Spirit Bear Dreaming

A dreamer asked about the meaning of dreaming of a shooting star. I've dreamt of the same or similar and wanted to dig into this a little.

The modern dreamwork movement puts the ownership of the meaning of a dream squarely in the lap of the dreamer. I think this is the essential truth of dreamwork, that we each need to determine the meanings of our own dreams or risk losing their power. So, I couldn't really say what someone else's dream means to them, but I can offer some help by telling what it might mean to me if it were my dream. The dreamer can then pick or choose or ignore what I say and make up their mind about the meaning for themselves.

I suggest we all should reserve the right to ignore other people's meaning if it does not feel right to us. And I really mean feeling. Experience tells me that if I get that shivery feeling when a certain meaning comes up, I know I am on the right track to something worthwhile.

If we were sitting down and talking about this dream I'd ask the dreamer what they want to know. If they were an artist looking for an image to work with, I might point at these images as visual inspiration. But the dreamer asks for meaning, so let me offer a few things about what I might say if this were my dream.

The first thing I would do is consider the feeling I had upon waking, which is usually an excellent clue as to the what and wherefores of the dream. When I wake feeling great after a dream of a scary or strange situation, then I take that as a sign to read it in a positive way, which might seem contrary to the dream, but experience shows that the waking feeling carries a lot of weight.

If they had just had a loved one pass, I might talk about movement in the heavens and how people have always seen that movement as a sign from beyond, and my feeling would tell me about that meaning. Since they didn't share a waking feeling we only have the images to look at for meaning.

If I dreamt of crystal water I would take that a marker for deep emotion and feeling and perhaps even calmness or purity. To me, lights arising out of water give me a sense of living things arising. The sense of water giving life, and fire being the spark of life within a living being. And since they fly off into the heavens I get the idea of migration.

In my dreaming, stars are usually living beings and somewhat different from us, often strange, but compelling, so, to me, it feels like spirits. To shoot off like fireworks and shooting stars makes me feel like there is some kind of celebration or dispersal taking place. So I might ask what vital thing am I giving birth to? What is coming from me? Where is it going? In dreams of shooting stars that I've had they felt alive and aware, and as if they were observing life on earth. Which was an odd feeling, not unsettled but with a hint of being watched from a different eye.

Again, the feeling on waking is so important. If joyful or glad, then I'd take it as a wonderful things coming from me and going off to make positive events. If I woke with a different feeling I would color my reading with that feeling.

Sometimes it is fun to look at cultural imagery to see what shows up, and I might look at the symbols of alchemy or other hermetic image systems like tarot symbols. In tarot the Star card has this mixture of water and stars, and is often the card of hope and inspiration, it can have to do with delving into higher things, and can be a marker of success and wisdom and healing and the calm after crisis.

Another tarot card that perhaps fits here is the Temperance card. It often shows an angelic being mixing some kinds of mysterious fluids while hovering over a pool, with one foot in the water, the other perhaps touching land. It is a card of blending and mixing opposites, or many different things, and maintaining balance and composure. I like these images a lot and, to me, they harmonize with the dream images.

If this were my dream I would see it as suggesting some inner peace and not being disturbed by the seeming chaos around me. It suggests victory and finding the real treasure in the end.

If we were sitting together and talking, and if the dreamer found something that spoke to them in my reading or if another thing formed a meaning, I'd ask if the dreamer thought there was something they needed to do about the dream, for dreams often demand we act on them. It can be a small thing, or something large, but acting on a dream brings some of the energy of the dream into the waking world.

Again, I emphasize that this is what I might consider if it were my dream, and a dreamer can pick or reject any of it. It is the dreamer's dream, and my take on it might be totally wrong for them. I want the dreamer to claim the benefit of the dream for themselves, and that won't happen if we try to hammer a round peg into a square hole. So it is best go with feelings and personal associations. Over time that evolves for us and brings more richness to one's dreaming.

Thanks to the dreamer for sharing this dream, it is quite compelling. I particularly love stars as they appear in dreams for their strange and un-human quality. I always find stars very engaging in my dreams and the dreams of others.

The great thing about working with dream images is the more you do it the more you learn about it. I'm not sure that there is an end to it all. Our individual Dream Source seems to have an endless library of imagery and sensations to send you and keep you going. And that is one of the joys of being a dreamer, an aspect that stays hidden until you work with dreams for a while.

~~fran

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