Dream: I’m on a city bus in the back and I see a friend several rows ahead of me. I also notice plastic transparent containers of cake all over the bus, slices of cake. I see a large slice under the seat across from me – it’s a seven layer chocolate cake with lots of colorful tidbits between the layers. I’d really like that slice but don’t take it. As we all get off the bus my friend gives me her cake container with half a slice. It’s strawberry cake. I think badly of myself for wanting the large chocolate slice and see how kind she is to share hers with me. I feel ashamed.

The next night I’m dreaming again and right in the middle of a happy dream about dancing, my dream maker gives me the same scene from the night before – my friend is handing me a container with half a slice of strawberry cake. Then it hits me – she is sharing half her heart and maybe that’s the best she can do right now. No need to feel shame for wanting more. My heart warmed to her that much more!

Our dream maker helps us see our ego selves’ attitude in relationship to others or an event. Sometimes these are blind spots or unhealthy habits we don’t see in waking life. Here, in the first dream my ego conscious felt shame - that I was not being grateful for what I was being offered.  By surprising me the next night, and placing it in the middle of another dream - surprise! I immediately got the message. Note, that the strawberry is heart shaped and can symbolize the heart and the power of love and healing.

As your relationship with your dreams deepens, you may come to recognize your dream maker as a wise and occasionally mischievous companion, patiently leading you toward a more whole and authentic life.

Dream: I’m sitting in the passenger seat and thinking about the car my partner and I are driving. It’s an old outdated vehicle like a skylark or Buick. I realize that we are comfortable enough and have money enough that I could buy my own car if I wanted. It feels fun and exciting the thought of getting something new!

This dream was a small segment of another lengthier dream dealing with awakening to new circumstances, new life. The car often portrays your persona or the way you move through life. In this dream I was a passenger and although ‘comfortable enough’ I began to see myself driving my own car, after all I have currency enough now to try something new!

The feeling it gave me was a new perspective on things in my life that were ‘comfortable enough’ but was now time to upgrade, to enhance and go bigger! That of course is not limited to material things, but to the matters of heart that make my life my own. These types of dreams can provide such a lift and recognition of your inner development and coming change.

Dream: I’m in my car in the driver’s seat in a large film studio’s prop building. I turn to see where I’m going as I back out. I put my foot on the accelerator and it sticks and begins to go very fast in reverse. I’m so frightened I will hit someone or damage something. I look in the rear view mirror as I speed backwards and then bang, I crash into something. I hit a large two story wall with beautiful artwork of a villa scene with people – it falls over and is destroyed. I think about all the work and effort to build it and paint it, all the arches and people in the scenes. I seek out a manager and tell him I need to pay for the damages. He looks at me and says all is good and it’s ok to go now.

This dream occurred many years after the 2008 recession, when my art business was severely impacted and ultimately downsized to survive the economic downturn. Even years later, I still carried guilt over laying off staff and I felt responsible for what had happened.

The dream showed me otherwise. The stuck accelerator symbolized circumstances beyond my control that propelled events toward an unavoidable crash. My impulse was to pay for the damages, to assume responsibility for everything that had been lost. Yet the manager simply told me it was all good and that I could go.

The setting itself offered another insight. A film studio creates elaborate worlds that are temporary by design - sets are built, dismantled, and rebuilt. The destroyed artwork mirrored my own creative losses during the downsizing, but it also reminded me that endings make way for new creations.

This new perspective, what Carl Jung called a "new attitude", released years of guilt and inner torment. I finally understood deep in my heart the role I played. I was always free to let go of the past, and now I could embrace new opportunities with greater peace and wholeness.

Are you as frustrated as I am, when you can recall dreams several times a week and then, several weeks go by without even a fragment? You begin to wonder what’s up?!

Dream memories are fragile, if you don’t attend to them in the first minute or two they are gone. If your waking mind is occupied our attention immediately shifts outward rather than inward.

There are many reasons we can find ourselves in a dream drought and the most common is a change in our waking routine. Dream recall depends heavily on how you wake up: sleeping in a different position or environment, immediately thinking about the day’s task, checking our phone, getting out of bed too quickly.

Maybe it’s increased mental or emotional load. Interestingly, both stress and positive busyness can reduce recall. Your dreams may even become richer during these times, they're simply not making it into conscious memory.

There could be changes in your sleep quality. Dreams occur throughout the night, but the vivid ones we tend to remember happen during longer REM (rapid eye movement) periods toward morning. Things that reduce morning REM include: waking earlier than usual, fragmented sleep, illness, alcohol, some medications, hormone changes, or sleeping more/less than usual.

Another reason - psyche may be incubating. From a Jungian perspective, there are seasons when the unconscious becomes quieter, not because nothing is happening, but because inner work is occurring below the threshold of awareness.

The unconscious may be shifting its emphasis. Jeremy Taylor, a pioneering dream worker, author, and teacher often suggested that dreams come when they are needed. Sometimes people experience weeks with very little recall after integrating important dreams, completing a major life transition, or making an important decision.

Remembering to keep a journal by your bed, and setting an intention to recall your dreams before sleep can create the expectation and follow-through of dream recall.

Healthy adults dream 90-120 minutes each night. You may even know you were dreaming but just can’t recall specifics. Your dreams haven’t left you, but will return when the time and conditions are right.

Dream: I’m in a large shopping mall and I see a department store at the far end. I think to myself, “As soon as I finish work I need to buy a pair of new shoes.” I can see the shoes in the distance as the store is wide open with the shoe display just where you would enter. I’m looking forward to it!

The setting is a public place. Shoes in dreams often symbolize the path we're walking and how we move through life. The type of shoe, its color and fit, whether worn or new, can offer clues to what the dream may be expressing.

In this dream, I was seeking new shoes, perhaps suggesting a new role, a new phase of life, or a new identity. At the time, I was nearing completion of my dream work studies. The public setting seemed to point toward a new direction emerging in how I would show up in the world.

What strikes me most, however, is not simply that I was buying new shoes. It is that I could already see them. They were waiting for me in the distance. And I was looking forward to them.

Looking back now, the dream seemed less concerned with uncertainty and more with anticipation. Whatever lay ahead wasn't something to fear. It was something I was ready to grow into - one step at a time.

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 right beside me.

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.