When dreams are mysteries, become a detective - or an initiate

From my mailbox:

I have been going over my dream journal, and I find it fascinating to track how symbols and themes reappear and evolve. I also notice that I have dreamed many events before they happened. But many of my dreams remain quite mysterious to me. What do you advise?

RM:

There are dreams that remain mysterious until life catches up with them. There are dreams that cannot be understood until we see them as part of a broader pattern. There are dreams that cannot be decoded in ordinary terms because they are experiences in other realities that escape ordinary understanding. There are dreams it is hard to fathom because they are glimpse of lives we never led, in worlds we don’t recognize outside the dreaming. There are dreams that seem alien because they are the dreams of others, not actually our own. 

    A dream may be a mystery in the sense of a case to be solved, in which case we want to play detective and follow the clues. We want to follow threads of connection between one incident report and others around it. We want to see where the suspect - a dream character or element - may have turned up in other situations. We want to try to run down every detail, including words and names we can't initially figure out. We may be required to revisit the scene of the incident, which means lifting the police tape applied by the routine mind to the door of a dream and going back inside to look for more than was noted in the original report. A dream detective must be a pro at dream reentry.* You can bring assistant sleuths to help you investigate the scene.
     You are going to use your imagination, but you are also going to respect the facts of the dream situation. Jung was quite correct about that: "Dreams are the facts from which we must proceed." Yes, your first report of that strange word in a foreign language may be garbled, but don't settle for some alternative version until you have checked and re-checked whether the original version is correct. And keep it in your active file - pinned to the wall in front of you - even as you are drawn to other leads.
    A dream may be a mystery in a larger sense. It may be a mystery in the original Greek

sense of the word. A mysterion is a secret and powerful rite that can only be approached through a depth experience, through direct revelation. It is not a case to be solved but an engagement with the sacred that is to be lived. It requires transformation. The one who enters and understands the mystery in this sense becomes the mystes, the initiate.

* Dream reentry is a core technique of Active Dreaming. The method is explained in several of my books, including The Three "Only" Things and Active Dreaming. You can learn to revisit a dream with a partner or a whole team of helpers, or trackers, in a conscious journey for which shamanic drumming is especially helpful. "Wings for the Journey", my CD of shamanic drumming for dream travelers is available from Psyche Productions.

Dream detectives and Russian thrilllers

In my dream adventures, I often seem to be a kind of detective, investigating complex intrigues in many times and places. Last weekend, Robert the dream detective was again in Russia, a recurring locale. He was following the threads of a secret operation code-named "Griboyedov". 
    The name was very clear, and I recognized it on waking. It is the name of a colorful nineteenth-century Russian poet and writer who was sent as a diplomat to the court of the Shah of Iran. When Armenian girls escaped from the Shah's harem and took refuge in the Russian embassy, an angry mob stormed the building; Griboyedov died fighting them, sword in hand. He was decapitated by a kebab seller and his head was put on a stick at his killer's market stall. Not sure why his name would be used as a code today, but my mind goes to all those angry mobs attacking U.S. embassies across the Middle East.
     The plot of my Russian thriller thickened and changed in my second cycle of sleep dreams. Now the character my dream self was tracking was a sleeper agent planted in the West in Soviet times. He has gone rogue, unknown to his Russian handlers, and gives them a very nasty surprise. A key name in the second part of this double feature was "Verezhensky".
     This name was quite unknown to me, so I tried it out on a highly literate Russian friend. She gave me this intriguing instant feedback: "Ha! If this were my dream, I would think that Verezhensky is a perfect name for a villain in the story. It is a rare name, so there are fewer chances to get sued by its bearers, it sounds sophisticated - and it is derived from the archaic form of 'to harm'."
     She informs me that Вередить means to do harm, to bother, create mischief or even to cast a bad spell. The modern form is "вредить". There is also an expression "бередить раны", to open old wounds. The name is also related to two villages Verezheny in northern Moldova, near the border with Ukraine. 
     Full disclosure: I wrote spy thrillers, including some with Russian themes and characters, back in the 1980s. It seems that while I follow my present path, there is an alternate Robert who loves reading and writing superior cloak-and-dagger stuff, out there gathering fresh material.