What does this dream mean?

To unlock its significance, dreamworkers might use the method called "if this were my dream." Using free association, they could quickly hone in on the Jungian shadow inherent in the foreign and black-colored automobile. Freudians could have a field day finding sexual metaphor in the flat tires. It doesn't matter if dreamworkers amplify the metal spikes into the archetypal Pearly Gates, play punning games with the parking lot or have a Gestalt dialogue with the wheels. The end result highlights the personal psychological parameters or spiritual explanations for the surface imagery of the dream.

And that's not enough.

In this case, the usual interpretation approaches leave out three crucial underlying elements: the physiological, the out-of-body and the psychic.

Let me continue my story. First, please review the dream, paying close attention to the car, the corridors and the spikes.

Physiological: My husband awoke from the dream with the sharp pains of indigestion. Yes, in this case, the old saw that "a dream is the result of what you eat" had some truth to it. Personally, I think the sharp pains initiated the image of the metal spikes.

Out-of-body: As he finished telling me the dream, my husband commented, "I was the car." This comment requires a bit of explanation. Many traditions support the idea that we go out-of-body during the night. For astral projectors, their traveling vehicle is an astral body similar to the physical version. Remote viewers are more apt to travel without a body, as a spark of consciousness. Shamans hitch a ride on another body, whether it be fish or fowl. They travel empathetically, as the other body. They become one with the bird or beast.

The common idea is that consciousness travels beyond the physical body. But the truth is, consciousness can travel anywhere...outside or inside. My husband recognized that the foreign car winding its way through the corridors of his dream was equivalent to the foreign matter winding its way through his intestinal track. "I was the car," he said. His consciousness was an empathic spark of awareness taking part in the events driving through the innards of his body.

However, this was not a literal view of the inner event. He did not dream the interior of his intestine. The actual activity was overlaid with fanciful imagery. Why? One reason could be witness inhibition. When direct awareness of the literal event is too disturbing, the psyche creates an image buffer. (Yes, Dr. Freud, I agree that the psyche can be a censor, but rarely for the reasons you thought!) Another reason is virtually the opposite: the literal event is too boring, so the psyche creates a more exciting and creative variation on the original theme. My husband is an artist. After consideration, he agreed that both "cover-up" explanations were plausible.

And why would his psyche choose that particular set of cover-up symbols? First clue came from day residue known to him. The night before, my husband had been a guest at the house of a married couple. There, he was witness to an argument between them over what car they would purchase. It was the strongest emotional event of the evening and "set him up" for the use of whatever car imagery would most closely resemble the indigestion event he was bound to experience later on. The imagery could have been a memory pulled from his past. But it wasn't.

Psychic: Second clue came from day residue unknown to him. When my husband told me his dream, it felt like a replay of the Action Jackson movie I'd seen on TV the day before. At the climax of the movie, Jackson drives a car up a flight of stairs and through the hallways of a mansion. Both he and his car are hit by gunfire. That sequence was the strongest picture of the day for me. I had not told my husband about it; I was nearly asleep when he returned home from his visit. This is not the first time that my husband has "picked up" MY day residue and translated it into HIS dream. Our psychic auras "rub off" on each other continuously. Maybe because we sleep in the same bed.

There are plenty of interpretation techniques that honor the psychological and spiritual. But do they routinely ask, "Is this dream psychic? Is this dream an out-of-body (or in-body) experience? Is this dream the result of physiological influence?" No. I know of no such method.

How about we invent one? And if so, what would we call it?