John's dream:

''This dream took me back to the pure innocence of my childhood: I am in my grandmother's apartment. My sister and I are playing tag. We are running and hiding everywhere and Grandma lets us do that. We had so much freedom to be our wild and wacky selves with Grandma. We run in and out of the garden. Each time we go back in, I notice that the furniture has changed. Every time it is different. I feel a little bewildered. I wake up feeling warm and fuzzy and missing my childhood.''

That's a wonderful dream even though there is something bittersweet about the memory. One technique I use is to bring the loved one into the present. I suggested that, just for a day, every time John remembers this dream, he should imagine showing his grandmother his life as it is now.

If you are grateful to these dream characters, if they hold fond memories for you, then hold imaginary conversations with them in which you tell them so. It will make a difference.

Sometimes the dead appear in our dreams for a purpose. If so, pay special attention.

Fran's dream:

''I dream that my aunt (who passed away last year) has come to visit me. In the dream, I don't realize that she is dead but I am taken aback by her visit. I know I didn't invite her. I ask her why she has come. She says she heard that I needed to reorganize my life and she's come to help. In the dream, I think I'll need to reorganize my study so she can use it as a guest room and sleep there.''

Your aunt offered to help you! Take her up on the offer! As with the first dream, take her around with you and show her your present life. Fran should ask her, ''How does my life need to be reorganized?'' (Hint: Fran already had a clue that it concerns her study.) Even though this is all imaginary, Fran will find that her aunt has thoughts and ideas about her life that she would never have come up with on her own.

I encourage you to take dreams as highly meaningful. You don't need to believe in reincarnation to recognize that this dream has, in a manner of speaking, told Fran that her life needs reorganizing and her aunt is someone to help with that.

Sometimes the dream makes a pointed statement that calls for completion.

David's Dream:

Here is a dream of my own that happened around the anniversary of the death of my father.

''I am on the stairs of my house. It's not really any house I know. My father is behind me and 'my' son is in front of us. My son is angry at me, but it is a teenage tantrum and I know it will pass. I look back to my father and shrug my shoulders helplessly. What can I do? He looks at me and smiles as if to say, 'Now you know what I had to put up with.'''

In waking life I have two daughters and no sons. From the dream, I took my father around with me and held conversations with him. Specific incidents from when I was 17 and fighting with him all the time flooded back; The teenage certainty that he was the person preventing me from living my life came through with embarrassing clarity. But the sense of his loving glance at me on the dream-stairs told me just as clearly that he was doing his best, and between us we really had done well even though I'd begrudged him a thank you for many years. He finally received that thank you as a result of this dreamwork.

It goes, almost without saying, that this is a technique to use with people who have your best interests at heart. It has to be a loved one, someone who, underneath it all, wants only to support you the best they can. So many dreams are stressful. Be sure to enjoy the magical moments of dream life and replay them into your waking world.

Dream Of The Week is an experimental email from David Jenkins. It has the goal of explaining the benefits of this unique way of working with dreams to as wide an audience as possible. Each email shows one of the many techniques I use and is intended to show the reader how I worked with a particular dream. Please forward this email to anyone who might be interested. (And unsubscribing information is at the bottom of the email.) If you have any feedback for me about Dream of the Week, please send me an email.

Best wishes