After attending a dream seminar at Virginia Beach, a young man kept a record of his dreams, interpreting them according to his own frame of reference and standard symbols mentioned by [Edgar] Cayce. What he did with one dream, apparently anyone can do with his own dreams, perhaps opening up a new realm of insight into one's life. The following dream was analyzed months after the study project.

The young man, in his early twenties, saw himself standing at the ocean, fishing. The water was clear but turbulent. Standing next to him on the sand was a small figure, a replica of himself, weeping. His larger self caught a fish, an orange-hued flounder, and gave it to the smaller self, who promptly stopped crying. But the flounder flopped out of the smaller figure's hands, landing in a clump of bushes, and the small self began to cry again.

The dream's larger self poked through the bushes for the fish, but as he parted the foliage, discovered the fish being eaten by two animals, a white rabbit and a beaver. The beaver ran off, vanishing; the rabbit leaped into the ocean, swam about for a while, then returned tired and bedraggled.

After writing down the dream, the young man studied each symbol separately, passing over some whose meaning was not readily clear, then coming back to them in a day or two. After two days of intermittent study, he had compiled a list of symbols, relating each symbol to his own feeling about it, hoping in this way to find out what was stirring in his unconscious mind.

• He began with ocean. "I have read that water means spirit or source of life, or the unconscious." Then:
• Fishing = act of seeking in the spiritual realm.
• A fish = something out of the spiritual realm.
• The self (larger) = myself as I am now in the physical.
• Smaller self = could this be my childhood? was I starved or hungry in childhood? (sobbing over not getting the fish).
• Crying = wanting something stopped crying with fish.
• Fish got away = lost something which started smaller self crying again.
• Beaver = work like a beaver.
• Rabbit = timid.

Reworking his dream, the young man began to form a discernible pattern:

• Ocean: whatever the ocean stood for (spiritual source of life or the unconscious) it was beautifully clear, but turbulent.
• A fish: the symbol used by early Christians; could this mean Christ or spiritual food?
• The self (larger): I seem to be seeking, or fishing, as I am now doing in real life, for direction for my life and solutions to my problems.
• The self (smaller): this isn't a child. It is an exact duplicate of me. Can this be the part of me which needs spiritual food, small, undeveloped, a part of me that is crying out and is satisfied when given the fish? Maybe this is not my childhood (as first thought), but rather part of me as I am now, which needs help.
• Fish got away: somehow my spiritual food is getting away.
• Beaver: when I think of a beaver, I think of work. Maybe this is my job.

In a very real sense, it then became apparent to the non-psychic dream interpreters, that the beaver (his work) was actually eating up his spiritual food.

Like many essentially idealistic, puritanically schooled young Americans, he blocked out sex symbolism--and the symbolism was rather obvious in the white rabbit. He had written subsequently that he had raised them as a boy. "Sometimes I liked them. A lot of times it was hard work taking care of them." What he apparently meant, it developed from questioning, was that he was intrigued by the rabbit's sex habits, and he had apparently learned something from watching them. His sex attitude--the rabbit--could be consuming his spiritual food--the fish.

Reviewing the dream, and the thought process connected with its interpretation, it would seem, offhand, a great deal of bother for one dream. However, the dream, with its interpretation, did have something to do with reshaping the young man's life. It got him thinking about himself, about the warning he had apparently received, and he acted on it. He quit his job (the beaver ran away), and got another he considered more constructive.

He took stock of his marriage, the sex habits that endangered that marriage (the rabbit swam around for a while) and attempted to reform. Dreaming had awakened him, and perhaps saved his marriage.