TRAPPED DEEP WITHIN the nocturnal halls of Morpheus soon after her mom’s death, Laynee Wild’s dream feet were spiriting her away from pursuing armed goons. But she abruptly stopped running when a sobering thought penetrated her dreams: Sooner or later, she must die.
“There was true clarity about the nature of life and death in that one moment,” Wild reveals. “I woke up very naturally at that point, and that experience has always stayed with me.”
Wild, a counselor who specializes in dreamwork, helps decipher the literal, metaphorical or symbolic scribblings on the mind’s vast chalkboard.
In one recurring dream during her adolescence, she stood before a giant wave, pondering her bodysurfing options. Later she learned that water can embody emotions or spirituality. “I always felt like emotions were out of control, and was I going to ride them out or dive into them or try to avoid them?” she says.
Common themes often surface in dreams, but each phantasm is unique to the dreamer, understood only within the context of a single life, Wild explains.
Author of The Complete Dream Journal, Wild sees symbolism and synchronicity in the waking world. She says her wisdom pours from some unknown source. Wild’s Los Gatos office, decorated with plants, Japanese screens and a squishy teddy bear, offers a comforting ambience. But the daily onslaught of dealing with her clients’ pain forces Wild to create boundaries to maintain her own equilibrium and sanity.
Wild said she fantasizes about the powers of a character from the original Star Trek, an empath who could physically absorb someone else’s pain and then heal herself. But for the client, Wild acknowledges the importance of the not-quite-as-neat-and-tidy healing process of counseling.
Wild is convinced that the dead can return in dreams. (“You can’t be involved in the world of dreams and be closed off to all the other spiritual and metaphysical possibilities,” she says.) Wild also urges her clients to unravel the meaning of dreams that don’t always reveal their messages after a night’s wanderings. Dreams are like riddles, and some take longer, maybe weeks or years, to figure out.
One of Wild’s clients dreamt about a nun knocking at her door. But the nun was a man who stabbed her. As Wild worked through the confusing nightmare with the client, she discovered an integral event that had never surfaced in their talks: As a child, the dreamer was molested by someone who looked as trustworthy as the habit-wearing interloper.
