Dream Symbols: What They Mean to You: Nightmares

Nightmares or Nighthorses?

“I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So, I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?”
― John Lennon

Halloween brings out ghosts, ghouls, and giant hairy spiders and bats and allows us to have fun facing our fears. Yet nightmares can startle us awake and leave us trembling and hardly fun. Do you wonder why dreams can be scary or difficult to understand? Have you ever been chased, or maybe you can’t find any resolution in the dream, or one recurs and recurs? You are not alone.

What if I told you that nightmares, all the things that scare us, are gifts?

In my classes and consults, nightmares are a frequent topic. What we fear and don’t face will persist. Yet how do we do this in our dreaming time? With patience, kindness, and some guidance, we can learn to face these fears and illuminate them so we understand their voices. Once we understand their voices, we can manage them differently from a place of loving response instead of reaction. Understand for some traumas and life events, this may seem impossible. But I have heard of and know of others who have come to a place of peace from the revelations that came from nightmares.

My Elders taught me to look at nightmares as night horses. I thought this was an interesting, thought-provoking perspective. I wished I could have grown up with this knowledge. Don’t you? A way to understand our nightmares from an early age helps us face our fears, and the results of that process get positively integrated into our psyche.

Horses allowed us to use them for transportation. They helped us to get out of our community and to travel to different places with a sense of freedom, exploration, and connection. They helped us get to places faster and helped carry our load.

Pegasus, the winged horse of mythology, transports us through portals and into other realms of existence. They remind us of magic and that this world holds mystery, too.

Horses, in many ways, are in service to us. So why not look at nightmares as a gift that transports us from one perception to another? Or a way to carry us from a darkened place in our psyche to the stars? Helping us become enlightened and integrated.

But the fact is, dreams catch us with our armor off.”
― Victoria Schwab, The Unbound

To fall asleep, we let go. We go through stages of sleep, and dreaming occurs whether we remember or not. In that space, our guard is down. We filter through events of our day but in a symbolic fashion and often receive guidance. But in that unguarded time, the mystery of who we are and who we are here to become pokes through. And that, my friends, is awesome.

To learn more, check out my new book and eBook, Navigating Your Dream World, which helps you to Track. Confirm guidance. Understand your dream characters and offer a way to understand your dreams, even the nightmares.