A 37 year old woman had the following dream:
“I love the TV show ‘Property Brothers’, and have a huge crush on Jonathan Scott. In my dream his younger brother took me over next to a car, and then he leaned over and just started kissing me. I resisted at first because I really like Jonathan, not this guy. But his brother wanted me to give it a chance, so I kissed him back. He didn’t know I liked Jonathan better. I woke up feeling bad because I didn’t really want to kiss him! I want Jonathan.”
The dreamer clarified that brother in the dream was not Jonathan’s twin, Drew, who co-stars with him on her favorite TV show ‘Property Brothers’, but that this was their ‘other brother’. She described the third brother as someone she was not as familiar with since she had seen him on an episode or two of ‘Property Brothers’ but he was not a regular part of the show.
It was interesting that the brother pulled the dreamer over to a car to kiss her. Why did he bring her next to a car, rather than by a tree, or find a little cozy spot somewhere? Cars in dreams are often a symbol of how we get from point A to point B in life. They can represent how we go about reaching our goals, and are often symbolic of careers. The word ‘car’ is even contained in ‘career’, and dreams love word play. While there is no single cut and dry meaning for any given symbol, it can be an interesting exploration to see if a universal meaning fits. In this case it did, as we shall see.
The dreamer described Jonathan as creative, artistic, original, and stylish. I asked her if that description fit any part of herself and she said ‘Yes!’. This dreamer was a clothing designer who longed to create her own clothing line. She had the skills and she had worked in the industry for many years as a technical designer for large companies that paid well, but this type of work did not fulfill her creativity and originality. Now she was between jobs and was getting asked by people she knew to do their mending and alteration projects. Though the projects were not up to her level of skill and talent, people loved her work and pursued her with a lot of ‘interest’, just like the man in her dream pursued her. And just like in the dream, she did not reciprocate the interest, though she conceded and ‘connected’ with them because they wanted her. Kissing can be a metaphor for connection.
The dreamer described this brother as ‘younger and shorter than Jonathan’. Later she did a little internet search to learn more about him and found out he is actually older than the twins Jonathan and Drew! But the dreamer didn’t know that, so her unconscious mind cast him in the role of younger for a reason. In dreams when someone is young it can be an indication of something new that we are starting, or that is newer in our life. Working with private clients was a newer endeavor for her. When we explored her description of the brother as ‘shorter’ than Jonathan, she said that what she was currently doing for work didn’t ‘measure up’ to what she would love to be doing. The pun fit, and pointed out to her that even though she was being acknowledged and pursued for her talents, what was pursuing her at the time was not what she really wanted. This dream showed the dreamer how she was falling into a role of passivity by of going along with what other people want, rather than exploring what she really wanted.
So why did the dream cast Jonathan’s brother in the role he played in her dream, rather than someone else? She said that the projects she was taking on were ‘related’ to her desired line of work, just not in the form she was really passionate about.
At the end of the dream she said “He doesn’t know I like Jonathan better”. This is symbolic of a lack of communication on her part, and she saw the correlation to the fact that her clients didn’t know that she liked designing better than what she was currently offering them. Through the dream work she came up with the idea that she could let her existing clients know about her designing talents, and possibly have a built in clientele for what she really wanted to do! She could now use the imagery from the dream as a symbol for connecting with what she really wants in life.
Dreams are amazing teachers. They want us to live true to our life purpose. A dream like this is a compass, showing a way to the path of right livelihood, and how to live with authenticity and meaning.
This ‘Ask The Dream Detective’ is from Mimi’s Dream Column for the New Spirit Journal
