Dream: I sense that I’m visiting with a dear friend and suddenly realize she’s passed on but I’m still with her! Then I see her face on a cell phone nearby. She’s smiling and we continue to talk.

I was struck by the symbolism of the phone, a device used to communicate across distance. The dream seemed to suggest that although death may separate us physically, love and connection can still find a way to reach us.

Dreams like this are sometimes called visitation dreams, experiences in which a deceased loved one appears vividly present and the dream carries a sense of comfort, connection, and reassurance. Whether understood as an actual visit, a gift from the psyche, or something in between, these dreams often leave a lasting impression.

The day before this dream I had been quite ill, and I awoke feeling deeply comforted by it. What stayed with me most was the feeling that my friend was not far away at all, but still very close.

Dream: I awaken in the dream with my husband on my right and my two precious dogs who passed away years ago, playing joyfully and noisily on the floor to my left. One is wearing a pair of glasses, and I reach over to remove them so they won't interfere with their fun.

This is a happy, comforting dream that left me feeling warm, safe, and loved - held between the conscious world on my right and the unconscious world on my left. And the glasses? Perhaps when we're fully immersed in joy and play, we don't need to analyze or understand it. We simply experience life as it is. Take off the glasses and just enjoy!

Dream: During the night I’m shown four spirals. They are drawn flat on white, one in each quadrant of a vertical and horizontal black line. They fill the quadrant with the tail reaching the outside. The lines of the spirals themselves are black with a dark blue color line alongside it as it swirls open.

This is a remarkably powerful mandala-like image combining several archetypal motifs. Jung often understood spirals as symbols of the soul’s evolution - suggesting expansion, emergence, and movement toward wholeness. The black evokes structure and the known; the blue, spirit, mystery, and intuition. So much more could be said about this image - the cross, center point, and four directions deepen the image further. Simply put: balanced and organized growth emerging from the center of the Self into lived life.

Dream: Images of walking a dirt path with the ocean to my left. Just ahead the ground opens up beneath me and I find myself at the bottom of a long vertical passage or well. I’m sitting at the bottom - soil floor and walls - and a blue light surrounds me. I look up and see the sunlight above from the opening. I feel very safe and comfortable, a womb-like feeling.

Walking my path with the ocean to my left suggests the unconscious - the receptive and intuitive. Though the ground opens beneath me, the descent is not frightening. Below, surrounded by earth and the spirit of blue light, I feel held and protected, almost returned to a womb-like place.

The sunlight warmly remains, suggesting that going inward is not a loss of self, but part of a transformation that can reconnect me with the outer world in a more balanced way. The dream feels like a movement inward - toward rest, containment, and renewal.

This dream followed a lengthy walking pilgrimage. The next journey would take me far deeper than I could imagine, as I began discovering the depth and breadth of dream work.

Dreams can be playful, clever, and surprising in the way their meaning unfolds afterward. I later realized that if the ocean were to fill the well, I could simply swim out with its support. Guidance would come not by avoiding the unconscious, but by entering it more fully.

Dream: I’m planting trees in the living room. Some plants need water or movement. A small child hugs me. I water the plants with hose and bucket, and it spills over, flooding the room and coming down the walls.

Planting trees in the living room feels like bringing something essential into the center of my life. The child’s embrace carries a quiet gratitude. Yet the water comes in abundance, more than the space can contain, as if something in me is being asked to receive more than I am yet able to hold.

Dream: Earlier in the dream people I love and trust offer positive reflections of me, which I discount and disregard. Then this image…in a cabinet I find a small clear glass jar and see what appears to be a large garlic head inside. I open the top of the jar and immediately a large whitish gold snail begins to crawl out. It’s coming out of its shell and quickly coming out of the jar! It seems to sparkle and glisten. I wonder why it’s there and so alive and vibrant.

There are many ways to see this and how it felt for me was: what first appears as a garlic head - useful, but ordinary becomes something alive and radiant. This suggests a shift from ‘this is just what I am, nothing special’ to ‘there is something living and beautiful here I hadn’t recognized’. It’s less self-improvement and more self-recognition. And if recognized - coming ‘out of my shell’, is a move in the right direction. Exploring the symbolism of the snail may deepen the meaning further.

Dream: I’m standing in a doorway to a sunlit meadow. I feel the warm sunshine on my face. A curious and youthful presence is beckoning me to move forward.

This is a threshold moment, and a felt sense that I know can be trusted. There is a new way of seeing things - if I choose it. I step out…

Dream: It’s dawn, just getting light and I’m walking in my neighborhood. I reach a four way crossing and suddenly don’t recognize the intersection.  Which way do I usually go? I realize someone is walking up behind me and they turn to the right and continue on. I decide to go straight and cross the road.

A new orientation is dawning. In an unfamiliar moment, the dream ego chooses a different way, embodying its own authority.

Dream: I see the bow of a massive wooden ship coming out of the darkness. As the light hits the bow I see thick beams of brown and gold tones in the wood, no ornamentation, just solid rustic, vibrant wood and it’s moving towards me. I feel awestruck!

At times, a dream is simply an image that carries a presence of its own. Carl Jung called this the numinous - something that evokes awe, a quiet sense of encounter with what feels larger than oneself. The feeling of awe may be the most important part. It suggests contact with something deeply alive in the psyche that is not constructed, but encountered.

Rather than asking what it means, it may be enough to let the image work on you. Some dreams do not explain, they reveal.  

Dream: I want to jump over the rail instead of having to walk all the way round to the stairs, it would be faster. But I think better of it, too risky and I walk around and take the steps down to the lower level.

Look for phrases that carry a deeper resonance in your current life. Here, the simple line: ‘take the steps.’

This feels like an affirmation of real progress. A movement away from impulsive or less grounded ways of choosing and toward a way of being that is more measured, more aware. Not a loss of vitality, but a wiser use of it. I’m taking the steps to ensure my progress.

Dream: In my dream at the beginning, I have a loyal and devoted dog with me. It is highly attuned to me and we are always together.

Though the dog can often symbolize positive things, as the dream plays out it suggests an instinct that has become overly domesticated - no longer fully wild or self-directed. The dream is showing me how I may be bound in ways that limit my vitality. Consider your assumptions may be blind spots.

Dream: Someone is handing me a very long, thin, dark blue handled artist’s brush, holding it vertical with the brush tip at the top as if saying “Here!”

I literally wake up, sit up in bed and reach out to take it. Is something being asked of the dreamer? The gesture carries a kind of authority, as if it does not require permission from the thinking mind. The brush suggests embodied expression. How might I express myself in ways I am not yet allowing?

Dream: I look out my kitchen window and see a massive ancient building - I can practically reach out and touch this monument to time, knowledge, and treasure. I can’t unsee what is right in front of my face!

Sometimes images are exaggerated in some way to catch our attention, especially when something in us has fallen out of balance. What ancient knowing is being overlooked?

Dream: I see a black butterfly and wonder it’s meaning when it transforms into a black moth eyeing me directly. I’m taken aback with it’s intelligence and gravitas.

Nature has an expedient way of showing us who we are if we just take the time to look. A creature of the night, attuned to what emerges in the darkness. At times, what we encounter in the natural world feels less like observation and more like recognition, as if something in us is being seen in return.

Dream: I noticed the spotless house I had just stepped out of, onto the spotless porch beneath my feet.

That dream opening, all by itself was showing me something about my ego self. It felt eerily prescient. As the dream continued I felt as if I was looking over my shoulder; I felt the weight of all that orderliness, all the care and overdoing that was the platform of my life…

Pay attention to the words in your dreams. Sometimes they point to an attitude or bias that we often overlook.

Dream: As I’m moving with my heavy gear and climbing tall fencing I see a young man who is stuck on the fence. He can’t move forward because part of his gear is caught on the fencing holding him back. I stop to help him by holding part of his gear so he can let go and then unhook the snag that’s holding him fast. He’s free and now we both can move on.

Dreams can convey many layers of meaning in your life - all of them pertinent. Where in your life might something caught, be asking for your attention, so that moving on becomes possible?

Dream: I’m outside on the top of the stairs to the client’s front door. My helper is at the base of the steps on the ground in front of me. The freestanding handrail that runs up the middle dividing the stairs breaks off in my right hand. It is made of wood and splits along the grain vertically.

It suddenly hits me that it’s time to let my ‘right hand’ go, that the both of us need to grow in different directions. Other imagery echoes this message and I realize something I didn’t consciously know before.

Dream: I’m standing outside in sunlight and in front of me is a very wide area of land going upwards for a long distance. It is obvious that earth movers are clearing the land to make way for a huge multi-lane highway. The ground is rutted with track marks, brown soil, chunks of grass and uneven terrain. I need to go up the slope of land…

Something new is being built and for public consumption. What is calling you to participate?

Dream: I turn and see a lioness coming into the bedroom straight toward me. I’m on the bed and the lion lies over me, feeling her full weight on my chest, her warm breath on my neck. I’m thinking ‘What will it be like to be eaten alive?’

Could this symbolize being taken into something larger, being claimed or even consumed by a force that brings about deep and fundamental change?

Dream: I awaken with the image of a beautiful, strong, powerful horse with muscular legs and neck. It is dark Indigo with purple, where the light hits its hair it is glistening and you can see brilliant rich red, purple and indigo.

A request for strength the night before, becomes a beautiful symbol to companion me on my lengthy, miles long pilgrimage.