Looking for answers in my dreams
What does dreaming about ghosts and finding myself repeatedly in the kitchen tell me about my needs?
One time when I was traveling in 2019, I had some time to kill and went to a mall. I know, why would I do that on travel? Well, the boredom that drove this decision turned out to be fortuitous.
Science and/or magic
I found myself in what was mostly a stationary and pens shop (always a sucker for these things), but at the far end I spotted a little book nook. I headed over, somehow stopping directly in front of the self-help section. Somehow, my eyes landed on the intriguing title, Self Intelligence: The New Science-Based Approach for Reaching Your True Potential by Jane Ransom, and I didn't bother to look at any of the other books. So I looked at the table of contents and somehow, Part One | Programming Your Subconscious Self | Section 1 | Dreams | Wake Up to Their Power spoke to me. (By the way, I did end up buying the book later because it has much more to offer than the section on dreams, and it is far and away one of the best books I have ever read. No promotion here, it's just that useful.)
I say "somehow" because each of those moments felt like a gentle but clear sequence of "just go there, just look at this, just read that," which was quite distinct for an otherwise waffly person. I skimmed a few pages and here's the short version of what they say: our dreams help us process our experiences, and if we take note of them, we can see what they are telling us; we can even prompt our unconscious to give us the solution to a particular problem through our dreams. So I thought I'd give it a try. Four dreams opened my eyes.
Four-part dream series
Within the first week, I had two dreams in which I was haunted by ghosts. The first took place where I worked at the time. My colleague in IT, Steve, wanted to show me some creepy room in the office. I asked him if it's haunted. He said, "Yeah, I think so," laughing about it because it didn't seem to bother him, though he believed it. I agreed to go in with him but started to get scared, so I grabbed his hand instinctively and he let me. Then I turned around and the room went dark and dirty with black and bluish colors, and at the same time all the angry-looking ghosts appeared. I dragged Steve out into the central kitchen where the electricity seemed to not be working and where other colleagues had pooled, questioning the situation. We were all a mix of scared and wondering.
In the second, I was with colleagues again, in a rented vacation home. Everyone just knew that the house was haunted. And when we came together in the kitchen (again, the kitchen) the CFO said laughingly, "Well I guess I should have read the contract."
The third dream happened a few weeks later, the same night I enjoyed hanging out with two new friends. We had been hanging out at the gym in the basement where there was a small kitchen (again), and that's where the dream took place. In the dream, I sensed that there were ghosts where we were and I asked my friends if there were. They replied, "Yeah, there are ghosts here" completely nonchalantly, like, "Yes, they're a little unsettling, but we just tell them to go away." And that's what happened--my friends told the ghosts to go away, and they did! So then I tried, and it worked!
The last and most momentous in this four-part ghost dream series took place in my family home in California. The apartment had a kitchen that opened into the living room, and the scene unfolded across these areas. I saw myself standing in the living room with three family members, and I was wearing only underwear and holding a colander. I was getting nervous sensing that there were ghosts in the home, and feeling frustrated and scared that my family members were getting ready to leave and that I would be alone with the ghosts. And they did leave. And then I saw the cupboards in the kitchen fluttering open. The ghosts. I was scared but I supposed I could use what I had learned from my two friends in the gym to just tell them to go away. But they didn't, so I tried to yell. At first I felt that my mouth wouldn't open even though I felt my voice rising inside my chest and throat. But then, it did! I got my voice out! It came out like a squeak because I was scared, but then I screamed at them and I waved that colander and I was ferocious! And the ghosts retreated back into the cupboards quietly. Finally at that moment, only after it was all over did the three family members come back, and I was relieved to not be alone anymore.
I couldn't understand who or what the ghosts represented, just that they're something I'm afraid of. I didn't know why I saw myself with colleagues, then with friends, then with family--and them only kind of. I didn't even see a pattern of being repeatedly in the kitchen until writing this now, 5 years later. But at least I knew as soon as I had the fourth dream that it was telling me something about my voice, my learning to speak up, and with whom I feel supported. And to tease more of that out, I spoke with my friend Valentina.
Stuck on a problem? Ask a friend.
Regarding the first dream I told her, "In some way I was relieved the others could see and feel and were concerned about the same things." She replied, "I think it's interesting that you kind of feel good when validated in seeing something that supposedly people do not/cannot see (ghosts)... like, would it be a problem if they couldn't? Would it diminish the experience? What would it be like if you saw them and they didn't? It's kind of... you want people to see what you see, and confirm that what you see/feel is not only real for you." What Valentina pointed out to me is the difficulty I had trusting my own experience, and the support that I felt when others validated my experience.
She continued this explanation through the second dream: "You basically don't say anything about how this haunting is manifesting, but you say you were feeling more relief and the support of the others helped me.' I think these are the things that seem the most important, and are connected. Like, being scared can be overcome with the support of others, to the point that you feel relief.
The third dream Valentina named a progression. "Your friends seem to have the ability of not being paralyzed by being scared, so they are scared, but they also know how to get out of a situation where they are scared, and they show you the way. You try and you make it. And if you think about it, it's a progression, and a progression in how you let people help you overcome the fear. The first two dreams, it's about being scared, and not being alone in it. In the third, they tell you exactly what to do, so that what makes you scared goes away."
And this is the reason I ask Valentina for her help--she understood that the last one is the most telling. She began her analysis on that one like this: "About the fourth...I mean... Sarika, to me it sounds like the story of you trying to be able to fight your demons/being able to speak up and learning that from others. But also acknowledging that you feel neglected, but that you think you'll actually solve things by yourself after going through the process of learning from others and your experiences how to do it."
Valentina’s helping me to connect the word "neglect" to my own experience was one of the most eye-opening and freeing experiences I have had. It didn't hurt to understand that I was neglected. What hurt is that I had been neglected and before this I couldn't even name the experience. It was a form of denial, but not my own. It had been denied to me. Now that I could finally grasp it, it was easy to acknowledge that this was the truth. I couldn't acknowledge the ghosts with my family present, and I couldn't use my voice unless my family was gone. I couldn't even ask my family not to leave me when I was scared, out of fear that they would deny my concerns. But I could ask my colleagues and my friends, and they helped me to build my voice and learn how to use it.
Mystery solved in the kitchen
Let's come back to the kitchen for a moment because I didn't pay attention to that symbolism when I had these dreams. As I was thinking about it while writing this, I considered that the kitchen is where we get sustenance. And then I asked myself, what did the place of the kitchen show me in these dreams? Here's what I heard back:
In each of the first three dreams, I found myself in a kitchen with others where answers were given in the form of shared experience and shared acknowledgement. In the kitchen in my family home, there was no communal meeting, there were only empty, dark, fluttering cupboards, and my family left the apartment from the living room. There was no life in that home for me. My physical, mental and emotional needs were not sustained. In looking at these dreams now I understand that I had to hide my voice and had been deprived of being able to use it until new connections enabled me to.
