Dreaming for others can involve answering the phone, or the doorbell, when they can’t hear it. I often see this when a deceased family member or friend is trying to get through to a survivor who keeps missing the messages, and finally manages to reach someone who can pass those messages along. 

Dreaming for others can extend to seeing a whole dream that actually belongs to that person, either as an observer or seemingly inside the body and perspective of the other person. I am rather busy at night, and I am aware that I miss quite a lot of my own dream mail. I have a very good friend – one of the most gifted psychic dreamers I know – who quite frequently collects some of that mail for me when I’m out, as a good neighbor might perform that service. She will call me up and introduce her report by saying, “I picked up another of your dreams last night.” Typically, the dreams she proceeds to pass on are like complete short films, filled with material and situations that belong to my life rather than hers – although, since we are good friends, they sometimes reflect shared experiences and overlapping themes.

I recently heard a dream report from a woman who appeared to have entered completely into the dream body and situation of a close companion. In her dream, she let someone prune her fingertips, leaving protruding bones and cartilage, while telling herself that the clipper was doing her a service. After this, she found herself in a dry, harsh landscape where nothing grew. In discussion, she recognized that her dream personality seemed to have fused with that of her friend, who was dissatisfied with his work, which involved handling dangerous equipment that could easily take off his fingertips if he was tired or careless.. Elements in the dream that were quite mysterious to the dreamer made sense when she looked at them as if they came from a dream of her friend. Seen this way, the clipped fingers and the sterile land could represent both a literal danger of an accident with mechanical equipment, and a symbolic risk of losing vitality in life, absent a decisive change in his situation or his attitudes around it. She proceeded to share and work the dream with her friend.

The most creative mode of dreaming for others is when we can bring the right dream to someone who is in need of a dream – a healing image, for example, or a vision of life possibilities. We can attempt this by asking for a dream for the benefit of another person. A gifted dreamer I know did this recently on behalf of a friend who is facing a life-threatening illness. In her dream, she found herself inside the body of another woman, challenged to choose the right door among three alternatives. She knew she had made the right choice when she found a door handle shaped like a heart. When she opened a doorway through the heart, she found herself inside the world’s best day spa, a kind of “paradise of women,” pampered and relaxed, with friends who included a woman she knew to be in complete remission from the same disease. The dreamer proceeded to pass on this dream, with its wonderful energy and promise, to the person for whom it was intended.

I teach what I call Dream Transfer or Vision Transfer as a conscious modality of healing through the imagination. You can find detailed accounts of how this works in my books Dreamways of the Iroquois and The Three “Only” Things.