Hi Marye,

I find dreams are invaluable tools to detect emotional themes and distortions. I have always had vivid dreams, but it’s not until this past year that I have learnt to really work with them.

I cannot interpret your dream for you, but I can share with you how I work with mine, in order to understand the underlying message.

The first thing I pay attention to is if there is a strong feeling or emotion attached to the situation in the dream. Usually, this feeling will still be there when I wake up, and that’s how I know what to focus on. For example, you mentioned the anger that you felt in the “ripping off” situation. Could you still touch this anger when you woke up?

If I can detect and identify the feeling, I stay with it and meditate on it before I get out of bed. I try to see if it reminds me of any real situations, themes, or old memories where I have felt or still feel the same feeling in my life. It can be a general theme that comes to mind or a more specific situation. It’s not so important which, because themes and situations tend to go hand in hand anyways. When I can transfer the feeling from the dream into my reality, then I start working with the images and if there are, the people in my dream. Most of the time, unless it’s a profetic or “true” dream, (in which case the rules are different), I find that the people or images represent aspects of myself. For instance, if I dream that my husband betrays me, I don’t get mad at my husband (at least not any more, haha!). Instead I try to contemplate in which way I am betraying myself. What part of me does my husband represent? So as an inquiry, you could reflect upon if the issue with the “white women” reminds you of some aspect of yourself.

If I manage to get this far, I try to put the rest of the dream into a context. I get into the details. What other interesting symbols and events are there? Perhaps there are more themes than one. Maybe more than one reaction or emotion. It becomes fun and exciting detective work, and offers a real kick when you finally solve the mystery, AND gain valuable information about yourself. You might also get a good laugh at the creativity and inventiveness that your subconscious is capable of, not to mention the lengths and loops it will go through to get you to think “outside the box”.

So, in short:

1) Identify the most prominent feeling in the dream.

2) Transfer this feeling into real life situations.

3) Translate the other role players in your dream into aspects of yourself.

4) Inspect the other aspects and details in the dream for further context and understanding.

5) Have fun with it!

Also, don’t give up too easily. It can take some work in the beginning to figure out how your dreams work for You in particular. This is only only one method I figured works very well for me.

Let me know if you get something out of it.

Love,

Anastasia