Parent in Dreams: What Your Subconscious Is Really Telling You

You moved out twenty years ago. You have your own money, your own house, your own opinions about how a life should be run. And last night your subconscious mind put you back in the kitchen, being told what to do by a parent, and some part of you went right along with it.

Nearly everybody reads that dream as unfinished family business. Something you never said. Something they did. A therapist's worth of history rising up in the dark. And there may be real history there — but that isn't what the dream is about, and treating it that way is why the dream keeps coming back.

In a dream like this, your subconscious mind isn't working with your mother or your father. It's working with you. When it puts a parent on screen, it is not reporting on your relationship with them. It is reporting on your relationship with the highest authority inside you.

Why does your subconscious mind still cast your parents decades after you left home?

Because casting is about function, not affection.

Every night your subconscious mind renders the state of your inner development as a picture. It doesn't use words. Words belong to the conscious mind and they're local — English, Hindi, Portuguese — and the subconscious mind is older than any of them. It uses images, and it selects each image by what that image does. This is the Universal Language of the Mind, the ancient language Tarak Uday teaches, and the rule underneath the entire system is that form follows function.

So ask what a parent does. A parent holds a picture of who you can become and gives you what you need to get there. A parent is the first authority you ever knew. That's the function, and your mind uses it for the authority that sits deepest in you: your superconscious mind. Any authority figure can play that role in a dream — a boss, a teacher, a doctor, a judge — and which one shows up tells you how you're seeing your inner authority right now. A parent says you see it as something that nurtures you.

Your mind uses your actual parents because they are the strongest, earliest, most fully rendered image of authority you own. The casting is efficient, not sentimental. When your mind needs to show you your inner authority, it reaches for the file that loads fastest.

What does a parent actually mean in the Universal Language of the Mind?

It means your superconscious mind — the deepest of the three divisions of your mind, and the one your spirit uses.

Most people in your dreams are CHARACTER-istics within your PERSON-ality. Men reflect aspects of your conscious mind, women reflect aspects of your subconscious mind, and how well you know them reflects how well you know that part of yourself. Authority figures are different. The superconscious mind is whole amongst itself. It doesn't split into aspects, because it is the mind your spirit uses in the fifth dimension, where there is no illusion of separation. So when a parent appears, the dream isn't pointing at one trait of yours. It's showing you your inner authority as a whole, and how you're perceiving it.

That authority has a job. It holds the blueprint you created for your own existence — your soul's purpose and your purpose in this lifetime — and it feeds lifeforce energy to the rest of you so you can live that blueprint out. That feeling of being suddenly wide awake in the middle of the night, inspired by an idea you can't wait to act on? That's your superconscious mind doing its job.

So the useful question is never what did my parent want from me. It's how am I treating the part of me that knows what I came here to do, and am I letting it fuel me.

So what is the difference between dreaming of your mother and your father?

They're the two qualities of the same authority, and the distinction is precise.

The mother figure carries the superconscious mind's receptive quality — its purpose. This is the part of you that holds the blueprint, and the blueprint is receptive: it waits for your attention. The mother in your dream is telling you how you're relating to your purpose. A warm, welcoming mother means you've been turning toward that blueprint. A critical or disappointed mother means you can feel the distance between what you're doing and what you came here to do. A mother you can't reach means the blueprint is waiting and you haven't been consulting it.

The father figure carries the superconscious mind's aggressive quality — its duty, the steady supply of lifeforce energy that lets you act on that purpose. A father in your dream reports on the energy you're drawing from within. A strong, proud father means that energy is flowing and you're using it. A father who is tired, distant or withholding means you've been cut off from your own inspiration and running on effort alone.

And when both appear together, the dream is showing you the working relationship between the two qualities of your superconscious mind — your purpose and the energy to carry it out. Watch how they treat each other in the scene, because that is exactly how those two sides of you are currently getting along. Parents arguing in a dream is not a memory. It's a picture of your purpose and your energy pulling in different directions.

The same goes for every authority figure. A grandmother, a female boss or a female teacher carries the receptive quality; a grandfather, a male boss or a male teacher carries the aggressive one. Being an authority is what makes them your superconscious mind. Being male or female tells you which quality you're looking at.

What does it mean when the parent is angry, absent, or has died?

Each of those is a different reading, and none of them is a forecast about your family.

An angry or punishing parent shows you perceiving your own inner authority as being against you. That usually happens when you know, somewhere, that you've been living out of line with your blueprint, and instead of consulting it you've started to dread it. The dream is showing you the strain in that relationship, not accusing you of anything. The repair is the same every time: go within and check the blueprint.

An absent parent, one you're looking for and can't find, reports a connection you've lost touch with. If it's your mother, the blueprint is still there, receptive, awaiting your attention, and you haven't been giving it any. If it's your father, the lifeforce energy that should be feeding your purpose isn't reaching you, and you've probably felt it as flatness or exhaustion. People often read this as abandonment. It's closer to a phone you stopped picking up.

A parent who is ill reflects negative thinking that has been weakening how you relate to your inner authority — doubt, cynicism, the story that your purpose isn't realistic. A parent in a hospital is that relationship in a healing state of mind. And a parent who is dying, or dies in the dream, is the Death symbol: major transformation. The way you relate to your superconscious mind is changing in a big way — an old way of seeing your inner authority is ending so a new one can take its place. Unsettling to experience, and one of the healthier things this symbol does. It is not a prediction about your parent's health.

A parent who has died in waking life deserves its own care. Most dreams of a parent who has passed are regular dreams, and your parent stands for your superconscious mind exactly as a living parent would, so read how they treated you. But visitation dreams are real: a true visitation is a shared experience with your parent's soul, and it has its own marks. Little else is going on, your parent is the whole focus, they speak to you without moving their mouth, and they look happy and healthy, often younger than when they died. If that's what you had, receive it for what it is.

Why do you become the parent in some of these dreams?

Because you're stepping into the role of your own inner authority, and the dream is showing you how you handle it.

✦ Tarak Uday takes this further in Structure of the Mind, his map of the three divisions of mind and the powers of attention, memory and imagination.

When you're the parent in the dream — instructing, protecting, deciding for a child — look at the child. A child is an undeveloped aspect of yourself: a quality that has started to grow but still needs attention and guidance to mature. A boy is a developing aspect of your conscious mind, a girl a developing aspect of your subconscious mind, and a baby is a brand-new quality being born in you.

Notice how you treat them. Most people are startled by their own tone here. If you're harsh with the child, that's how you treat the qualities you're still developing — you demand they be finished before you'll give them any support. If you're patient, you're giving your own growth what your superconscious mind gives you: direction and energy. The subconscious mind reports this without comment, and it's some of the most direct feedback you will ever get about how you actually treat yourself.

There's a version of this that catches people off guard, which is parenting a child who is clearly you at a younger age. That child is a quality you began developing long ago and never finished. The dream is putting it back in your care. Ask what that younger you was reaching for, because that is the part of you asking for direction now.

And if you're a parent to a child you don't recognise, the aspect is one you know less well. Something you've started to develop recently is now in your care and hasn't been named yet. That's one of the healthiest versions of this dream. It means you're growing in a direction you weren't growing a year ago, and you'll get to know that quality the more attention you give it.

How do you read a parent dream tonight?

Write it down before you move, while the specifics are still yours. Who was there, what was said, where it happened, and what you felt about it in the dream rather than what you feel about it now.

Then name the quality. Was it your mother — the receptive side, your purpose? Your father — the aggressive side, the energy to live it? A grandparent, a boss, a teacher? The figure your subconscious mind chose shows you how you're seeing your inner authority: as nurturing like a parent, guiding like a teacher, or telling you what to do like a boss.

Now look at the relationship, because this is the whole point. How did the parent treat you, and how did you respond? Did you listen, argue, hide, ignore them, go looking for them? That exchange is how you've been relating to your superconscious mind lately. If the parent told you something, take it seriously, and ask where in your life you've been ignoring your own inner guidance on exactly that.

Then check the setting, because places in dreams are states of mind. Your home is your everyday state of mind, the one you habitually live in. A kitchen is the state of mind of deciding what lessons you will be learning in life — which is why a parent in the kitchen is such a pointed dream. A school is a learning state of mind. A car is your physical body and your life in the physical reality.

Then give your superconscious mind a way in. The word spirit comes from words that mean breath, and the breath is your most direct connection to the mind your spirit uses. A few minutes of long, slow, deep breathing before you sleep is how you start consulting the blueprint.

Do that honestly and the dream stops repeating, which is how the subconscious mind signals that a message has landed. It has no interest in reminding you about your childhood. It's showing you how you're treating the highest authority you have, so that you can choose to listen to it.