Now, you have your dream's message-response structure clear in your mind.

So you can see your conscious mind and your dreaming mind agreeing or disagreeing; you can pick up the tone of the conversation, much like you can hear the tone of a conversation in a language you don't understand. That's a big step.

The question now is: what is it about?

Think of dreams as communication in a kind of emotional-symbolic heiroglypics. If you were trying to communicate with someone without a shared language -- without even the idea of language -- how would you do it?

You'd show them something sad if you were trying to get across something sad; something funny if it were a funny message; something frightening if it were a frightening message.

Doesn't that make sense?

Now, imagining that you were your dreaming mind (which, in a sense, you are), keep in mind that you can't simply represent the message directly. Usually. The problem is that you can't deal in abstractions. So, what do you do?

You represent the message as clearly as you can by analogy. You're the director: you want to represent to your overly-literal conscious mind that you have something to teach it. What do you do?

Couldn't you put the conscious mind in a classroom?

Couldn't you adopt the persona of a favorite teacher?

This is so important: the dreaming mind is trying to communicate with you. It's doing its best to represent very abstract matters in vivid, physical ways.

Now, we know that we-as-our-conscious-mind won't always agree or cooperate with, or even listen to, our unconscious mind. So: what do you do, as the director, when the conscious mind doesn't listen? You shake 'em up! Throw in the snakes, the zombies, the shipwreck -- it's your job to make them listen.

So, if you came to this site because you had a dream that has really got you thinking, then your dreaming mind did its job well!


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