{"id":221,"date":"2011-01-27T10:59:25","date_gmt":"2011-01-27T10:59:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/dreamgates\/2011\/01\/every-profession-has-its-own-anxiety-dream.html"},"modified":"2011-01-27T10:59:25","modified_gmt":"2011-01-27T10:59:25","slug":"every-profession-has-its-own-anxiety-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/01\/every-profession-has-its-own-anxiety-dream.html","title":{"rendered":"Every profession has its own anxiety dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"empty<\/a><\/span>The great ancient dream interpreter, Artemidorus, insisted that the meaning of a dream symbol is connected to the life situation, and especially the occupation, of the dreamer. Losing a tooth or having sex in a certain position means something different depending on whether you are rich or poor, a scholar or a laborer, a seaman or a farmer.<\/p>\n

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I’ve noticed that every profession seems to have a typical anxiety dream. If you’re pharmacist, you dream that you give the customer poison instead of medicine. If you are a minister, you dream you forgot the text of the sermon and can’t improvise. If you are a farmer or gardener, you dream of drought or early frost. If you are an entertainer, you dream that you’re in front of empty seats, or seats that empty as the audience walks out in the middle of your act.<\/div>\n
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A musician tells me her standard anxiety dream is that she forgets her instrument or leaves her music at home – and sometimes picks up an unlikely object (a plastic bag, a sock, a pan) in front of an audience in order to have something to play. A family therapist reports that her recurring anxiety dream is that she can’t manage all the clutter, which often takes the form of a mess of fast food wrappers and boxes. A school teacher’s most frequent anxiety dream is that when she gets in front of the class she finds she has not lesson plan. A radio producer dreams that his equipment malfunctions, or the switchboard blows up as he’s trying to handle calls for a live show. A wilderness guide dreams a rope snaps as he’s trying to get a group up a rock face.<\/div>\n
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Let me be quick to note that such profession-specific dream jitters are not only<\/i> “anxiety dreams”. Pore over the details of a dream of this type, and you may find that, while it reflects a common motif, it may also contain specific clues to a coming situation that can help you handle that better.<\/div>\n
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In itself, the dream may be a rehearsal. You screwed up or froze in your dream, but now you’ve got that behind you, perhaps you can move forward more decisively and successfully in regular life. Maybe you’ll be able to re-vision those empty seats as space for the huge audience that is going to join you for a coming event that will be very popular.<\/div>\n
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So: what do you recognize in your night life as the most common anxiety dream related to your work? Let’s discuss these themes in the Comments thread.<\/div>\n
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Empty seats: a common motif in the anxiety dreams of entertainers and public speakers – yet maybe also a space of possibility, a space ready to be filled.<\/i><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The great ancient dream interpreter, Artemidorus, insisted that the meaning of a dream symbol is connected to the life situation, and especially the occupation, of the dreamer. Losing a tooth or having sex in a certain position means something different depending on whether you are rich or poor, a scholar or a laborer, a seaman…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,13,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dream-interpretation","category-dream-symbols","category-dreams"],"yoast_head":"\nEvery profession has its own anxiety dream - Dream Gates<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/2011\/01\/every-profession-has-its-own-anxiety-dream.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Every profession has its own anxiety dream - Dream Gates\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The great ancient dream interpreter, Artemidorus, insisted that the meaning of a dream symbol is connected to the life situation, and especially the occupation, of the dreamer. 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He is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. Born in Australia, he survived three near-death experiences in childhood. He leads popular seminars all over the world, including a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His nine books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Dreamer's Book of the Dead, The Three \"\"Only\"\" Things, The Secret History of Dreaming, Dreamgates, Active Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home: Shamanic Dreaming for Healing and Becoming Whole. His most recent book is The Boy Who Died and Came Back: Adventures of a Dream Archaeologist in the Multiverse. Over the past 20 years, he has led seminars at the Esalen Institute, Kripalu, the Omega Institute, the New York Open Center, Bastyr University, John F. Kennedy University, Meriter Hospital, and many other centers and institutions. He has taught depth workshops in Active Dreaming in the UK, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Romania, Brazil and Austria and leads a three-year training for teachers of Active Dreaming. He hosts the \"\"Way of the Dreamer\"\" radio show at www.healthylife.net. He has appeared on many TV and radio shows, ranging from Charlie Rose and the Today show to Coast to Coast and the Diane Rehm show on NPR. His articles on dreaming have been published in media ranging from Parade to Shaman's Drum.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.mossdreams.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/author\/rmoss"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/dreamgates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}