to others how to improve their dreaming and their interpretation of dreams, was a familiar one that appeared regularly in his life and medical readings. That note was service.
“For some dreamers, service through dreaming meant literally dreaming for others and giving them aid and counsel,” shares Bro. “But such dreamers were few among those who consulted Cayce. Others were encouraged to draw or to write stories based on their dreams. Or to share stock tips secured from their dreams. Or to learn from their dreams the laws of human development, and teach these laws to classes of interested adults. Or to teach others to dream. Or to pray for those presented to them in their dreams. Each one's gifts were different….
“First the dreamer must change and grow. Then he must find a way to share his growth in unassuming service to those closest to him in everyday life. Only then may he find dreams that can occasionally help the leaders in his profession, or his social class, or his school of art, or his reform movement—by helping him to help them.
“It is a law underscored by the failure of the early dreamers that Cayce trained to sustain the high potential which he saw for them, and which they realized at times in both their dreams and their lives. They fell away from one another in their families. This was a blow the straining psyche could not survive, said Cayce, while it was reaching for the heights of dreaming. With his next dreamers he put his first emphasis not on dreaming skill at all, but on loving and producing. There was loving and producing in the family, there was loving and producing in the daily work, there was loving and producing in the gathered fellow-ship of those who met to study and pray. Only this course—only the course of giving, giving, giving—would keep the flow of dreams clean and ever stronger.”
Lawful patterns in dream interpretation
Bro points out that just as there were what he called “lawful processes” that governed every reading Cayce gave and every dream of every dreamer, so there are lawful processes of interpreting dreams. Of particular usefulness are the following:
• “As Cayce took up each dream in a typical dream reading, he first distinguished which levels of the psyche had produced that particular dream. The dreamer can also be taught by his own dreams, he said, to recognize the various levels working within him to produce each dream.
“When a voice speaks in a dream, an aura of feelings and thoughts will show whether the voice is his best self or just his imagination. When a scene from the day flashes across his mind in sleep, he will be shown by nuances whether the scene represents merely worries from the day, or a prologue to helpful comments from the subconscious. When strange and outrageous material appears, his own subconscious will teach him to distinguish which is merely a dream caricature of his outrageous behavior, and which is instead a radical challenge to his being.
“Dreamers should often ask in a dream, or immediately after it, he said, to be shown what part of their mentality has been at work in the dream, and why. Some of Cayce's dreamers were amazed at the colloquy which they were able to follow within them. Others were delighted to be able, they felt, to distinguish their own inner voice from the contribution of discarnates in dreams.”
• “In Cayce's view, dreams often carry significant meaning on several levels at once, and should be interpreted accordingly.”
• “Part of the art of interpreting dreams, according to Cayce, lies…in recognizing symbols with relatively universal meaning. He emphasized the purely personal meaning of much dream contents, from articles of clothing to scenes of war. But he also challenged dreamers to see, in certain poetic and evocative dreams, the presence of symbols which have wide currency in myth and art. Fire often means anger. Light often means insight and help from the divine, as does movement upward. A child often means helpful beginnings, needing further aid from the dreamer. A horse and rider often mean a message from higher realms of consciousness. Pointed objects inserted in openings may be sex symbols—although a key in a lock is more typically unlocking something in the dreamer.”
• “One aspect of Cayce's dream interpretation was harder for dreamers to duplicate: the times he predicted their dreams, even the night and time of night. In the strange, wandering world of dreams, this bit of his skill seemed incredible—even allowing for the power of his suggestion upon the dreamer's unconscious. But he said he could do it because he could see factors in the dreamer's psyche which made the dreams inevitable, much as one on a high building could predict the collision of careening cars on separate streets below him. He added that dreamers would also learn to recognize when given dreams were signals of a new theme or series, and to predict for themselves how more would follow—as his dreamers did in lesser degree.”
• “In Cayce's view, determining the purpose of a dream is a major step in interpreting it. He explained that the psyche or total being tries to supply whatever the dreamer needs most. If the dreamer needs in-sight and understanding, it gives him lessons and even discourses. If he needs shaking up, it gives him experiences—beautiful or horrendous. If he needs information, it retrieves the facts for him. Dreams are part of a self-regulating, self-enhancing, self-training program, over which the dreamer's own soul ever presides.
“An important step in interpreting a dream, then, is specifying what it came to accomplish—which the dreamer, according to Cayce, can learn to recognize for himself. A stock discussed by an acquaintance in a dream was a nudge to note and study the stock. But a stock seen in action, in actual figures, or described with instructions by a special kind of voice in his dream, was a signal for the dreamer to act, no longer to study.
“Part of Cayce's training led dreamers to wake up after a vivid dream, review it in their minds so as to recall it later, and then return to sleep with the intention of having the dream interpreted for them—as it not infrequently was, whether by more episodes, or by essay-like passages, or by the voice of an interpreter or ‘interviewer,’ as one dreamer called it.”
Simple Steps to dream interpretation
Kevin Todeschi, in his book Dream Images and Symbols, offers this advice on developing the skill of dream interpretation:
“Step One: Write down your dream immediately upon awakening…. Even if you only have the feeling of a good night's sleep, write it down. Let the subconscious mind know that you are serious.
“Step Two: Realize that the feeling you had about the dream is every bit as important as any one possible interpretation. What is the emotional response you have to the dream, to other characters in the dream, or to the action taking place in the dream? Note the actions, feelings, emotions, and conversations of each of the characters in your dream as well.
“Step Three: Remember that every character in a dream usually represents a part of yourself. Other people may reflect aspects of your own personality, desires, and fears. Even if the character in the dream is a real person who you know, generally the dream character represents an aspect of yourself in relationship to that person.
“Step Four: Watch for recurring symbols, characters, and emotions in your dreams, and begin a personal dream dictionary. Write down these symbols and what their importance is to you. As you observe what is going on in your life and then look at a particular dream, you'll begin to have an idea of what individual symbols may mean to you, especially if the symbol appears in later dreams. If the symbol had a voice, what would it be telling you? The symbol won't necessarily mean the same thing to other people, because personal symbols are as individual as the dreamer. For example, dreaming of your teeth falling out may be symbolic of gossip to some people, but an individual who has just been fitted with new dentures may have an entirely different interpretation.
“Step Five: Practice, practice, practice!…
