CHAPTER 3: Why do dreams use a metaphor? – AoteaRa: Dawn of the Sun

Understanding the hidden meaning of each dream-parable can be quite difficult. This is true even for experienced dream interpreters. This raises a logical question: Why complicate the communication process between the subconscious and conscious minds or the soul and the mind? Wouldn’t it be better to have dreams that point directly and unambiguously to the issues we need to work on?

Yes, that would be easier. However, the result of direct interaction between the conscious and unconscious would likely not be as useful as it seems at first. After all, humanity has long had direct instructions on how to “live right.” Various commandments, virtues, and norms are described in every spiritual teaching in the world, and these are always accompanied by numerous social and moral norms and laws.

However, life proves that not everyone follows these laws. When rules are imposed from the outside without the necessary groundwork of personal experience, there is little chance that they will take root. Like the Sower in the aforementioned parable, a person must create a suitable environment to cultivate certain qualities and virtues within themselves. This often happens through numerous trials and errors, day after day, year after year, life after life.

This brings us to the concept of “free will” as the main creative principle of this reality. Dreams in the form of a parable are an ideal tool for offering guidance because they never violate the dreamer’s free will. This is because messages encoded in allegorical form can be interpreted in different ways, or ignored altogether, without any significance being given to them. Therefore, the choice of how to act, whether to use what is seen in a dream or not, is always left to the dreamer.

According to statistics, the vast majority of modern people living normal worldly lives tend to dream in a symbolic way, i.e., in the form of a metaphor, parable, analogy, etc. Non-symbolic dreams experienced by individuals such as monks, clairvoyants from birth, and those who have taken the vow of service are the exception rather than the norm. Since this book aims to provide a wider audience with insights into the practical applications of dreams and their usefulness in everyday life, full of typical worldly joys and challenges, we will maintain that the language of dreams is primarily metaphorical. At the same time, however, we will not exclude non-symbolic dreams from consideration. Any dreamer may experience them from time to time, but their deeper meaning is often unrecognized, which diminishes their practical usefulness.

Now, let’s return to the reasons for using metaphor as a language of dreams. Experienced dream interpreters know that it is not always possible to obtain an unambiguous instructional message when interpreting a metaphor. The same dream can often be interpreted as prompting a certain action or abstaining from it. This preserves the dreamer’s free will, allowing them to make decisions based on their own motivations and readiness for a particular action. An outside dream interpreter may have an opinion on how the dreamer should act, and it may be more “correct.” However, it is the dreamer who needs to learn a life lesson so as to avoid repeating it; to do so, he must experience the real-life consequences of his choices, even if they are “wrong,” if he is inclined to make them.

Thus, another reason for using metaphor as a language of dreams is to preserve the personal nature of dream guidance. Although there is a universal set of abstract symbols and archetypes common to all of humanity, the interpretation of the same dream can differ significantly from person to person. Carl Jung spoke about this as well, using the example of two of his patients having identical dreams about running horses that conveyed opposite messages: for one, to be more courageous; for the other, to be more cautious. Each interpretation was based on an analysis of the dreamer’s personal life experiences and associations. In this case, a “one-size-fits-all” interpretation would be dangerous.

The symbolic nature of dreams protects the dreamer’s free will from outside influence, preventing others from forcing decisions on them that they may not be ready for. Additionally, another person’s interpretation of a dream may impose a solution that is completely foreign to the dreamer. This solution would be based on another person’s experience and opinion and may be completely untrue to the parable created specifically for the dreamer.

This leads to the futility and sometimes harm of using so-called “dreambooks.” Even a skillfully compiled dreambook will only be true for its author. As for ancient dreambooks in the form of collections of omens for dream interpretation, some of them may partially reflect certain archetypal symbols peculiar to humankind as a whole. However, they mostly contain outdated information based on the life experiences of people from past centuries who had a completely different understanding of the world than modern people do.

For example, consider the curious case of some dreambooks claiming that seeing a snake in a dream means becoming pregnant. This omen apparently stems from our ancestors’ associations about intimate relationships (i.e., comparing the penis to a snake), which were shrouded in secrecy and misunderstanding, where any sexual act could lead to pregnancy. Whether such an omen is relevant for modern people is a purely individual question based on personal experience and perceptions. However, this interpretation of the symbol “snake” is not universal. Like many other omens listed in such compilations, it indicates the uselessness of using dreambooks compiled by others, even if they were formed by generations of our ancestors.

The task of learning to work with dreams is to compile one’s own personal “dreambook,” or, more precisely, a dictionary of one’s own symbols. Many of the symbols in this dreambook will have several different meanings, and a large portion of them will be unique to the owner of this dictionary because they have been formed as a result of his or her own life experiences.

Now, let’s examine another important aspect of metaphor. As we know, metaphors allow us to perceive information on an emotional level. This is why the use of metaphor is quite common in art, literature, and especially poetry, to evoke an emotional response in the reader at deeper levels of consciousness than the analytical mind. Similarly, dreams convey their message in metaphorical form, leaving an imprint on the dreamer’s consciousness at the level of feelings. If the dreamer reflects on the feelings evoked by the dream, they may find resonance with a similar emotional imprint produced by a particular event or person in real life. This provides an important clue to unlocking the meaning of the dream. The emotional impact of metaphorical dream scenes is accessible only to the dreamer, thus protecting them from outside influences regarding the meaning of their dreams.

Based on this, it’s clear that using artificial intelligence or other software to automatically interpret dreams is pointless. Firstly, because it’s similar to using dreambooks: applying a generic database to an individual whose knowledge and life experiences are always unique. And secondly, only the dreamer has additional, crucial information about the deeper content of their dream, such as emotions, feelings, memories, and associations produced by the dream metaphor. This area is so unique and subtle that only a real human being can grasp it, not a robotic machine, even if it is extremely “intelligent.”

As we can see, communication between the conscious and unconscious mind through metaphor offers a high level of protection against infringement on the dreamer’s free will, whether from other people or the guiding dreams themselves. And since recently, the dream metaphor serves as a defence against the governance of artificial intelligence, which is rapidly penetrating every sphere of our lives, but luckily, it is unable to truly penetrate the sphere of the human subconscious and feelings.

Having discussed the purpose of using metaphorical language in dreams from the perspective of preserving the dreamer’s free will, it is important to mention another reason why using a metaphor is useful for conveying messages and guidance from the subtle plane of existence.

Often, events in a person’s life follow the same pattern across several areas (e.g., health, career, family). With the help of a single scenario, it is possible to demonstrate the presence of this pattern on all levels simultaneously and thus raise the question of what the common cause may be of several problems that exist in seemingly different areas of life.

Here, we will look at an example of a dream that depicts a situation from the dreamer’s life in a nearly literal (non-symbolic) manner, recreating the events as they occurred in real life. At the same time, however, the dream carries a hidden message encrypted with the help of this “pseudo-literalness,” indicating that a similar scenario is unfolding in another area of life. Such a dream subtly and almost unnoticeably encourages the dreamer to view what was seen in the dream through a symbolic lens and recognize a common scenario pattern that is much more prevalent in their life than it may have seemed before. Unfortunately, instances in which dreamers recognize such hidden messages in seemingly “literal” dreams are rare. Therefore, we will continue to discuss pseudo-literal dreams to encourage readers to look for symbolism, dig deeper, recognize patterns, and see connections.

The highly observant genius Leonardo Da Vinci once said, “Learn to see. Realize that everything connects to everything else.” Since then, science has done a good job of establishing relationships between numerous physical objects and phenomena. However, the fractal design of the universe is so multidimensional and limitless that it can be difficult, or even impossible, to see the connection between seemingly independent events or objects from different realms. Dreams have the ability to point out the interconnectedness or similarity of such seemingly separate objects, phenomena, and events through the use of metaphor, which is multidimensional by nature.

To conclude the answer to the question “Why metaphor?” we should not forget that during sleep, a bridge is built between the conscious and the unconscious, on which a journey is made into a world that may be so different from what our conscious mind is used to that it is impossible to describe the experience there in the exact terms of the language we are accustomed to, which may simply not contain the necessary definitions. Therefore, the only way to capture the information received by consciousness is to use comparative language, replacing exotic concepts with those familiar to us from everyday life. This is where allegory comes in. It can only vaguely reflect the meaning of the transmitted information, but often, only with the help of the language of images, can we access knowledge from higher spheres of consciousness.

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