QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:
Dreams Department

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Question

I had a dream that my baby wandered off while I was washing the clothes, I had completely forgotten about her! I ran outside looking everywhere but couldn't find her. My grandmother said (in waking life) this means I'm going to have to watch my baby more closely, or she will get away. Now I'm going crazy all the time looking and watching over her.

Answer

Being responsible for those under our care is always a hard task, and family bugging us about it makes even more stressful. Although the deeper meanings of your dream can only be known and discovered by you, there are some common themes I can comment on.

This dream often happens to people who are the most responsible in life, and have, in a sense *earned* the right to see a little father than most. It is interesting that in mythology many of the heros are first abandoned by the parents, on hillsides, in rivers, in caves and fields. What this indicates to some is that our dream children are really metaphors of our higher self.

In other words, from the point of view of the dreaming mind, what is emerging is something new and world shaking. What we are doing in losing our charges is neglecting it or allowing it to develop on its own. The neglect then is self-neglect. How many projects, for example, have I left abandoned on the hillside? How to give ourselves time for self growth in the modern world is a real challenge.

If this were my dream, I would be interested in why this happens when I'm washing the clothes. Generally I would see clothes washing as a metaphor for dealing with difficult issues, i.e. dirty laundry. In my dream it is exactly at this place that the baby's absence is revealed. In other words, its not that I was supposed to be watching the baby (either the real baby or metaphorical baby self) instead of doing the laundry, but that when I do the laundry, when I deal with my stuff, then the divine child is revealed to me as missing. We can't look for that which we are not aware of being absent.

2/19/98

Richard Wilkerson is general editor for The Internet Dream E-zine, Electric Dreams, and director of DreamGate, the Internet Communications and Dream Education Center. He writes the Cyberphile column for the Association for the Study of Dreams Newsletter.