How a Dream about Shooting Your Mom Can Be Good
A client called me yesterday, very disturbed about a dream in which he tried to shoot his mom. As I always do with this type of dream, I got really excited for him. The only thing that can be “killed” in a dream is Learned Distress, the feeling that “there is something wrong with me being just as I am.” And, the intensity of a dream indicates the intensity of Learned Distress that is removed permanently.
Removing layers of Learned Distress reveals more of someone’s natural well-being, the energy that allows them to feel good and fulfill their life’s purpose. So, a dream like this is very productive, whether one is the attacker or the attacked. Let’s take a look at the mechanics of this dream.
The Dream: My client’s mom is just finishing a shower and he is going to kill her. He grabs two pistols and storms through the house, opening and going through a whole series of doors, at least 4 or 5, before reaching her bedroom, where she is drying off and getting dressed. He raises the pistols and pulls the trigger on them both, one in each hand, but both just click. He forgot to check if they were loaded, and they were not. He feels kind of stupid, because the element of surprise is ruined. She doesn’t seem upset or surprised – as if this were a matter of course. He is immediately thinking of a recovery plan, which is to hurry back into the other room, load the pistols and return, in hopes she’ll be in the same position. He leaves the room to load the pistols and then wakes up.
Shift Theme: (Shifting is the daytime work of Quanta Change, where you tell your brain specifically what you want it to work on during sleep.) His shift theme was about uncovering the way to achieve what matters to him, especially to discover how he can best serve humanity.
Context: (You bring people, places, animals, things, situations, or time frames into dreams based on the feeling that they trigger within you. It is these triggered feelings that you remove layers of within the dream.)
The most prominent feeling his mom triggers for him is that he is frustrated that she has spent the last 25 years doing nothing but sitting on the couch drinking and smoking, and reading and watching TV. And, he said that when he gets frustrated with her, it triggers the fear that he isn’t doing enough, himself. He has felt addicted to various things over the years, and has felt that his addictions were getting in the way of him doing something really worthwhile. So, the feeling he’s “shooting” in the dream is one of being blocked from accomplishing his bigger goals.
Points of Change: (In a Quanta Change dream, each time there is something wrong and you do something about it, you permanently remove a layer of Learned Distress from your sense of self.)
1: The doorways he’s going through were significant to him – each doorway he made it through was a point of change.
2: He tries to shoot her, but realizes the pistols weren’t loaded. He feels stupid for not checking on that. Even having a realization and thoughts like these can be a point of change.
3. In response to the failure, he comes up with a recovery plan.
4: He actually moves into the other room to try and reload the pistols.
Result: What we’ll be watching for over the next week or so is something different in his understanding of how he can best serve humanity and accomplish his goals. This may come in the form of realizing the kind of service work that feels right to him, of having some kind of pathway open up, or realizing something he is addicted to that is standing in the way of finding his service work. What I know is that it will come out of the blue, will not be something that he has to “figure out,” and will bring a new level of ease in the realm of achievement.
Do you have intense dreams and if so, what is happening in them? What are the people, places, or things that tend to show up in these dreams? Answering these questions can give you a clue to what your brain is working on during sleep for you.