I had learned about the importance of dreams in Belsebuub’s courses, so I often looked to them for guidance. Every once in a while I had dreams that helped me in a practical way with my job as a self-employed app designer and developer.
Fonts Matter
I had an interesting dream when I was trying to design a poster. It was the first design project I had ever tried my hand in, and the designs I was producing were really bad.
Nevertheless, I was trying different things and gradually improving. Then one night, I dreamt of a beautiful font, with curls and accents in all the right places, absolutely lovely, a bit like this one:
Although my next design didn’t make the final cut, it was a vast improvement thanks to the tip from my dream. I now carefully consider fonts when designing, and often start with them first.
Colors
My understanding of colors began when I saw a symbol in my dreams that I was shocked to later discover in a real life drawing by Goethe.
Goethe approached his study of color experientially, using his own perceptions to study light and color instead of relying on external physical instruments.
As a result, his work is still the best available on color perception, even if it’s not recognized as widely for its scientific merit. It also carries surprising hidden symbology.
Goethe saw colors as the outcome of the interplay of light (whose closest corollary is yellow, like sunlight) and darkness (most similar to purple, like deep water or dark sky).
Another interesting tip about colors I picked up from a dream happened more recently. I had a semi-lucid dream in which I saw a man in a blue business suit, but it was a particular color of blue… I knew intuitively that the suit was from the 1950s, and that it was a particular shade of blue that was very popular at the time.
I intuitively grasped the immense power culture has on our perception of color and its meaning, as everything associated with 1950s America such as conservative values, blue-collar work, trustworthiness, suburban life, quality products, etc… can be communicated with the use of a particular shade of blue. Looking at the work of successful designers, one can clearly see how they draw upon the influence of past eras to create a message, and now I could relate to this approach on a more personal level thanks to my dream.
Business and Sales
I worked in sales support for a while at a rice company in the San Francisco bay area. Sales was something that made me very uncomfortable, and I struggled with anxiety around selling. One night I had a dream that showed me something surprising. A buyer was trying to decide on a gift for a friend. A salesman offered him something very expensive and fancy, covered in diamonds.
Then I suggested something else instead, something that was both very personal and would provide a fun experience for the both of them. The dream showed me how good sales is not trying to make someone pay money for something, but trying to help someone find a solution to their problem, one they wouldn’t come up with on their own.
In another dream, I was in a grocery store buying a commodity. I noticed a few major brands, and then one that mixed all of them together and touted the benefits of each. I had no desire to use the mixed one, and was certain that no one would buy it. This showed me how powerful differentiation can be.
Another night, I dreamt of browsing a warehouse with someone I know, he was looking to sell a set of items. He asked if I thought he should include the whole set, even if someone didn’t need everything in the set, to which I replied “why would you do that?” He answered that if someone were choosing between comparable options, they would choose the one with a more complete set, even if they didn’t need everything in it — I thought it was an interesting tip.
The last piece of business advice, came in the form of a premonition. My wife and I were working on creating a business, and we knew we needed some help and direction.
In a dream, I met someone who was teaching a martial art (which I understood to symbolize business development.) He wasn’t very experienced, but had a lot of knowledge about it and would be able to teach us a lot.
Around the same time, my wife had a dream about someone that would help us, and it would be mutually beneficial. It was shortly after this that we found and joined a business plan competition that we became a part of, where both of our dreams became a reality.
The program mentors were both young, and without extensive business experience, but with a lot of knowledge about all the different aspects of business, and we received office space, a small amount of funding, and mentorship in exchange for equity.
I laughed out loud a number of times as I found it quite enjoyable to think you were getting guidance on typefaces and other design decisions! Very interesting and fresh perspective on the value of dreams. I quite enjoyed it. And VERY good advice on how to be a good salesman.
I had to think a while about it to see if I had any similar dream lessons and one which surfaced was on how to deal with clients. I remember it very early on in my freelance career and one of my earliest clients was also one of my most needy. Always changing things last minute, always wanting this as quickly as possible and I felt a pressure from him which gave me a certain amount of stress while I was working on his projects. I was also quite new and was a bit uncomfortable with my abilities.
One night I dreamt that he called me on the phone and asked in a very irate way if the project was finished. I told him clearly about where I was in my work and how long it would be until completion etc.. He went absolutely nuts on the phone, screaming at my, threatening me, cursing etc.. It was completely uncalled for and so out of place, that once I died to my fear, I was able to see that he was being totally absurd. I hung up on him without feeling badly. When I woke up, I realized that I could only control myself, do my best and communicate well. And that I couldn’t be responsible for others behaviour and I resolved to not worry about pressure they felt themselves and tried to exert on me. That lesson has definitely stuck with me since and made my freelance career much more enjoyable.
Thanks for sharing your experiences Julian. It was nice to read your observations and I could tap into a bit of the sense of learning that you were going through.
I also remember having design jobs and going through a similar set of questions and reflections. I looked into Goethe’s color wheel. It stood out to me as something worthwhile, but because it was not scientific enough I moved to a more modern version. It knowledge the value of your dream experience gave you that I did not have.
I also liked your perspective on sales. After some struggling with it I also came around to the conclusion that it can be a useful work for society, but has aspects in it that are dark, and these aspects need to removed from my approach. Self observation helped me get a similar guidance as you into this topic.
Nice Julian. Your experiences show how useful it is for anyone to be in tune with their dreams and the guidance that is available there. I think each person is given so much, every night, but only a very small part of that potential is generally realised by people as dreams had are largely ignored and not understood. Such an unfortunate waste.
I also find that, by far, most of what is given has to do with my inner work, the personal development of oneself and the daily work to do this. But like your experience mentions here we can also get help on more every day things, yet this can still be so helpful! Similar to what Ella mentions, it all becomes or should be part of one thing where we move in accordance with divine will.
Nice topic of the colours btw.
Interesting examples of very practical guidance Julian, and I love the insight about the colours! Since studying Chinese Medicine and their patterns of resonance, the seasons have also had colours for me, and most of them correspond to Goethe’s wheel. 🙂
I’ve heard that marketing stratagies often use deep understanding of peoples psychology, but your experience goes further than I expected! It’s great also that you had that reassuring dream about sales in itself not being a bad thing, though if course it can so easily get hijacked by greed.
I’ve often felt unsure about following hunches regarding an action I should take that would benefit my ‘material’ life, though I’ve also felt that there is such capacity for learning through what we choose to do to ‘make a living’; our learning, growth and spirituality is not just confined to meditation rooms and ‘spiritual activities’, right?! Reading your experiences has reminded me to avoid compartmentalising areas of my life; I think it blocks my learning in some areas.
Those are some very interesting and practical dreams, Julian! Even if they weren’t about personal, self-knowledge, it’s still such a profound thing to learn more about this world and how it works through a dream.
I thought your comments on the colour wheel were very interesting! I’d never considered the colours as being tied to the solar events before.
And It’s actually fascinating to see how the colours blend together. Each colour has its own energy, with visible red light having less energy than visible blue or violet light… but somehow visually in moving from red through the colours, we go back seamlessly to red visually, despite the energy having increased all the way around. I wonder if this, too, is a reflection of the inner work taking place on many levels, on higher and higher octaves, as we carry on… It’s like the level beyond what we can physically see would very much resemble what we can see…
It’s great you found this practical guidance in your dreams Julian. Thanks for sharing these examples.
Thanks for sharing Julian,
I† is amazing how much we can learn in so many areas
of our lives from our dreams, a real treasure trove of guidance
and information to help us on our journey.