RECURRING DREAMS

My sister, Cindy, said something very poetic that I would like to relate, "If dreams are the pathway to the soul, then recurring dreams might be the speedway to the psyche."

She could be right, because while dreams tell us something about ourselves, recurring dreams are probably screaming out to us for attention. I myself have had them numerous times and, because of their repetitiveness, I have eventually been able to figure out their significance.

Because of my experience with recurring dreams, I think they probably continue until the dreamer figures out why they continue to have the same dream.

Here is an example of a recurring dream related to me recently:

"The dream always begins the same way – I am a little girl, crawling and reaching to find my way out from beneath a tall hardwood chair that has, in addition to its four legs, multiple criss-crossing beams beneath the seat of the chair. I don’t recall having ever being concerned that I might never escape, nor am I particularly afraid of my unusual circumstances, but I am definitely frustratingly challenged by the ordeal. As I endlessly navigate through the chair legs and beams, I feel convinced that there is a right path to take, if I could only identify it. But each time I poke my head through one of the beams, I find another one obstructing my progress.

The dream always ends with me still under the chair, sitting quietly contemplating my next move, and looking forward to waking up.  The dream always begins with a recognition of the familiar surroundings and a determination to begin plotting my course once again."

The dreamer relates that the irony of this dream is her lack of concern or fear. "After all, I was trapped under that chair. However, I was never desperate to escape, nor afraid that I would never escape. In fact, the more often I had the dream, the more familiar the predictable dilemma became. It was, at times, almost a welcomed dream. For someone who has spent her entire adult life fearing something or someone or some future unknown, it suggests that, at one time – many years ago, perhaps I was more self-assured about my circumstances, environment and life."

Her introspection is interesting and what happens next was very revealing to the dreamer. She goes on to say that, "Three decades after not having experienced the dream, I was dusting a chair in our bedroom that once belonged to my Great Auntie Alice and Great Auntie Margaret. I had inherited the desk and chair set from my mother after her aunts had passed away. I have been in possession of it for over 30 years. I’m always finding something new about the desk and chair – a chip here, a mar there, or sometimes it’s something that had been tucked inside one of the drawers and forgotten for years.

However, on this particular day, something struck me about the rich cherry-wood of the chair, its tall back with thin slats of wood, and the cross-beams beneath the seat.  It dawned on me that this was the chair in my dream. How was it that I hadn’t recognized it earlier?"

My belief is that dreams reveal something about the dreamer. Dreams that bring the dreamer back to an earlier time reveal something about the childhood of the dreamer. Perhaps this dreamer needed to reclaim that part of her childhood that she had been neglecting.