Working with the symbols in our dreams can be an amazing way to tune into our intuition as highly sensitive people. It’s a way to cut right through the din of other people’s voices & tune in to our deeper self.
The following post is an excerpt from The Empath’s Journey.
The dream I mention is from a time when I was newly married & still adjusting to life in the United States after relocating here from India. In these early days of married life, I was also trying out the wifely role for the first time and getting entangled in my conditioning, which was draining me of my creative life.
It was during this time that I had this dream:
“In one such dream, I was following my sister, and we were walking uphill to catch a train. I trudged behind her, willing myself to walk, looking wistfully at the purple amethyst crystals growing on the side of the road. I wished I could stop for a moment and really look at them. But my sister was walking quickly, afraid of missing the train. I followed compliantly behind, all the while looking longingly at those crystals.
As the dream had ended, the perspective had shifted, as it often does in dreams. My sister and I had reached the train. It was waiting patiently for us to board. In the end, it seemed that it would have waited for us after all. Over the next few months, I would turn this dream around, thinking about it. I would also have other similar dreams with amethyst crystals in them where I was always walking away.
In time, as I learned about dreamwork, I started piecing together my own understanding of this dream. In day-to-day life, I think of my sister as very task-focused. Amethyst crystals are something I love, both for their enchanting color and their beauty. In fact, amethyst is my birthstone and I have some amethyst jewellery. Obviously, I was walking away from something precious and beautiful, something I was longing for. My sister’s image had stood in for that part of me that was very task-driven.
This part of me was marching ahead, oblivious of the beautiful crystals growing on the roadside. It was dragging forward that other wistful but compliant part, the one who had noticed the crystals growing on the roadside but who had given up this knowing all too easily.
In my day-to-day life, in those first few years in the States, I had been obsessive about keeping my house perfectly ordered. Part of this was healthy, a way to assert control over my environment, to not have one more thing that would overstimulate me. But there was a lot that was unhealthy about it too. As a new wife, I was caught up in the role of being “wifely,” trying to create a picture-perfect house. It wasn’t something Rohit told me to do. It was an internalized idea, some old conditioning that I was acting out.
Everything had to be just perfect. Everything had to look good. I hated it if one used glass was left behind on the table. I spent a lot of energy keeping things clean and organized. But this too-much keeping things in place was as unhealthy as too-much-mess. It wasn’t me being me, the messy, creative person I was. It was me climbing into a box and then complaining I couldn’t breathe. And I did this to myself.
The dream was telling me how I was acting. Caught up in the mundane, I was missing the beauty that was all around me. You will catch the train, the dream seemed to be saying. It will wait. But if you go on like this, trying to control everything, you will miss the beauties strewn in your path. During that time, one dream after another had come warning me of this. It was only later, as my relationship with my creativity deepened, as I settled into my skin a little more, that these dreams had finally disappeared. They had done their job. They were no longer needed.
This is why dreams are important. When we listen to our dreams, we change. When we respond to them, they change.
A long while afterwards, I would also learn that Jungian depth psychologists consider crystals as a symbol for the authentic self, our larger self that contains not just our ego but also our very essence. This is our real self, the one we are trying to become, the one we are trying to realize. In my acting out my conditioning of what my “wifely” role meant, I had been walking away from my own potential.”
Did You Know? Crystals are archetypal symbols for the essential self in Jungian depth psychology. The next time you encounter one in a dream, think about your relationship with your authentic self!
Ritu Kaushal is the author of the book The Empath’s Journey, which TEDx speaker Andy Mort calls “A fascinating insight into the life of a highly sensitive person and an emotional empath.” Sign up for Ritu’s newsletter to get two free chapters of The Empath’s Journey or find the book here.
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