Today is the day that I have been waiting for.  Neptune moves into Pisces, the sign of his rulership, and of all of the enormous changes that have been happening in the cosmos of late, this is the one that promises the most benefit to the world.  This shift heralds the new world order at the deepest and most profound level.

Neptune is an outer planet and moves very slowly; it takes over 164 years for it to orbit the Sun.  As such it has sway over elements of our consciousness that are social, global and universal.  The most remarkable thing about Neptune to me has to do with how we came to know of its existence.  It is the only planet that was discovered not by actually being observed in the sky, but by mathematical calculation.  There were phenomena associated with the orbit of Uranus which led scientists to accurately predict another, large planet further out in space whose gravitational pull was impacting Uranus.  Though we could not actually see it, we knew it was there.

Let me say this again: Even though we could not see it, we knew it was there.

Let that sink in while I now tell you that Neptune rules all things invisible.  On the very mundane level, he rules the depths of the oceans, like the god he was named for.  On dry land, Neptune holds sway over all the elements of life that are of glamour (in the true sense of the word – look it up if you don’t know what I mean by that): that includes theater, television, film, fashion, politics, etc.

In our daily lives (and this is where it gets really interesting) Neptune also rules the elements of our personal, human condition that live in the invisible.  This relates to good, old fashioned confusion, delusion and deceit on the negative end of the spectrum.  However, on the positive end, Neptune is the part of our consciousness that is firmly rooted in the infinite field of creative possibility.  It is from this infinite field of creative possibility that all things emerge and become form.  It is through this field of creative possibility that each of us has DIRECT access to the Divine Nature of our being.

We all access this field of possibility all the time, whether we are aware of it or not.  Just as the scientists who first discovered it’s existence in blind faith, it is up to each and every one of us to find the “mathematical calculations” in our personal consciousness that allow us to KNOW WITH CERTAINTY that there is a field of infinite, creative possibility that is, in fact, the source of all our power, sustenance and happiness.

Today, Neptune comes back to the place he calls home and with that return, we all get to benefit from much easier access to the invisible power that he yields than we’ve ever experienced in our lifetimes.  We reach this energy most easily in our dreams and yes, Neptune rules dreaming.  Dreams have been increasing with incredible velocity since Neptune dipped into Pisces last spring before going retrograde and backing into Aquarius for one last visit.

Meditation and prayer are waking-life techniques for tapping into the power of Neptune.  This shift also heralds a deepening of the efficacy of those practices.  Those who are well versed in these techniques will find their inner lives expanding with great intensity.  Those who feel drawn to this way of living who have in the past met with resistance are far more likely to find the discipline that they previously lacked.  Wherever you are in this continuum of consciousness, this is the beginning of an increased ability to tap into the Power of Source and create the life of your dreams beyond your wildest imaginations.

In the spirit of this monumental change, I am extending my special $53 rate for astrological sessions for another two weeks.  Contact me at lennoxdreams@gmail.com for more information and to set up your appointment today!

The first of the major astrological events of 2012 is upon us.  Mars is about to go retrograde in Virgo and there is a wonderful opportunity on tap for all of us to prepare for the wild-ride-of-a-year that’s just gotten started.

Mars is a personal planet.  All of the inner bodies of the solar system (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Mars and Venus) represent how we experience ourselves as individuals.  Mars rules the body; so the energy that Mars brings to us is interpreted by how we move physically through space.

Virgo rules how we process information and energy.  It also correlates to all the various systems that support how we move through life.  This is more apparent with the physical body than in any other arena; we are basically a whole series of systems that work together in harmony.  Mars in Virgo is certainly all about the body.

At first glance, it could seem like this is a moment to make sure to eat right, commit to exercise, increase your self care, etc.  Mars in Virgo is about mastering the day to day experience of being inside a body and managing our experience in this 3-Dimensional world.  But far more importantly, this cycle is about being fully grounded in the body, while maintaining an active connection to the invisible, spiritual energies that are all around us at all times.

A retrograde cycle indicates that integration is at hand.  This is the appearance that a planet is moving backward in the heavens.  Of course, we know that this is just an optical illusion, but it is an illusion that comes with an enormous shift in energy.  The direction of that shift is inward, creating a perfect atmosphere for self-investigation and integration.

Mars is the god that rules war.  As such, he has long held sway over all matters of the masculine principle.  However, this is changing.  We inhabit a four-body system.  The physical body is at the center of our experience.  Next is the “emotional body” which is connected to the sympathetic nervous systems and is how we use the sensation of emotion to navigate our lives.  These two make up the lower half of this four body system, in which the physical body is governed by Mars.

We experience the Divine Feminine through our emotional body, which is ruled by Venus.  However, WHERE we actually experience this Divine Feminine energy is INSIDE OUR PHYSICAL BODIES.  We experience it as emotion.  Therefore, our salvation lies within the framework of expanding our relationship with our feelings.  We must surrender to the notion that we are more powerfully guided by what the heart feels than what the head thinks it knows.

Given all of this, who is really more in charge of our access to the Divine Feminine?  The answer may actually be Mars.  Our masculine drives (read mental, ego-based thinking) must give way to the new heart-centered norm.  Living in the heart is only possible when we have a healthy, open relationship with our emotions.  When we allow them to simply flow through us, we are liberated from the need to make them mean something or the compulsion to find their root cause.  Our emotions simply remind us the power of our instincts and the amazing responsive nature of the human mechanism when it is allowed to function without the obstacle of negative thought patterns.

Therefore, where Mars is, is where our access to living gracefully in the feminine principle lays.  Use this retrograde cycle to deeply integrate everything you’ve been learning about patience, compassion, non-judgment and Love, and you will be well on your way to being ready for the huge manifestation cycle that is coming up in the Spring!

To be fully prepared for what is coming, it is the responsibility of each and every one of us to be pristine in our daily spiritual practice.  The days of just squeaking by are over.  The second half of this year is going to require that all of us be operating at peak performance.  How good is your spiritual fitness regimen?  How well are you nourishing ALL of your bodies; the physical, emotional, mental AND spiritual?  The time to step up is now; the rehearsals are all behind us.

Here are the significant dates for this cycle.  Mars has been traveling over the part of his journey that he will be retracing since the beginning of November (in fact, you can use 11/11/11 for the date of the initiation of this cycle).  This means that you can identify what issues are going to be coming up for review again by virtue of what was going on in your life between November 11th and January 23rd, when the retrograde motion will begin.

This inward journey goes all the way through April 14th, when Mars will turn around once more and we will feel the third (and least intense) passage of this same territory until the end of July.

This transit will most impact people with the Sun in Virgo, Pisces, Gemini or Sagittarius.  To truly understand what areas of your own life that are being most influenced by this cycle however, look to where Virgo falls in your natal chart.  Whatever house is ruled by Virgo is where all the action is going to be.

This is a perfect time to take advantage of my current session-fee special.  Till the end of January, you can purchase sessions and gift certificates good for the entire year for only $53!  This is more than 2/3rds off my usual fee.  You can have a session now and put one on account for later in the year.

The email address lennoxdreams@gmail.com is good for both contacting me about scheduling as well as for PayPal payments.  I work over the phone or via Skype (in person, if you are local to Los Angeles).  Take advantage of this opportunity to receive assistance in making this the most exciting year you’ve ever had!

I received this dream from a life-long friend.

I’m traversing a path. Sometimes it’s indoors. Sometimes it’s outdoors. It’s not familiar, but I don’t feel uneasy about that.  What’s unsettling is that it is populated with wild cats – tigers, cougars, etc. – miniature in size, but not cubs. I’m on some sort of rolling cart and riding with me are 2 of these cats, one of which is gnawing on my right arm, but not breaking the skin. My feeling is to continue on, but I’m trying to remain very still.  When I wake up I’m not upset – just stuck be the fact that I’ve had this same dream twice.
The best way to approach a dream like this is to go symbol by symbol, and go straight to universal meaning of the stories that the symbols are telling us.

You start on a path.  A path in a dream is essentially your private journey in life.  More specifically, it is the journey of your life that is outside of the consideration of the people who join you on your path (family, etc.).   You say that sometimes it’s indoors and other times out, which means that this is the path of your life in both your interior, personal experiences as well as your social experiences.  But because you are alone in the dream, we are looking at your private journey.

You tell us in your description that you are not feeling uneasy, even though you are facing the unknown.  This gives us a bit of info.  It tells us that a change is afoot (which we also know because the dream recurs).  It also lets us know that it manageable enough to leave you feeling relatively at ease.

Animals connect to instincts.  Often, they appear in a dream to remind us of the instinctual nature that we have access to.  The dream may be telling you to tap into this energy as an asset.  On the other hand, it could be your unconscious indicating for you to not over compensate and cause destructive behavior.  The sensations of the dream and the process of ruminating over it will bring the insight you seek.

In this dream specifically, this energy is trying to get your attention with a gnawing gesture.  Have you ever noticed the word gnawing related to a thought – something gnawing on your mind?  Things to tend to “gnaw on us” till eventually, we are forced to take action.  Whatever it is, it has not broken the skin and perhaps has no intention of harming you, but something wants your attention.

The realm of unconditional love is well expressed by dogs and cats.  We have brought them into our world to respond to us with complete and utter love.  Dogs represent the masculine principle and the realm of the feminine is ruled by cats.  The Divine Feminine relates to the power of creativity, receptivity, and the ability to nurture and bring new expression into the world.

These cats are mature, yet small in size.  So these are not instincts that are new to you.  In fact, these are cats that might look like cubs, but are no longer young.  Something to ask yourself is could this dream also connect to managing your waking-life role as a mother?

The arm that’s being gnawed on is the right, which is the masculine side.  You are aware that you are not in danger and you recognize that stillness is your best posture (stillness is the feminine principle).  Whatever associations you make with this dream as it relates to your current life, ask yourself where might you be tempted to take action, and then don’t.  Here is the fortune cookie version: “You are stepping into more power.  This is part of who you are: Value stillness over action.”

As promised, here is a recap of the astrological weather for this week including November 11th.  And while the transits are not what I would call over the top, there are some very significant shifts in the cosmos that connect to this date and time.

The inner planets connect with our personal experience while the outer planets have to do with our social experience.  This week, ALL of the personal planets (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Mars and Venus) and two of the outer planets (Neptune and Chiron) are doing something significant.  What we have going on is a conjunction (two planets coming together), an ingress (a planet changing signs) and two stations (planets that were retrograde are turning around to move in a direct motion).  And to top it all of, there is a lunation (the Full Moon).  This is a big week indeed, one of the biggest of the year.

This Full Moon features the Sun in Scorpio and the Moon in Taurus.  Scorpio has domain over death and rebirth, making the theme of this particular lunation about transformation and change.  If 11/11/11 means anything in the world of a changing landscape, the proximity of this particular Full Moon indicates that the old is dying out and the new is being born.  And given that Scorpio and Taurus are both feminine signs, the Divine Feminine is all over this week.

Mars is moving into Virgo, also a feminine sign.  When a personal planet changes signs, we feel this as a very big shift in energy.  Mars rules the physical body and how we move through life in terms of the actions we take.  Virgo is the sign that relates how we process things.  In its opposition to the spiritual sign of Pisces, Virgo’s domain is how we incorporate spiritual principles into our day to day lives.

Mars moving into Virgo is big news.  Any event that happens within close proximity to a Full Moon significantly increases its importance.  In addition, Mars is going to spend eight months in Virgo, which is an enormous amount of time for the fast moving planet to spend in one sign.  Due to a rare retrograde, his prolonged journey through Virgo will give us all the opportunity to truly embody the spiritual shifts of the time.

Further, in the process of changing from Leo to Virgo, Mars will oppose both Neptune and Chiron, the two planets that are going direct this week.  Mars has the power to activate, and oppositions are the most active angle in geometry.  The movement of these two planets is significant in and of themselves.  Mars in opposition to this creates an even bigger wave of energy connected to this shift.

Neptune rules spiritual principles.  It is the planet that has sway over all matters of the invisible side of life.  For the past six months, this planet has been retrograde, turning spiritual matters inward.  When Neptune turns direct, everything we have just learned can now be put into action.

Chiron is an intercepted asteroid which was pulled into our solar system.  Since it has its own gravitational pull, it has a very erratic orbit as it tugs on the Sun’s gravity.  It was named for a mythological figure, a half god who was a teacher and trainer of Hercules.  In that role, he was mortally wounded.  But as an immortal, he could not die.  He wandered eternity in pain.  In his wanderings, he became a master healer.  In a natal chart, the placement of Chiron points to where a person’s deepest wounding is going to be, and therefore, where their masterful healing will take place.  Cosmically, the movement of Chiron expresses how the entire planet is experiencing healing and mastery.

Chiron has also been retrograde for the past months and turns around during this week.  This makes the power of masterful healing flow outward into the world in a very active way.  Healing is upon us and that healing is specifically connected to unity and the new world order.

In Pisces, Chiron is in a position to heal the very deep wounds associated with the misappropriation of spiritual principles by religious dogma.  The last two thousand years was the Age of Pisces.  The unconscious nature of the fish in the deep sea allowed the masculine principle to take the loving message of Christ (that God is within each and every one of us) and use it against mankind to foster fear and separation.  The hallmark of the Age of Aquarius is unity, the healing of this wound and the return of the Divine Feminine.

Besides Mars, the other two rulers of the lower body system are Mercury and Venus.  These two are traveling together and are in exactly the same place this week.  Mercury rules the mind and Venus rules the heart.  And while they come together frequently, this joining is particularly significant because of both the Full Moon and the 11/11/11 date.  They are meeting in the sign of Sagittarius which rules truth and spiritual principles.  Any opportunity for the heart and the mind to get together is a powerful moment of expansion indeed.  Given that it is happening at the same time as these other events, we can rest assured that there is a sense of permanence associated with this particular joining of head and heart.

If you take the astrological interpretations that I have outlined them here and combine them with the perspectives around 11/11/11 outlined in the previous article, there can be no doubt that there is a major moment on tap.  If you look around the world at all of the change that is afoot, I encourage you to see the peace and love that is making itself known.

Sometimes we have to see peace as the space between bullets and love as the constant that flows just beyond tides of rage.  But it is truly what we focus on that we experience in this life.  I encourage all of us to focus on the possibilities of a brand new world, one filled with love and peace.

Eleven-eleven-eleven is upon us!  I initially had tremendous resistance to the notion that this moment in time had any real significance.  However, I was asked what I thought about it so frequently, that I had many opportunities to consider all sides of the idea embodied by Friday’s date.

I certainly believe in the power of synchronicity – the simultaneous occurrence of unrelated phenomenon that, as a result of their proximity, seem to have tremendous meaning.  My life is so filled with this today that I can’t even separate my day to day experience as having it or not having it.  It is visible every moment of every day; from conversations of strangers on the street aligning with words that are coming out of my mouth, to the subject matter on television replicating itself as I change the channels.

But is the synchronistic lining up of numbers in a date enough to merit so much fascination?  After all, as a friend said to me the other day, “It’s just a man made date.”  And he’s right, in a way.  The Gregorian calendar that we follow is relatively new; it was first proposed only four hundred years ago.  And the numerology just doesn’t work out either.  Those principles require that you add the digits of any number up to find its final value (except in the case of master numbers, 11, 22 and 33).  But when you add up 2011, you get four, not eleven.

However, as the date gets closer, I find myself more and more attracted to the notion of its power.  In fact, I plan on spending the entire day in meditative contemplation.  I encourage anyone who is reading this to find their own way of honoring this moment in time as special and transformative.  So I thought I’d do my part by sharing with you my resistance, how I dealt with it and what my thinking is now.

Let’s start with the numerology.  While this year resonates with the number four, which represents foundations and structure (think building blocks, which are square), there is the fact that Friday is the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of the new millennium.  There is elegance in this alignment that is undeniable.  The number eleven relates to the same meaning of the number two, only on a masterful level.  Part of that meaning has to do with duality.  The mastery of eleven is connected to the end of duality and the beginning of a unity that encompasses both sides of everything that used to be thought of as separate.  Things like you and me, or us and them.

And while it is easy to dismiss the calendar as irrelevant, consider this:  For many thousands of years, people on earth used many different ways to mark time.  Never before has the possibility of a new, global world order been so prevalent.  And the fact that the now seven billion people on this planet are all aligned with the same measure of time, the power of the collective has never been greater.

This brings me to that which is at the heart of this phenomenon; the collective consciousness.  There is some very compelling research that has shown that when large world events occur, there is a measurable response in the realm of thought.  There is a mechanism that uses an electromagnetic field in connection to the creation of random number sequencing.  This mechanism shows that the sequence of numbers is impacted when someone focuses their thoughts on the machine.  It is supposed that the electromagnetic force from the individual’s brain is what is shifting the numbers in the machine.  Hundreds of these boxes have been placed all over the world and the data has been examined to reveal that there is a clearly measurable shift during large world events.  It has been proven in a scientifically sound way that our collective thoughts have energy.

If this is true, then the power of eleven-eleven-eleven lies in this gathered energy of thought.  In my personal world view, I believe that we are all connected and that there is really just one mind and that we are all part of that one mind.  Further, I believe that our individual minds connected on the same thought is probably the most powerful force there is in the Universe.  It is focusing this power on peace that can actually bring peace into existence.

Peace begins with us as individuals, and the most important thing any of us can do to affect change on this planet is to find that change inside ourselves and be the change we wish to see in the world.  I believe this as more than just mere words.  I am committed to healing my heart completely and moving out into the world in love and light.  The more I do this, the better my world seems to be.  And a moment in time where millions of people are doing the same thing on the same day is a big moment indeed!  I hope you do your part.

Come back later in the week for a description of the astrological significance of this week’s transits!

I got this message on facebook the other day:

Hey Michael, question for you – hope you don’t mind. This morning, Jane was having what appeared to be a bad dream, so I ran my hand across her forehead to gently wake her up.  But then I wondered, is that a bad idea? Should we let dreams take their natural course?

Here was my reply:

That’s a great question, Brett. There is certainly an argument for the idea of letting a dream run its course. However, there is also the perspective that we are all participating in a living dream – and as a couple, you are each intertwined with each other in such a dynamic way, that your impulse to comfort her and wake her is as much a part of her consciousness as it is yours. I like your impulse and I REALLY like the way you executed it (hand gently across her forehead). My input is this: If you feel to do this again, be as gentle as you possibly can – perhaps with the intention rather than of waking her up, of calming her from the waking world and joining in her experience bringing comfort, grace and ease. It’s basically what you already did, but taking it one step further with intentionality.

My friend really enjoyed my answer, telling me he thought it was thoughtful and insightful.  And it got me thinking and seeking more insight to one of the questions that people have for me with some regularity.  Just how fluid is the boundary between the dreaming world and the real world?

The true answer is of course that there is no boundary and that the two worlds are one and the same.  The challenge with that answer is what we do with the information.  If we take it literally, we are lost.  Any hard scientist (or reasonable person for that matter) will flatly disagree and they’d be right to do so.  The idea that these two worlds are intertwined is an idea that has yet to be explained in any way that might be satisfying to any but the tried and true followers of hooey-hooey.  And yet, I believe it is so.

Using the example above of Brett and Jane, we have a married couple who share their lives and within that construct each night, their bed.  The brain is an electrical organization that functions on a system of waves.  Waves can synchronize and desynchronize.  In fact, the synchronization of usually chaotic and erratic brain waves is the first evidence that sleep is upon us.  It is entirely possible that when two people sleep together, the synchronization of their brain waves creates a similitude of experience that may be profound indeed.

I was once asked by my pregnant neighbors about this phenomenon.  It seemed that the husband was having just as many vivid and fantastic dreams as his hormone-saturated wife.  While pondering my answer, I found myself expressing just this notion: the electromagnetic activity in one person’s brain impacts the brain of someone nearby.  There is research to back this notion up, though it is still very rudimentary.

So does this mean that if you dream about the hot guy or gal you have a crush on that they are also thinking about you in their nocturnal journey?  Probably not.  But there is certainly more to this than meets the eye.  We are all connected in ways that are far more mysterious than explainable.  And if in the dream world we can create anything just with a thought, then that is the life I would like to be leading while I am awake.

In recent weeks, I have been asked about the meaning of celebrity dreams with more frequency than usual.  I decided to post the term “Celebrity” from my book, Dream Sight: A Dictionary & Guide for Interpreting Any Dream.  If you don’t have my book yet, buy it now on line or at your local bookstore!

Celebrities

Universal Landscape: Archetypal Character Aspect; heightened expressions of human traits or qualities.

Dreaming Lens:  Were you with a celebrity intimately or was it a celebrity sighting?  Did you know each other?  What was the connection between you?  Were there other people around?  Did you have sex?  Were you comfortable with the connection that you had?  Did you want more?  Did you want less?

Personal Focus:  Celebrities are the gods and goddesses of modern life and represent archetypal human qualities with which we all identify.  The essence of a particular celebrity’s image can be distilled into a character aspect by the ways in which we perceive them.  Millions of people hold the same projected image of celebrities.  The power of all that magnified perception endows them with superhuman status and removes any sense of the person underneath the persona.

Celebrities show up in our dreams when the stakes are a little higher in terms of what we’re dreaming about.  By providing a more powerful image, the unconscious is telling you to pay more attention.  Approach the interpretation the same way you would anyone in your dreams.  When considering the qualities of the person you are dreaming about, remember to look at everything about them and take into account how you perceive them, including if you are a fan or not or whether they are currently in or out of public favor.  When interpreting a celebrity from a dream, first consider what they embody on a universal level.  Then, and only then, add your personal feelings about them.  When you have done this, you will be clear about what character aspect of yourself you are dreaming of.

In the way that people in our dreams represent character aspects of ourselves, celebrities represent character aspects of the global consciousness as reflected by the idea of archetypes.  Celebrities are our modern-day gods and goddesses.  Dreaming about one of these elite individuals represents a need to explore the qualities they embody as a character aspect, but in a much more powerful way.  In a process identical to working with a character aspect of someone at the pedestrian level, a celebrity’s fame elevates the significance of the meaning you assign to them.  Your unconscious is using the notoriety associated with their public visibility to get your attention.  It is, in effect, providing you with an image that has a chance of making the dream memorable upon waking so that you might more readily take notice of the guidance available to you in the dream.

Sexual dreams with celebrities are common.  Most dreamers assume this is so because of how attractive most of them are.  Additionally, what they do puts them in a position to carry the sexual fantasies of their public.  However, in dream work, sexual dreams with celebrities are common because the drive to integrate archetypal energy is integral to the evolution of our souls.  When the unconscious is encouraging you to own the more powerful parts of your psychic makeup, there is no better way for it to get your attention than through highly charged, sexual imagery.

It is natural for us to need larger-than-life representations of the human experience to motivate us through the various challenges we face managing the stressors and disappointments that are a part of life’s journey.  Our culture’s fascination with the life of celebrities provides us with hope that our own lives have the potential for excitement and glamour, even if this is just a fantasy.  In fact, such fantasies can function as survival mechanisms for many people.

Discovering what a dream involving a celebrity might be telling you is the same as with any character aspect.  Since we are in the realm of archetypal energy when dealing with celebrities, the quality that your dream is inviting you to explore may be very obvious.  A sports figure may be asking you to examine your willingness to play the game of life with more confidence whereas a pop singer may be suggesting that more self-expression is crying out for release.  If you get stuck on how to interpret the meaning of a celebrity’s presence, the technique of using three adjectives to describe them works just as well with the famous as with the ordinary.

Inevitably, when I tell people that Mercury is retrograde, someone will shriek in response and say, “What, again?!”  The truth is that we are always in a Mercury cycle.  The solar system is exactly like a clock.  It is a complex structure of gears, each turning in its own perfect way to mark out the progression of moments that we call time.  Mercury is like the inner spring that keeps things wound up in a constant state of contraction and release; expansion and integration.

Because of its close proximity to us and its very fast orbit around the Sun, Mercury hits the point where it goes retrograde with great precision.  It happens three times a year for 22 days every 88 days.  We don’t have to think about the chaos of the next retrograde part of Mercury’s cycle until late autumn, starting at the beginning of the day on November 24th through the very end of the day on December 13th.  But the new cycle begins today and I thought it would be a good chance to get a jump on things.

Let’s begin by describing the archetypal sense of what Mercury represents.  The most basic meaning associated with this messenger-god is communication.  In the consciousness of astrology, Mercury is the mind.  While it is through the heart that we experience our selves, it is through the mind that we experience the world.  The capacity for our mind to expand in consciousness and for us to become wiser (as opposed to just smarter) is what the Mercury cycles are all about.

We move through life collecting data about how the world works.  Every few months we need to integrate what we’ve been learning and that is what happens when Mercury goes retrograde.  After we move around in the new territory we are learning about for a few weeks, the cycle begins anew.  This new start can be a very satisfying moment; a breath of fresh air and a new beginning.  And that, my fellow travelers, is where we are today (September 9, 2011).

Mercury has just entered Virgo.  That means it will travel through Virgo, then Libra followed by Scorpio before going retrograde in the sign of Sagittarius.  You can begin this new cycle with a much greater sense of conscious intention by understanding the themes that are being generated by this archetypal journey of the mind.

We’ll start with the end of the journey.  Sagittarius is the archetype of truth, expansion and spiritual principles.  If the world is calling us to bring on our “A-game” of how we live our lives, it is easy to see that this current cycle is going to take us through a process to do just that.  And we start in the sign that represents process itself, Virgo.

The next month is all about integrating what we’ve just learned into our daily experience of life.  That is what Virgo rules: daily routine and integrating wisdom into how we live our lives each day.  By the 25th of this month, Mercury moves into Libra, turning the focus on relationships and the mirror that life is.  Remember, there is no “out there” out there.  It’s all just a reflection.  Through October 13th, it’s all about how well we understand that the things we are looking for are to be found within us.  What we find outside of us is truly just a reflection of our own consciousness.  If you need to know what it is you want in your life, take a look at what you have, because that will tell you in no uncertain terms.

Want things to look differently?  Then the period between October 14th and November 2nd will put Mercury in Scorpio, the sign of transformation and change.  This is your best opportunity for making deeply felt changes that are organic and permanent.  In fact, Mercury meets up with Venus as they both enter Sagittarius on the 2nd.  This is a fantastic moment for your mind and your heart to become congruent with each other.  The Mercury retrograde period in late November is where the integration of all of this heart/mind congruency stuff is going to get down and dirty.

Do your work in advance and you’ll have a MUCH easier time of this part of the process.  Don’t do it and it will be done to you anyway.  The conscious path is the more loving and expansive.

In the world of interpretation, there is no right or wrong.  This is why I prefer the term dream interpretation over dream analysis.  To analyze something is to reduce it down to all of its essential parts.  From this perspective, there has to be a “right” and accurate meaning of a dream.  An interpretation explains the meaning of something, but it is completely subjective.  From this perspective, there is no such thing as accurate, there is only satisfying.  A dream interpretation that satisfies the dreamer and provides some level of meaning is a home run.

My entire work is based on the fundamental law of universality.  Universality has to do with agreement; the more people who would agree about the meaning of something, the more universal that idea is.  When I am teaching someone about the principles of interpretation, I put a lot of emphasis of going beyond the personal and connecting with the universal.  For example, you might be afraid of dogs (personal) but you know that in our culture a dog is a man’s best friend (universal).  The notion that a symbol can be deconstructed down to its most universal meaning can be applied to any image that appears in a dream.

When in doubt, it can be helpful to look toward something’s USE or ESSENCE in order to find a satisfying universal meaning. The use of something applies to its function, while its essence connects to its purpose.  These may seem barely distinguishable from each other, but they are in fact different.

Use takes into account what something does and that helps define how it relates to us.  A refrigerator keeps a certain amount of space at a specific, desired temperature that is colder than the surrounding space.  That is how we use it, taking advantage of the chilly area it creates.  Its essence connects to the purpose of a refrigerator which is to lengthen the life of our perishable foods, for which we value it highly.

Both the use and essence of something may need to be examined in the course of interpreting a dream.  One or both will always lead you toward the universal meaning of a symbol.

A woman dreams she found someone’s disembodied head in a refrigerator.  She decides that the head represents thoughts or ideas that she has not incorporated into your mainstream thinking.  In order to discover the universal meaning for refrigerator and further inform her understanding of these images, the dreamer turns to use and essence of refrigerator.  The use would tell you the head is going to be kept cold, but that may not provide a good meaning to incorporate into your interpretation.  If you go to the essence, to preserve, there is suddenly something interesting to explore.  This is now a dream about ideas whose time has not yet come; they must be kept fresh though, preserved for later use.

To further illustrate, take the example of a bomb appearing in a dream.  Its use relates to creating sudden, intense combustion.  It isn’t until the essence of deliberate destructiveness with an implied target is added to your definition that you have something to work with.  If you had a dream that you were carrying a bomb from one place to another, you can now consider both the dangerousness of sudden combustion as well as deliberate destructiveness that the bomb represents.  These minute distinctions will pay off powerful dividends when the symbols you are working with are even more esoteric and challenging.

The use of a hat is to cover and protect the head.  The essence of a hat is to adorn and express.  Therefore the universal meaning of the symbol of a hat in a dream will connect to protecting or hiding private thoughts and/or expressing thoughts indirectly (wearing a hat on the head is what adds the element of thoughts or thinking).

Dreams are filled with people.  Some you know, others are strangers.  Sometimes, you know exactly who they are despite the fact that they may look nothing like the person they seem to be representing.  And while dreams feature a myriad of settings, objects, themes, creatures – the list is endless – the bulk of our dreams contain people more than any other type of image.

There is an adage in dream work that everyone in your dreams is a part of you.  While this is not the only way to approach the people who appear in your dreams, it is the only way that I work because for me it is the perspective that offers the most value.  This is not to say that dreams that involve people close to you in your life are not reflecting the relationships you have with them.  They are.  However, the dream work that I am drawn to is entirely about self-investigation.  Therefore, considering every person who appears in a dream as representing a part of your own personality is the best route to go.  I call these individual representations Character Aspects, where each character represents an aspect of your personality.

Have you ever noticed how often we use language to describe how we feel that goes something like, “part of me feels one way and part of me feels another?”  This is a great example of how we organize our inner experience in a compartmentalized way. Dreams operate on the same principle, but exclusively through the language of symbols.  It is in this way that the people in your dreams are symbolic representations of different aspects of yourself.

I’ll give you a few examples from my own life.  A professor of mine from graduate school was very analytical and, at times, harshly critical – that’s the polite version to describe him.  If he showed up in a dream, I know that he would be a Character Aspect of the critical part of me.  On the other side of the spectrum, I have a close friend who is one of the warmest, most affectionate individuals I have ever known.  If she were to appear in a dream, she would be a Character Aspect of my own capacity for warmth and affection.

Let’s use an example from a real dream of an actual client.  A woman has a dream that her high school English teacher is standing at the back of the conference room in which the dreamer is soon to give a presentation at work.  When asked for three adjectives to describe the English teacher, the dreamer replies “negative,” “harsh” and “demanding.”  It was easy for her to understand and even express to me how nervous she was about this upcoming presentation.  But it was by examining this person as a Character Aspect of herself that she was able to relieve some of her anxiety by understanding that she is her own worst critic.

The better you know someone from your life, the harder it may be to envision them as operating as a part of your own personality.  In these cases, it’s best to attempt to stay very detached in your thinking.  You might consider how someone else might describe such a person in order to reach a more objective sense of them as a Character Aspect of yourself.

Of course, the dream world is just as populated with people you have never met before, if not more so.  When this is the case, use whatever information you have from the dream and any details you can remember about them. The less stuff offered by the dream, the more work you will have to do to discover what Character Aspect might be represented by these strangers.

Sometimes this is not at all easy to do, especially if a Character Aspect represents elements of your personality that you don’t readily relate to.  I ran into this with a client who so resisted this idea that it took every ounce of my patience to guide her through the process.  She was a woman in her late twenties who had a dream about an older, female boss she worked for many years prior to when she had the dream.  When picking the three adjectives, she came up with “aggressive,” “powerful” and “unethical.”  It was clear to me that the merciless boss-lady from the dream was a Character Aspect of the part of the dreamer that is also capable of being ruthless and unconcerned with the moral constructs of right and wrong.

Let me tell you; my client didn’t like this process one bit.  In her waking life, this young woman certainly does her best to do the right thing in every situation and would hardly be considered ruthless.  Ironically, while railing against the idea I was asking her to consider, she became quite ruthless in her defensiveness.  She finally relented and understood what I was trying to convey when I explained to her that all things live inside of us; the good as well as the seemingly bad.

To be truly effective with your dream work, you must be willing to explore all sides of yourself.  Remember that the unconscious mind knows the totality of who we are:  Even the parts that are ugly, unpleasant and hidden away from our conscious awareness.  This is called The Shadow and brings us to the next concept that is one of the most powerful and important parts of effective dream work.