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Dreams For Peace
Dream Interpretation, Therapy, Transformation
Richard Hastings
Richard Hastings is an expert in change work and dream work and author of Dreams for Peace. He is a Baha'i and currently lives in Vancouver, BC. Read more...
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Dreams For Peace 
Hi there! I saw the following last night. I was with my grandmother, who is alive, in somewhere like an isolated train station. It was night. My grandmother was scared and she grabbed my hand and we started running to nowhere. Then, we got surrounded by groups of people, a kind of gangs, and we were really scared. Could it be related to my grandfather’s disease? (my grandfather has a disease, but we don’t know which one). Thank you in advance.
This is a response to Dean’s dream,
Hi Dean, What is important to do in a dream like this is to think of the solution rather than staying in the fear of the dream. The fear reminds you of your current situation so when you replay the fear, it gets you kind of stuck. The fear starts with your grandmother and then spreads to you. The solution to the dream is to surround yourself with a lot of positive people so that you don’t stay stuck in feelings of isolation and like the world is ganging up on you. When you are around really positive people it really helps a lot.
In the dream, I am entering into the home of a woman who taught me a holistic health practice called Body Talk. I knock on the front door and she tells me that I can go around back to meet her in the building she has set up in the back yard. I go back there and find a rock garden, clearly unkept in that there is moss growing on the soil but other than that it is not ugly or over-grown the way gardens can get, just mossy
I find it interesting that there is no break in the stones to create a path way to get to the stairs to go up to the door. I will have to walk over the stones and I pause to make sure this is what she intended as I don’t want to go walking all over her garden if she had wanted me to go somewhere else.
So I take a step and as I do she comes around the corner of the house. I’m happy to see her. She leads me over the stones and we go up the wooden staircase to the entrance. She is really so amazing and her energy is just so incredible. She is so loving and so wise that I often feel very foolish around her.
In the dream I feel that way – foolish and childish and a part of me wants to leave so that I don’t feel that anymore but she speaks and does some things around the kitchen that make me comfortable and asks me a few questions that keeps me grounded.
For example, she starts getting tea ready with tea bags and a kettle, then she opens the door and several tea bags are drifting down on little parachutes and the sky bright blue with fluffy clouds and she takes the tea bags, puts one/two in our cups and then rest in her pocket. I feel like she has just done magic or a trick of the eye or something and I pause to think about what she has just done and then she asks me if i like her carpet that we are standing on.
I look down. It is a shag carpet. Orange. Yes I tell her I like it. She asks me what I like about it. As I try to find my words and am talking about the colour I look down and now it’s blue, turquoise. She just smiles. I want to keep answering her question but I don’t know if she did that to change the colours on purpose or if it is the nature of the rug to do that or something in the room?
I try to find my words and she is now holding something in her hands, with an action as if she is peeling an onion but I do not see or smell an onion. She asks about where I’ve been sleeping. What the place is like. I start to describe where I’ve been sleeping but then find myself trying to describe to her the word “loft” (which is not where I sleep currently but where I slept when I was 12 and started having memorable dreams and writing a dream journal).
I got really fixated on try to describe to her what a loft was and I looked up at her ceiling and told her “Imagine there was a hole in this ceiling and then there in the front of the room, above and behind the fireplace is a small space. Well, they put a mattress there and that is where I sleep.” But I was trying to tell her where I sleep now does not have a hole in the ceiling and I was trying to figure out what quality about that environment made it a “loft” – was it because you had to climb to it to get there? was it because it was free standing, a part from the rest of the building? would it have been a loft if the part of the ceiling hadn’t been cut out?
As I try to think and speak and gain understanding she just keeps peeling an invisible onion, as we stand casually by the sink, and she is smiling at me amused with her eyes just laughing and I just feel so joyful but so childish at the same time. She doesn’t even care about the loft, I realize, she just wants me to experience the process of trying to explain something challenging to someone.
So then when the tea (and the onion?) are ready she takes them and says, “okay then” and indicates with a nod of her head to follow her into another area of the house. I am excited beyond all measure. I keep thinking about the floating tea bags, which are now in her pocket, and am wondering where we are going.
She seems to answer every thought I have as we walk. At first it freaks me out but then I get used to it as I see that she cares so much about me and is not trying to make me seem or feel foolish. I have an understanding that she is taking me to the upper level of her dwelling, the “loft” and that I have begun the next course of Body Talk training, which I have waiting a long time for, and am feeling so much excitement as we walk down a hallway.
I look at a picture on the wall and even though she is infront of me walking, carrying the two teas, she describes the image that i look at and tells me more about it – like “oh that was when we were in Hawaiii” for example. And then I understood. I like the image of the beach and the feeling of following her. And the idea of where we are going.
** This last part of the dream, Richard, is faded and much more of a feeling than an image/soundtrack….but in writing out this dream I am able to guess a bit to what was the activity behind the feeling as we walk down the hall…..so I do not mean to change what I experienced in that part of the dream but yet in trying to describe it, it is possible I am adding bits to it from my memory…..I am not sure…this I just wanted to say.**
Rachel,
This dream is about being comfortable with experiencing things more fully. Then they become magical.
Thanks Richard, I find dreams so fascinating. My friends manager does act like a 3 year old and I should know because he is also my manager. We all work in the same team.
My last dream was I was riding a Vespa and it was quite small. I was on the street and an unknown lady decided to jump on. As we were riding I looked down and noticed the tyres were really flat and I told her to get off and after that the Vespa wasn’t quite right and the seat seems to stretch and disintegrate.
In the next scene I was in a room and it seemed to be a place where they fixed Vespa’s. I remember warm lighting and wood. There was a tiger in the room which seemed to be quite temperamental and the tiger was reacting to the noises around it. For example I started to sing and the tiger didn’t like it and started to react. When I noticed this I grabbed hold of the collar on the tiger and held him back so he wouldn’t jump or lunge. I remember feeling the strength of the tiger. I did hold the tiger back a few times.
This is for Suzanna’s dream,
The vespa is a symbol of how you get to what you want to do in your daily life on your own, not with others. When others get involved, they slow you down to stop. The quality you need to fix your getting to where you want to go in your daily life is courage or strength like a tiger. This is how you need to be if you are going to get somewhere. The 3 year old can probably be like a mean tiger, but where you are going you need to be a positive one.
Dear Richard
I had this really weird dream the other day. I’d love to know what it means, but so far I haven’t got a clue. lol.
I was in my old apartment with this man, and I murdered and dismembered him, and put his body parts in garbage bags full of my clothing and left them in the laundry room because I didn’t know what else do to with it. After awhile It started to smell, so I panicked cause I couldn’t figure out what I was gonna do with the bags. So I threw them on the balcony, and a bunch of cats and birds started getting at it, and I remembered that I wanted to keep one of his arms but didn’t know how to get it back at that point. And the whole dream had this feeling of total sadness, no crying or anything, just sadness.
I’d love if you could give me an idea about the clothes part especially cause I had another dream of him as well that also had clothes in it, only in that dream the floor was completely covered with them.
Thanks 😀
This is a response to Angela’s dream,
Hi Angela, What you are trying to do when you kill someone in a dream is to kill a relationship. You not only kill him, but dismember him, which means that it isn’t enough for you to kill him, you always have to make him feel really bad because you are holding on to bad feelings. Clothing has to do with roles like role of friend, worker, mother, sister, etc.. So when you metaphorically dismember someone, it affects all of your roles and then your whole life begins to stink.
Sadness means you need to let go, but letting go with wanting to hurt someone is not a positive thing. It has bad consequences for you. It is like taking poison and hoping the other person will die. The key is to just let go and then you will find a lot of new open doors and relationships.
Hi Richard
A friend of mine had this dream
She was with her work manager (who she is quite friendly with and they have a good healthy banter) They were in the dream and he had his real life son with him (who is 3 years old) and my friend had a baby in the dream but she doesn’t have a baby in real life. Her baby soiled himself in his diaper and across his back. She didn’t have another diaper to put back on him so she had to pull his pants up and just leave it at that. Her manager was very critical of her and looked at her with disapproval
This is for Suzana’s friend,
Hi. I love this dream. It shows which parts of themselves they have trouble with in their working relationship. He acts like a 3 year old and she acts like a baby who has soiled her pants and has to pretend like it didn’t happen. This is how it is for her when he is critical and disapproving.
What she needs to do to be successful with him is to ignore his 3 year old behavior, to not let it affect her. She needs to be the grown-up when he acts so young. It is weird because normally it is the responsibility of the manager to be the adult. However, he seems to get childish. Usually the best thing to do is be able to really ignore the negative behavior and then find the positive and acknowledge it when it comes.
In the dream, I see the face of a First Nations male elder. Parts of the face are emerging as though it were a painting but it is a 3D image, like a hologram. As a certain part emerges there is a voice describing the purpose of each section. The voice is female and sounds technological like I’ve heard in the movies. In one part, a shield is formed over the brow of the elder and the voice describes it is to protect him and his thoughts. It keeps people away when necessary. Then the face zooms back a few feet and I see how it works. There are also two eagle feathers in his hair, special designs on his face, special colours in his attire.
In another part, I am in a kitchen of a house but the floor is a mud floor and on a bit of in incline. There are hundreds of snails. It is impossible to move without crushing some and when I hear them crack i feel so bad but it is impossible to move without stepping on one. Somehow there is a connection between the elder and the snails – something like maybe I am looking over at him across the hill and he gives advice as to the best way to step to cause the least amount of damage, something like that. I do take a few small steps forward, hear cracking, and just keep going in the direction I’m to go in. It’s awkward as I try to keep my balance and move forward at the same time.
This is for Rachel,
This is going to sound weird. The elder is the wrong person to be around because you end up in a room full of snails. This means that the past is the wrong place to look for your answers. Where you need to look is the future and it always means that you are ready to move really quickly not like a snail. Get out of the past and move forward at light speed to the future.
Thanks for your time I guess this would be the end if anything you did help. I don’t normally worry about dreams but I guess this dreams interested me a bit any way thanks and if I don’t get any dreams related to her I think this will be my last post ,so far she has been in 3 of my dreams if the dreams are connected.
It will be ironic if i get another dream of her after i post this X)
Hi Richard
You may have missed this post from me…quite a few messages back
When I was younger many years ago I would often dream of flying. The type of flying like Peter Pan. Where I would soar through the air and travel high above the tree tops and it gave me a feeling of freedom and joy. I haven’t had a flying dream in 20 years.
A few nights ago I dreamed I was floating through the air about 2 metres off the ground. I was moving at a slow pace and trying to move through the air by using my arms to propel me but it was very slow going. I was in an outdoor carpark trying to find my car but I discovered I couldn’t find where I had parked it.
Is flying in both instances different? This is the first time in many years where I was able to lift myself off the ground
Okay…to make a joke…because I really will follow your advice and seek out teaching opportunities but in truth, at this moment, and I’m sure you will understand – potatoes and bananas just does not seem very appealing if you know what I’m saying. 🙂 potatoes? yes! ….bananas? yes…but together? Potatoes and Bananas?….sounds gross to me…no matter how excited the sales person is about the combination. Just sayin’.
In the spiritual world it makes sense, not in the physical world.
REALLY???!!!??? Hmmmm…..potatoes and bananas?????? Well, that gives me something to think about. Thank you for the tip.
This is a response for Rachel. You have posted a few dreams so I am going to do a big summary in a really summarized way. What you should do to get employment is to focus on your life as a teacher. That is where your best skills are and that will provide you stability. Don’t go into other areas like various forms of change work. it does not give you consistent money. You are gifted teacher, collaborate well, and have a lot of creativity. That should be your focus. That is what I am reading in the work you are sending to me. Go for the potatoes and bananas, not the turkey.
Hi Richard,
Last night I dreamed of buying a bunch of potatoes and the woman at the til had two choices to put on a potato dish, one was sweet with strawberries and the other was pumpkin or something like that. My daughter and I chose the pumpkin at first but then the lady got excited about the other kind and came around to our side of the counter and started putting fruit on the potatoes, made a smile out of a banana and kept going on and on about how good this will taste. My daughter and I were giving looks to each other saying “what? bananas on potatoes?” but the lady actually convinced us to try it and we bought what she recommended. we laughed about it as we left the store. The potatoes we bought were already cooked and prepared in a dish. They were peeled and white as though they were boiled and they were sliced and placed in a formation in the pan. They looked good.
In another part, there was a frozen turkey in a cold garage and someone was trying to back in and out of it with their car. I watched, somewhat amused again. They didn’t want my help so I just encouraged them with a smile.
We were waiting for the turkey to thaw to eat for dinner. Someone stepped on it accidentally and someone else told them to stop.
Richard,
In the dream, my daughter was getting ready to drive in a race. I drove a very far distance in town to the location of the race to see who else would be there, how the racers would be, what the track was like. I discovered this area of town had been re-designed to accommodate the racers and it was really safe, lots of parking, and a good atmosphere of competition and comradery. So then I drove back to where she was and encouraged her to get ready. When we were ready we started walking with another woman and her son, who had some sort of learning disability and carried a chair with him. Then along the sidewalk as we walked my daughter wanted a chair too but the one we carried was a large green rocking chair and it was awkward to carry and drag along. The woman didn’t say anything but the look she gave me told me she thought it was ridiculous that we were carrying the chair but since my daughter wanted it I didn’t see why it was a problem.
Eventually we get to this area where we are waiting for a ride of some sort. There is a public shower and there are children bathing and showering in there. It’s dirty, smells of urine and pretty gross. I want the children to come out and yet they won’t listen to me. Also I think my daughter goes in and I really want her out too. Something about our ride coming moves this part of the dream along.
Then we are in a car and I am in the backseat, my mom is driving and we are in heavy traffic. A bus in the lane beside us comes really close and nearly scrapes the car right infront of the window where I’m sitting. I announce the bus nearly hit us and she just laughs and keeps driving. By her reaction I can’t tell if she heard me or not.
In another part of the dream, I am buying something at a til. It’s just $2 and when I open my purse there is tons of loose change, and some fives, tens, twenties. It’s weird to have so many choices. I just stare at it for a moment an lose myself in surprise. Then someone comes up beside me, a boy I had a crush on in Grade 3 who was smart, charismatic, had a friendly family, and had financial stability. He gave the woman at the til a $5 and wanted change. I handed him some change too at the same time. We all were laughing about who had given who which loonie or twoonie and who owed what and soon we got it sorted out. It felt great to laugh like that over having enough change to help him out and participate.
Thank you,
Rachel
Hi Rachel,
This dream is about moving forward in your daily so that you have financial choices. It seems as though you are going to get there because the dream ends up with you having money, but right now you are stuck making a lot of bad choices first with the chair and then getting in the car with your mother. Those are things that are holding you back from real financial security. I think you need to find options that actually pay real money. You tend to go for options that are not going to work out because they are only the hope of money, but not real money.
This is a follow up to the dream of the girl in the forest I think well I think it is. We got a nice week off since I don’t have to go to college because of that I basically went to bed at 4 am on the 29th. I think about the dreams I had before go to sleep at 4am and I come to the conclusion that I want to see the girls or the girl since it could be the same one from my dreams to understand what happened on both dreams and I go to sleep with that thought. I wake up at 9 am or so I see the sun I close the window and turn my TV off since I let it on after that I went to beg.
Here is where it starts: /
I go to bed at 9 am I don’t know if I was sleeping or what the hell happened but I hear a voice it said if you want to see her again close your left eye and focus on the right one while the right eye is open. I did what the voice told me to do and I get a weird feeling of motion and I go back to the same forest from the dream that happened to years ago that was the feeling I got from that forest.
I did not like what I saw I did see the girl. The girl was covered in blood laying in the floor I did not notice if she was alive or dead since I stood there from a few feet away so I don’t know if it was her blood or not after I see her I get surprise and I come back to my senses I do get a weird feeling of motion as I come back.
Thanks for helping me but after I tell the second one I was trying to find my own meaning to the dreams and if they were connected.
This is a response to Joseph’s dreams. Hi Joseph. I have just read two of your posts. I think I missed one before. In the previous dream where you had some kind of sleep paralysis the girl was taking things out of your abdomen and now in this one she is covered in blood lying on the floor. The way I look at the girl is that she is a cultural girl in the negative sense. These are the girls who take away your spirit because they fancy themselves up to try to look really beautiful for the sole purpose of attracting someone who will work night and day for them. They seem to more present than ever in today’s world. When you open your right away (it is like seeing things in the right way) then you can see that having a relationship with this kind of person ends up badly. What you need to find is a companion in life who is not interested in image and material things, but interested in deep and positive things. It is actually an awesome dream because it teaches you to go for people that are not into the image thing.
Hi Richard
Lastnight I dreamed me and an unknown man were walking to the ocean but when we moved closer to the shore it tuned into a grassy marsh area. We found a wild boar underneath the water with only its head visible. It was in labour. I remember the wild boar had a look of pain on its face but it didn’t cry or thrash about, it was calm and holding its pain on the inside. I wanted to stay with it to help and give it comfort.
In another unrelated scene, I was given fancy drinking glasses. My task was to arrange them nicely on a table in preparation of them being sold. I was also given decorations to use. I remember it was taking me a long time to figure out how to arrange them.
This is a response to Suzanna’s dream,
Hi Suzanna, The wild boar is a symbol of how a lot of men are in relationships. They are a bit out of control and they also hold their pain in. What you do is the perfect way to deal with many men and if you can do this, you will have a lot of close male friends and help them out a lot.
The second part of the dream is what women do to try to impress other women. What you need to realize in this case is that while beauty and decoration is nice, it needs to tempered with moderation. What is important is not how you organize fancy glasses, but the conversations and how deep they are when you are together with others drinking from them.
In the dream, there is someone trying to kill me. He and his daughter and I are with a large group of friends in a large home. Everything they try to do (teasing/bullying) to hurt me or disempower me, I ignore. It begins to make them angry that they can’t get my attention or make me react in fear. So much so that their behaviour catches the attention of others nearby, who start asking what is going on. They are trying to make sense of my behaviour and his. Then he does a nasty trick. He is pretending to be a photographer. The image at first is positive like a sunny day on a courtyard and then there is this chain. He pretends he is taking pictures of the sunny day but he is taking 100 pictures of the chain to study alone and make a noose. When I see the photos of the chain they flash quickly before my eyes and there is a sound to them like in a drama/suspense film for mystery and suspense. Those chain links – I say to myself – they are the problem.
Then when I go home I am also thinking of ways to avoid whatever trap he sets to try to hang me like a noose. When I woke up, the hundred images of the chain keep flashing in my mind. I think the key to the solution for this dream is the positive opposite of a chain. But I am not sure.
Hi Richard
Lastnight I dreamed of a dragon. It had been captured and was put on a large platform in the middle of the ocean until some unknown men figured out how to kill it. They knew it would be difficult to kill it because of the fire within but I imagined the only way would be to drown it somehow.
Thanks
Hi Suzanna,
This is a response to the dragon dream. I live in Asia where dragons are actually positive creatures who are supposed to help in the removal of all of the bad spirits. During Chinese New Year every house and shop is visit by dragon dancers to take away the negative energy.
When a dragon’s energy turns to the negative side, it kills all of the goodness with fire. In the dream you are trying to kill the dragon by drowning it. However, the goal is not kill the dragon, but turn it into the positive force it was meant to be.
What I would do with this dream is to think of having a dragon in me that takes care of the negative stuff in me or the bad qualities in me. It is like when the bad qualities in me know that a dragon is going to kill them off, they won’t act out.
People used to call this dragon inside the fear of God or your moral and ethical sense inside. It keeps you doing the right things. When you don’t have a dragon, you take the easy way out in life which causes pain for a lot of other people and then eventually your self.
Keep the dragon and do the right thing.
Richard,
In the dream, I was working in a setting like an outdoor education center, which I could tell because outside of every window i could see trees, hills, sky, fresh grass, sports fields. The center was made out of wood, had a rustic feeling to it. The flow of time in the dream felt like a day at work.
At one point, I was eating with a friend and we were discussing how things have changed for us since we took a class that talked about “truthfulness” being the foundation of all human virtues. We shared how this had impacted us and that after reading that in our class it changed how we lead our lives. I told her that now if I see a restaurant that treats pigs really badly I cannot go in and order ham and eat it, pretending like I didn’t know the pig had suffered first. She said she is the same way. “It changes everything,” I said.
Then in another part, in a morning session, the children had been mis-behaving, jumping on furniture, not listening to the teacher. The classroom reminded me of the livingroom of the home where my dad grew up in and where I used to visit my grand-mother before she passed away in my teens. The livingroom was dark, smoke-filled and smelled of alcohol (although I didn’t know what smell was as a child)…anyway, when I saw the teachers couldn’t get a handle on the class then I stepped in and did my attention-grabbing thing “Hands on top! That means stop!” and the children stopped and listened and I reminded them of the rules and to listen to their teachers, etc. Then the teachers stepped in giving instructions and I left.
Then in another part there was a large gathering of the students after lunch. The teachers/camp counselors did a short activity with a large group of about 30 children and then the four of them were having a discussion about what to do next. While the children were in a circle, full of energy and waiting I decided to step in and lead a camp song with them. The funny part of the dream was how cautious I was to step in – how once I had the idea I asked myself about 10 questions to see if it was a good time, place, and song, to consider that my doing so wouldn’t interfere or interrupt the counselors plans, etc. I looked out at the group and saw the children (age 9-14ish) eager and waiting, they looked so happy, glowing almost and I decided yes I’ll do it. I considered how wonderful it will be to hear a large group like this singing all together. And I stepped in to offer a song.
That was a great feeling. The counselors looked on with amusement. There was one youth there that I knew from camp last year and he shared a mutual love for camp songs I nodded to him to indicate it’d be great for him to join me and it seemed like he would. The dream ended with me starting the song. Every camp song starts with the call, “This is a repeat after me song!” and then the children repeat back and the song begins – it is so much fun!
Hi Richard,
Thank you for your interpretation of the flabby part of me that is acting unconsciously. That makes so much sense to me and I am grateful for the opportunity to change it. I think the dream I posted today carries on the theme. Very interesting.
Rachel
In the dream, I am in charge of a little child who I am treating like mine even though it isn’t mine but at other times it is mine even though I treat it like its not. We are in a large complex, museum-like in size and feel in the physical structure, but sports like in terms of the high energy of the people, and theatre-like in terms of the presentation.
At one point we are sitting in chairs facing the front. There is one more presentation and then we’ll be leaving. The person beside me drops a large number of beads which tumble down and around and between the chairs which she then goes to get because they are valuable to her. Someone in the audience, a very old man, in his 90s who reminds me of my grand-father, will be dying soon and he is going on the bus to go to a safe place to die. He has a companion with him, an Indian man, who will help him on his journey.
As for me, I have a cold and snot runs down my nose while in the chairs and there is no kleenex or anywhere to wipe my nose – gross! I actually do wake up at this point and find I have a real cold and a real snot issue to deal with, which I do, and I go back to sleep.
In another part of the dream, I go into a room where someone negative from the past is giving a presentation at a white board. The way he is standing, moving, speaking, writing reminds me exactly of me. And he’s making a clear point but the problem is that the point he is making is no longer relevant, it’s old and out-dated. I find it comical. That seems to make him angry and he tries harder to make his point. That makes me laugh even more. I have to leave the room so as not not embarrass myself or him with my laughter.
Out in the hall I have a child with me again and am looking where to go with them. There are others too and so together we are looking. There is a large area where we have played with in the past, through glass doors to the right, which we consider, but someone tells us they are doing cleaning/repairs so part of that would be sectioned off and we just have a small section to work with. The other mom gets annoyed and doesn’t want to and I don’t think it’s an issue. I start walking towards it, nudging her, saying “Come on, yes? At least they have a small area to play. It’s better than no area” and as we get closer we see there is an opening into an even larger area on the other side of the first and so they actually have a good size playing field with green plastic grass and some playground equipment.