A local dream interpreter walked me through what I was dreaming about

I don’t always write down my dreams. In fact, I often lose them the moment I unlock my phone in the morning. Luckily, this one was spared. A Post-It on my nightstand reminded me of the pragmatic task at hand: “Write down your dreams.”

I was just lucid and caffeinated enough to comply.

Before we read into the knives and goo of my subconscious, April told me about her spiritual awakening in 2012. She began analyzing her own dreams three years later, studying the Aisling Method of dream analysis under her mentor Michael Sheridan — “Ireland’s favorite dream expert,” now based in Seattle.

The term “aisling” comes from the Irish word for “dream,” or “vision poem.” The Aisling Method, a system for interpreting dreams developed by Sheridan, treats dreams as messages — from your subconscious or something beyond it — that are trying to guide you toward clarity.

In combination with the Aisling Method, April channels, teaches and counsels dreamers to navigate the lives they are meant to be living. She is currently the lead trainer at the Aisling School of Dream Interpretation.

“We look at dreams, and the dreams say what needs healing,” April said. “Your dreams are going to be telling you what programming you picked up in childhood, and what’s holding you back in life today based on the way that you grew up.”

She says we build defense mechanisms as children and carry them through adulthood. Dreams, she believes, reveal those defenses, the blocks that blanket the real self. If we heal them, we can expand into our natural form.

Before my 717-word line reading, my only real experience with dream analysis was a book called “The Dreamers Dictionary” by Lady Stearn Robinson and Tom Gorbett. I’d referenced the water-logged mass-market paperback a few times, typically when an image would reemerge across my psyche. (An elephant in a normal, friendly mood, for instance, is an omen of good luck, the dictionary informs me.)

And frankly, there was nothing particularly significant that troubled me about the dream I’d emailed April; I just happened to have an excellent recall of that night’s subconscious contents. But what I discovered during my dream analysis is that if you pay attention to what your mind is trying to tell you, nothing is insignificant.

I went in without preconceived notions of what we’d discover inside my head.

The dream started off with a bike, abandoned in the turn lane.

Bikes in dreams, April tells me, represent balance. Because many dreams comment on our masculine and feminine energies, she believes the bike represents my heart. And because the bike (read: my heart) was abandoned in the turn lane, the dream suggests I have an abandonment wound.

“Dreams come from your higher self,” April said. “Part of the plan of the higher self is sending you these dreams every night to remind you what the mission is, what you’re here to work on.”

A mustachioed madman with a knife taunted me at a high-top table. Suddenly, everyone in the nebulous room ganged up on me. My defense mechanism in the dream is to harass them with words, to verbally assault and fight back. This tells April that my coping mechanism from my past wound is pointed language, not physical violence.

The arsenal of words I use in my daily life (as a freelance writer) transcends the conscious/subconscious threshold.

As she pointed out, I am everything in the dream; there will either be aspects of me, or there will be aspects of behavior I’ve endured. These could be from parents, exes, friends, foes, or mustachioed strangers with knives.

Perhaps my proudest moment, considering April Angel has been interpreting dreams for 10 years, is that she said this phrase to me: “I’ve never seen that before.”

This is in reference to the galactic goo apparel I mentioned earlier. Clothing typically represents attitudes in dreams. In this case, the jelly-like substance from a distant galaxy must be torched onto the body for the person to wear it. Also, the wearer will lose all the knowledge they’d acquired up to the point of donning the clothing.

In the dream, I scrounged through yard sale boxes of this galactic apparel, to which April paused and said “you’ve got some sensitivities, man.” This, I assumed, meant the symbol was devoid of any real meaning.

At the subconscious climax, after trekking briefly through a futuristic dungeon, a car flips over and above me, in slow motion. Inside, the mustachioed madman with the knife is inside, stabbing a woman I know.

“That’s you,” April said. “That’s your feminine energy. Feminine energy is emotions, heart, feelings, compassion, sensitivity, intuition. That car in front of you, flipping over… Anything in front of you is representing the future. Anything behind you is representing the past. It’s in your future to address this.”

My 717-word dream told me that I must confront my femininity.

April offered a service called “cutting the ties that bind,” a costly guided meditation designed to help break free from past limitations, to aid in self-discovery. I’ve been patiently awaiting another subconscious signifier to go through with the workshop.

“A lot of people just want to know what their gifts are,” April said, of her practice. “Everyone has the gift of channeling. That’s a given. Most people can channel, and they’re not aware of it. You also have the gift of channeling.”

We spent most of the hour diagnosing the knowledge imparted by my higher self. April never had a chance to explain what channeling really means.

But whatever it is, it must be significant. That’s what I wrote down anyway. The bike is my heart, the madman is me.