I’ve had an interesting epiphany when it came to dreams and dream interpretation. It seems to fit all of the dreams I’ve had in the past and may be an improvement on some of the data in published books.

Before we begin, let’s make one thing clear. To this day, it is not entirely certain why we dream. Most animals have at least some kind of REM sleep, indicative of dreaming, so it seems to have at least some evolutionary purpose. Some people believe it’s to help people process experiences which had taken place over the previous day, but there is no definitive proof.

The first thing to look into is the possibility of recurring themes in dreams. There are traditional themes where the viewer is flying, falling, and so forth. Although these are very common, none of them have developed in my personal experiences. Mine generally involve me facing a stormy ocean where the waves get bigger and bigger, forcing me to retreat to higher and higher altitudes in a desperate event to save my life. I used to dream about nuclear war when I was younger, though that may not be particularly surprising given that I spent my formative years during the Cold War. A more recent theme has involved me learning that the society around me is about to collapse due to some kind of internal rot and I have to escape before I am consumed by the darkness.

I have always believed that the recurring themes are due to the fact that the issue being visualized is simply a part of human nature and my mind is giving me an opportunity to practice dealing with the problem, in effect showing me that I may be able to deal with it reality should arrive. Since the human condition is a general, abstract phenomenon, the dream provides a concrete example which allows me to work with it in a safe environment.

The thing that is interesting about visualizations in dreams is that the event being depicted must have actually triggered the emotion it represented in the dreamer’s past, or at least represent something the dreamer can easily tie to the situation. In the case of the ocean, I have never personally hundred-foot-tall waves. However, I can IMAGINE such a thing taking place. I have certainly seen and feared large waves in the past (in fact, when I was very young I was intimidated by the large waves at one of the beaches on Curacao). Waves miles high could conceivably be generated by asteroids and comets that land in the ocean, and there is tantalizing evidence linking Noah’s flood to a comet impact of the coast of Madagascar. Combining the visual cue of large, intimidating waves as a child with the giant waves induced by impacts and you get the image depicted in the dream.

Why am I using this image in the dream? My hypothesis is that I am trying to process the fact that the world’s problems sometimes seem to be getting worse and worse, especially in the case of climate change. All you can do is try to run as far away from them as you can and hope you can survive the onslaught. Note that there ARE cases where it may be best to confront the threat directly, but I strongly suspect that a different scene would be used to represent that scenario.

The only prerequisite for an image’s use is that the visualization which serves as the basis for it must have transpired before the event it represents takes place. Once it starts being used in dreams, it may be used to represent that scenario indefinitely (or at least until a better option comes around).

I always believed the nuclear war imagery represented sensory overload, with the huge explosions. It may have also done double duty as fear of nuclear annihilation as well. What is intriguing, however, is that this theme abated shortly after high school. Two things happened about that time: I may have shut down in an attempt to avoid sensory overload (making sensory overload less of an issue), and the Cold War ended, reducing the threat of nuclear war. The issue represented was no longer an obvious problem, so the dreams to deal with it disappeared.

The societal decay theme is very recent, partially because I was exposed to the imagery it uses only a few weeks ago. In the recent fantasy book Shorefall, by Robert Jackson Bennett, a character has to wear a mask because seeing his true faces causes people to go insane and either kill themselves or gouge their eyes out. This character warns his henchmen to hide their eyes and then proceeds to remove his mask, throwing a noble family’s throne room into instant chaos. The scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark when the Nazis open the Ark comes to mind here.

After wrecking the throne room, the character tells the henchmen that he will leave the area and that it will soon be safe for them to remove their own masks as long as they do not look out the window. They wait a little longer (during which the unmasked villain starts walking around outside devastating the rest of the family’s complex), and when the coast is clear they make their escape.

When this event is seen by characters in a different area of the city, the scenario in the dream depicts the situation perfectly. Rumors of a disaster in the throne room start to emerge, and soon people from that family are seen screaming and jumping from the walls of the palace. Panic starts spreading along with the mental contagion, which started with just one event and eventually affects the whole city.

What is the societal contagion being represented in the dream? I am an American, and like many Americans believe that our country is falling apart around us (the political divide involves what to do about it, and given the situation this can lead to some very passionate opinions). This has never been processed in dreams before, and it appears that the analogy provided in Shorefall has finally gotten me into dealing with it.

There is also the obvious possibility that it represents COVID. The COVID explanation certainly matches the evidence as well, but the first instinct — which is often correct — was to consider societal collapse.

Now what does this interpretation have to do with books saying what a symbol means? My theory is that people use different symbols for different things, so in many the symbols and their interpretations may not match up depending on the experience of the dreamer. Suppose a book says flying represents freedom. However, someone who has survived a plane crash may use flying to represent danger he or she cannot control. Similarly, someone who has served time in prison may see an open door as freedom. Books may show common linkages, but they likely will not match your own.

Note that the appearance of people in dreams may also serve as symbols in this regard, especially if the person has (or had) been known to trigger emotions in the path. In situations like that, the person may appear if the dreamer wants to process a problem involving that emotion. I had imaginary friends as a child, representing concepts such as order and chaos, and they often appeared in dreams when going through the trauma of puberty.

It is interesting that most of the symbolism in my dreams dates from junior high and high school (it is uncommon for a person I know from a period later than high school to show up in a dream). Curiously, most of the modern friends represent concepts I did not understand as a child: true platonic friendship, romantic love (as compared to a crush), and so forth.

There is a very plausible explanation for that: most of my experience were first encountered (and therefore assigned symbols) when I was young. Second, a whole new experiences involving puberty appeared at that time, and those needed symbols on the spur of the moment.

Symbols will persist as long as they can — until they are no longer able to do so. How so? In my experience, if I know something is a dream I won’t pay as much attention to it because I know I can get out of it if necessary. As a result, the best way to deal with a problem is assume that it is actually happening in reality. In particular, I CANNOT let myself know it is a dream.

Note that if you do have a lucid dream, try to not to break yourself out of it until it becomes truly unbearable. This actually happened to me recently, and although I was able to force myself to wake up once I realized it was a dream and couldn’t take it anymore I just discovered that I had woken from the depths of REM sleep, a situation which can lead to much discomfort and grogginess.

At any rate, the symbol which I could no longer use involved one who represented God controlling people. It took the form of a close friend who, in my teenage mind, was stolen from me by an angry God who had already been notorious for wrecking my life (in retrospect I suspect trauma over his parents’ divorce and a strong sense of spirituality led him to religion after being secular earlier). This symbol worked well…until he died of a brain tumor. For the first few months, my mind tried to have him appear in dreams in his usual role, which inevitably resulted in “Wait a minute: aren’t you supposed to be dead? There is no way this is real!”

Not surprisingly, he disappeared for a while from dreams as my mind tried to make sense of what to do with him. Eventually, he reappeared under a different role: as a messenger from my higher self or the divine! Clearly, this symbol is too good to throw out for good. Amazingly, an early posthumous appearance involved me asking him: “So, what’s heaven like?”. His response? “You’re doing it all wrong”.

This conveniently “happened” to take place after I had developed much more of a personal spiritual practice than I had had when I was younger. So, I had needed another symbol to represent personal spirituality. It is probably not that dissimilar from someone seeing the Virgin Mary or Jesus in a dream, except in this case he did not represent an established religion (though he eventually became an Orthodox rabbi) as much as my own. It completed my transition from a strict dogmatic upbringing to a more benign personal spirituality.

So next time you have a dream, pay attention to it. What do the characters make you feel, and how do you relate to the scene? You may be doing some deep emotional and spiritual work there, and take whatever advantage you can get. Don’t force anything, just see what it is actually like so you can practice dealing with it.

One final note. Dreams are an easy way to determine if you have repressed emotions or other issues. Why is that? If an experience is consciously repressed, you will not be able to have it while awake…but you will be able to experience it while asleep as you are not conscious. This is yet another form of dream therapy where you can practice feeling something which intimidated you when you were younger and forced you to shunt it away. If you notice that you behave differently dreaming than while you are awake, see how you are different and what those suppressed experiences tell you about yourself.

The photo is from the Allegro Papagayo resort in Costa Rica. If there’s anything that depicts someone looking dreamily out over a landscape it’s this.