Do we dream in color? Can the colors in our dreams function like an internal mood ring? My research writing my new sci-fi / fantasy Secret Legacy tells me so. So much so, that color becomes an important clue to revealing the Temple Legacy’s volatile, potentially deadly secrets. Because color reveals mood in our sleeping worlds.
Whether you remember them or not, most agree that we see our dreaming realities like we do our waking ones–in color. So why do so many people believe they only see things in black and white while they sleep? Since dream images fade quickly, unless we work on remembering them as quickly after waking as possible, the colors just as easily disappear with them. Also, how often do we actually stop and notice color in our daily lives? How aware are we of the hues in our environment while we’re awake? The answer tends to be “not often” for most people. Why would our dreaming awareness of color be any different?
Plus, there’s the emotional tie between dream colors and our awareness of a sleeping vision’s meaning. Remember from past Dream Theories posts that emotion is the single, strongest, most universal tie between a dream and the dreamer’s reality. Our feelings and emotional reactions to what we’re seeing are often our only “real world” connection to the crazy stuff our minds obsess about while we’re asleep.
When I encourage people to work on techniques that allow for more lucid dreaming, I always start with making you more aware of your feelings before you sleep, while you’re dreaming, and immediately after you wake. Many people are uncomfortable at first, connecting with the strong emotion that feeds the creation of our sleeping realities, but making the conscious decision to do it can be an exciting step toward understanding what our dreams are trying to tell us. Color works the same. Color is your mind’s way of reflecting emotion and mood within a dream. Which in turn can mirror the emotion and mood of our waking reality, and how we feel about things we need to do to make our lives better. Things we often avoid or resist or are too worried or scared to attempt.
Think about it. In our dreams, we have the power and freedom to tackle difficult choices and challenges.What if our minds are giving us this safe space to experiment and take risks and confront what we’re not ready to embrace completey what we’re not ready to yet in waking life?
Of COURSE, in the Legacy Series, in Secret Legacy particularly, the stakes are higher ;o) Learning to control their own dreaming, so others can’t manipulate them and their other powers, is the only way the Temple twins will survive. It’s the only way the world will be safe from the unstoppable weapon a covert group of government scientists want to develop from their minds.
Sarah Temple doesn’t want to remember her dreams, just like many of us. They’re too disturbing (and in her case, too deadly at times). But, they’re also too closely tied to memories of the childhood that both shaped and destroyed her mind. She never learned to deal with her psychic Legacy or your gifts, and running from them and her family and her past has already caused too much destruction. She doesn’t want to look back–at least not during her waking life.
But when she dreams, a secret child’s voice calls to her for help. Then the colors swirling around Sarah in her watery visions guide her deeper into their deadly reality. And the more she avoids understanding what the dreams are trying to show her, the more unstable she herself becomes when she’s awake. Searching her dreams and her past for answers, and finding the child she begins to hear beyond her dreams, becomes the only way to free Sarah and her twin and the child who’s somehow a part of their Legacy from the scientists’ control. Looking back and connecting with the emotions and memories she’s avoided dealing with, before Sarah loses complete control, is the only way to save the world from the unstoppable psychic weapon the government is close to completing.
Pretty cool, huh? I LOVE starting with something as seemingly simple as dreams and color and seeing how a story can take those concepts to exciting new level ;o) I can’t wait until you get the chance to read the latest result for yourself, when Secret Legacy hits stores and is released digitally next month!
But back to you and me and our not so psychically challenged realities… Connecting more closely to the images and emotions your dreams reflect back to you is important for us, too. Our minds work on this stuff for a reason, even if the resulting dreams are either startling or quirky or downright wacky. Remember that what’s actually happening in the dreams is most often less important than the recurring images and colors your sleeping mind seems fixated on.
We’ll talk more abut dream symbols this month. But for now, let’s start with color.
Try stopping once or twice a day to focus on the colors in your waking life.
What do you see the most of, what do you react the most strongly to, which colors are more friendly, and which ones do you tend to avoid? What’s your relationship to color while you’re awake? Then, as you’re practicing being more “lucid” or aware of your dreaming while it’s happening, and then while you work to remember dream images as soon as possible after you wake, see if color doesn’t become a stronger part of that story, too, the more you focus on color while you wake.
Color was such a central part of the psychic world I continued into Secret Legacy, I spent a lot of time understanding what each hue meant not just to Sarah Temple, but to me as well. Once you begin to more carefully see the colors of your own waking and sleeping worlds, I suspect you’ll want to do the same. So here are a few places to start your own exploring–
- a great beginning guide to the potential meaning of dream colors
- a more fun/alternative article on dream color symbolism
Of course there’s lots more out there, so keep searching for your own answers, while I research how I’ll torment my Legacy families. Bwahahahahaha…
And keep coming back each week for more Dream Theories and cool insights into Secret Legacy’s Psychic Realm!
Tags: Anna DeStefano, contemporary fantasy, creativity & inspiration, Dark Legacy, dream color, dream emotion, Dream Theories, dreams, fantasy author, Legacy Series, lucid dreaming, Secert Legacy
Undeniably believe that which you said. Your favorite justification seemed to be on the net the simplest thing to be aware of. I say to you, I certainly get irked while people think about worries that they just do not know about. You managed to hit the nail upon the top and also defined out the whole thing without having side-effects , people could take a signal. Will likely be back to get more. Thanks