what did you dream about last night?

Volume 1

People find it funny when I ask them about their dreams. I, to be honest, find it intimate. I’m trying to get into the depths of their subconscious mind and understand their narratives and fixations. One of my favorite talking stages used to call me dream girl, because the dream question is usually my opening line for conversation. I do it to my family, friends, and strangers. Everybody usually responds that they don’t remember them, though.

However… I do. In great detail. I write them in my personal chat as soon as I wake up. Sometimes I’m still half asleep when I do it, so I cannot decipher what they were the next day. But when I do, they are easy to remember. Recently, there have been three main topics: my hometown, water, and pregnancy. People find that even funnier.

Having dreams at night is one of my favorite things about being a human being, along with having a body that I can decorate to my liking, and being able to swim and feel the water on my skin. Dreams are the most mysterious, magical, and absurd day-to-day experiences, and they simply happen, as naturally as breathing and digesting. If we didn’t experience it and someday someone told us they see random made-up movies on their mind as they sleep, we’d be atonished. We’d probably never want to wake up. But fortunately, they are not an upgrade. We just need to pay attention enough times until remembering them becomes automatic.

For me and many people around me, dreams are a spiritual experience. In more than one ocassion I have received answers to many of my questions in my sleep. I have been guided in my decision-making, been told to be patient, found out why my friends got a divorce, visited places that I end up discovering in the future, and solved professional-related situations. The last person I dated mentioned they can predict situations in their dreams that later allowed them to make better decisions, and my grandma was said to be capable of predicting deaths. This is one of the reasons why I take dreams so seriously, because maybe they are a direct connection with Source.

If you remember your dreams, I suggest you look into recurrent symbols, feelings, and beliefs. Dreams hold a lot of clues about our emotional landscape:

✷ Recurrent symbols might indicate big events or concerns i.e. the recurrent pregnancy probably suggests I’m about to give birth to a new project, or that I am gestating something.

✷ Feelings in dreams usually mirror the ones we experience in our day-to-day, taken out of context. They might be feelings we suppress, are not aware of, or decide not to pay attention to.

✷ Core belief systems are uncovered in dreams as well. What does your brain believe when it’s on autopilot? That you’re not capable of something? Paying attention to the narratives you follow when you are asleep can help you identify limiting ideas that can be consciously reprogrammed when awake. I usually do it through journaling, meditation, and affirmations.

Of course, though, not every dream is meaningful. It’s not about trying to dissect every single night as some sort of cold science, but about listening when a message keeps repeating itself, and about trusting the gut feeling that tells us a dream is special.

Anyways, if you don’t usually remember your dreams, I can lend you some of my favorite ones:

✷ My grandma’s house is a one-story light blue building from around 100 years ago. The walls are bumpy as they are partially made of soil, and partially made of bricks. Right after the front door, there’s a living room to the right. You have no access to any other area of the house through it, and it was where my mom received guests and dates in her teenage years. The door that leads to the living room is located at the start of a long hallway that finishes in an internal patio filled with flowers and a rectangular concrete water tank to wash clothes and pots. Inside, surrounding the patio, you can find the rooms and the kitchen.

The house is now falling apart, but it wasn’t last night. I was there during a strong night storm. My youngest aunt was desperate (as usual), asking us to unplug everything to avoid getting struck by thunder. Laura, my youngest cousin, and I started making a list of deceased relatives who could keep her company. Every time we named a new one, the air was filled with silver glitter.

✷ Last night, I was on my first day as a senior in high school again. It was sunny, probably around 11 am, warm enough not to need a jacket but cold enough not to sweat. My school was a big two-story brick building surrounded by grass and occasional trees. All my female friends were sitting in a circle underneath one of the shorter trees. The tree looked like a drop of water on top of a slim straw, and the foliage was so low that we needed to get on our knees to get underneath it. As I approached them, I saw they had a bottle of Absolut Vodka and wanted to take a communal shot in honor of our last first day together.

✷ I was in El Carmen de Viboral last night, a colorful Colombian town a couple of hours away from Medellin, known for its pottery. However, in my dream, El Carmen didn’t look like it does in real life. From afar, the town was a green, abundant, exuberant hill, full of tropical plants. Behind the central church, you could see a curtain made of waterfalls. A faceless man invited me to tour them in a chiva, a traditional Colombian bus originally used to transport food between small towns and cities. He held my hand as we stepped into the water.

A Colombian chiva, for context

✷ I was pregnant again last night. I wasn’t just pregnant, actually, I was certain that I was about to give birth. I approached a hospital to get a nurse to check on me because I had no birthing symptoms or contractions, even though I was CERTAIN I was about to give birth. “I’m about to give birth”, can you please check on me? I said to a middle-aged nurse. Did I mention I was convinced a baby was about to come out of me? For the record, I wasn’t scared, I knew my body was designed for that. The nurse took me to a room and examined me. “You are definitely pregnant”, she said, “… but you are only 7 months in. You have to wait”. It was a request for patience from the Universe.

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Thanks for diving into my subconscious mind with me. I’d love to hear your dreams. In any case, happy spring!!!!