The back at school dream is in the top three most common dreams that is reported to me… daily! In fact, when I was on Katie Couric’s show last year, she told me her 90 year old mother STILL gets it! And that is good testimony to the fact that 10, 20 even 70 years after we graduate we still find ourselves, from time to time, within those cinder block walls at night.

The reason school is such a popular dream locale throughout our entire life is because the dynamics of the school setting continue on into your job or career and also into your social life.  School is where you first learn the importance of being on time and meeting deadlines, it is where you learn how to prepare and “do your homework,” it is where you learn how to deal with scrutiny, how to move on up the ladder, and also how to fit in.  Basically, it’s where you learn all your basic job skills and social skills.   School dreams are most often connected to your work life and slightly less often connected to your social life.

In my research I have found that there are three very common themes within the school dream genre. Here is what they are and what they mean:

Can’t find your class or locker
– Your locker and your classroom both represent where you should be in your waking life. Back when you were in school, your locker was designated specifically for you; it was your real estate and where you kept everything you needed. Your class is where you were supposed to be at a specific time so it will represent the time factor you are up against in real life.  If you dream of not being able to find either or both of these in a dream it is a very good indication you do not feel you are where you should be in your career or perhaps even where you thought you would be at this point in your life. You may not have even found what you want to be yet. None the less, you feel the clock ticking away in the dream and in real life. This dream is letting you know that time is of the essence. Figure out what it is you really want for yourself OR figure out how you can get to that place in your career where you feel you belong.

Not prepared for a test
– Long after we graduate, we continue to be tested thanks to all the difficulties that come with simply being alive. When you get this dream ask yourself how you are being tested in your real life. Start with your job or career first (most school dreams are caused by job pressure) and see if you can connect the dream to how you may be feeling tested at work. Is it evaluation time? Do you have a co-worker or boss who is really testing your patience? Do you have a presentation in front of the board room that you’re stressing about? Do you have to pitch a new idea? What situation are you dealing with right now that is pass or fail? Also, the element of not being prepared is important as it suggests you are NOT feeling ready for this pressure cooker of a situation in real life. At times like these I like to remind myself of advice Donald Trump once gave on his show The Apprentice, “ALWAYS be overly prepared.” In other words, do your homework! (get it? school dreams… homework… ahem) Anyway…

Have to take a whole year all over again/didn’t have enough credits
– This is the one I get the most. Sometimes it’s my senior year, sometimes it’s all four years! This dream happens when you need to prove yourself in real life, when you know you’ve got the skill and experience behind but for various reasons you have to prove it to someone else. The reason this dream is so common for me is due to my line of work, Dream Analyst. I am constantly having to prove to others that dreams DO have meaning, dreams DO provide us with answers and guidance and I DO know how to understand them. So when you get this dream, ask yourself what it is you need to prove you know or what you need to prove you can do. This dream is common when you start a new job or are trying to get a promotion because you are having to prove you can handle the tasks your job entails. And the dream where you find out you don’t have enough credits is most prevalent when you feel you aren’t getting the credit you deserve for what you do know and what you can do.  In these cases your dream is reminding you that you’ve totally got this. Don’t worry, you’re an old pro.

No matter what back at school dream you get, remember that you are getting it because you are either dealing with job related stress right now or perhaps pressure from your social circle.  Compare the thoughts and emotions you had in your school dream to the thoughts and emotions you have about your job or social situation.  See the similarities?  There is probably some unpreparedness, uncertainty or even vulnerability that needs to be addressed.  There is a lesson to be learned from all of our school dream variations, so sit up straight and pay attention!

Being able to figure out your dreams isn’t just fun, it’s unbelievably helpful to your life!! We all are being given answers, directions, even warnings in our dreams every single night through our dreams… you just have to know how to understand the language and piece it together. It’s really not that hard. That’s why I wrote Dream On It, so YOU can do this too, so that YOU can get those powerful messages hiding in your dreams, so that YOU can improve every area of your life by understanding the wisdom of your very own dreaming mind. Get yourself a copy and start understanding your dreams like never before!

“If you want to know what your dreams mean, you’ve GOT to get Dream On It y’all!” – Steve Harvey, King of Comedy and talk show host

The post The 3 Most Common Back At School Dreams appeared first on Lauri Loewenberg | Dream Expert.

The following is an excerpt from my latest book Dream On It, Unlock Your Dreams Change Your Life…

Remember that Pat Benatar song from the eighties, “Love is a Battlefield?” It’s all about the power struggle and tug of war of emotions within a relationship. Basically, whether it is two countries or two people, all wars are a struggle for power. When there is a power struggle somewhere in your life, your dreams are likely to take place in a war zone in order to drive home the message that the situation has reached a volatile level.

Many of my dreams are in the past, like in the Civil War or World War II. I can see the gunfire and death and I am always running and running. I don’t know why I run or who or what is chasing me. I always wake up exhausted from the running. – Mary Ann 44

Lauri: Dreaming of the past doesn’t necessarily mean you are seeing a past life, but rather your dream is commenting on something from YOUR past. The settings of your dreams are always a war, which means there is a battle from your past that you are still fighting to this day. It is something you are continually “running from” or avoiding dealing with in waking life… and that is why you keep dreaming the same thing over and over again. Your dreams cannot move forward until you move forward. Clearly there is something from your past you are avoiding rather than confronting and working through. When you get help with this, when you finally face it and stop running, your dreams will stop.

Mary Ann replies: I think this goes back to my first health issues. I have had twenty surgeries, ten on my lower back, seven for an artificial hip and the rest for different things. I believe my war dreams started when I had one of my many hip surgeries; I freaked out and literally ran out of the hospital. Whenever I need another surgery I freak and want to run. I had back surgery in January but called and cancelled the surgery. That same day I got a calming phone call from my surgeon and we re-booked the surgery. I am tired of running. I will now face my health issues straight on.

Mary Ann’s health is a war zone. She’s not only battling physical ailments but she is battling herself over getting the proper care she needs. She is having a power struggle between what she knows is the right thing to do and not wanting to do it. But now that she finally understands her dreams, she can see that she has waged a war on herself! That is surely no way to go through life.

The message of battlefield dreams: There is a war going on in some area of your life. What or whom are you in conflict with? Is it an inner battle, such as battling an addiction? Or is there a war of words you are in with someone else? Where is the power struggle? It is time to decide if you should go into soldier mode and fight the good fight or raise the white flag and sign the peace treaty. While there may never be world peace, t’is a good thing to have inner peace.

Your dreams are trying to help you with every area of your life. When you can understand your dreams you will find that they are helping you to move on from the past, they are giving you warnings about issues you need to be more aware of, they are giving you advice that will improve your relationships and are even giving you great ideas and inspiration for your projects and artistic endeavors.  Your dreams are far more powerful than you may realize… in fact, they are the most powerful part of you!

I am more than happy to personally help you understand your dreams.

Or you can grab yourself a copy of one of my dream books and easily learn how to understand your dreams for yourself. They make great gifts too!

The post Dreams of war and conflict appeared first on Lauri Loewenberg | Dream Expert.

The back at school dream is in the top three most common dreams that is reported to me… daily! In fact, when I was on Katie Couric’s show, she told me her 90 year old mother STILL gets it! And that is good testimony to the fact that 10, 20 even 70 years after we graduate we still find ourselves, from time to time, within those cinder block walls at night.

I’m a victim of this dream too. There are many versions of the back at school dream and the one I get the most is where I find out I have to take my senior year or sometimes even all 4 years of high school all over again, even though I know I graduated.  In fact, I had it just the other night and the very next morning when I was on the air on Beach 104 in Nags Head, NC one of the morning show hosts told me he had that same version of the dream the night before as well! So that inspired me to blog about it because, clearly, it’s an epidemic!

My dream:  I was back in the house I lived in in Nashville and I was putting on my old Catholic high school uniform. I was very upset because I had to take my whole senior year all over again even though I was certain I had already graduated. I was saying to myself, as I was getting dressed, “This is ridiculous! I don’t have time to spend all day at school. I have a son to raise and a business to run. I’ve done this already. I’m just going to tell them no, I’m not doing this.” THEN I’m walking through my junior high trying to find my locker and realizing I don’t even know my class schedule. Thankfully Marlo Thomas shows up and takes me to my class.

The post What that persistent and annoying back at school dream means appeared first on Lauri Loewenberg | Dream Expert.

Maybe you have a dream that’s pretty short and don’t want to pay the price of a full dream interpretation ($125.00) but you really want to know what it means. Well, I don’t think you should pay full price either so now you can still get my personal attention and expertise (via email) for just $40.00.

Even though your dream may be short, the message it has for you is HUGE! In other words, my analysis will not be small. Below is an example what it’s like to get a mini dream interpretation. This is an actual exchange between the dreamer and me…

I walk into my living room and an old wooden trunk I use as a coffee table is gone. Nothing else seems disturbed. The front door is open and the curtains next to the door are blowing gently in the breeze. Where the trunk was, there is the normal ‘stuff’, bits of paper etc that is left behind when you move furniture. I am shocked, saddened and hurt. – Donalee

Lauri: Interesting. When a dream takes place in your living room it is usually connected to something that you deal with on a daily basis. Your coffee table/old trunk is gone. This must mean that you are feeling robbed in some way in waking life… not necessarily physically robbed but more likely you are feeling that an opportunity was taken from you or credit you feel you deserved was given to someone else… something like that. What is causing you to feel empty, left out or taken advantage of in real life?

There is a reason your dreaming mind chose the trunk to get its message across to you. Is there any emotional attachment you have to that trunk? Was there anything you keep in that trunk that you can connect to your waking feeling of emptiness or loss? Trunks are also used to put things away that we are not using. Maybe there is a certain skill or ability you have not used for some time and now you feel you have lost the ability?

The open front door and the breeze suggest you recently “opened up” to someone and they took advantage of you. Maybe that is what the trunk represents, the mental space where you store away memories and stories from your life. The open door may also be about you feeling vulnerable right now. The breeze may be one of two things… has someone recently breezed through your life and left you feeling alone? If not, the breeze may be connected to the “winds of change” that are beginning to blow through your life. It’s just a breeze, not a strong wind so the change is slight.

Whatever the case, the emotions you experienced in the dream are directly connected to those very same emotions in your waking life. What or who is causing you to feel shocked, saddened and hurt? How has your every day life now changed?

What I’d like you to do at this point is please email me back and let me know what you now think this dream is connected to. Once I know the real life issue connected to this dream, I will be able to give you even more insight. And if you have any questions, feel free to include them. I want you to get the most out of the message this dream is giving you.

Donalee replies: Yes to many of your statements. The trunk is an old treasure from my old life which feels like it has been fading away because I have been getting rid of things left by family, but not really important stuff. I also sold all the jewelry from past loves recently. Friends have also been fading away recently or worse, tried to take advantage of me. Some managed, some didn’t. I’m trying to move on with the changing world as I have financially stepped back from owning homes here and there to owning just the one where I can live the best. And at 60 yrs old and living alone I am feeling left behind by those who have relationships to sustain them. Is there any clues in this vision to help make changes to be more comfortable with life?

Lauri: Yes, there are answers in this dream for you… and it comes in the form of the open door. Your dream is showing you that you are indeed still open to receiving new relationships and lessons into your life. You have not closed yourself off. Yes, being open to others has caused you pain but that is not a good enough reason to close your door on the world as that would only leave you closed off with no opportunity for change, growth and new healthier relationships. Also, the empty place where the trunk was is a nudge from your inner self that it is definitely time to fill that empty space within yourself with something new as there is no need to hold on to the old and pointless.

Your inner self is very wise and if you follow it’s advice, you’ll be surprised how your life can change. It seems you are actually ready for something new… and better!

Donalee replies: Your interpretation validated my own thoughts and gave me great comfort!! Thank you.

Like I said, even though your dream may be short, you can be certain the meaning… and my analysis, will be HUGE! Get your mini dream interpretation now! In most cases, I can get my analysis back to you the very same day.

What others are saying…

“Wow! Thanks Lauri! You did an excellent job with this. I appreciate all the time and energy you put into this – such depth and insight! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”
– Jennifer, Holt, MI

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