Everything is a Metaphor

Laura Basha

I took a wonderful class last year through the University of Berkeley’s “Ollie” curriculum. It was a course on dreams and consciousness. We shared dreams as part of the coursework, and as we all sat in a circle, we took one voluntarily communicated dream and we all interpreted it. The caveat was, however, that we had to interpret the dream as if it was our own – we could not analyze the dream as if we had the answer for someone else. Well, of course, each of us saw so much value in our own interpretation of another’s dream, because the symbolic nature of the other’s dream got interpreted through our own filters, born of each of our own unique past experiences. It didn’t matter which of us had actually dreamed the dream! Very powerful.

As I reflected on this classwork over the weeks, something occurred to me.

What if I were to describe an event that happened during my waking hours, an event that caused me some kind of dilemma, concern, or perplexity, and reviewed it myself as if it were a dream I had had, or even a dream that another had had? And what if my interpretation of this waking event as if it were a dream, resulted in a fruitful illumination of the issue?

Well, there followed many good harvests.

If you want to know the source of your life, consider what you are thinking!

Are we sure this life is the waking walk and the dream life is the sleeping walk? Is it worth considering that everything is a metaphor? With this perspective through which to peer, life experience takes on even richer hues, even clearer vision. The deeply wise essence of who I am is always trying to tell me something, but I have been limiting myself to listening only to the language my tongue can speak.