, it probably would have taken me much longer to come
to such a simple realization about myself.”
Don’t discount the power of your dreams to be
transformative in your life!
Sweet Dreams to You, Dear Dreamers!
SMYD
sendmeyourdreams@mail.com
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