A Stranger in a Foreign Land

Xtsoi bsksiutye snrigkksue jisginr gpt kidy s opqrmy.

Confused? Imagine if everything looked like gibberish to you. You would feel lost, isolated, and lonely. In a 1993 survey by USA Today the biggest worry of international travelers was the inability to communicate. This worry or fear motivated most global travelers to become at least rudimentarily familiar with the language native to the land they visited. Learning the basics gave them confidence and security, opening the door for understanding and being understood.

Most dreamers never consider that feelings of being lost, isolated, or lonely arise from a lack of Self knowledge, a deficiency that can be easily remedied by understanding dreams. Even though the dream arises from within themselves, they too often feel powerless to comprehend the images they remember. It is as if they are visiting a foreign land each time they sleep. Rather than being motivated to learn the language of this foreign land, they quickly forget their nighttime journeys. Their confusion, worry, fear, or forgetfulness can be easily remedied by learning not a physical language but the language of the soul; the language used by the inner Self in dream communication. Once the basics are learned, the door is open for understanding these nightly messages from the Self, about the Self, and for the Self.

Each one of us was taught and has learned English. Otherwise writing and reading this book would be very difficult if not impossible. If this book was penned in a language foreign to you, you would see strings of letters and symbols unfamiliar to you -- characters without meaning. You wouldn’t identify them as words so you wouldn’t be able to assess any meaning to them. Communication would not occur. This is often what happens with our dream states. Communication does not break down, rather it does not occur because the outer mind and the inner mind do not speak a language common to both of them.

Yet, because of curiosity and our drive to understand, we consciously try to assess meaning to our dreams without the benefit of education. We erroneously believe the inner mind speaks the same physical language we are accustomed to using in our everyday physical life, leading to the misconceptions about dreams held by most people today. We try to make dreaming a phenomenon of the waking, conscious mind — a daydream — instead of respecting its integrity as images arising from another part of ourselves without conscious provocation. Dreams originate in the subconscious mind. They are communicated in the language the inner mind speaks which is not a language you have chosen to learn and use with your conscious mind in your everyday life. As long as we remain uneducated in the nature of the whole Self, we are like strangers in a foreign land.

If you are native to the United States, you are fluent in the language of your homeland: English. If you plan to visit a foreign country where English is not spoken, it would be wise to learn the new language to facilitate communication while in the foreign land. When you do, you will find great freedom in expression and in understanding those who speak another language. With practice, the previously foreign language will no longer seem strange to you. Rather it will be very familiar. In order to understand the messages being conveyed by your subconscious mind you must be willing to learn its language, just as you are willing to learn the language of the foreign country you plan to visit.

As with physical languages, there are basic components and principles in the Universal Language of Mind that you can learn in order to facilitate interpreting and understanding your dream messages. These principles and components are the universal part of the duality of dreaming. By learning this language you can identify the symbols or images appearing in a dream and assess meaning to them thus bring understanding of the communication from the inner levels of your mind into your conscious mind.

The images comprising your dream are chosen by your subconscious mind, not by somebody else but by your own inner Self. They appear in order to convey a message to you. The message will always pertain to your conscious state of awareness. This is universally true. Your dreams are for you, about you. They will tell you where you are, where you are going, where you have been. Sometimes they will commend you when you are using your potential wisely, sometimes they will reprimand you when you are procrastinating and lazy. They will always offer a truthful assessment of who you are right now. This is the beauty of dream interpretation. When you learn to translate the images in your dreams, you can establish a rapport with your soul. You have the best in you coming forward and saying, “This is what I think about who you are and what you are doing. This is how we can progress and move forward. This is how we can meet the challenges in life.”

Just as you were taught and learned to communicate in English, you can be taught and learn to communicate in the language of mind. Remember as a child you received your first book. At that time you didn’t know how to read, you were only captivated by the pretty pictures and those little marks on the page didn’t mean anything to you until someone who was knowledgeable cared and took the time to teach you, “This is an ‘a’ and when you see it by itself it represents a singular unit, meaning one thing.” Then that someone taught you what a “b” was, and a “c” and a “d”. Then they taught you how to make different combinations of these symbols-letters to represent something. L-o-v-e took on meaning. You learned the combinations of letters represented meaning. As you progressed in using language, you learned you could write poetry or essays communicating your thoughts through the written word and sharing those thoughts with others. You also learned to wield language as a means to convey your desires to others and acknowledge their desires by receiving words with meaning.

This is very similar to what your inner, subconscious mind does when it gives you a message in a dream. The inner mind uses images similar to the pictures which captivated your attention before you learned a physical language. The images your subconscious mind chooses to use are drawn from information stored in your brain. For this reason, our dreams tend to be comprised of people, places, and things we have experienced sometime, somewhere. Sometimes we don’t know the people in our dreams, but we do recognize them as people. The subconscious mind draws on the brain’s memory to form the images for communication. This might include what a male looks like, his hair coloring, the type of clothing, and even a previously stored bit of information that would lead us to assess this male as intelligent. Your subconscious mind uses what is stored in your brain as memory to create the images that will correspond to the message it wants to give to the conscious mind. When you learn what those dream-people, dream-places, and dream-things indicate you can understand what the message is conveying just as you learned physical words and their meaning.

When people appear in dreams they represent aspects of the dreamer. An easy way to identify aspects of ourselves is to realize how we change our expression according to who is in our environment. I have found that no matter how many years I live, when I am around my parents as far as they are concerned I am still their six-year-old daughter. The stories they tell and often how they communicate with me based upon this old image serves to stimulate thoughts deeply imbedded in my consciousness that have been accepted as a part of me for years. It constantly raises the choice in my mind between reverting to that six-year-old or revealing the person I have become. The aspect of six-year-old Barbara has a certain way of expressing.

At work, you may have a capable and efficient persona that you bring forth. You are dedicated in your work and are very skilled in the activities you perform. When you are the parent or interact with a child, perhaps you become a little lighter, a bit more open and friendly. When you are in the company of someone you feel doesn’t like you, perhaps you feel threatened and you close off trying to protect yourself. If you’re with a best friend maybe you’re very communicative, you feel relaxed and you talk about anything. These are aspects of you.

To communicate its message, your subconscious mind chooses a male or a female, depending upon your physical sex, who exhibits a particular quality. That specific person will appear in your dream to tell you about your efficiency or friendliness, or protectiveness, or talkativeness. If your subconscious mind is trying to tell you that you should talk more, you should express yourself more and let people know what you have on your mind, your subconscious mind will choose someone of the same sex who is familiar to you and who exhibits qualities of gregariousness. Maybe it will be somebody who always talks to the point that you find them annoying when you are with them. This dream-person will illustrate the quality and attitudes of gregarity in you. People of the same sex universally represent conscious waking aspects of the dreamer.

People of the opposite sex, when they appear in a dream, will represent an aspect of the dreamer’s subconscious mind. You can interpret the quality of those aspects in the same way you would a conscious aspect appearing in the dream as a person of the same sex.

Learning how to identify the aspects and what they mean can prove a challenge for some people. If this seems difficult or elusive to you, think of it in this way. If you were to describe the person who has appeared in your dream to me, a stranger, what would you want me to know about them? What descriptive quality would come to your mind? You might be tempted to describe physical qualities such as they are pretty, dress well, or make a lot of money. These descriptions are relevant to certain qualities of thought that are the point of origin for what is experienced in the outer physical world. If they are pretty, perhaps they are a very gentle person, very loving; this would identify the aspect being revealed in your dream communication. If they dress well maybe they possess high esteem or a healthy Self respect which displays itself in personal hygiene and care in the clothing they wear. If they make a lot of money perhaps they are hardworking, ambitious, or successful. However you assess that person is the reason your subconscious mind chose this image from all available in your brain to communicate its message. Your subconscious mind placed Ann or Mary or John or Peter in your dream to tell you about a specific quality in you.

This is the blending of what is universal in dreams and what is personally relevant. No matter who you are dream-people represent aspects of Self. For everyone, people of the same sex signify conscious aspects and people of the opposite sex signify subconscious aspects. These concepts are universally true for anyone, anywhere, anytime. The specific people who appear in your dream will tell you of specific qualities unique to you. They will be personally relevant for your subconscious mind uses the information you have stored in your memory for dream communication.

For instance, two sisters dream. One of the characters in both dreams is Susan, a woman they both know. One sister thinks that Susan is the most trustworthy person she has ever met. The other sister thinks Susan is the biggest liar she has ever met. This illustrates differences in perception arising from individual experiences. The woman in both dreams represents a conscious aspect of the dreamer. But for the first sister Susan represents a conscious aspect of loyalty and for the second sister Susan signifies a conscious aspect of deceit. The meaning of the dream message will be entirely different for each sister. Remember, dreams will commend or reprimand depending upon the state of your conscious awareness and therefore your own individual needs for growth.

Honesty in your conscious mind is very important in evaluating your dreams. Your subconscious mind will present truth, letting you know exactly where you stand. This is a true advantage to learning the language your inner mind speaks. This dictionary is intended to be a resource for the meaning of images in the Universal Language of Mind, thus it will define the universally true elements of anyone’s dream. How and why the symbols appear in your dream depends solely upon your subconscious mind’s intended message. As with any dictionary, this one can only translate the image’s meaning. It is up to you to place that meaning in the context of your dream message. By understanding dream messages, you access your own subconscious perception that will aid you in developing your mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual powers.

There is another kind of person who will appear in your dreams which signifies an even deeper part of you which is termed the superconscious mind. When people of authority appear in your dreams, they will represent your superconscious mind. Your parents, your boss, the president of your country, or your minister, are examples of images representing your divinity, an inner authority. The superconscious mind is the part of mind closest to the Creator who brought you into existence as a spiritual being. The spark of life from that Creator expresses first in the superconscious mind. Authority figures are the symbol used in the dream language to illustrate your awareness of your own spirituality and sense of divine presence. When these dream-people appear, they will indicate your spiritual progress, how you are learning and responding to spiritual maturity.

In the commonly cited Freudian dream of wanting to kill your mother, the subconscious mind would be indicating something you want to do with your superconscious mind. The something would be causing death. Death in a dream indicates change. Therefore, if in a dream you are killing your mother, the message revolves around a change in your spirituality that you are forcing to transpire. When the message is understood, the dreamer is free to apply this new information in his or her everyday life. Perhaps the subconscious mind is commenting on the fact that although you attend a church or temple regularly you are missing the spirit of your faith because it is lacking in your everyday life. Another possible interpretation of the dream might be indicating that although you are knowledgeable about meditation and stilling the mind, you haven’t been using this skill to promote peace in your life. Or maybe you have been trying to force spiritual awareness artificially through drugs or hypnosis. Maybe you are being selfish, refusing to share the wisdom you possess with others and in that way denying your own inner authority. These are all possible individual interpretations of the same dream. It is up to the dreamer to place the translated message into his or her life for greater Self awareness. There really is no one else who can do that for you. Nor is there anyone else who will be able to apply the insight and wisdom relayed by your subconscious mind to you in the form of your dream. You are the final authority on what your dreams mean to you.

How the dream applies to the dreamer is as rich and varied as the dreamers are. Once the dream is understood you, the dreamer, must determine the significance of the dream message to your life. Knowing how to read words in a physical language gives you a means to acquire new knowledge. If you read without comprehending the intended meaning, you lose the import of what is being communicated. You will find the same is true in using the Universal Language of Mind. Use this dictionary as a resource to acquire new knowledge, then seek to comprehend how the knowledge is personally relevant. In this way the significance of your dreams will become apparent and immediately useful to you. •