A 35 year old woman had the following dream
“I dreamed that I was in my house when I realized there was an extra room that I never noticed before. It was easy to miss because there wasn’t a regular door, but the whole wall was able to lift up, more like a garage door. I went in the room and it was full of things that whomever lived there before must have left. I was thrilled at the idea of going through everything, assuming it belonged to me now, to see what I might find. I thought I might be able to sell some of the things and make some money, or even rent out the room for additional income. The idea of this was very exciting to me and gave me some hope and relief from the financial pressures I have been feeling lately.”
The discovery of new rooms is a common theme in dreams, and is usually symbolic of discovering new aspects of our self. There will always be some variation from dreamer to dreamer, so we look at the unique traits of the dream to uncover more of what it represents to that person specifically.
What stood out in this dream was that the room did not have a regular interior door, but the whole wall lifted up and opened up into the room. Dreams love puns and plays on words, as well as depicting visual representations of words. In this case the dreamer was between jobs, and experiencing a lot of stress about how she was going to produce enough income to get by. The night of this dream she did some meditation in an attempt to relieve stress and visualize her ideal career in the form of her own business. She had always wanted to have her own business, but felt like there was some kind of ‘wall’ between herself and her dream career. Thus, the symbolism of a wall rather than a regular door. The meditation and visualization may have helped to lift the ‘wall’ between the dreamer and her ideal career, as depicted visually by the wall lifting up in the dream. She was then able to access what was on the other side of the wall, which held many objects of interest to her, as well as potential income.
The things in the room were left by those who had been there before her. She made the connection to the fact that she had been a long-time student with many teachers, and now some of them were role models who provided a template for how she wanted to structure her own business. The symbolism translated: those who were ‘there’ before her in her ideal career had ‘left’ many things for her in the form of knowledge they passed down that now belonged to her. Now it was time for her to ‘move in’ to her own power and ‘own’ what she had acquired. The idea that the material things in the bonus room were now her own was symbolic of the fact that she now owned these resources within herself.
In the dream story, she contemplated how she might be able to use the new room and the things within it to bring in some income. This represented her realization that not only did she have these talents and resources within her, but that they could actually be a source of income if she chose to use them!
In waking life the idea that she had the ability to make this work – and that her subconscious mind verified this ability via the dream – provided a huge sense of relief to the dreamer. Sometimes we just need to be given permission or acknowledgement that we can do something. The fact that this came from deep within her own psyche was very reassuring to the dreamer, and gave her the confidence to take her first action steps towards her goal.
This ‘Ask The Dream Detective’ is from Mimi’s Dream Column for the New Spirit Journal
