DREAMING ABOUT OLD FRIENDS

Monday, February 27, 2012

This week's dream:


"I was standing next to the driver's side of my truck in a parking lot. I was waiting to meet up with an old friend. (This is a friend that I had a falling out with a few years ago. We used to be really great friends and had a great time together). She approached me, we hugged and I felt very happy to see her. The next thing I remember is that we are sitting in my truck. I am in the driver's seat and she is in the passenger seat. We are just sitting in the truck and in the parking lot and talking. We are sharing information about our lives and what has been going on over the past few years(I don't remember the details of our conversation). I remember looking at her face and thinking that she looked older and tired but it was still nice to talk to her... and then I woke up."



There is an easy rational flow to this dream.  Very often, dreams don't flow.  They jump from one scene to another without rhyme or reason.  They just don't make sense.

Dreams happen because of unresolved emotions, thoughts and events in our daily lives.  Such things can cause us to "lose sleep" or "toss and turn" in anxiety all night.  The saying," let me sleep on it," suggests that our minds have the ability to process such unresolved issues during the dream state.

If a person is experiencing a general unhappiness and anxiety about life and there's no focus on a specific issue, this is when the dreams are too jumbled and unfocused to make sense.  They reflect the dreamer's very lack of focus and angst.

In this week's featured dream, there is a continuity which suggests that the dreamer has consciously considered the "falling out" with her friend many times and has tried to puzzle out the whys and wherefores and what-if's about it.  She evidently had bad feelings about the "falling out" and has thought long and hard about how to make things good with that friend.

We are self-healing beings.  Our bodies automatically self-heal and as long as it's relatively fixable, like small cuts or bad stomach aches, the passage of time is all that's needed for such things to heal.  If our emotions or psyches are hurt or damaged, passage of time can also generate remarkable healing.  Just as greater physical damage requires a "body" doctor's help, so do greater emotional or psychic hurts require a "mind" doctor.

Still, there are times when the hurt is deep, but a person can still resolve his or her own issue about it.  That seems to be the case in this instance.

When a cut to the body occurs, just as the blood sends healer cells to repair physical damage, so do our minds create a "filter" to soothe, protect and heal the emotional and psychic hurt.  What happens is the filter processes real events in life to act as a healing agent.

For example, we watch a movie about two friends who mis-communicate to each other and have a fight and decide never to speak to each other again.  As we watch the movie, the healing filter recognizes the similarity to our own personal dilemma and we become emotionally empathetic to the movie.  When the movie resolves itself by the two friends talking it out and concluding that it was all just a big misunderstanding and they're friends again, a wonderful thing happens.  The healing that occurs on screen resonates in our self-healing filter and, magically, that filter dissolves just a bit.

Then maybe we witness a son and father going through the same ordeal, and again our filter recognizes the similar wound, processes the self-healing mechanics involved, and that filter dissolves even more.  So we think about the "falling out" with a friend, relive the ordeal in our minds, understand why it happened and consider maybe it was a mistake to cut off that friendship.  Thus, over a period of time, without necessarily confronting the friend we've kicked out of our lives, the wound has healed by itself (thanks to the filter), and we find ourselves regretting the loss of that friend.

Now the issue is no longer anger at our friend... it is regret that we've lost that special person from our lives.

So our psyche sends us a dream, telling us, "No worries, kiddo.  That friend has also been processing this 'falling out' event, and you're both healed now.  In fact, if you were to meet at a parking lot beside your car, it'd be like old times.  Easy conversation between friends who care about each other's lives, a little bit older and worn, maybe, but still the same people as before.  All the rancor and hurt and anger between you have healed.  Go forth and be happy."

And that is exactly the message to the person dreaming about this incident.

I would add one more thing.  Since the dreamer is the one in the "driver's seat," the suggestion is that she was the one hurt and angered, the one who initiated the "falling-out" incident, and the one who walked away from the friendship.  This dream is also telling her that if she wants to heal the relationship in real life, she will also have to be the one to initiate the mutual resolution.

It need not be (but can be... at least in the movies) a literal interpretation of the dream, i.e., calling up said friend and agreeing to meet in a parking lot.  In fact, if the friend has moved on with her life and is unreachable, it can be a simple acceptance and forgiveness of oneself, of the friend, and of the situation.

In the dream, the two friends have accepted and forgiven each other.  Who knows... but maybe the dream is  a telepathic "psychic" communication between the two, depicting  the true state of things between them.   All has been healed.  Be at peace.  Go forth and be happy.

That's it for today, folks!

Happy snoozling to all you dreamers out there.