CHAPTER 2. Dreams are Parables
A parable is a succinct, didactic story, in prose or verse, that illustrates one or more instructive lessons or principles. (Wikipedia)
Throughout their long history, people have been seeking to understand the meaning of dreams, sometimes giving them the status of divine prophecy, but in our modern society, dreams are considered so unimportant that reading the morning news is a higher priority for most people than investigating the content of their previous night’s visions.
This can be explained mainly by the unusual language of dreams – metaphor, which is not the normal language of communication in modern society, oriented towards direct logical thinking and the expression of ideas in literal form. It’s not surprising that when you dream about something that seems to have nothing to do with what you do in your everyday life, you shrug it off: what nonsense were you dreaming about? That’s why we usually write off the images we see in a dream as uncontrolled processes of brain activity during sleep, as some kind of junk, useless and meaningless material.
However, if we were told from an early age that dreams are parables, and if we were taught how to interpret them properly (just as we were taught in school to decipher popular fables and find their hidden lessons), we would take dreams much more seriously. Most likely, we would try to look at each dream image from the perspective of what it might symbolically represent about our lives, so that we could uncover the “moral of this fable” of the night and improve our lives accordingly.
It would be wrong, however, to say that we have never been taught to pay special attention to the parables. The texts of the world’s major religions emphasize the importance of understanding parables.
Christians, for example, are familiar with the parable of the Sower, which, in addition to illustrating the metaphor itself, also explains how to decipher it and, most importantly, says that God communicates with most people through parables.
Let’s take a look at this biblical text, for it contains a very valuable key that is essential to the proper perception of guidance that comes from the subtle, spiritual realm.
«Again Jesus began to teach by the lake. The crowd that gathered around him was so large that he got into a boat and sat in it out on the lake, while all the people were along the shore at the water’s edge. He taught them many things by parables, and in his teaching said:
“Listen! A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants, so that they did not bear grain. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up, grew and produced a crop, some multiplying thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times.”
Then Jesus said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”
When he was alone, the Twelve and the others around him asked him about the parables. He told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that, they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be forgiven!”
Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? The farmer sows the word. Some people are like seed along the path, where the word is sown. As soon as they hear it, Satan comes and takes away the word that was sown in them. Others, like seed sown on rocky places, hear the word and at once receive it with joy. But since they have no root, they last only a short time. When trouble or persecution comes because of the word, they quickly fall away. Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful. Others, like seed sown on good soil, hear the word, accept it, and produce a crop—some thirty, some sixty, some a hundred times what was sown.”
He said to them, “Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don’t you put it on its stand? For whatever is hidden is meant to be disclosed, and whatever is concealed is meant to be brought out into the open. If anyone has ears to hear, let them hear.”
… With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything. »
(Bible, Gospel of Mark, Chapter 4)
The only question that needs to be answered after reading this is how, when, or where communication between humans and the Divine takes place. Obviously, for the majority of the population, according to the Bible, it’s in the form of a parable, but where do we see or hear it? In the church? Through a medium, tarot cards or a crystal ball? Or is it that each of us, individually, receives tailor-made parables from a higher consciousness on a daily/nightly basis, and that’s the divine design?
Commenting on how some modern Christians complain that God no longer speaks to people as He did in the past, Carl Gustav Jung aptly observed:
«We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions. »
Now imagine that God (Higher Self, Spirit, Source, etc., depending on your personal terminology) sends you a dream-parable in response to your prayers for guidance. And without looking too far for an example, let’s imagine that you dreamed the parable of the Sower. That is, you dreamed that you were sowing seeds, and then you looked at the sown fields and compared the results of the sowing. It can be guaranteed that if you are a typical city dweller who is not involved in agriculture, this dream will seem like nonsense to you (unless, of course, you already knew that your dreams were fables created personally for you).
And by dismissing such a dream as nonsense, you ignore the parable that has been brought to you, as the Bible says, in the form of a “lamp”; the lamp that can illuminate what lies in the shadows of your subconscious and what may be preventing you from moving through life the way you want to. Therefore, by not placing this lamp on its stand, you didn’t take the opportunity to see your unconscious (“concealed”) motives, fears, desires, blockages, memories that were “brought out into the open” in certain situations and expressed as your typical emotional reaction, behavior or thinking style.
If left unnoticed, and therefore not worked on, this “hidden” will continue to be “brought out into the open” and “disclosed” each time, i.e., you will react the same way over and over again in response to similar phenomena, situations or people in your life. This usually happens because you do not know the true origins of your typical unfavorable reaction, because its roots are in the shadows, and you place the lamp/dream, that was brought to illuminate it, “under a bowl or under a bed,” and so you “may see but not perceive”, you “may hear but not understand”, what the parable of the night has brought to you.
In my humble opinion, a clearer understanding of the nature of working with parables, mentioned in the Bible, could not be found.
In fact, the Bible, in urging those who have ears to hear, is not the only highly regarded religious source that emphasizes the importance of being able to decipher the symbolic language of communication with the Spirit.
The main text of the Muslim world contains the same information on this subject (where some English translations of the Quran use “illustration” or “example” for the word “parable”, while some other languages say “parable”):
«Indeed, Allah is not timid to present an example – that of a mosquito or what is smaller than it. And those who have believed know that it is the truth from their Lord. But as for those who disbelieve, they say, “What did Allah intend by this as an example?” He misleads many thereby and guides many thereby…»
(Quran, Surah 2:26)
The cases of being misled, mentioned in the above quote, typically occur when the parables are taken literally. In such cases, one either rejects the vision/dream as nonsense or begins to follow the false path of fantasy, often feeding the ego instead of doing the inner work of self-healing and transformation.
Nowadays, there are many other sources of information, not only esoteric but also scientific (e.g. psychology), which point out both the importance of dreams and the fact that their language is symbolic, i.e. that the content of dreams should be interpreted.
Rather than overload this chapter with too much information that readers can find on their own, we will limit ourselves to the quotations analyzed in this chapter. And since Christianity and Islam are two of the most practiced religions on Earth (with 31% and 24% shares of all religions, including non-believers, in 2024, respectively), the above quotes are enough to support the idea that for centuries more than half of the world’s population has had information about the symbolic nature of the language of communication with the spirit.
How this knowledge was used (and if it was used at all) is another question, but it is worth noting that if the followers of the two most popular religions in the world treated parables with all due respect – just as their religious scriptures teach – there would be far more healed people today who are in intimate contact with their souls and who follow the wise and gentle guidance their souls provide through dreams.
But we have what our history has brought us so far. And we should not despair: each of us has a powerful tool for self-healing – our own dreams, created personally for each of us, taking into account our most sensitive individual characteristics, and offered at the most appropriate time. In order to begin to use this invaluable tool for its intended purpose, it is essential to first learn the symbolic language of the metaphor.
Author: Margarita Alsaker ©2024
(from the book “Living the Dream Yoga: Physical & Metaphysical in One Yoke”