Age differences Dream Meanings

Universal Landscape: Consciousness that is rooted in earlier times in life.

Dreaming Lens: What age were you in your dream? Were you watching yourself at a different age? Were other people in your dream the same age as you? Was the setting of your dream related to your life at the age you were?

Personal Focus: Dreams often return us to our past. In some cases, a past setting is witnessed from the current life perspective. Other dreams of this type may transform us into the person we were at the earlier time and to the specific surroundings we visited in the dream. No matter what the actual structure of the dream, any time we return to earlier moments in life, we are exploring who we are today as a result of our past.

Our personal history lives forever inside our memory and, in many ways, who we are today is a function of what occurred in the past. Maturity and wisdom can be seen as a function of how well we call forth lessons learned from past mistakes and simultaneously leave behind outmoded ways of being. This cycle of change and growth is a lifelong process from birth to death. The fundamental ways in which we are impacted by the past fall into two categories: experiential and developmental.

The experiential realm contains all the external elements of life: who our parents were and how they raised us, our social environments, our relationship to school and other institutions to which we are connected. This includes all of the events that transpired throughout our own personal histories.

Developmental issues reflect the internal side of life, and how we relate to the world changes significantly as we pass from one developmental stage to another. Emotional development and cognitive functioning also follow specific and predictable patterns that are based on our age as we pass from infancy into adulthood. What we understand at ten years old is too abstract for a seven-year-old’s mind. These differences exist regardless of outer circumstances.

Knowing what age and level of development you have returned to in a dream can play a key role in your interpretation of it. A perfect example of this is the very common anxiety dream of being back in high school or college completely unprepared for an exam. It was in these settings that we were, for the first time in our lives, faced with the pressure to perform at very high-stake levels. Most adults would agree that as life progresses, the stakes get even higher and the pressure to perform far exceeds the demands of high school. However, since this is where this type of stress is first experienced, our minds contain a powerful imprinting that will forever associate fears of inadequacy and unpreparedness with the origin of these emotions. It would be unusual for an adult to consciously relate a major presentation at work with what it felt like to face a test in math class. In the unconscious mind, however, it is a perfect depiction of such feelings. As a result, moments in our adult lives that have the capacity to inspire similar reactions will often invoke a dream setting that is similar to the time in life where such responses originated.

Often, a dreamer returns to a particular setting and time in their past when they are stuck in some developmental issue. This can last for weeks or years, depending on how much inner work is required to free them from the grips of the past. When an earlier age or setting is prominent in a dream, ask yourself what was going on in your life at that time. How did you respond to such peak moments as moving to a new town, a parent’s divorce, getting or losing a pet, the onset of puberty, or the death of a loved one? Any one of these major events can usher us into a new level of emotional awareness. Identifying the theme of the particular time frame will clarify exactly what underlying issue is being stirred up by current events. (See also Taking a Test, High School).