There is something exciting about traveling somewhere you have never been.

And maybe something a little unnerving, too. So before we go, we usually gather information.

We pick up a guidebook. We look at maps. We search for the places everyone says we shouldn’t miss. We want to know where we’re going. And we like to know how we’re going to get there. A little information can help us find our way.

The Information and the Experience

Someone tells you about the incredible meal they ate at a little restaurant. They tell you exactly what they ordered. They describe every bite. So you arrive already thinking, That’s what I’m going to have.

Then you sit down. You open the menu. And suddenly possibility returns. Something else catches your eye. And then something else.

There is curiosity. Appetite. Response. Preference.

Somewhere between learning about a place, how to travel there, what others have done, and the actual experience you have in it, a lot can change.

What sounded wonderful when someone else described it doesn’t have to be what you do or what you choose when the whole menu is open in front of you.

Dreaming is a lot like this.

There are countless ways to learn about dreams. We can read books, explore symbols, listen to other dreamers, study traditions, learn techniques, and become curious about the experiences people have had inside their own dreaming worlds.

All of that can add something to our adventure.

• Information can tell us where something is and how we might travel it.
• Experience tells us what it was like to be there.
• Relationship tells us what it becomes for us.

Perhaps, though, it’s really about not being so hung up on the guidebook to dreaming that we forget to enter the experience of dreams in our own way.

Because once we arrive, the experience is ours. We are no longer reading about the restaurant. We are tasting the food. We are no longer looking at pictures of the ancient structure. We are standing inside it.

We feel the temperature of the place. We hear its sounds. We notice what catches our attention. Our bodies respond to the space around us. Our minds wander into territory we didn’t know was there.

Someone else’s experience may have helped us get there. But they didn’t take our trip. You are the one who went there on that day, at that time, in that season, with your luggage…

You see what you see. You feel what you feel. You notice what catches your eye.

Others may have encountered something similar. They might study dreaming for decades. They may offer a perspective that allows you to notice something you hadn’t considered before. That can be part of the adventure.

We can share experiences…

And suddenly two travelers have more of the world to wonder about.

Sometimes we recognize something in the other person’s story: Yes. I see that.

Life is so interesting, though. We can stand before the same statue and share what it was like to see it, and each person can have a different perspective. Sometimes that adds to our experience. Other times, it might cause us to wonder if they know something we don’t.

And if we’re not careful, another person’s perception and relationship with an experience can begin changing the memory of our own.

Dreams can be like that, too. We can share what we saw. We can wonder together. Someone else’s perspective or perception may illuminate something we hadn’t considered or help something suddenly click into place.

But what is ours is ours. And we really don’t need someone else to define it for us.

In our dreams, we can be somewhere that is ours alone. We get to experience something our lives did not contain before. And now they do. Even if we don’t remember every detail of the trip.

Just like our waking-world trips, it’s the experience inside our dreams that leaves the impression on us.

We go wherever we dreamed, and whatever that experience brings back to us, connects to, or leaves lingering into today, tomorrow, and the days that follow is already there with us.

And only you know what that feels like for you. What that is in your life. What that personally means to you.

Agency and autonomy are inherent in being the one who dreamed.

Whatever meaning the trip holds is yours to discover. You get to decide for yourself. Trust yourself to know, because…

Your dream is your dream.

You were the one who went.