I own many different masks. In school, my mask was the uniform I wore and the academic success I achieved – these are what others saw. The other mask I wear is when people ask, “Hi, how are you?”
“I’m fine, thanks!” – is the most common mask we all wear.
Deep down inside, I was something other than fine. I was curious about something more – I was interested in talking about dreams with others. This was the truth behind my mask.
I imagined a world where Bob greets his neighbor with, “Hey John! Had a weird dream last night – how about you?”
To which John would answer, “ Yea, Me too!”
Something about dreams feel personally authentic – it’s organically your own. From this, I knew there had to be more to dreams.
Allow me to start by sharing a recurring dream that began my journey into deeper realms of dreaming.
In the month of February 2009, I had a dream of an elusive figure. This dream figure was a human in pure liquid form. The dream unfolded as follows:
A green hooded figure, stood under a beam of light against dark infinite space. Deep within the green shadows of the hood, a crystal light sparkled. Light reflected off a liquid sculpted face that stared. The liquid skin was clear , smooth – yet strangely still. Its shiny visage resembled thick translucent gel that traced along carved facial features. An edge of the liquid lips curved upward and forced a water ripple. Liquid thickened , flowed over translucent eyes. It held my gaze.
I blinked. I woke to the sound of light rain drops tapping against the window .
Before I could make anything of it, this liquid character soon appeared in many more dreams. Curious for answers, I began recording my dreams daily to try and piece together clues about any meaning behind this mysterious dream figure.
After years of writing out all my dreams in a dream journal, I started to discover dreams in a conscious way.
I experienced many lucid dreams. A lucid dream starts out as a normal dream until you realize you are in a dream – this is the realm of lucidity. In these incredible lucid dreams, I would consciously explore my dreams. Yet, as much as I tried to face the liquid dream figure that often appeared – I still found no answers.
To further my exploration, I read books on dream interpretation and began to brain storm ideas and images to practice interpreting my dreams. As dreams help uncover so much of our growth potential, many books on dream interpretation encourage research outside your realm of knowledge. This helps brain storm ideas you weren’t previously conscious of. With this in mind, I further reflected upon this liquid dream figure and decided to research the imagery of water.
My search lead me to read the works by Dr. Masaru Emoto – a Japanese scientist, author and water researcher. Based on his New York Times best selling book called “The Hidden Messages in Water”, his findings on the unique properties of water claims that human consciousness can affect matter – including the molecular structure of water.
According to Dr. Emoto’s research, water is like a mirror. It can reflect and change in relation to conscious shifts of the mind.
From this, I further pondered the symbol of water behind the liquid figure in my dream. Water can shift to liquid, solid or vapor – it changes in relation to its environment. Similarly, in my dream – the liquid character was an extension of my mental environment and may respond to a shift in my awareness. With this insight, I withdrew my expectation for answers in my dream . Instead, I chose to embrace it with respect and the liquid dream figure never appeared again.
A dream appears to have a higher intelligence of its own. When the need to control everything in a dream is released – we listen inward.
Further research lead me to the scientific studies of dreams that included the works of Carl Jung . He was a Swiss psychiatrist , psychoanalyst and founder of analytical psychology. He theorized that working with dreams was like learning a new language and that dreams have the goal of helping the dreamer.
Like windows into the greater unknown, our dreams seem to reveal more than we think – bridging the unconscious with the conscious mind, further allowing us to access a deeper connection to ourselves and others.
There is no real rule book when it comes to explaining the depth of dreams. The language of dreams defies definitions and speaks over logic. When the meaning of dreams loses itself down the rabbit hole of interpretation, higher awareness takes you deeper. It’s that liberating feeling I get when I take flight in my dreams and soar out into space.
In that moment of dreaming , the mind runs free.
Thank you to fellow dreamers exploring my dream blog! If you would like to ask any questions on dreaming or share your own personal dream journals , I would be happy to share my awe and opinions with you at: nikita.king@utoronto.ca
-By Nikita King